Newsletter · · Ashutosh Agarwal

A $50,000 Roadster Deposit, a $7 Robot Ride, and Detroit's Smallest Slice Ever - The Auto Disruption - Week of September 28, 2026

A synthesis of what podcasts, operators, analysts and critics said about the auto industry for the week of September 21 to September 28, 2026, from Tesla's $50,000 Roadster reservations and the robotaxi bull-versus-bear fight to Aurora's paid driverless trucking, China's surging European sales, Washington's move to ban Chinese cars, and Detroit heading for its smallest combined US market share on record.

The Auto Disruption

Week of September 28, 2026: A $50,000 Roadster Deposit, a $7 Robot Ride, and Detroit's Smallest Slice Ever

Covering podcasts published September 21 to September 28, 2026.

Tesla spent the week before its big Roadster reveal doing what it does best: making people argue. It reopened reservations with a $50,000 price of entry, the government closed the sky over the launch site, and fans spent days debating whether a car can fly. At the same time, one of Wall Street's best-known skeptics said Tesla's robotaxi business might be worth $800 million, not $800 billion. And a data firm showed why Uber investors are nervous anyway: in Austin, a ride in Tesla's driverless Cybercab costs about half what an Uber does.

While the robot cars grabbed attention, a real driverless business quietly got paid. Aurora ran paying freight across Texas in trucks with nobody behind the wheel, and the numbers it gave are some of the most concrete we've heard in this whole field.

Then there is the slower story, which may matter more. Chinese carmakers nearly doubled their European sales in a year and now hold 12.5% of that market. Europe asked Beijing to voluntarily limit its hybrid exports, and Beijing said no. In Washington, Chinese President Xi Jinping came to the White House, and the Senate moved the other way, toward a permanent ban on Chinese cars. And at home, Detroit's three carmakers are on track for their smallest combined share of the US market on record, while Volkswagen cut its profit forecast to a margin of just 1%.

Here is what the people building, financing, covering and criticizing this industry actually said, with every number and quote tied to the podcast where it was said.

1. The Roadster: $50,000 down, a no-fly zone, and a lot of guessing

The Roadster is being revealed on October 1st, just after this issue's window closes. So this week was all about the run-up, and the run-up was strange.

The deposit is serious money. Tesla reopened Roadster reservations, and the terms are unusual. As laid out on Kilowatt (Sept 21), you put $5,000 on a credit card, then have 10 days to wire the other $45,000. The host, who likes Tesla, still sounded a warning: a refundable $100 deposit is one thing, but "if you're planning on putting $50,000 on this vehicle, I would double, triple, and quadruple check the terms of service... to make sure you know exactly how to get your money back." Ride the Lightning (Sept 27) added that Tesla has stopped taking the $250,000 "Founders Series" reservations, which were meant to cover the first 1,000 cars. Either they sold out, or Tesla shut them off.

The sky is closed, and that set off the "flying car" talk. The reveal happens at SpaceX's site in Waco, Texas, not a Tesla factory, and the FAA (the Federal Aviation Administration, which controls US airspace) has set a temporary no-fly zone over it. On Turn Down for Watt (Sept 22), the hosts went all in on the idea: "Is this Tesla's unveiling of a flying car? We don't know. I mean, it could be." They pointed to talk of rocket thrusters on the back, and to a Musk post saying Tesla needed film cameras at the event "because people are going to think that the video content is AI." Their comparison points: the Rimac Nevera, the current king of fast electric supercars, costs about $2.5 million and hits 60 mph in 1.7 to 1.8 seconds. Fans are guessing the Roadster could do it in under one second.

The cooler heads weren't buying the hover talk:

  • On Autonomy Markets (Sept 26), host Grayson Brulte (an autonomous-vehicle industry figure and usually a Tesla bull) said plainly: "I don't see it hovering despite the videos I've seen... the thrusters are for speed." His guess for the closed airspace: "most likely has to do with the drone show."
  • On Ride the Lightning, a devoted Tesla-fan show, host Ryan McCaffrey said the same. The no-fly zone "almost definitely has absolutely nothing to do with the Roadster... flying high enough for that to matter." It is either a drone show or Tesla keeping outsiders' drones from leaking the car early. His own theory is more down to earth: the Roadster is a "fan car," using powerful fans to suck the car onto the road for grip, like the British McMurtry Spéirling track car. He bet it will have four motors.
  • Even ARK Invest's Cathie Wood, one of Tesla's most famous backers, hedged on Squawk Pod (Sept 25): "We don't know if it's going to fly. We have no idea." (On the same show she named Tesla and SpaceX as ARK's top two holdings.)

