Good morning! It’s Monday, January 27, 2025, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know.
1st Gear: Alfa Romeo Rolls Out ‘Multi-Energy’ Approach
It’s a tumultuous time for America’s automakers, as after years spent plowing millions of dollars into an electric vehicle-only approach to car sales, they’re now questioning everything thanks to tough sales and a president who practically hates the things. This is leading automakers to backtrack on targets, and now Alfa Romeo has completely scrapped its ambition to go all-electric.
The Stellantis-owned brand says it will no longer work to be an EV-only brand by 2027, which means it could launch new gas-powered cars in America, reports Automotive News. The comments were made by new Alfa boss Chris Feuell, who is desperately trying to turn around years of declining sales for the historic Italian marque:
Feuell, who assumed responsibility for Alfa Romeo in December, said the brand changed course in the last month. Feuell said the conventional gasoline version of the Tonale is now starting to reach dealerships, and the company will try to hook buyers with a lease offer of $399 per month or less.
Feuell asked dealers during the brand’s Jan. 26 meeting at the NADA Show whether Alfa Romeo should bring the Junior compact crossover to the U.S. market.
The vehicle has electric and mild hybrid variants.
“The biggest thing in our product and technology road map is transitioning from what was a BEV-only strategy for Alfa to one that is multi-energy,” Feuell told Automotive News after the meeting. “We’ve got 110 dealers ... in our U.S. network, and it would be very challenging for them to survive with a BEV-only portfolio.”
Those dealers are already struggling to survive, as Alfa’s sales are dropping like flies these days. The brand sold just 8,895 cars in 2024, which was down nearly 20 percent compared with 2023. In 2022, it sold more than 12,000 cars and in 2021 it shifted more than 18,000 units here in America.
Clearly, something dramatic needs to happen at Alfa Romeo if it hopes to survive in America. As such, Feuell says she aims to raise quality at the brand, offload the 2024 stock that currently accounts for around half of its inventory right now, and strengthen the dealer network.
The next step will be convincing Americans that they should care about Alfa Romeo once again, and I’m not sure a few hybrid SUVs will be quite enough to do that.
2nd Gear: Kia Recalls 80,000 Cars Over Faulty Airbags
Just when you thought every car with a faulty airbag had already been recalled thanks to enormous campaigns to fix issues with Takata and ARC inflators, Kia has issued an enormous recall due to issues with its airbags.
The Korean automaker will recall more than 80,000 cars due to improper deployment of the airbags, reports CNN. The issue isn’t to do with the airbag itself, and rather the wiring that is meant to set it off, as CNN explains:
Automaker Kia America is recalling more than 80,000 vehicles due to floor wiring beneath the front passenger seat that can become damaged and prevent airbags and seat belts from deploying properly.
Damaged wiring can also cause an unintended side curtain air bag deployment, according to documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The recall covers 80,255 2023-2025 Niro EV, Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV), and Hybrid vehicles.
In order to fix the problem, Kia dealers will inspect the wiring in impacted Niro models. If issues are uncovered, they will then replace and reroute the wiring, free of charge. Owners of models affected by the recall will be notified in March.
If you are worried that your car might be affected by a recall, there are a few easy ways to check if it’s the case. First up, the NHTSA has a super handy app that you can use to see if your vehicle is impacted by a recall, or you can head to the regulator’s website and plug your VIN into its recall search tool.
3rd Gear: Jaguar Hopes $80 Million Bet On Personalization Will Draw Luxury Buyers
Jaguar is in the midst of an enormous re-brand that will see it relaunch itself as a desirable, relevant car brand once again. We’ve already seen the new logo and concept car that’s meant to embody this new direction, and now the automaker has revealed that it’s plowing millions of dollars into personalization to attract luxury buyers.
The British automaker will invest $80 million across Jaguar and Land Rover to try and tap into the demand for luxury trimmings that high-end buyers want, reports Reuters. The move follows similar efforts from the likes of Aston Martin and Bentley in recent years, which have helped boost income for the two brands:
JLR will more than double the capacity of its SV Bespoke Paint matching service, allowing Range Rover SV clients to paint their cars in any colour, including those matching their private jets or yachts.
The company will open new paint facilities in Castle Bromwich, West Midlands and Nitra, Slovakia.
If it works out, then Jaguar could be a winner as Bentley boasted just last year that profits at the automaker had surpassed $600,000 as a result of its personalization services. What’s more, Rolls-Royce announced earlier this year that it was adding $300 million to its own bespoke services, which it said would enable buyers to add more colors, more fabrics and more gold to their cars.
4th Gear: Autonomous Cars Won’t Steal Your Jobs Just Yet
For years, we’ve been told that autonomy is coming. When it does, it’s going to revolutionize the world by making tasks easier, people more productive and it could also mean that you won’t have to talk to others as much. This has led automakers to invest millions into autonomous cars and private startups have set out to create autonomous taxi services across America.
Now, the boss of Uber has stepped in to calm concerns that autonomous cars are going to steal taxi drivers’ jobs. Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi said there’s currently space for both human- and self-driven cars, and said this will be true for at least the next five years, reports Business Insider:
“So, for example, in San Francisco, our business continues to grow and Waymo is growing — just the overall envelope of the business is growing faster,” he said, referencing the self-driving car division of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Uber partnered with Waymo in 2023 and provides access to self-driving rides in some cities through its app.
Though Uber plans to increase the number of AVs in its ride-hailing fleet, Khosrowshahi said that the integration will proceed slowly, at least for the coming decade.
“I think we will operate in a hybrid network,” the Uber CEO said. “A combination, you know. By far predominantly human drivers, and then some AVs feathering in over the next 10 years.”
While companies like Uber and Tesla have been promising autonomy for years, Khosrowshahi says the next ten years really will be crunch time for self-driving taxis as they “work their way” into the system.
He doesn’t have much to say about what will happen to taxi drivers once autonomous cabs are truly integrated, maybe he knows the answer will anger taxi drivers across America. Or, perhaps he suspects that after another ten years of autonomous driving research, we’ll be in the same position we are now.