Safety Concerns Prompt Waymo To Pause Highway Rides Across The U.S. And Atlanta Operations Altogether

Good morning! It's Friday, May 22, 2026, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you'll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.

In this morning's edition, Waymo is suspending all highway rides as well as its operations in Atlanta as it deals with safety issues, Ford F-150 production hits another snag while the automaker repairs a broken part of its stamping plant, Stellantis may finally have a solution for its idle plant in Brampton, Canada, and Hyundai is recalling over 420,000 vehicles for a brake software issue.

There's trouble afoot at Waymo. The Alphabet-owned robotaxi company says it has suspended its services on highways across the U.S., and it has paused its operations in Atlanta, Georgia, altogether as it updates software in an effort to improve performance and safety around construction zones and flooded roadways. We've told you in the past how Waymo vehicles have a certain penchant for driving through flooded roadways, and now it seems the company is doing something about it. As it stood, highway trips were only available in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Miami.

The suspension could be a sign that Waymo — after years of careful and considered expansion in the U.S. — started moving too quickly. It has undoubtedly picked up the pace as companies like Tesla and Zoox have entered the game. From Reuters:

"We ​have temporarily paused freeway operations, as we work to integrate recent technical learnings into our software and expect to resume ​these routes soon," a Waymo spokesperson said in ​an email.

[...]

Waymo was evaluating and improving its performance around certain types of construction zones, the company told Reuters, adding that street operations remained unaffected.

The company ​also paused its ​service in ⁠Atlanta, offered through its partnership with Uber, it said, after an unoccupied Waymo ​robotaxi stopped in flood water on Wednesday.

The ​pause ⁠follows Waymo's recall of about 3,800 robotaxis in the United States earlier this month, after identifying a risk that ⁠vehicles ​could enter flooded roads with ​higher speed limits, raising safety concerns.

Right now, there's no word on exactly when highway (or freeway if you're that sort of person) trips will open back up, or when Atlanta operations will resume. At the very least, that neighborhood outside of Atlanta is finally free from an onslaught of Waymos circling their block. 

Personally, I think it's best if Waymo take it's time getting operations back up and running. No need to rush, fellas. Go figure this out.

Ford is pausing F-150 production at its Dearborn Truck plant for at least the next few days, as it deals with a broken hood die at a nearby stamping plant. The line ground to a halt the evening of May 21, and it's expected to be down May 22, 23, and possibly 24, according to two people with knowledge of the situation who weren't authorized to share the information publicly.

For those who don't know, a hood die is a heavy-duty industrial mold used in a press to stamp and shape flat sheets of metal (in this case, aluminum) into the outer or inner panels of a vehicle's hood. 

An issue like this is a big problem for Ford, which is already dealing with incredibly tight F-150 inventory. Last fall, two fires at its main aluminum supplier in Oswego, New York, marred aluminum availability for the automaker, forcing it to look elsewhere while cutting production for some time. Ford has been working with the supplier to get things back in order, but it could take until later this year for F-150 inventory to stabilize. From the Detroit Free Press:

According to people familiar with the plant, Ford has been running two 10-hour shifts a day at the factory and builds about 1,000 pickups across those shifts. That means a shutdown for this length of time could result in a loss of about 2,500 or more pickups.

That normally wouldn't be too serious except for the fact that Ford leaders told investors last month the automaker is about 60,000 units short in inventory compared to the year-ago period. Ford has been scrambling to run as much production as possible to make up the inventory shortfall.

"They're already running all that they can to make it up and they have time to make it all up," said one of the people. "They do super Saturdays and volunteer overtime so they'll make it up. We've never not made it up."

A "super Saturday" or "super Sunday" is when the carmaker runs an extra shift outside of the normal schedule so as to catch up on any lost production.

Ford dealers have told the Detroit Free Press they are worried about losing truck sales due to carrying thin inventory of the popular pickups, adding that the vehicles are dribbling out of the factories. Ford also makes the F-150 at its Kansas City Assembly Plant in Claycomo, Missouri.

Earlier this year, Ford announced its plan to add 50,000 F-Series pickups to its inventory in 2026. Some of those measures included speeding up the Kentucky Truck line, hiring 100 new employees at that facility, adding a third shift at Dearborn, starting Super Duty production in Canada, and skipping a summer shutdown to help make up the difference.

