Sept. 9, 2025 | Ralph Nader talks auto safety in 2025; Toyota to consolidate U.S. Lexus production

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Welcome to Daily Drive for September 9th, 2025.

I'm Jake Nier in New Orleans, in for Kellen Walker.

Today on the show, a new report says Toyota will consolidate Lexus production sites in the U.S.,

Ford will recall nearly 1.5 million vehicles in the U.S., and Stellantis Chairman John Elkan

will do a year of community service to settle a tax-broad case.

Plus, Automotive News has a new series on industry disruptors over the past century.

We'll hear from one of those disruptors, consumer advocate, politician, and author,

Ralph Nader.

In recent years, it's really grown to a halt.

There's been a lot of diversionary attention to autonomous cars or semi-autonomous features.

Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.

Toyota Motor plans to consolidate production of Lexus vehicles in the U.S.

into a single location down from two.

That's according to Japan's Nikkei news outlet.

The report says the move is in response to the cost of high tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.

Toyota currently makes Lexus ES sedans in Georgetown, Kentucky,

and Lexus TX utility vehicles at its plant in Princeton, Indiana.

After the consolidation, Nikkei says Toyota will end production of Lexus cars at the Kentucky plant.

A Toyota spokesperson was not immediately available to comment on the report.

Ford is recalling about one and a half million vehicles in the U.S. due to a rear-view camera issue.

NHTSA says the issue causes an inverted, distorted, or blank image.

The agency says Ford dealers will inspect and replace vehicle cameras at no cost to owners.

NHTSA data shows Ford has issued a record 109 recalls in the U.S. so far in 2025.

Stellantis is second with 30 callbacks.

And Stellantis chairman John Elcan has agreed to do a year of community service

and pay a negotiated sum to settle a tax dispute over the inheritance of his grandmother.

That's according to Italian prosecutors.

They say Elcan and his siblings will jointly pay $215 million to tax authorities

related to the inheritance.

And those are today's headlines.

You can find more details on all of those stories at AutoNews.com.

In just a minute, we're going to hear a piece of our own Molly Boygon's conversation

with famed consumer advocate and one-time Green Party nominee for President Ralph Nader.

Molly conducted that interview as part of Automotive News' new series on industry disruptors

that you can find in this week's print edition and on AutoNews.com.

Here to talk more about that series is Jerry Hirsch, Senior Editor for the Technology and Innovation

Team at Automotive News. Jerry, welcome back to Daily Drive.

Thank you very much for having me.

So Jerry, how did the series come about?

Well, there's just an amazing amount of turmoil in the auto industry right now.

A lot of it's based upon tariffs and trade and policy.

But we can't lose sight that it's also people.

Almost every day Elon Musk is in the news, right?

And he's done a tremendous amount to disrupt the auto industry and now other things.

So we looked at that and we thought, boy, this is an industry that's had a series of disruptors.

It goes all the way back to Henry Ford.

But there's a post-World War II or we would say modern group that exists,

especially in the last 20, 30 years that is completely changing the auto industry.

So we already mentioned Ralph Nader.

We'll hear from him in a minute.

But who are some of the other people that we profiled?

First, I want to go to Ralph Nader.

He is so important because if it were not for him,

we wouldn't have the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.

We wouldn't have all these safety tests.

He's the person who puts safety on the automotive industry's radar,

on the national radar.

And it's saved hundreds of thousands of lives since then,

even though roughly 40,000 people lose their lives because of traffic crashes annually still.

Another really interesting one is Ernie Garcia and the group that created Car Vanilla.

This is such a simple idea.

These guys were looking at how the world was changing and say, boy,

I can buy a book online and it's on my front porch the next day.

I can buy groceries online and they're delivered.

Why can't I buy a car?

And they've gone about and they've transformed the industry.

Now, still the paint on state regulation and everything else,

it's not quite as seamless as buying a book on Amazon and having it delivered that afternoon.

But it really has changed the face of our retailing.

People can do so much research online.

They can negotiate online.

They can find financing online.

In some cases, they can have a car delivered within a day or two.

You can take 15, 20 photos of your car and you can sell it online.

