🚗 The White House Just Called Ford's China Strategy a "Troubling Picture"
🚙 Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent Ford CEO Jim Farley a letter this week expressing "profound concern" over the automaker's ties to Chinese companies, specifically its CATL battery licensing deal, its dealings with Geely and BYD, and Farley's own comments floating Chinese joint ventures on U.S. soil.
The White House Just Called Ford's China Strategy a "Troubling Picture"
Ford has been building its America-first credentials for years, more hourly workers in the U.S. than any other automaker, its own battery plants, its own workforce. The Trump administration just publicly said that story doesn't add up.
Mobile Service Just Crossed From "Early Adopter" to "Everyone's Doing This"
Curbee CEO Amit Chandarana joined the show to unpack what's actually driving that jump, and why the harder problem now isn't convincing dealers mobile service works, it's helping them execute it well.
🚙 The next three to five years are expected to separate the leaders from the laggards, according to Gartner's Pedro Pacheco. On the factory floor, AI vision systems are already catching defects human eyes miss consistently. In dealerships, chatbots have occasionally gone rogue, one reportedly offered to sell a Chevrolet Tahoe for $1.
Used EV Prices Should Have Crashed by Now. They Haven't. Here's Why.
100,000 EVs came off lease in the first half of this year. Another 200,000 are landing in the second half. Every instinct says that supply wave should have crushed used EV prices. It hasn't, and Plug CEO Jimmy Douglas says he knows exactly why.
🚗 Global Dealers Are Asking AI the Same Question American Dealers Asked a Year Ago
🚙 One of our own sat in on a major automotive gathering in Istanbul this week, where AI dominated the agenda and the audience, largely dealership owners and senior leaders, wasn't shy about pushing back on speakers who talked adoption without proof it moves the needle.
Dispatch from Istanbul: Global Dealers Are Asking AI the Same Question American Dealers Asked a Year Ago
"Show me it actually works." That was the pushback in the room this week at a major automotive gathering in Istanbul, and it's a question worth sitting with, because a fresh piece of research suggests the skepticism is earning its keep.
🚙 The Cybercab is a two-seat, gold-colored robotaxi with butterfly doors and, notably, no steering wheel, no pedals, and no mirrors. It runs entirely on Tesla's Full Self-Driving software with zero manual override if anything goes wrong. Roughly 45 vehicles are authorized to operate in Austin today.
🚙 Great customer service, apparently, extends to wildlife too. Shoutout to Carl, the whole team at Walser Nissan Coon Rapids, and the folks at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota for giving a scrappy young gull a second shot.
What Dealers Actually Risk by Partnering with a Chinese Automaker
Dunne has spent years watching China's domestic auto market up close, and he's seeing dealers in markets like Kazakhstan and Russia already courting BYD, Geely, Leapmotor, and Xpeng. His warning isn't about the product. It's about what happens after the honeymoon.
Stellantis Just Told a Journalist It Can't Beat China. It's Joining Instead.
Dunne, longtime China auto analyst and author of the upcoming book Car Wars, joined the show to trace how Stellantis went from manufacturing Jeeps in China to quietly becoming dependent on a Chinese partner for its own global lineup.
Reynolds and Reynolds Is Building an AI Agent That Refuses to Guess
Everyone wants to believe AI can just figure out messy data on its own. AJ McGowan, VP of Research and Development at Reynolds and Reynolds, says that belief is exactly what stops most AI projects from ever reaching 100%. He joined Auto Collabs to break down Ray, Reynolds' proprietary AI agent, and three ideas worth stealing before your own dealership bets big on AI.
