Editor's note: This week we bring you a sneak peek of a NEW exclusive weekly feature you'll typically only find in the free weekly Car Pro Show newsletter. Car Pro Show host Jerry Reynolds' shares his no-holds-barred thoughts on the top auto headlines of the week in his new Auto Roundup commentary. To get it in your inbox every week, subscribe to the Car Pro Show newsletter here.
Jerry's Weekly Auto Roundup
Each week I bring you the top stories in the auto industry along with my commentary or sometimes amusing thoughts about the craziness that goes on in the world of cars.
- Some automaker needs to hire me as CEO, ASAP! Yes, I want to work for an automaker, and I’ll do a good job, I promise. I’ll also work for a fraction of what you are currently paying your CEO! Why would I agree to that given the long hours and high stress level? I just want to get fired. Last week, I brought you compensation of current automaker CEOs and they do quite well, but leaving is lucrative, too. A couple of CEOs ago at Ford, Mark Fields got a payout of 54 million dollars as he exited. The next one, Jim Hackett, whom I called an idiot on the air, left with 17 million. Now we find out that my favorite electric automaker’s CEO is stepping down. Peter Rawlinson is leaving Lucid, supposedly of his own volition. The company has never come close to meeting sales projections and has burned through billions of dollars. However, poor old Peter isn’t going to have to get food stamps. You see, he is staying on as an “advisor” for two years. How much do advisors make these days, you ask? His golden parachute pays $120,000 PER MONTH, a free Lucid Gravity to drive, health insurance, and a TWO MILLION DOLLAR stock grant. So yes, I want to be the CEO of a car company, and I’ll start planning my exit strategy on day one. For the record, Lucid lost 2.7 BILLION in 2024, and 2.8 BILLION in 2023. Wonder why?
- So, what is happening with the soap opera that is electric cars? Ho Hum. Another day with more automakers slamming on the brakes on future plans for electric vehicles. Is it because of the 47th President undoing the 46th President’s green initiatives? Perhaps. Or maybe it is the fact that sales have continued to slow down in spite of repeated price reductions. It seems there is some sort of new announcement every day from one of the automakers that previously said they’d be all-electric by 2025, like Buick, that doesn’t have a single EV yet. Just this week Mercedes-Benz says they are “recalibrating their EV strategy.” Good move, I concur. Meanwhile, President Trump is disabling 8,000 EV charging ports at federal buildings across the land, and the government will sell off 25,000 EVs the GSA has already purchased. I’m guessing that will not be a profitable venture. In Dearborn, Michigan Ford now has a $10,500 incentive on the electric Lightning, PLUS they’ll give you a free home charger. You can lease one of these pickups, which are terrific by the way, for under $250 per month. Also at Ford, they had a great idea to stack EVs up in big storage lots around the country and the dealers could buy them as they sold them to customers. The idea was that dealers would sell more if they weren’t paying to have them sit in inventory for months. That plan went down like Enron, so back to the original plan: Cram them down the throats of the Dealers. Finally, this week we learned about a lady who was at a dealership for an oil change, and a now ex-employee wrote a racial slur on the little sticker on the windshield that reminds you of the next oil change. That is a horrible thing to do, and the dealership was right to fire the person. Another dealership owner, 900 miles away, read about the story and gave the lady a new Nissan Leaf all-electric car so she wouldn’t have to “relive the upsetting experience” of routine maintenance. A very, very nice gesture, and a creative way to get a Nissan Leaf off the lot.
- Dodge Durango’s are a steal-at least in Detroit. I’ve always liked the Durango, especially the big ‘honkin Hemi Hellcats, but even if you opted for the six-banger, you just knew it was a well-built, solid SUV. Like so many other SUVs that got stale due to a lack of updates, sales have waned in recent years. Apparently, nobody told that to a couple of guys in Detroit. David Franklin and Barron Hatch Jr. stole over 25 Durangos across Michigan, and now they've been arrested by police in Macomb County, Michigan. All the Dodges were stolen from dealerships. The “brains” behind the operation now faces 20-years in federal prison and his bond was set at one million dollars, so he’ll not likely see the sun anytime soon. Apparently he could not DODGE the long arm of the law. Speaking of fast Dodges, there was a guy in Seattle terrorizing the streets in a Dodge Charger Hellcat with incredibly loud exhaust. Being the brainiac he was, he filmed all his escapades in spite of the fact that the citizens of Seattle complained about the speedster profusely. He didn’t care, he had 700,000 Instagram followers, and said his videos paid for the car. As is almost always the case, he showed out once too often and got busted. Besides numerous traffic citations and some time in the pokey, a judge ruled he could drive, he just couldn’t drive the suspect Charger. The mind boggles on how he was successful for so long, wreaking havoc against the good citizens of Seattle. Aren’t the street always wet there? In one of his videos, he shows himself going 107-miles per hour on a downtown street. Good grief.
- Reverse rebates on electric vehicles proposed: Reverse rebates is a brilliant term I just made up. Personally, I think it properly depicts what 14 Senators are proposing in Washington. If passed, it would eliminate the $7,500 federal rebate on certain new electrics, and the $4,000 rebate on used electrics. OK, so we pretty much knew this was going to happen after the election results of November 5, 2024. However, this group of Senators want to take it a step further. A separate bill would enact a $1,000 tax on electric vehicle purchases. I am not a math major, but I am pretty sure that is an $8,500 swing from where we are today. Hence, reverse rebates! The thinking on the new tax of a thousand bucks is that gasoline taxes pay for road repairs across our great land, and EV owners do not participate currently. Not to mention, EVs weigh more than gasoline cars, causing more road damage. Think back to the 9,000 pound Hummer I reviewed not long ago. Oddly, the $1,000 tax makes sense to me if the money is really used to repair the current highways and byways in America, which are single-handedly keeping frontend alignments in business. Rocky Road is not just an ice cream, kids.
That’s it for this week. And now you know the rest of the story. Good day!
