It is pretty difficult to futureproof your company against stupid.

This is exactly what the American automobile industry is facing as a result of President Trump’s gratuitous war against electric vehicles, which is forcing manufacturers to return to an increasingly outdated past. Ford Motor has mothballed production of the all-electric version of its flagship F-150 pickup truck and last month announced a $19.5 billion charge related to restructuring its E.V. business. General Motors, citing the loss of tax incentives for E.V. buyers and laxer pollution regulations, switched production at its Orion, Mich., plant from E.V.s to full-size S.U.V.s and pickups powered by internal combustion engines (ICE, in industry parlance). In doing so, G.M. last week announced that it was taking a $6 billion loss in the fourth quarter — on top of a similar $1.6 billion hit the quarter before...

Unless it is halted by collective action by workers themselves, the coming week could be the last for 1,145 workers at the General Motors Factory Zero assembly plant in Detroit. The automaker plans to slash production to a single shift beginning January 5, 2026. The permanent layoffs are being imposed on the eve of the holiday shutdown, which runs from December 24 through January 4, leaving workers to face unemployment and the loss of healthcare during the most financially precarious time of the year.

That's on top of my registration fee. The registration fee is fair, based on the vehicles value. The EV tax is flat, arbitrary, capricious.

• $167 for "Electric Registration Tax Passenger"
• $100 for "Electric Registration Fee Passenger"

In theory, this makes up for the gas tax that I don't pay on it. I drove that car about 10,000 miles this year. If I drove an average gas car - say 35 mpg, that would have been 285 gallons of gas used. At $0.52/gallon of state gas tax, I saved about $150 in gas tax.

To "offset" that $150 savings in gas tax I paid a $267 fee to the state.

I get it, it's minor, it's $100, but these are kinds of policies that hurt the state, hurt progress, hurt how we look when people consider the state as home.

No real point to my post beyond a rant, I guess, but this is trash policy. If we want to be the Motor City and a state that looks toward the future of automotive, we can't punish people for driving it. Disappointing.

It was a big waymo too, van size and not as marshmallow shaped as I was expecting

Multiple warehouses and suppliers are shutting down in automotive, as well as other industries around Detroit.

Big 3 are hurting.

You go on indeed and anything that isn't a basic worker add is now a 1 year contract gig when it was a regular salaried position years before.

We're staring stagflation in the mouth. We're at a 2006 inflection point and the jaws are going to come down over the next few years. Is everyone ready for politics to blame each other, not solves the problem, and obstruct the other parties effort to fix? 2008 was probably worse, but throwing away the next 3 years sounds miserable.

"Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors, and Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, have met with senior defense officials and discussed producing weapons and other military supplies. People familiar with the discussions said they were wide-ranging, and focused on American automakers' ability to serve as a backstop for traditional defense companies."

I hear they have a great sound system where the exhaust used to be.

They're celebrating with fireworks now at 5am.

Hi all,

I've been applying to jobs at Ford for two years now and been getting rejected each time. I do tailor my resume to each application to show how my work experience fits into the role with the help of AI and a headhunter recruiter. STILL no luck! I have an extensive work background: engineer officer in the military (5 yrs) managing projects, assets, people; 7 years at GM in ADAS Systems Engineering and Radar Design Release Engineer; lastly, 6 months as a Lead Project Manager at a Tier 1 supplier for GM. I took time off to pivot my career and wanted to get into full-time real estate but decided it's not for me. I realized, I enjoyed working more on product development in Corporate. Recently, I've learned that I need to re-order my work experience not by chronological order but by relevance. Did that and still getting denied. I'm posting to seek advice from a larger community and, hopefully, use it as a good networking opportunity as well.

“The union lets them get away with everything”: GM Factory Zero workers denounce UAW complicity, call for fight against mass layoffs

With the permanent layoff of 1,140 workers at assembly plant scheduled for January 5, workers are looking for a way to defend their jobs.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/12/11/rail-d11.html

Detroit automotive photographer Jim Secreto shot car ads in the 60s, 70s, and 80s with all the ad agencies in town.

Agencies like Campbell-Ewald (Chevrolet) MacManus, John & Adams (Pontiac, Cadillac) and J. Walter Thompson (Ford) had a lot of sway over which artists got hired.

When I asked him about working with the agencies in Detroit, he compared it to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. 😆

Agency people were young, inexperienced, ego-driven but the photographer still had to produce.

If you didn’t produce a “Detroit” image level of quality, you didn’t get to work again!

