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Welcome to Daily Drive for September 9th, 2025.
00:23
I'm Jake Nier in New Orleans, in for Kellen Walker.
00:27
Today on the show, a new report says Toyota will consolidate Lexus production sites in the U.S.,
00:34
Ford will recall nearly 1.5 million vehicles in the U.S., and Stellantis Chairman John Elkan
00:40
will do a year of community service to settle a tax-broad case.
00:45
Plus, Automotive News has a new series on industry disruptors over the past century.
00:51
We'll hear from one of those disruptors, consumer advocate, politician, and author,
00:57
In recent years, it's really grown to a halt.
01:01
There's been a lot of diversionary attention to autonomous cars or semi-autonomous features.
01:08
Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.
01:13
Toyota Motor plans to consolidate production of Lexus vehicles in the U.S.
01:18
into a single location down from two.
01:21
That's according to Japan's Nikkei news outlet.
01:24
The report says the move is in response to the cost of high tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.
01:31
Toyota currently makes Lexus ES sedans in Georgetown, Kentucky,
01:36
and Lexus TX utility vehicles at its plant in Princeton, Indiana.
01:41
After the consolidation, Nikkei says Toyota will end production of Lexus cars at the Kentucky plant.
01:47
A Toyota spokesperson was not immediately available to comment on the report.
01:52
Ford is recalling about one and a half million vehicles in the U.S. due to a rear-view camera issue.
01:59
NHTSA says the issue causes an inverted, distorted, or blank image.
02:04
The agency says Ford dealers will inspect and replace vehicle cameras at no cost to owners.
02:11
NHTSA data shows Ford has issued a record 109 recalls in the U.S. so far in 2025.
02:18
Stellantis is second with 30 callbacks.
02:22
And Stellantis chairman John Elcan has agreed to do a year of community service
02:27
and pay a negotiated sum to settle a tax dispute over the inheritance of his grandmother.
02:33
That's according to Italian prosecutors.
02:36
They say Elcan and his siblings will jointly pay $215 million to tax authorities
02:43
related to the inheritance.
02:45
And those are today's headlines.
02:47
You can find more details on all of those stories at AutoNews.com.
02:51
In just a minute, we're going to hear a piece of our own Molly Boygon's conversation
02:55
with famed consumer advocate and one-time Green Party nominee for President Ralph Nader.
03:01
Molly conducted that interview as part of Automotive News' new series on industry disruptors
03:06
that you can find in this week's print edition and on AutoNews.com.
03:11
Here to talk more about that series is Jerry Hirsch, Senior Editor for the Technology and Innovation
03:16
Team at Automotive News. Jerry, welcome back to Daily Drive.
03:20
Thank you very much for having me.
03:22
So Jerry, how did the series come about?
03:24
Well, there's just an amazing amount of turmoil in the auto industry right now.
03:29
A lot of it's based upon tariffs and trade and policy.
03:34
But we can't lose sight that it's also people.
03:38
Almost every day Elon Musk is in the news, right?
03:41
And he's done a tremendous amount to disrupt the auto industry and now other things.
03:47
So we looked at that and we thought, boy, this is an industry that's had a series of disruptors.
03:52
It goes all the way back to Henry Ford.
03:54
But there's a post-World War II or we would say modern group that exists,
04:01
especially in the last 20, 30 years that is completely changing the auto industry.
04:07
So we already mentioned Ralph Nader.
04:09
We'll hear from him in a minute.
04:10
But who are some of the other people that we profiled?
04:13
First, I want to go to Ralph Nader.
04:15
He is so important because if it were not for him,
04:19
we wouldn't have the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.
04:23
We wouldn't have all these safety tests.
04:26
He's the person who puts safety on the automotive industry's radar,
04:31
on the national radar.
04:32
And it's saved hundreds of thousands of lives since then,
04:37
even though roughly 40,000 people lose their lives because of traffic crashes annually still.
04:46
Another really interesting one is Ernie Garcia and the group that created Car Vanilla.
04:52
This is such a simple idea.
04:54
These guys were looking at how the world was changing and say, boy,
04:58
I can buy a book online and it's on my front porch the next day.
05:03
I can buy groceries online and they're delivered.
05:07
Why can't I buy a car?
05:10
And they've gone about and they've transformed the industry.
05:14
Now, still the paint on state regulation and everything else,
05:18
it's not quite as seamless as buying a book on Amazon and having it delivered that afternoon.
05:25
But it really has changed the face of our retailing.
05:30
People can do so much research online.
05:32
They can negotiate online.
05:34
They can find financing online.
05:36
In some cases, they can have a car delivered within a day or two.
05:42
You can take 15, 20 photos of your car and you can sell it online.
05:48
And all the other auto retailers are looking at this and moving in that direction.
