Photo: Honda
In today's issue:
Honda's two volume nameplates drop pure gas, and buyers are the reason, not rules
Europe looks at the door handles China just recalled and declines to follow
Top Gear returns after four years off, and The Grand Tour is back Sept. 4 with new hosts
DEMAND, NOT MANDATE
It sits inside a plan for 15 next-generation hybrid models across North America by 2030, as Honda walks back from aggressive short-term EV timelines, the retreat we covered in Honda's $9B EV retreat, per AutoGuide.
Honda executives told reporters that hybrid demand, not regulation, is what is driving the calls on the Accord, CR-V and Civic, per Motor1.
American Honda product planning executive Gary Robinson said there is "no technical reason" the HR-V and Acura ADX could not take the hybrid hardware already in the Civic and CR-V, per AutoGuide.
The reason matters more than the date. A lineup that goes hybrid because a rule demands it can be unwound the moment the rule moves, and the UK government is weighing whether to water down its own ZEV mandate, which its carmakers would read as a hybrid lifeline. Honda's planners are describing the opposite causality: buyers picked the hybrid, so the gasoline version is the one that goes, and it goes on America's best-selling vehicle. The shape repeats in the quick links: Kia's refreshed Niro drops every other powertrain entirely. That is the version of electrification that survives a change of government.
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Also worth knowing
VW's Sept. 4 Reckoning: CEO Oliver Blume is pushing for deeper cuts ahead of a supervisory board vote set for Sept. 4, per Automotive News Europe. The board rejected an earlier version of his restructuring plan 12-7 in July, after Blume first asked it to accept 100,000 job cuts, the cuts under discussion run to as many as 100,000 jobs and four shuttered plants, and Emden, Zwickau, Hanover and Neckarsulm still have no confirmed production plans past 2030, per CBT News. #analyst
August Sales Hold, Barely: Cox Automotive expects a 16.3 million SAAR in August, matching July's pace, but total volume is projected to fall 8.5% year over year to 1.35 million units, largely because the month has fewer selling days, per CBT News. #market
BMW Sells China's Newest EV Off a Spec Sheet: Chinese buyers are ordering the long-wheelbase iX3 sight unseen because dealers don't have showroom units yet, an early demand signal for BMW's first Neue Klasse model in China, per BMWBLOG. #market
Waymo Takes a Swipe at Tesla's Cameras: A Waymo blog post laying out 10 takeaways from 200 million autonomous miles casts doubt on camera-only driving without naming Tesla once. Waymo writes that “cameras are incredible, but they aren’t enough” and that “multimodal sensors are indispensable”; its latest system runs 13 cameras, four lidar units and six radars, plus microphones, per InsideEVs. #analyst
Photo: Oleg Yunakov / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Reveals & culture
Bentley's Electric SUV Fakes Its Engine Noise With Real Drums: The 2028 Torcal, Bentley's first EV, rides on Porsche-derived hardware and pipes in a synthesized soundtrack built from actual drum recordings ahead of an official reveal that Car and Driver says is still a few weeks away, per MotorTrend and Car and Driver. #enthusiast
Top Gear Is Coming Back, and The Grand Tour Returns Sept. 4: BBC director of entertainment Ed Havard told the Edinburgh TV Festival that “Top Gear is coming back,” ending a four-year absence that followed the 2022 crash which badly injured host Andrew Flintoff, per Deadline; comedian Jimmy Carr is reportedly in talks to front it, per Jalopnik. Amazon's The Grand Tour is back first, on Sept. 4, with Throttle House's James Engelsman and Thomas Holland plus Francis Bourgeois taking over from Clarkson, Hammond and May for a six-episode seventh series, per Paul Tan. #culture
Photo: BBC
A V8 BMW 5 Series Sold for E-Bike Money: An F10-generation 5 Series went to no reserve on Cars&Bids with the owner’s manuals and two keys, and closed at $6,550, which autoevolution calls “new electric bicycle money.” Even flagship German sedans depreciate into pocket change, per autoevolution. #culture
Recalls & legal action
Europe Looks at the Same Door Handles and Declines to Act: Dutch regulator RDW says it sees no need for a European recall over the electronic door handles China just ordered 11 automakers to fix on 4.3 million cars, per Automotive News Europe. China's door handle recall, which we led with on Aug. 22, is itself mostly warning stickers and a software update rather than new hardware. The handles unlatch on an electric current and can fail when the circuit is cut in a crash, the mechanism at the center of a deadly Toronto Tesla fire that the Toronto Star investigated earlier this year. Same part, three answers: a mandatory fix in China that barely changes the hardware, no action in the Netherlands, and no public NHTSA move in the US. → If you own one: Find the manual door release for both front and rear doors now, before you need it. On most Teslas the front release is easy to reach and the rear one is not.
Photo: Alexander Migl / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Kia Recalls 21,290 EV9s Over an Airbag Defect: A pinched tube in Georgia-built EV9s can cause the front airbag to deploy even with a child seat installed, per Autoblog and Motor Illustrated. → If you own one: Avoid installing a child seat in the front passenger position until Kia completes the fix.
Photo: Alexander-93 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Quick links
Most US Buyers Say They'd Consider a Chinese-Made Car: More than half of US consumers, and over three-quarters of those under 35, would consider a China-made vehicle, per Dave Cantin Group's mid-year outlook, cited by CBT News.
Kia Prices the Hybrid-Only 2027 Niro at $29,890: The refreshed Niro drops other powertrains entirely and starts at $29,890 plus $1,495 destination, per Kia Media.
Yesterday's picks
Lincoln Imports the Corsair From China, Two Weeks After Ford Vowed to Stop: Lincoln confirmed Aug. 25 that the facelifted 2027 Corsair will be imported from a Changan Ford joint-venture plant in Chongqing, China, Ford's second Chinese-built Lincoln after the Nautilus (built at a separate China plant), after ending U.S. Corsair production in Kentucky in late 2025 so Ford could retool the Louisville plant for a new EV lineup that includes the Fathom pickup, per Automotive News and Kelley Blue Book.
Tesla Hikes Cybertruck Prices $5,000 as the Line Runs at 10% Capacity: Tesla raised Dual Motor AWD Cybertruck pricing to $74,990 and Premium AWD to $84,990, per Electrek and Motor1, while running the line at roughly 10% of capacity, as some near-$100k trucks now resell around $63,000, a loss of nearly 40%, per Motor1. Tesla hasn't explained the increase; the math says this protects margin on a slow-selling line, not a hot one.
Hyundai Plans Its Biggest-Ever Product Blitz: 100+ Models, a 600-Mile Santa Fe, and Trucks It's Never Built Before: CEO Jose Munoz used Hyundai's Aug. 26 investor day to detail more than 100 new or refreshed models over four years, including the brand's first U.S. extended-range EV in a redesigned Santa Fe rated at 600 miles, a Genesis GV80 hybrid, and new body-on-frame trucks and commercial vans aimed at segments Hyundai has never competed in, per Automotive News. The N performance lineup is targeted to grow from 20,000 to 100,000 annual sales by 2030, and Hyundai wants operating margin above 9% by 2030, up from 6.2% in 2025.
Worth a listen
One episode from Car Curious, our sister car-podcast platform, picked out of everything the shows published in the last day.
Land Rovers we regret selling, modifying a run-out Special Edition and how to start a project (The LRM Podcast): The hosts break down why a Discovery 4 engine rebuild runs to 10 grand, and which Land Rovers they regret selling.
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