In today's issue:

The volume line and the pace line point in opposite directions, and the second is the one that matters. Automotive News puts the decline down to a tough comparison with a year earlier, when EV demand surged, plus ongoing affordability pressure and weak consumer sentiment, with Labor Day deliveries landing in September this year rather than August. The pace still beat every forecast on the board, carried by hybrids selling faster than the industry can build them. Individual battery-electric nameplates show the other side of that comparison: Ford's Mustang Mach-E down 72.5%, the Subaru Solterra down 86.6% and the Honda Prologue, which Honda stops building after the 2026 model year, down 80.9%, per Motor1. Those are three models against a year-ago spike, not the whole EV market. But the shape of the month is hard to miss: the thing carrying US sales right now is the powertrain most of these companies treated as a bridge. #market

The UK Rules Out a Bailout as JLR Opens the Door to 4,000 Exits: Jaguar Land Rover has opened a voluntary redundancy programme covering as many as 4,000 jobs, against a UK workforce of roughly 30,000 and a target of £1.7 billion in savings over two years, per the Financial Times and the BBC. Business minister Jonathan Reynolds said he will meet JLR's chief executive this week to look at mitigating job losses, and explicitly ruled out a bailout. That refusal is the story. JLR is Tata-owned, employs about 30,000 people in Britain, and is coming up on a year since the cyberattack that halted production for more than a month; the government's answer to all of that is a meeting rather than money. The cuts are believed to fall mainly on white-collar roles, and the company has not ruled out compulsory redundancies. #analyst

The World's Biggest Battery Maker Says China Is Launching EVs Too Fast: CATL chairman Robin Zeng warned that China's rapid vehicle launch cycles, close to three new EVs a day, have contributed to batch battery failures, per CarNewsChina. Separately, Chinese domestic safety regulators have warned that the pace of automaker R&D is becoming a concern for overall vehicle quality and safety, and are preparing stricter testing and quality-control rules in the coming months, per Autoblog. When the supplier with the most to lose from an EV slowdown is the one calling out the launch pace, it is worth more than a regulator saying the same thing. #news

BYD Clears 250,000 Battery EVs in a Month for the First Time: BYD sold more than 250,000 battery-electric vehicles in a single month for the first time in August, a fourth consecutive month of growth after a run of declining figures, with strong exports offsetting weakening demand in its home market, per Electrive. Set that against the lead: in the same month that individual US battery-electric nameplates were posting declines of 70% and more against a year-ago spike, BYD set a monthly record, and did it by shipping abroad while its own market softened. #market

Tesla Adds a Collision-Evasion Layer That Can Engage While You Drive: FSD Supervised v14.3.9 is rolling out with what amounts to Automatic Collision Evasion: the system can activate on the driver's behalf when it detects an imminent collision that automatic emergency braking alone may not prevent, and may also engage on heavy distraction or an accidental FSD disengagement, per Teslarati. Unlike conventional AEB, which mostly brakes in a straight line, it can combine steering, braking and acceleration, change lanes or move to a shoulder, then continue driving. Tesla frames it as a last-resort safety net rather than a replacement for attention. #news

Xiaomi's New Battery Comes With a Free SUV If It Catches Fire: Xiaomi's "Dragonscale" battery, built with CALB and Sunwoda, debuts alongside the Skynomad SUV with a guarantee: a free replacement Skynomad if the battery ignites, per CarNewsChina. Read next to CATL's batch-failure warning above, a warranty written in whole vehicles starts to look less like swagger and more like pricing a known risk. #culture

Why the Supercar Establishment Isn't Losing Sleep Over 1,584bhp: Denza is bringing a Panamera-rivalling GT to Europe, a Defender-rivalling 4x4 behind it, a Milan design centre and Daniel Craig as an ambassador, topped by the 1,584bhp Denza Z at 911 money. AutoCar's argument is that Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini and McLaren are right not to panic, because global demand for electric sports cars under £100,000 is "practically zero" and buyers are not convinced emotionally or financially, per AutoCar. Nio and Yangwang have made this run before, with a Nürburgring record and a 3,000bhp show car, and the establishment is still here. #enthusiast