The honest summary: a lot of excitement, very few facts. The facts that matter on October 1st are the price, the delivery date, and whether it ever reaches customers. The car was first shown in November 2017.

2. Robotaxis: the bull case, the bear case, and the Uber problem

The biggest argument in the robotaxi world this week wasn't about safety. It was about money.

The bear case came from Steve Eisman's show. On The Real Eisman Playbook (Sept 21), investor George Noble, who is betting against both Tesla and SpaceX, made the sharpest attack we've heard in weeks. His math on robotaxis goes like this: take the number of Tesla robotaxi rides per million people in Austin, scale it up to the whole US population of about 350 million, and put a value on that. His answer: "It's like 800 million, not 800 billion. Slight problem." He also argued:

  • Tesla's car sales "are imploding," citing US sales down 26% in July, and said this quarter will look bad because last year's third quarter was boosted by buyers rushing in before the federal EV tax credit ended.
  • Tesla's spending on factories and equipment is heading to $30 billion this year, mostly for AI, against depreciation of roughly $6 to $8 billion. He said that pushes Tesla to burn cash "at a time when the auto business is falling apart."
  • His value for both Tesla and SpaceX is "somewhere in the neighborhood of $30, $40, $50 a share," against a Tesla price he put around $360.

Treat that as what it is: a short-seller (someone betting the price will fall) making his case. But it is a detailed case, and it is the mirror image of the trillion-dollar bull stories this newsletter covered last week.

The Uber problem is real either way. On Schwab Network (Sept 22), Landon Swan, co-founder of the consumer-data firm LikeFolio, said Uber's business is healthy today: bookings up 22% last quarter, 208 million monthly users, and delivery up 26% after a Costco deal grew from 17 states to 47. But his main point was a warning. When Tesla's Cybercab launched in Austin, rides cost roughly half of an Uber fare. The show kept coming back to one comparison from that data: "Why would you pay $17 when you can pay $7?" Swan's blunt take:

"On the people-moving side of things, I think that it is dire for Uber."

His reasoning is simple. Uber's advantage is an app that matches riders with drivers, and "anyone can build technology now." There's no social network effect keeping riders loyal, so "if your friends start talking about, well, you can get there for half the cost, you're going to download that other app." He added that trips per hour on Uber and Lyft are falling faster in cities that already have driverless cars than in cities that don't. His advice to Uber: lean into delivery, where the "knock on the door" still needs a human.

Tesla fans got a small software promise, with a big asterisk. On Kilowatt, the host relayed a post from Tesla's head of AI software, Ashok Elluswamy, saying the robotaxi service will soon run 24 hours a day on the next version of its self-driving software, version 15, in the "next month or so." The host's reply: "In Tesla speak, next month or so could mean a year."

The regulator question hasn't gone away. Last week's big story, a federal safety audit of the Cybercab, had no clear resolution this week. On Autonomy Markets, one of the hosts said he is now "more positive on Tesla" based on what he has "heard about the NHTSA situation" (NHTSA is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the car-safety regulator), and the pair flagged that a deadline in the audit is ending. Co-host Walter Piecyk pointed to something Tesla does better than most: it builds its own cars and owns its own charging network. "There's just no denying that," he told Brulte. "That is a huge advantage." And on the Car Stuff Podcast (Sept 22), Automotive News reporter Larry Vellequette and host Tom Appel discussed a photo sent to Autoline of a Cybercab with a steering wheel, a car that is supposed to have none. Their best guess: it's a test car, so a safety driver can take over.

A cautionary tale on the money side. On The Road to Autonomy (Sept 25), the hosts picked apart robotaxi startup May Mobility's plan to go public by merging with a SPAC (a listed shell company whose only purpose is to buy a private business). May is valued at $1.4 billion, about 140 times its 2025 revenue of roughly $10 million, with an estimated $93 million a year of cash burn. The deal could bring in up to $337 million, but only $120 million is locked in. The rest depends on SPAC investors not pulling their money out, and Brulte noted that at earlier self-driving SPACs like Aurora and Kodiak, "conservatively north of 80%, 85%" of that money was pulled. His bottom line: May will "probably have to raise more capital."

3. The driverless business that is already getting paid: trucks

If robotaxis are the headline, trucking may be the business. This week gave us hard numbers.