And all the other auto retailers are looking at this and moving in that direction.

So he's a real fascinating one.

Let's go a little farther back.

There's a guy named Maximilian Hoffmann.

This guy was a refugee to the United States from Nazi Germany.

Now, a lot of those refugees want nothing to do with Germany post World War II.

But he thought, wow, there's some really great cars in Germany.

And maybe we should import them and maybe they will work in the US market.

So now we have Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, all in the US market, all marquee brands.

What he did, he was the first distributor for these.

And once he got the brands going, he sold the distributorships back to the automakers

and making a ton of money at the time in the process.

Interestingly, he also was the first to import VW Beetles,

the Bug, who hasn't played Slugbug with a sibling on a long road trip.

But he didn't make the Beetle work that well.

And he sold that off quite quickly.

Other brands he toyed with were Jaguar.

This guy, he put imports on the face of the US auto market.

You know, of all the series that we've done here at Automotive News

in the past few years since I've been here, this really is one of my favorites.

There's just so many interesting stories and interesting people involved.

I so recommend that people check this out.

You can find it in this week's Automotive News Print Edition

or at AutoNews.com if you are a subscriber.

Jerry Hirsch, thank you so much for joining us again on Daily Drive.

Bad to be with you.

Coming up, consumer advocate Ralph Nader talks about his view of the auto industry in 2025

from safety standards to autonomous driving.

That's next on Daily Drive.

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Welcome back to Daily Drive.

I'm Jake Nier.

Ralph Nader has long sparred with automakers over vehicle safety and consumer protection,

the once presidential candidate recently spoke with our own Molly Boygon as part of our new series

on industry disruptors over the past 100 years.

They spoke on Shift, a podcast about mobility.

Here's a piece of their conversation.

So I read through your 1996 congressional testimony and I wanted to read some of it to you and

sort of get your reaction.

So you said, quote, year after year with Medea-like intensity,

the motor vehicle through its traumatic and polluting impacts performs as the greatest

environmental hazard in this country, a hazard whose inception and consequences

do not conform neatly to municipal, county, and state boundaries.

And year after year, our scientific, technological, and organizational know-how

and potential to literally invent the future of motor vehicle safety,

expand exponentially, and thereby expose the shocking, shameful gap between what can be done

and what is being done.

How much do you think that things have changed since that testimony in 1966?

Well, in the first few years, they've changed a lot because the first stage

improvements long overdue for motor vehicle safety, both crash worthiness and handling

and braking and tires were all improved.

Our tires were improved.

It went to the level of Europe where we were behind.

We had better brakes, crash worthiness, mandatory depots, later on airbags,

and a whole list of changes, rollover protection, for example, side impact protection,

collapsible steering columns, padded dash panels, head restraints.

So that was a big leap forward.

And then there was a long period with very little progress.

And then came along actually some competition from different companies abroad

and they stimulated the domestic industry just to keep up.

The first stage regulation was quite successful, led to a lot of prevention of deaths, injuries,

property damage.

The second, it became some degree self-perpetuating.

They began to compete on fuel efficiency.

They began to reduce their emissions more,

stimulated by auto safety legislation, of course, but also by competition.

In recent years, it's really ground to a halt.

There's been a lot of diversionary attention to autonomous cars or semi-autonomous features

and then drive in Congress, which failed by the auto companies to

not regulate autonomous cars at all.

So we're now looking for the next stage of conventional

fresh worthiness and operational safety for NHTSA.

And when you talk about the diversion toward autonomous vehicles and semi-autonomous vehicles,

you know, it's interesting that you describe that as a diversion because some people

in the industry, as you know, view autonomy as kind of the natural extension of safety features

like automatic emergency braking and lane keeping assist.

So can you say a little bit more about that?

Yeah, well, there is a clear distinction between semi-autonomous, which, you know,

lane changing protections, for example, autonomous braking, those are good.

But once they try to get rid of the driver, either totally or, you know, just lay back,

get rid of the steering wheel, the auto industry is in real trouble because they can't get the

first base on autonomous vehicles in conventional traffic without the trust of motorists.

