Good morning and welcome to The Downshift, or TDS for short.
Light, tight, and right, TDS gathers all the latest automotive news bubbling around the globe and places it in one spot. Stories are summarized in a single, sometime long, sentence accompanied by a link for those seeking more information.
I’m in Japan and it’s dinner time here in the future so let’s get into it.
🚘 What I’m driving: Nothing. I’m in Japan and rode in a Toyota van earlier today in Tokyo.
📉 J.D. Power expects EV market share to drop from 8.5% to 5.2% year-over-year and forecasts October sales will be 43% down year-over-year due to the expiration of the EV tax credit at the end of September; the situation was called a market “recalibration,” though gasoline and hybrids gained market share so far in October.
😭 Tesla’s Board Chair Robyn Denholm said Elon Musk might leave the company if he doesn’t get his $1 trillion pay package.
🚙 Kia teased the hotter EV4 GT as the performance variant of the electric hatchback, which is coming to the U.S. market.
🚢 Japan reportedly might start importing some U.S.-made vehicles from both Toyota and Nissan.
🔋 Nissan said it’s currently on track to put solid-state batteries into production in 2028, which would enable more range, more performance, faster charging, and less range loss in cold weather situations.
❌ GM laid off 325 employees from a Georgia-based IT center it’s closing while also laying off over 200 salaried workers in Detroit all on the heels of a stock surge following better-than-expected earnings.
⏭️ Turns out the Kia Telluride will skip right over the 2026 model year as the second-generation of the nameplate arrives for 2027.
Have feedback on the formatting of TDS? Send us a note: tips@thedrive.com