Barra Sticks to EV Script as GM Softens the Timeline

General Motors CEO Mary Barra still calls electric vehicles (EV) the "end game" for the automaker, even as she concedes the road there is longer and bumpier than the company once planned. Speaking with Fortune, Barra framed EVs as the industry's long-term endpoint while ticking off the reasons adoption has slowed in the United States: shifting regulations, an incomplete charging network, and plain old practicality. The talking points are familiar, but the confidence remains intact. GM's north s

New cars in the United States now average more than $50,000 for the first time. That buys you a Highlander, a Passport, or some other appliance with a badge. It does not buy you 400 horsepower unless you go shopping in the used market, where the math bends heavily in your favor. The Hagerty Price Guide lists plenty of cars making more than 400 hp, and a surprising number land under $40,000 in #3 (Good) condition — the driver-quality tier that needs a bit of sorting. What follows are six m

There are plenty of ways to determine what’s “affordable” when it comes to a new car, truck, or crossover. But only one that really matters: What a buyer is willing to spend. Cox Automotive has a specific measurement that can determine “affordability.” They call it the “Vehicle Affordability Index.” Clever. It’s a monthly measure of the number of median weeks of income needed to purchase a new vehicle.Currently it sits at 35.5 weeks for August. It

The good news at the pump this week is thin, but it exists. The bad news is that it's parked next to a diesel market setting fresh all-time highs and a global oil supply that isn't reaching anyone. According to AAA data, the U.S. national average for regular gasoline slipped on both Sept. 22 and 23. The relief was measured in fractions of a cent. It didn't stick. Regular sat at $4.47 yesterday before ticking up a penny to $4.48 today.
One penny sounds tolerable until you remember AAA's national

General Motors just shared details about the new 8.3-liter Duramax turbodiesel along with the relevant changes being made to the next batch of HD pickup trucks designed to accommodate the massive engine.
Thanks to other manufacturers not doing much beyond showcasing a few pointless concepts and announcing some new paint options this week, General Motors’ evolving engine lineup has taken up the brunt of the automotive news cycle.
We previously discussed the updated (and upsized) V8 motors s

The good news for anyone eyeing a high-mileage electric truck: pulling the battery out of a Ford F-150 Lightning is, in raw mechanical terms, simpler than yanking an internal combustion engine. The bad news is that the pack weighs roughly as much as a small car, and one wrong move with a scissor lift can leave you with a broken connector and a ruined coolant hose.Here is what the job actually demands, based on a real swap performed after a Lightning's battery failed at 234,000 miles driven in t

As politicians wrangle about what rules Chinese auto and parts makers should be subjected to in the United States, a new report out suggests the two legacy American automakers — General Motors and Ford — face tough times in 2027.According to a new Cox Automotive forecast, the pair are going to see sales — and market share — drop in 2027 due to a lineup of vehicles that doesn’t help buyers combat rising gas prices. Ford will get hit hard with sales dropping a predic

TATRA is redefining heavy-duty trucking with its FORCE e-DRIVE lineup, a range of zero-emission vehicles built without sacrificing off-road capability.  The FORCE e-DRIVE trucks are available in three configurations: a fully electric Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV), a Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle (FCEV), and a BEV with a Range Extender engine. Each is built on TATRA's signature backbone tube chassis with swinging half-axles and air suspension, preserving 100 percent of the brand's legendary m

The used-car bias against high-odometer readings has a well-worn logic behind it: more miles mean more wear, and more wear means more repair bills waiting to ambush the next owner. However, a new study suggests that instinct, developed over decades of gasoline-powered vehicle ownership, may steer you wrong when the car in question runs on electrons.The British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA) recently conducted a large study of vehicle inspection records and found that high-mileag

Bentley has finally built an electric car, and the company calls it its most powerful production vehicle. The Torcal, an ultraluxury compact crossover, will do the silent estate-to-country-club run faster than anything Crewe has made before. The catch: this is not the flagship, and Bentley now needs to find buyers willing to write $200,000-plus checks for a model that isn't even the top of its own range. Two electric motors deliver a combined 876 horsepower in S trim, or 888 in metric ratings,