05:54
So he's a real fascinating one.
05:56
Let's go a little farther back.
05:59
There's a guy named Maximilian Hoffmann.
06:02
This guy was a refugee to the United States from Nazi Germany.
06:08
Now, a lot of those refugees want nothing to do with Germany post World War II.
06:14
But he thought, wow, there's some really great cars in Germany.
06:19
And maybe we should import them and maybe they will work in the US market.
06:24
So now we have Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, all in the US market, all marquee brands.
06:34
What he did, he was the first distributor for these.
06:37
And once he got the brands going, he sold the distributorships back to the automakers
06:43
and making a ton of money at the time in the process.
06:47
Interestingly, he also was the first to import VW Beetles,
06:51
the Bug, who hasn't played Slugbug with a sibling on a long road trip.
06:57
But he didn't make the Beetle work that well.
07:00
And he sold that off quite quickly.
07:02
Other brands he toyed with were Jaguar.
07:05
This guy, he put imports on the face of the US auto market.
07:11
You know, of all the series that we've done here at Automotive News
07:15
in the past few years since I've been here, this really is one of my favorites.
07:19
There's just so many interesting stories and interesting people involved.
07:23
I so recommend that people check this out.
07:26
You can find it in this week's Automotive News Print Edition
07:29
or at AutoNews.com if you are a subscriber.
07:32
Jerry Hirsch, thank you so much for joining us again on Daily Drive.
07:36
Bad to be with you.
07:37
Coming up, consumer advocate Ralph Nader talks about his view of the auto industry in 2025
07:43
from safety standards to autonomous driving.
07:46
That's next on Daily Drive.
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08:28
Welcome back to Daily Drive.
08:32
Ralph Nader has long sparred with automakers over vehicle safety and consumer protection,
08:38
the once presidential candidate recently spoke with our own Molly Boygon as part of our new series
08:44
on industry disruptors over the past 100 years.
08:47
They spoke on Shift, a podcast about mobility.
08:51
Here's a piece of their conversation.
08:53
So I read through your 1996 congressional testimony and I wanted to read some of it to you and
08:59
sort of get your reaction.
09:00
So you said, quote, year after year with Medea-like intensity,
09:05
the motor vehicle through its traumatic and polluting impacts performs as the greatest
09:10
environmental hazard in this country, a hazard whose inception and consequences
09:16
do not conform neatly to municipal, county, and state boundaries.
09:20
And year after year, our scientific, technological, and organizational know-how
09:26
and potential to literally invent the future of motor vehicle safety,
09:31
expand exponentially, and thereby expose the shocking, shameful gap between what can be done
09:37
and what is being done.
09:39
How much do you think that things have changed since that testimony in 1966?
09:44
Well, in the first few years, they've changed a lot because the first stage
09:50
improvements long overdue for motor vehicle safety, both crash worthiness and handling
09:57
and braking and tires were all improved.
10:02
Our tires were improved.
10:04
It went to the level of Europe where we were behind.
10:10
We had better brakes, crash worthiness, mandatory depots, later on airbags,
10:18
and a whole list of changes, rollover protection, for example, side impact protection,
10:25
collapsible steering columns, padded dash panels, head restraints.
10:30
So that was a big leap forward.
10:33
And then there was a long period with very little progress.
10:38
And then came along actually some competition from different companies abroad
10:46
and they stimulated the domestic industry just to keep up.
10:53
The first stage regulation was quite successful, led to a lot of prevention of deaths, injuries,
11:03
The second, it became some degree self-perpetuating.
11:08
They began to compete on fuel efficiency.
11:12
They began to reduce their emissions more,
11:16
stimulated by auto safety legislation, of course, but also by competition.
11:23
In recent years, it's really ground to a halt.
11:27
There's been a lot of diversionary attention to autonomous cars or semi-autonomous features
11:36
and then drive in Congress, which failed by the auto companies to
11:41
not regulate autonomous cars at all.
11:44
So we're now looking for the next stage of conventional
11:50
fresh worthiness and operational safety for NHTSA.
11:56
And when you talk about the diversion toward autonomous vehicles and semi-autonomous vehicles,
12:04
you know, it's interesting that you describe that as a diversion because some people
12:08
in the industry, as you know, view autonomy as kind of the natural extension of safety features
12:14
like automatic emergency braking and lane keeping assist.
12:17
So can you say a little bit more about that?
12:20
Yeah, well, there is a clear distinction between semi-autonomous, which, you know,
12:26
lane changing protections, for example, autonomous braking, those are good.
12:32
But once they try to get rid of the driver, either totally or, you know, just lay back,
12:39
get rid of the steering wheel, the auto industry is in real trouble because they can't get the
12:46
first base on autonomous vehicles in conventional traffic without the trust of motorists.