On Squawk on the Street (Sept 21), CNBC's Phil LeBeau rode a three-and-a-half-hour run from Houston to a distribution center in Palmer, Texas, in an Aurora truck with nobody in the driver's seat. He called it one of "the first true commercial paid customer runs without a safety driver." Aurora founder and CEO Chris Urmson gave the plan:

  • "We have a handful now. We'll have 20 in the not-distant future. By the end of the year, expect we'll have 200-plus. And then next year, we'll be going to 1,000-plus trucks."
  • The cost pitch: Aurora expects to charge about 85 cents a mile for its self-driving system, versus about $1.18 a mile for a human driver.
  • On the practical questions: the truck "will call ahead" to a gas station so an attendant can fill it, and if a tire blows, it will "notice it... start to slow down... pull the shoulder and stop," then call for help, like a human driver would.

(One caution on those timelines: on Autonomy Markets, the hosts described Aurora's targets as 1,000-plus trucks by the end of 2027, with about 300 delivered by the end of 2026 and 7,500 by the end of 2028. That is a slower pace than the CEO's on-air version. Watch which one holds.)

Morgan Stanley did the math on why shippers care. On Thoughts on the Market (Sept 25), transport analyst Ravi Shankar said Aurora now has "almost half a million miles of fully driverless revenue-generating operations on public highways," so "I don't think there is much debate on the technology itself." The question has moved from "does this work" to "can this work for me." His firm's estimate:

  • Labor is 35% to 40% of a typical trucking company's costs. Fuel is about another third, and a self-driving truck should be 13% to 22% more fuel-efficient.
  • Even after paying the tech company about 85 cents a mile, a fleet should save about 20% per mile.
  • The bigger prize is using the truck more hours a day, since it doesn't need rest breaks. He said lower running costs are "only about a third of the total savings," and better use of the truck delivers the other two-thirds.

4. China's cars keep flooding into Europe, and Europe asks for a limit

The clearest number of the week: Chinese carmakers nearly doubled their European sales in a year. On Autoline Daily (Sept 25):

  • In August 2025, Chinese brands sold just over 57,700 cars in Europe. This August, they sold nearly 103,500. "Every single one posted year-over-year gains."
  • That gives them 12.5% of Europe's car market, and more than 1 million sales in the region from January through August.

BYD wants to build there, not just ship there. On ev.news (Sept 22), host Martyn Lee relayed Bloomberg reporting that BYD expects to need three car assembly plants and one battery factory in Europe. Its first European car plant, in Hungary, is just starting production. BYD's overseas sales hit about 790,000 in the first half of 2026, up almost 70%. One reason to build locally: the EU is expected to add rules requiring more locally made parts. Lee also noted that Chinese battery makers supplied "more than half" of the EU's EV batteries last year, double their 2023 share.

Europe's new worry is hybrids. The EU's extra tariffs (import taxes) on Chinese cars apply only to fully electric models, not plug-in hybrids, which have both a battery and a gas engine. Chinese companies noticed. On ev.news (Sept 24), Lee cited Financial Times figures: monthly EU imports of Chinese-made hybrids rose from just under 4,000 two years ago to 50,000 a month this July. According to the FT, the EU then asked Beijing to voluntarily keep its hybrid exports to 15% of that part of the European market, with higher tariffs as the alternative. China's answer, per its commerce ministry, quoted on ev.news (Sept 25):

"These so-called voluntary export restrictions seriously violate WTO rules and run counter to the laws of market economies and the principle of fair competition. China firmly opposes this."

(The WTO is the World Trade Organization, which sets global trade rules.) Lee's summary: China said, "no, but we can talk about it."

Chinese brands are also getting in through partnerships.

  • Leapmotor now has 1,020 stores across 36 European countries, up from 450 in early 2025. That's through a joint venture that Stellantis (owner of Jeep, Peugeot and Fiat) owns 51% of. Leapmotor says the network puts buyers an average of 22 minutes from a store (ev.news, Sept 25).
  • Volvo, owned by China's Geely, will now sell cars from Geely's cheaper Lynk & Co brand through its roughly 1,300 European dealers. On Car Stuff, the hosts called this a way for Chinese companies to keep "sneaking into other markets." They wondered whether the same trick, partnering with a Ford or GM, could one day open the US. Appel's observation on buyers: "American consumers are not worried about Chinese brands. Years ago, we thought they would be."
  • Xiaomi, the Chinese phone giant, plans to enter Germany next year. Because it didn't cooperate with the EU's original investigation, it would likely face a combined import tax of about 45% (a 35.3% EU duty on top of the standard 10%) unless it cuts a separate deal (ev.news, Sept 24).
  • Closer to home, BYD launched its first pickup truck, the Shark, in Mexico before China, and The Verge noted Canada has just started importing Chinese EVs by the thousands (The Vergecast, Sept 23).