The debate about allowing new Chinese vehicles to travel American roads anytime soon looks to be coming to a head this week as China’s President Xi Jinping arrives for a visit with U.S. President Donald Trump. A bipartisan effort led by Michigan’s Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin and Republican Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio to ban Chinese vehicles is speeding through the U.S. Senate this week. That bill is also hustling through the U.S. House of Representatives at a similar pace. T

What do we think about a rugged Palisade? Friend of the site Connie Peters reviews the 2026 Hyundai Palisade XRT Pro. Take a look at the video or transcript below to see what she thinks. 
The TTAC Creators Series tells stories and amplifies creators from all corners of the car world, including culture, dealerships, collections, modified builds and more.
A transcript, summarized by AI and edited by a staffer, is below.
[Image: YouTube Video Thumbnail]
Become a TTAC insider. G

Volkswagen Group has reportedly cut its operating-margin forecast for 2026 from a range of 4 percent to 5.5 percent down to just 1 percent at best, and the fallout is going to reach every brand under the umbrella. The automaker that trades the "world's biggest" title back and forth with Toyota is now hitting the panic button. A 1 percent margin is the kind of number that triggers structural upheaval, and Volkswagen is delivering. The group is reportedly planning to fundamentally restructure ope

Ford's sales are sliding, and the fix is a manufacturer-to-dealer discount that most shoppers won't see advertised anywhere. Ford has launched a $1,000 factory-to-dealer incentive branded the "Fast Cash Cert Program," in effect from now until the end of September, according to a dealer bulletin. Dealers get $250 credits and can layer as many as four of them onto a single deal, which is how the total reaches the full grand. The catch: that maximum only applies to purchases. Lease deals cap out a

General Motors has been drip feeding the world details about its updated full-size pickups for the 2027 model year. Today, we learned about the planned pricing bumps for the GMC Sierra and Chevrolet Silverado.Pricing on the Chevy was made public a few days ago, with GMC having just followed up with the Sierra. The elephant in the room is that everything looks to be getting significantly more expensive. While the Sierra has typically yielded higher MSRPs, it’s also supposed to be the more l

His long career included stints at TV Guide and CNN and now Howard Polskin has what his friends say is the worst job in journalism, reading content on conservative news websites and writing commentary for subscribers of his website TheRighting.com. It's not what you think.  Polskin and host/journalist Ed Garsten have a spirited conversation about the controversial website along with the state of the media in general. TTAC Creator Ed Garsten hosts " Tales from the Beat," a podcast

Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe confirmed what the company's cheaper future looks like, even if he's not attaching numbers to it yet. The R3 hatchback's cost will be "materially lower" than the R2, and the R4 waiting behind it will drop the price further still."The next product, which we creatively call R3, is going to take the price point down. We haven't announced pricing yet, but it will move materially lower," Scaringe told The New York Times. "There's a product beyond that, called R4, w

Following last week’s promotion of the new V8s that will replace some of the brand’s more contentious powertrains, General Motors has elected to tease the new Duramax “Mongoose” engine. Despite being named after a small predatory mammal, the motor is a monstrous 8.3-liter turbo diesel.As with the new small blocks, the Duramax V8 will see action in the updated Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra. The only difference is that the gasoline engines will premiere in the 1500 mod

Volvo Cars is about to churn through another chief executive, and this time the board went shopping in Wolfsburg — Germany. The Swedish automaker has appointed Klaus Zellmer as President and CEO, less than two years after coaxing Håkan Samuelsson out of retirement to steady the ship. Zellmer takes over no later than Oct. 1, 2027. By then, Volvo will have run through four CEOs in roughly five years — a revolving door that has become the norm rather than the exception in Gothenb

The annual contest to find the best vehicles of 2027, the North American Car, Truck, and Utility of the Year (NACTOY) has whittled the field down to a large group of semifinalists, which includes some surprises.“This is a diverse field of vehicles that reflects the changing nature of the auto industry,” said Jeff Gilbert, president of NACTOY and auto reporter for WWJ Newsradio 950 in Detroit, in a release. “Our jurors started with 56 eligible vehicles and selected 25 to advanc