12:55
And the motorists read about these fatalities and injuries and crashing into
13:02
lease cars and so on. And they get very upset, you know, the one thing
13:09
they feel they have control of in their lives is their car. And without driver's trust,
13:17
no matter how many so-called dry runs and on heavy traffic areas that Waymo and others brag about,
13:26
it's not going to happen. The other thing is you're ignoring hacking. I was at a technical
13:32
conference a few years ago and I raised the question of hacking. I said, are there any
13:41
defenses against hacking, you know, that it can be remotely hacked for a whole model fleet of cars?
13:48
All at once, suddenly they can be moved in different directions on the highway. In addition to
13:56
dealers wanting to get paid and, you know, they can disable the vehicle or criminal elements.
14:07
And it's almost a taboo of discussion. Nobody wants to talk about it. I've had experts tell me
14:14
the auto companies have no answer to the hacking problem. And so there's a lot of uncertainty
14:23
and there are people who are very knowledgeable about this who think that fully autonomous
14:32
vehicles are not going to see in our lifetime. First of all, they have to have highway preparations
14:38
for them. And there are all kinds of hypotheticals on how they're going to interact with driver-driven
14:46
vehicles as there comes more and more of a mix. I think there's been a lot of hype,
14:54
Silicon Valley responsible for it and it shook up the Michigan industry. There's been a lot of hype,
15:03
but if you look at some of the articles that have come out, don't hold your breath
15:11
for kind of promise that Elon Musk and others have continually repeated and failed to materialize
15:21
in terms of autonomous cars be ruling the roads. What do you make of Elon Musk's
15:29
sort of legacy in the auto industry? Because on the one hand, I think you may have been sort of
15:33
nodding at Tesla when you talked about the innovation that was pushing the
15:40
traditional auto industry forward, particularly on electric vehicles. And on the other hand,
15:45
he's emerged as as you say, a booster of some technologies that may not be ready for prime
15:51
time. And obviously his political advocacy is a sort of separate issue. So how do you think about his
15:57
role in the auto industry? Well, it was a remarkable role. After all, nobody make a dent in the
16:04
auto companies. The Tucker Carr effort was suppressed decades ago. So you have to give
16:13
him credit. He really broke through, developed a substantial volume of electric car sales,
16:21
but it does seem to be sunsetting now for him. Look at the latest figures of decline,
16:28
and he seems to have lost interest. He became very political and he involved in Starlink and
16:36
SpaceX and Neural Company has written himself very thin. So I think the amazing thing is how the
16:48
stock is holding up. And I think it's because he still has a sort of aga level of intense support
16:58
by his fans. But clearly, you know, he's being beaten by BYW all over and it's going to be worse.
17:08
And his sales are declining in Europe, United States. He now says the future of Tesla is
17:18
autonomous vehicles. Well, he's behind on that. He's trying to engage in ketchup. It's too much
17:25
of a Tesla relies on him. He does have a great skill in early on in hiring very confident engineers
17:38
and production people have to hand it to him. But now there are people abandoning ships. They
17:45
don't like them ideologically. And they don't like the fact that he's not paying enough
17:51
attention to the company. And then they see overwhelmingly insuperable competition from
17:58
the Chinese. I mean, they're producing very high quality electric cars for half price.
18:04
They can bear a big tariff and still be very, very competitive. And now they're opening up
18:11
South America. They're into Asia, Europe. And then there's the conventional companies
18:18
that are going to start competing more, you know, the U.S. companies in BW and Toyota. Toyota,
18:26
I think, is sending us a message, which is, you know, they haven't really bought into electric
18:32
cars. They're into hybrids. And it's worked out pretty well for them. So what did they know
18:37
early about the deficiencies of electric cars, not just the limited range and not just the
18:47
lack of stations to recharge. But there are fire problems with electric cars and there are
18:55
problems of servicing and the like. Once you get into a volume bubble.
19:01
Consumer advocate, author and politician Ralph Nader spoke with our own Molly Boygon
19:06
on SHIFT, a podcast about mobility. You can hear that full conversation available now wherever
19:12
you get your podcasts. That's Daily Drive for today. I'm Jake Nier in for Kellan Walker. You can
19:19
get the latest news on industry disruptors, manufacturing and everything happening in the
19:24
auto industry at AutoNews.com. Come back tomorrow for a conversation with Selmy ride president
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Dom Pope and the company's new chairman Chip Perry. This was a solution that in all my years
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in the industry hadn't seen anything quite like this. It's quite unique and it very much
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complements any other set of lead sources that a dealer is using to acquire opportunities
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to buy cars in the public. We'd love to hear from you. Let us know what you think of the show
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and the topics we covered today. Send us an email at dailydrive at autonews.com or leave
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