China's home market is shrinking, even as it goes electric. China's car industry group expects September electric-and-hybrid sales of 1.11 million, a record 65.7% share. But the whole market is forecast at about 1.69 million, down almost 25% from a year ago (ev.news, Sept 22). On China EVs & More (Sept 21), Tu Le of Sino Auto Insights and Lei Xing, former chief editor of China Auto Review, said Beijing's new five-year target, 70% electric by 2030, "is pretty conservative." Le said China's market lost 2.54 million vehicles in the first eight months of the year, and that the US was "right on its heels" in August sales. The ones taking the hardest hit are foreign carmakers, since "80% of the lost volume roughly are" gas cars. That shrinking home market is exactly why Chinese makers are pushing so hard overseas.

5. Washington: Xi comes to dinner, and the Senate moves to ban Chinese cars

Last week we described Washington's split mind on Chinese cars. This week the split got sharper.

Congress hardened. On Autoline Daily (Sept 24), the hosts reported that senators were working on a bipartisan bill to permanently ban Chinese vehicles, aiming to pass it that week. Here's the background: Chinese carmakers are already barred from selling or building internet-connected vehicles in the US, and Chinese-made cars face 100% tariffs. The Senate bill would lock those rules in and stop the White House from granting waivers. Autoline was direct about why Congress is moving now: it's "after President Trump said he's open to Chinese companies building vehicles in the U.S." A House version could pass by year-end. On Automotive News Daily Drive (Sept 26), reporter Larry Vellequette said the bill "looks as though it may pass the Senate 99 to 1."

What is at stake, in one number. Autoline cited a Mobility Global study estimating Chinese carmakers could sell up to 1.7 million vehicles a year in the US by 2038, about 11% of the market, if the rules were loosened. Their low prices could add 600,000 new car sales a year, mostly taking share from other Asian brands. The head of Bosch North America added that Chinese parts suppliers are now a growing threat too, especially in South America.

The White House dinner. Xi visited the White House this week. On the same Automotive News episode, host Kellen Walker noted there were reports that BYD's founder and the founder of battery giant CATL might join the Chinese delegation, while US carmakers, dealers and suppliers "all lobby Trump to keep Chinese automakers out." In the end, "both of them were conspicuously absent." The Best One Yet (Sept 22) noted the tech guest list for the state dinner included Elon Musk.

6. Canada: the trade war shows up in the showroom

The US-Canada fight now has clear numbers on car lots. On Automotive News Daily Drive (Sept 22), Automotive News Canada's David Kennedy laid them out using J.D. Power Canada data:

  • US-built vehicles used to make up about 40% of Canadian car sales. In the first half of 2026, that fell to 28.4%.
  • Mexico is at 22.2%, and might overtake the US as Canada's biggest source of cars next year. That would be a first. The reason: cars from Mexico still enter Canada tariff-free under the North American trade pact, while US-built cars can face up to a 25% tariff.
  • The pain is uneven. Canada lets the five carmakers that build cars in Canada (Ford, GM, Honda, Stellantis and Toyota) largely skip the tariff, as long as they keep their Canadian factories running. Brands without Canadian plants, like Subaru, Mazda and Nissan, "got hit pretty hard."
  • The supply chains have already moved: Tesla now supplies Canada's Model 3s from China and its Model Ys from Germany, cars that used to come from the US. Kennedy cited a White House estimate that the dispute has cost the American auto industry about $5.5 billion.

The US side of the story came from Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on Bloomberg Talks (Sept 21). His account: of the countries hit by the president's tariffs, only two fought back, China and Canada, and Canada went further than tariffs ("they banned alcohol. They banned American companies from their procurement systems"). He said the US measures cover about 5% of Canadian goods. He described the deal Canada walked away from: "cut steel and aluminum tariffs in half... cut auto tariffs down... remove certain tariffs on lumber. They looked at the deal. Agreed to elements of it. A few days later said, no." On Canada's talk of closer ties with Europe, he said: "Zero growth plus zero growth still equals zero growth." He also flagged the concern the US will bring to the upcoming review of the North American trade pact: Chinese or Vietnamese goods being lightly reworked in Canada or Mexico and then shipped into the US duty-free.