When the Ford Motor Co. replaced the Model T with the Model A for the 1928 model year, the price tag for the cheapest possible new U.S.-market Ford car jumped 33 percent just like that. It wasn't until the introduction of the Falcon that the Model T had a genuine successor here, and I've found an early example in a Denver-area yard.When the Falcon first appeared as a 1960 model, its MSRP was more than 15 percent less than the next-cheapest U.S.-market Ford car (the two-door Fairlane Business Sed

Lincoln built its whole reputation on being American. The brand started in Detroit, Ford folded it into the Blue Oval as its luxury division, and it once supplied official state cars for several US presidents. The Nautilus, though, is assembled in Hangzhou and made mostly from Chinese parts. That single fact is now the most important thing to understand about the vehicle, because it determines what you will pay to repair one and what you will lose when you sell it. The core problem is a 52.5 per

Toyota's all-new, all-hybrid RAV4 was supposed to spend 2026 doing what the RAV4 always does: sit near the top of the sales charts as the best-selling thing in America that isn't an F-Series. Fresh styling, more power, better efficiency. Instead, production problems knocked sales down early in the year, and the Honda CR-V walked right through the open door. Honda's lead is now large enough that Toyota probably can't reel it back before the calendar runs out.Rather than sit on that advantage, Ho

Ford has a small but pointed problem on its hands: a software fix that may have created the very kind of trouble software fixes are supposed to prevent. The company is recalling 86 Mustang Mach-E from the 2023-2025 model years over Battery Energy Control Module (BECM) software that can misreport how much charge is actually in the pack.The affected cars reportedly received a new BECM software update during a prior repair. That update is the culprit. Cars running it might show the wrong charge re

Charging an EV in the U.S. still involves too much fumbling with QR codes and credit cards. Red E Charge is trying to cut that out. The Detroit-based operator has turned on Plug & Charge at a good chunk of its stalls, so drivers can walk up, plug in, and let the payment sort itself out. It's calling the new service Red E Go.The catch, as always, is the setup. Drivers complete a one-time configuration in the network's smartphone app, entering vehicle details and a payment method. After that,

Somewhere past hour six, the romance of the open road starts to wear a little thin. The playlist has looped twice, your lower back has filed a formal complaint, and you've been staring at the same stretch of I-70 in Kansas for what feels like geological time.A cross-country drive is one of the great American experiences when it goes well. When it doesn't, it is a very long, very expensive way to arrive somewhere exhausted and irritable.1. Sort the car out before you leave
This one should go with

Another one bites the dust. The list of sports car makers who swore they'd never build an SUV and then quietly built one just added its sportiest holdout. McLaren Automotive has confirmed it will produce its first sport utility vehicle in the company's 63-year history, joining a club that Porsche opened in 2002 with the Cayenne and that has since roped in Jaguar, Maserati, Lotus, and even Ferrari. The SUV is the centerpiece of a $670 million (£500 million) investment announced Wednesday,

We sit down with Lee Wilson to discuss his epic 8,222-mile (13,232 km) road trip around the entire U.S. in his all-wheel drive (AWD) orange Volkswagen ID. Buzz. If you've ever worried about EV range, Lee is here to prove that charging infrastructure is a solved problem. Lee shares how utilizing a Peace Vans kitchen box gave them the flexibility to camp, hit up hotels, or stay with friends along their eastbound and westbound routes. He breaks down their strategy of stopping every two hours for a

Volvo says it might bring back the wagon. That alone should perk up the ears of anyone who's spent the last decade watching the brand bulldoze its lineup into an all-SUV monoculture. The Swedish automaker has confirmed 13 all-new models by the end of 2030, and not every one of them will be a crossover. Of the 13, seven are earmarked for Western markets including Europe and North America. The remaining six? Reserved for China. Volvo calls this "the largest and most ambitious global product push

General Motors is hyping up the new V8 options that will be coming to updated versions of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra — with other models presumed to follow. Considering the lackluster reputation gained by the V8 engines currently available on those models, the forthcoming changes will presumably be welcomed by customers.With the United States recently pulling back on stringent vehicle emissions, domestic automakers feel comfortable fielding more V8 motors. This change is especi