Senate hearing on car affordability postponed due to lack of Elon Musk – Jalopnik

Happy Wednesday! It’s January 7, 2026 and this is The Morning Shift: your daily digest of the most important car news from around the world, in one place. Here are the top stories shaping the way Americans drive and get around.

In this morning’s edition, we’ll look at the upcoming Senate hearing on affordability, and automakers’ bleak outlook for U.S. sales in 2026. We’ll also look at open sourcing in auto technology and Nissan’s new head of U.S. sales.

A US Senate committee hearing on vehicle affordability, which was to include the CEOs of Detroit 3 and a top Tesla executive, has been postponed after Ford Motor Co. has reversed the timing and format.

The hearing, initially scheduled for Jan. 14, would have brought the heads of Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Stellantis together on Capitol Hill for the first time since 2008.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation planned to question the three executives and Lars Moravy, Tesla’s vice president of vehicle engineering, about “how radical global warming regulations and mandatory technologies have driven up the cost of vehicles for American consumers,” said U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, chairman of the panel.

But Ford balked at the idea of ​​sending CEO Jim Farley when Tesla CEO Elon Musk was not called to testify, according to a letter to the committee first reported by Politico and obtained by Automotive News.

“If a vice president of engineering is suitable for the scheduled hearing, the other companies should be given the opportunity to present a similar witness,” wrote Brian Smith, an attorney for Ford of the firm Covington & Burling.

This hearing as a whole is extremely stupid. The “radical global warming regulations” are still less restrictive than those of most of the world, and are in fact the bare minimum that automakers could do to ensure that the Earth remains habitable. In the land of the free market, car manufacturers figured out long ago that gigantic polluting cars make them more money. That’s it. That is the affordability crisis.

General Motors and several rivals reported a slump in year-end sales, an ominous sign that U.S. auto sales will slow this year as consumers push back on higher prices.

GM, the largest U.S. automaker by sales and a bellwether for American industry, said Monday that sales fell 7% in the final quarter of 2025. Honda, Hyundai, Mazda and Nissan also said Monday that their U.S. sales fell toward the end of the year.

The slowdown is expected to continue until this year. Analysts and automakers predict annual U.S. sales will fall in 2026 after three straight years of gains, as belt-tightening U.S. car buyers face tariff costs that companies are unlikely to continue absorbing.

Executives at Toyota, which posted an 8% U.S. sales increase in the fourth quarter, said they are preparing for a roaring year.

Toyota managed to maintain sales momentum late last year as it absorbed the costs of U.S. tariffs and as car buyers gravitated toward the company’s entry-level models such as the Corolla sedan. Still, executives say companies won’t be able to keep footing the bill for the tariffs.

“Prices will rise for us and for our competitors,” David Christ, Toyota’s U.S. sales chief, said on a call with reporters.

New cars are already too expensive for American consumers, so why not raise prices even further? This will certainly only go well if the economy teeters on the brink of a collapse that would make 2008 look like a bull market.

More than 30 companies in the automotive industry supply chain have agreed to collaborate on open source software to develop next-generation cars and cut costs, the German industry lobby behind the initiative said on Wednesday.

Germany’s VDA announced the expansion of the initiative at the CES fair in Las Vegas, where automakers and suppliers are betting on AI and software to revive an industry struggling with slow progress and high costs.

European automotive group Stellantis and truck manufacturer Traton signed the memorandum of understanding, along with German supplier Schaeffler and chipmakers Infineon and Qualcomm, the VDA said.

They join the likes of German carmakers Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, increasing the number of participating companies to 32 from 11 when the group was announced last year.

The idea behind open source software is simple: anyone can contribute to the code, anyone can use it, and no one benefits from it. That last part could be a sticking point for automakers, and why this whole endeavor is more of a “memorandum of understanding” than something more binding.

The revolving door of Nissan’s leadership is turning again.

Michael Soutter, Nissan’s senior vice president of U.S. marketing and sales, has resigned for personal reasons after just four months.

Tiago Castro, a 23-year veteran of Nissan Motor Co., will succeed Soutter, Automotive News has learned. Castro has led Infiniti’s U.S. operations as vice president since April 2025.

Soutter’s departure adds to Nissan’s employee turnover as the automaker tries to revive its struggling U.S. business amid flat sales and continued dealer dissatisfaction.

These damn millennials just have no idea about corporate loyalty. It used to be that you worked in the same place for thirty years until they gave you a gold watch and a pension and sent you on your way (to Florida). Nowadays they leave their jobs every four months! Kids, I swear.

As a child, I was convinced that adult life would be full of a few things that haven’t really appeared since. Quicksand, house fires, and the Harlem Globetrotters are all on that list.