The Canadian view came on Decouple (Sept 25), where guest Jesse Huebsch argued Washington is missing that "Canada gets a say" too. The US can try to pull auto jobs south, he said, but Canada can respond by buying "anyone but American," which shrinks the scale of the whole North American industry just when it needs size to compete with China. He explained that for decades the two countries ran one integrated car industry, so that "there's essentially no such thing as a completely Canadian or completely American car."

7. Detroit's worst quarter for market share, ever

Here is the stat of the week for the US market. On Autoline Daily (Sept 25) and Automotive News Daily Drive (Sept 26), forecasters said GM, Ford and Stellantis together are on track for about 36% of US sales in the third quarter. That would be a record low.

  • Hyundai Group is on pace to outsell Ford this quarter, and Toyota could come within about 30,000 units of GM.
  • Total third-quarter US sales are expected to dip slightly to just over 4 million. The declines are at GM, Ford and Stellantis, while Honda, Hyundai and Toyota are expected to grow.
  • For perspective, Automotive News reporter Michael Martinez noted that GM alone once had nearly 51% of the market. "That is a stunning fall."

Two reasons, both about fuel.

  1. Hybrids are booming, and Detroit doesn't have enough. Hybrids hit 16.3% of US sales, their highest share ever, according to Cox Automotive (via Autoline).
  2. Diesel is expensive, and that hurts trucks, which is where Detroit makes its money. Diesel is above $6.50 a gallon on average. The Detroit carmakers each have about 20 more days of full-size truck inventory than they want, and diesel vehicles are sitting on dealer lots longer than any other type, at 114 days of supply. Martinez spoke to a Texas and Oklahoma dealer, Stephen Gilchrist, who said heavy-duty truck buyers are starting to pull back. His answer on how worried the industry should be heading into the last three months of the year: "Very, to keep it concise." Vellequette added that farmers, big buyers of these trucks, "are just getting hammered right now from every direction by tariffs, by the Canada trade war, with fertilizer costs."

Awkward timing: GM is launching a new diesel V8, nicknamed "Mongoose," with 550 horsepower in its heavy-duty pickups, right into $6.50 diesel.

Meanwhile, the Asian carmakers are building. Honda plans a $2.5 billion new plant, likely in Ohio, to build large three-row hybrid crossovers, including the next Acura MDX, with capacity for about 250,000 vehicles a year. That brings Honda to around 2 million vehicles a year of North American capacity (Autoline, Sept 24 and 25). Vellequette described it as "the sound of the clutch as Honda disengages from EVs and re-engages back into hybrids." Minivans are also having a moment. Sales of about 281,000 through August are up 8%, and minivans have outsold large SUVs for the first time in almost a decade because they're about $31,400 cheaper on average (Autoline, Sept 25).

A bright spot for GM, and it isn't cars. On The Best One Yet, the hosts reported that GM converted a car factory to make parts for Patriot missiles for Lockheed Martin in 22 days, where the existing supplier takes months. CEO Mary Barra says GM will do about $700 million in defense revenue this year, "with double digit margins," and the stock is up 41% over 12 months to an all-time high. Their takeaway on GM's three big bets (electric, tech, defense): the one that's working is the one closest to what GM already does well, which is manufacturing.

8. US electric car demand: the rebound hasn't come

A year after the federal EV tax credit ended on September 30, 2025, the podcasts agreed that US electric car demand has not bounced back.

On Automotive News Daily Drive (Sept 21), reporter Lonnie Iliff gave the numbers:

  • July EV registrations were down 31% from a year earlier. EVs made up 6.2% of the market, down from 8.9%.
  • Tesla is holding flat and "the Model Y is going gangbusters," but older carmakers are falling away: Chevrolet EV sales down more than 70%, and its best-seller, the Equinox EV, down 90% in July.
  • His explanation: President Trump pulled back both "the carrot" (the $7,500 tax break) and "the stick" (emissions and fuel-economy rules), so carmakers are saying, in effect: "We lost a ton of money pushing EVs, but buyers seem to really like hybrids... we can make money on hybrids." He expects hybrids to win for the next few years, with some analysts seeing EVs return to 20% to 25% of the market around 2030 to 2031.