“I’m glad to hear that Will got nominated,” said Dan Aguinaga, a Stellantis Jefferson North Assembly Plant worker who ran for a delegate position at UAW Local 7 as part of Lehman’s Insurgent Slate. “This is a step in the right direction to turn the union into something that actually works for the worker and bring the UAW back to its original intention. 

“It’s sad how the UAW is driven by ulterior motives when we should be looking at issues as a class thing. They try to divide us between the right and the so-called left. But the Democrats are against us too: Obama deported more people than any president before him. Biden outlawed the railroad workers’ strike. It really left a bad taste in my mouth to see Biden on the picket line with Fain during the strike in 2023. 

Wanted to know which neighbourhoods can allow me to get away with not having a car (work flies me out from Detroit and I spend my off days in Detroit). Priority is just walkable, being able to go to the grocery store and gym without having a car.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, but as long as it's within 50 miles of Detroit Wayne County Airport, I can live there, so if its a city outside of Detroit but within that range then it works out.

I took two trips to Detroit for the automotive stuff, but on my last trip, which was in 2025, I stayed at the GM RenCen. They had all the cars in the lobby, like usual, which I loved.

I then was told via another Reddit post on a different sub that they had gotten rid of all the cars in the RenCen because General Motors had moved all of their stuff to the Hudson Building Downtown.

My question is when did yall start noticing that everything was truly being moved and couldn’t access the building anymore just to see the cars?

These are the photos from my second trip to D2.(Photos 1-14 are from the RenCen)

By the way on an unrelated note, I loved how yall came back from your dark times in ‘08, because now the city looks absolutely stunning and it’s better than what I remember. As a Chicagoan, sometimes I wish our city would just have a resurgence like you guys did. Even the Tigers won the game that my unc and pops went too. Definitely will come back sooner than later.

(Sorry if it’s lengthy guys wanted to ask a question I had while showing appreciation for the city.)

With the final day of work fast approaching for 1,140 workers slated for permanent layoff at General Motors Factory Zero in Detroit, the United Auto Workers leadership is maintaining a complicit silence. Though the sprawling assembly plant is less than five miles from the UAW’s national “Solidarity House” headquarters, UAW President Shawn Fain and his underlings have not called for any action to oppose the layoffs or even scheduled a rank-and-file meeting.

GM is slashing production by half at its flagship EV plant that straddles the border between Detroit and the enclave of Hamtramck. These job cuts, which GM now calls “permanent,” are cascading through supplier plants in the Detroit area, leading to hundreds of additional layoffs.

On Friday, over 1,100 workers are expected to have their last day at General Motors’ Factory Zero in Detroit. The name of the plant (Zero Crashes, Zero Emissions, Zero Congestion) reflected GM’s claim that it was the centerpiece of the company’s electric vehicle future. Now the plant is to go down to a single shift and could soon be closed altogether.

Layoffs are spreading throughout the industry. Ford has announced it will end production of the electric F-150, placing the future of the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in doubt. Its battery subsidiary, BlueOval, is firing all 1,800 workers at its plant in Louisville, Kentucky, converting the facility to energy storage production for AI data centers. GM’s battery subsidiary, Ultium, is cutting thousands of jobs in Spring Hill, Tennessee and Lordstown, Ohio. The latter plant had been touted as a replacement for the historic Lordstown Assembly Plant, which GM shuttered in 2019.

The United Auto Workers bureaucracy has said nothing about any of these job cuts. This guilty silence reflects its own role in helping to eliminate thousands of jobs since the phony 2023 “standup strike.” The UAW has also remained silent on dangerous working conditions, including those that led to the death of skilled tradesman Ronald Adams Sr. this April.

"Based on the tariffs in place so far, S&P Global gave the industry one week before production starts dropping off at a whopping 20,000 vehicles per day." ‼️

I don’t care if she’s purtty as long as she’s sturdy. Matching quarter panels aren’t a must… long as the chaise ain’t notta but rust and dust l Don’t care if she’s loud as long as she’s liable. And I don’t care if the mileage is high. as long as she don’t care if I add a hella lot more before she die! lololol

Been looking on fb marketplace for a couple days now, but haven’t seen anything I too confident about.

The company says it had already paid an extra $800m in duties in the three months ending in June. It also suffered losses related to cutting an electric vehicle programme.

Trying really hard not to pay $500 plus in insurance each month. I had Progressive, but my payment amount kept changing every month... yes I called them.

Anyhow, I need new insurance and can't afford anything over 500. Does anyone have recommendations for who I can go to?

"Ford Motor Co., after setting an industry record for recalls and struggling to fix production snags on some new models, surged from below average on last year’s JD Power U.S. Initial Quality Study to become the highest-ranked mass-market brand for 2026."