While this latest issue at Dearborn is only temporary, Ford can hardly afford any setbacks right now.

Stellantis' sprawling $70 billion turnaround plan that includes 11 new models for Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram in North America by 2030 may have finally created "meaningful potential opportunities" for the automaker's idled Brampton Assembly Plant in Ontario, Canada. The future of the plant has been up in the air since the last vehicle rolled off the line there in 2023. It was originally slated to build the new Jeep Compass, but because of President Trump's tariff mess, production was moved to Belvidere, Illinois. From Automotive News:

But the automaker's latest strategic plan, detailed by top company leadership during a daylong presentation to investors May 21 in Auburn Hills, Mich., gives Stellantis a "strong pipeline" of new products as the company continues "actively evaluating future opportunities" for its Canadian assembly footprint, Gosselin said in an email.

"[This] creates meaningful potential opportunities for facilities like Brampton as we align future production with our growth strategy."

The slate of new models is a positive sign for Brampton, said Vito Beato, president of Unifor 1285, which represents about 3,000 hourly workers at the plant.

"A lot of those products are Dodge and Chrysler — so a lot of the stuff that we can build and want to build and have built."

While the long list of models that will need to find homes at North American assembly plants is a good thing, the union now needs answers from the company on what can find its way to Brampton, Beato said.

Unifor and the Canadian government have locked horns with Stellantis over the broken Jeep Compass commitment for Brampton over the past year, as U.S. tariffs complicate Canadian assembly and sink local vehicle output to lows not seen in decades.

Beato said Unifor is still very much pressing Stellantis to make good on its commitment during 2023's contract talks to bring Compass production to Brampton, but he admits it's open to alternatives. Yeah, bud. I think you're going to have to be open here. That being said, the union did just reject a proposal floated by the company to build Leapmotor EVs from complete knockdown kits at the site. Time will tell what ends up being built there. I just hope it's something.

Hyundai is recalling a whopping 421,078 vehicles in the U.S. because of a software issue that could cause the brakes to jam on unexpectedly, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. I don't know about you, but I prefer my brakes to be a bit, well, more predictable. From Reuters:

The auto safety agency said that a software error in the ​front cameras of the vehicles ​may cause the forward collision avoidance system to ‌prematurely ⁠activate and cause the application of brakes, increasing the risk of a crash.

Dealers will update the ​front camera ​software ⁠at no cost, the regulator added.

The recall covers certain 2025-2026 Santa Cruz pickups (don't argue with me) and Tucsons in gas, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid flavors. Just 1% of the recalled vehicles are expected to actually have the defect.

History.com

I'm not sure how you feel, but I think it would have been better for the world if the Axis had not existed. I know it's a hot take, but it's one I really believe in. Cancel me, I dare you! 

Friends, I come bearing wonderful, excellent and exciting news: the average price of a gallon of gas didn't reach a new 2026 record today. Sweet relief! Instead, it dropped by about a penny in a move that will surely make all the difference in the world to folks fueling up ahead of Memorial Day Weekend. Hell, even WTI Crude Oil futures and Brent Crude are down a bit compared to yesterday, currently sitting at $98 and $104, respectively, at the time of publication.

Here's where national average prices stand right now, according to AAA:

AAA

All of this is to say that the average price of a gallon of gas is now sitting $4.55, according to AAA. That's a whopping one cent less than it was yesterday. Hopefully it's a sign of a new trend, because I've got my first gas-only press car on loan in months right now, and I really don't want to deal with all of this.

I don't know if you can tell, but I'm a bit tired today, and it's because I was up until around 1 a.m. watching the final episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The show wrapped up with back-to-back musical performances, beginning with a quartet of Colbert, Cato, Batiste, and Costello performing "Jump Up." It was them, immediately followed by a live performance of McCartney — who famously sang at the Ed Sullivan Theater with the Beatles in 1964 — and the show's house band signing "Hello Goodbye" to end the show. 

I'll admit, it made me a bit emotional. I've been a fan of Colbert since his Report days, but I'll admit, I didn't exactly follow him to The Late Show. Still, I think what has happened here is a travesty — and one CBS will come to regret. Watch these performances. They're really quite special.