And the motorists read about these fatalities and injuries and crashing into

lease cars and so on. And they get very upset, you know, the one thing

they feel they have control of in their lives is their car. And without driver's trust,

no matter how many so-called dry runs and on heavy traffic areas that Waymo and others brag about,

it's not going to happen. The other thing is you're ignoring hacking. I was at a technical

conference a few years ago and I raised the question of hacking. I said, are there any

defenses against hacking, you know, that it can be remotely hacked for a whole model fleet of cars?

All at once, suddenly they can be moved in different directions on the highway. In addition to

dealers wanting to get paid and, you know, they can disable the vehicle or criminal elements.

And it's almost a taboo of discussion. Nobody wants to talk about it. I've had experts tell me

the auto companies have no answer to the hacking problem. And so there's a lot of uncertainty

and there are people who are very knowledgeable about this who think that fully autonomous

vehicles are not going to see in our lifetime. First of all, they have to have highway preparations

for them. And there are all kinds of hypotheticals on how they're going to interact with driver-driven

vehicles as there comes more and more of a mix. I think there's been a lot of hype,

Silicon Valley responsible for it and it shook up the Michigan industry. There's been a lot of hype,

but if you look at some of the articles that have come out, don't hold your breath

for kind of promise that Elon Musk and others have continually repeated and failed to materialize

in terms of autonomous cars be ruling the roads. What do you make of Elon Musk's

sort of legacy in the auto industry? Because on the one hand, I think you may have been sort of

nodding at Tesla when you talked about the innovation that was pushing the

traditional auto industry forward, particularly on electric vehicles. And on the other hand,

he's emerged as as you say, a booster of some technologies that may not be ready for prime

time. And obviously his political advocacy is a sort of separate issue. So how do you think about his

role in the auto industry? Well, it was a remarkable role. After all, nobody make a dent in the

auto companies. The Tucker Carr effort was suppressed decades ago. So you have to give

him credit. He really broke through, developed a substantial volume of electric car sales,

but it does seem to be sunsetting now for him. Look at the latest figures of decline,

and he seems to have lost interest. He became very political and he involved in Starlink and

SpaceX and Neural Company has written himself very thin. So I think the amazing thing is how the

stock is holding up. And I think it's because he still has a sort of aga level of intense support

by his fans. But clearly, you know, he's being beaten by BYW all over and it's going to be worse.

And his sales are declining in Europe, United States. He now says the future of Tesla is

autonomous vehicles. Well, he's behind on that. He's trying to engage in ketchup. It's too much

of a Tesla relies on him. He does have a great skill in early on in hiring very confident engineers

and production people have to hand it to him. But now there are people abandoning ships. They

don't like them ideologically. And they don't like the fact that he's not paying enough

attention to the company. And then they see overwhelmingly insuperable competition from

the Chinese. I mean, they're producing very high quality electric cars for half price.

They can bear a big tariff and still be very, very competitive. And now they're opening up

South America. They're into Asia, Europe. And then there's the conventional companies

that are going to start competing more, you know, the U.S. companies in BW and Toyota. Toyota,

I think, is sending us a message, which is, you know, they haven't really bought into electric

cars. They're into hybrids. And it's worked out pretty well for them. So what did they know

early about the deficiencies of electric cars, not just the limited range and not just the

lack of stations to recharge. But there are fire problems with electric cars and there are

problems of servicing and the like. Once you get into a volume bubble.

Consumer advocate, author and politician Ralph Nader spoke with our own Molly Boygon

on SHIFT, a podcast about mobility. You can hear that full conversation available now wherever

you get your podcasts. That's Daily Drive for today. I'm Jake Nier in for Kellan Walker. You can

get the latest news on industry disruptors, manufacturing and everything happening in the

auto industry at AutoNews.com. Come back tomorrow for a conversation with Selmy ride president

Dom Pope and the company's new chairman Chip Perry. This was a solution that in all my years

in the industry hadn't seen anything quite like this. It's quite unique and it very much

complements any other set of lead sources that a dealer is using to acquire opportunities

to buy cars in the public. We'd love to hear from you. Let us know what you think of the show

and the topics we covered today. Send us an email at dailydrive at autonews.com or leave

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