A Split-Window Corvette, Now Mid-Engine, Sells for $65,500: A 1963 Corvette Split-Window was reworked into a mid-engine configuration and sold for $65,500, per Autoblog. An unmolested Split-Window is a six-figure car, which makes this less an engineering essay than a very expensive lesson in what originality is worth. #culture

Jeep Recalls 328,381 Grand Cherokees for a Fix Two Recalls Missed: Jeep is recalling 328,381 Grand Cherokees under NHTSA campaign 26V562 because rear coil springs may have been installed improperly, in manufacturing or in a previous repair, and can detach while driving. The campaign was filed this week and is the third aimed at the same defect, after 23V413 in June 2023 and 26V051 in January, per Autoblog. The bulk is the long-wheelbase L at 215,433 units, alongside 97,477 standard Grand Cherokees and 15,471 4xe plug-in hybrids; models with air suspension are excluded, and Stellantis estimates 0.1% of the population is affected. → If you own one: Check your VIN at NHTSA.gov. This is the third attempt at the same repair, so a prior "fixed" notice does not mean you are covered.

Ford Won J.D. Power's Quality Title in June. It Has Filed 67 Recalls Since January.: Ford's rise to the top mainstream brand in J.D. Power's 2026 Initial Quality Study, published in June, came from hiring or promoting more than 350 "technical specialists," each owning a single part or component, per Automotive News. This week Ford disclosed its 67th safety recall of 2026, covering 10,001 US and 3,221 Canadian 2026 Explorer, Bronco, Bronco Sport, Mustang and Ranger vehicles with 1.5-litre or 2.3-litre EcoBoost engines whose piston domes can crack; dealers will replace the engine long block where they find damage, per CarComplaints and Driving.ca.

Toyota Recalls C-HR Over Sudden Power Loss: About 11,300 Toyota C-HR SUVs, including 1,300 in Canada, can lose drive power when the electric drive system shuts down, per CarComplaints.

Solid-State Batteries Hit Mass Production, Just Not for Your Car: Mercedes-backed ProLogium started mass-producing a 381 Wh/kg solid-state cell, but its 0.5 GWh Taoyuan plant keeps mainstream EV packs years away, per CarNewsChina.

The Car Curious Weekly: 276 episodes, 173 podcasts: Our sister car-podcast platform's Sunday recap is up. This week: UK public chargers delivering a fraction of their advertised output with a 50% spread in what drivers pay for the same electricity, Vicki Butler-Henderson on why the move from television to YouTube changed her audience but not her job, and The Grand Tour's replacement trio arriving all six episodes at once.

Yesterday's picks

NHTSA Opens an Audit Query on the Cybercab: NHTSA opened a formal audit query on Sept. 4, one day after Tesla began charging riders for Cybercab trips in Austin, per Automotive News and The New York Times. The probe targets how Tesla self-certified a production vehicle with no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors, per InsideEVs, which notes regulators ran the same playbook on Zoox's robotaxi first. The self-certification question is not new, only newly aimed at Tesla.

VW's Board Approves the Cuts, Defers the Pain: Volkswagen's supervisory board approved 50,000 additional job cuts and a plan to halve its model lineup by 2035, with four German plants (Emden, Zwickau, Hanover, Neckarsulm) losing current production runs between 2031 and 2034, per Automotive News Europe and Motor1. Which plants close, and when, stays unresolved. The 50,000 needs reading against the 100,000 Blume asked for when we covered his pitch to the board in July. That is not Blume getting half his ask: the July proposal failed at the supervisory board against opposition from its 10 employee representatives and the state of Lower Saxony, which controls 20% of VW's voting rights, per Carscoops. It came back in modified form and passed on Sept. 3, a day ahead of the Sept. 4 vote we flagged last week. The 50,000 sit on top of the tens of thousands already cut, per Autoblog, which is how a rejected 100,000 becomes an approved plan without the headline number ever being met.

Polestar Narrows Its Losses on the Way Out of the US: Polestar slightly grew sales and significantly reduced operating losses in the first half, with US restructuring adding costs, per Electrive. The restructuring is the connected-vehicle rules doing their work: those restrictions are forcing the Geely-owned brand out of the US market, per Carscoops.

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