Discounts are the tell. Volkswagen is cutting the price of the 2025 ID.4 by up to $12,500 and the 2026 model by $6,000, to clear inventory after it stopped building the ID.4 in Tennessee to make more Atlas SUVs. It also pushed the return of the ID. Buzz van to the first half of 2027. The van sold just over 6,100 units in 2025 (Autoline, Sept 25). GM is giving away home chargers worth up to $2,000 to EV buyers in Northern and Central California who sign up for a PG&E program (Autoline, Sept 24).

The case that Detroit is making a mistake. On Automotive News Daily Drive (Sept 24), Dale Hall of the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), an environmental research group, argued the US is "really an outlier." It trails not just China and Europe but Korea, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia and Chile, and "even India has now caught up." His view: Detroit's carmakers have good technology (range, efficiency, charging speed) but a lineup that "skews toward the more premium and expensive segments." They're investing "less than a quarter" of their truck and SUV profits into EV platforms, and hybrids won't hold up long-term against batteries whose prices keep falling about 10% a year. He singled out the Chevy Bolt as a strong affordable car GM has been "not really ambitious about." The host cited Ford CEO Jim Farley's own warning: "If we don't put our chips on the right number and the right color, Ford could maybe not exist."

One Tesla milestone. Nine years after it was unveiled, Tesla has started delivering its Semi truck, with PepsiCo, DHL and US Foods among the first customers. Tesla didn't give a price, but it has reportedly been quoting about $290,000 for the 500-mile version and $260,000 for the 325-mile version (Autoline, Sept 25).

9. Germany's car industry keeps shrinking

Volkswagen's profit warning. On Automotive News Daily Drive (Sept 21), VW cut its 2026 profit forecast to a 1% margin (meaning it expects to keep about one cent of profit per dollar of sales). That's after $11.5 billion of one-time charges. The biggest piece: a write-down of almost $7 billion on its stake in Porsche, "which has watched its China sales evaporate." On the Sept 26 episode, Vellequette traced the roots to an over-reliance on China, the Dieselgate scandal and a hard shift to EV-only plans that buyers didn't follow. "They'll be very lucky to get to 1%." Martinez added that Porsche is planning about 4,000 more job cuts on top of earlier rounds.

The pain is spreading across Germany. On Autoline Daily (Sept 24):

  • Mercedes warned it may have to close two German plants if it can't cut costs. It is aiming to take more than $900 million out of German labor costs, with options including longer hours without extra pay and cuts to holiday and Christmas bonuses.
  • VW is planning to cut 100,000 jobs, and BMW is cutting 8,000.
  • German parts suppliers have already cut about 75,000 jobs.

The robot answer. Toyota took a different path to cutting costs: starting in 2028, the Toyota Group plans to spend about $6.4 billion a year to put 400,000 robots to work in its factories worldwide, some of them humanoids trained by watching veteran workers (Automotive News Daily Drive, Sept 21). And Volvo named Škoda's boss, Klaus Zellmer, as its next CEO. Škoda made an 8.3% operating margin last year, while Volvo made 3.5%.

On China EVs & More, Tu Le captured the German mood in one line: "Cost cutting is not a strategy." Cutting models from 150 to 75 lowers costs, "but what are we going to do with China?"

What we're watching

  • October 1st in Waco. The Roadster reveal is livestreamed. Ignore the hover talk and watch for price, delivery date, and whether the "fan car" theory is right. Anyone putting down $50,000 should read the refund terms first.
  • Tesla's third-quarter deliveries. George Noble expects "a disaster," pointing to last year's rush of buyers before the tax credit ended. The delivery report will show who's right. Also watch for any news on the NHTSA audit and on 24/7 robotaxi service.
  • Aurora's truck count. The CEO said 200-plus driverless trucks by year-end. The number of trucks on the road is the best test of whether driverless freight is really scaling.
  • The Senate vote on Chinese cars. If it passes 99 to 1 as predicted, the White House loses the ability to grant waivers to Chinese carmakers, whatever Trump and Xi discussed.
  • Europe vs. Chinese hybrids. China has rejected a voluntary 15% cap. Watch whether Brussels extends its tariffs to plug-in hybrids, and how fast BYD's three planned European plants move.
  • Detroit's record-low share. Third-quarter sales come out this week. If Hyundai really does outsell Ford and diesel keeps climbing, the pressure on Detroit's truck-heavy strategy will grow.