GM Wants To Sell You Gas Guzzlers

Happy Wednesday! It’s July 15, 2025, 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, we’re looking at GM swapping its EV production capacity for pickup trucks and SUVs, as well as Ford announcing new passenger cars are coming down the pipe — just, not for the United States. Instead, we’ll look at the shiny new Ford recall we’re getting over here, plus the effect of tariffs on plane maker Embraer. 

General Motors is a forward-thinking company, and as such it started a project back in 2023 to convert its Orion plant in Michigan to build electric vehicles. Enormous, hulking, lumbering EVs like the Silverado and Sierra, but EVs nonetheless. Now, though, it seems GM’s foresight has gotten a little cloudy. It still intends to use the Orion plant to build enormous, hulking, lumbering vehicles, but now they won’t be electric. From Automotive News:

General Motors will build both of its light-duty full-size pickups and the Cadillac Escalade full-size SUV at a Michigan assembly plant starting in 2027.

The automaker on July 15 confirmed it will build the Escalade, Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra at Orion Assembly, about 35 miles north of Detroit. The Orion plant is one of three that GM last month said will share a $4 billion investment to expand U.S. production of gasoline-powered vehicles.

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The Orion plant has been down since late 2023, originally to convert to building electric versions of the Silverado and Sierra. That plan was delayed twice before GM last month said the plant would be used to supplement production of internal combustion pickups.

The factory currently employs about 200 people who build battery modules for electric vehicles made at GM’s Factory Zero plant in Detroit, a spokesperson said. That operation started last year and was part of GM’s original electrification plans for the Orion factory.

The move here brings more production into the U.S., shifting it from Mexico and Canada in the face of tariffs, but it also cuts GM’s ability to take even the mildest step towards considering the future. They say that climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it, and earlier this week the footage came from New York City. How long until it reaches that fancy Hudson’s building?

Ford’s passenger cars are long-dead in the U.S., save the Mustang, but they’ve held on better in Europe. The Focus may not be long for this world, but it’s still kicking for now — and it seems it could have a successor in the works, according to European dealers. From Automotive News:

Ford will expand its European passenger car lineup with new models, dealers have been told.

Ford CEO Jim Farley plans to develop new passenger cars in Europe again, dealers were told in a video conference by Christoph Herr, head of the brand in German-speaking countries.

In recent years, U.S. automaker has downsized its passenger car offerings in Europe to focus on its more profitable light commercial vehicles business.

The popular Fiesta small car was dropped, along with the Galaxy and S-Max minivans. The Focus compact car is due to go out of production in the autumn.

Remember passenger cars? Before we all needed 60,000 pounds of SUV to carry one singular person to work and back? That wasn’t so long ago. It wouldn’t be hard to go back to smaller vehicles. 

It’s been a big year for Ford recalls, with the company breaking the annual record for recalls in just the first half of 2025. But Ford, never one to rest on its laurels, is keeping the pedal down — recalling another nearly 700,000 Bronco Sports and Escapes for fuel injectors that may leak. From Reuters:

Ford is recalling 694,271 crossover SUVs in the United States due to a fuel leak issue that could increase the risk of a fire, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Wednesday, following a year-long investigation.

The NHTSA said fuel injectors in affected vehicles may crack, causing fuel to leak into the engine compartment and potentially ignite. Drivers may notice a strong fuel smell inside or outside the vehicle, dashboard warnings, smoke, or visible flames.

The recall covers certain 2021–2024 Bronco Sport and 2020–2022 Escape models equipped with 1.5-litre engines. The NHTSA estimates that 0.3% of recalled vehicles may have the defect.

At this point, all the Ford recalls are beginning to blur together and overlap in my brain due to their sheer number and size, but I kind of thought we already got this one. In April, the company recalled Escapes and Bronco Sports for leaky fuel injectors, as it did back in 2022. Are the injectors the problem, or is something cracking them?

Ever flown on a real little plane for a short-hop connecting flight? It may well have been an Embraer, a Brazilian planemaker that sends plenty of E175s to the United States. Embraer is looking down the barrel of 50% tariffs on Brazil — notably Trump’s first tariffs to be purely ideological, rather than relying on some incomprehensible trade deficit math. Embraer is, unsurprisingly, not feeling great about the whole thing. From Reuters:

The 50% tariff that U.S. President Donald Trump plans to impose on Brazilian exports starting in August could hammer the revenue of planemaker Embraer (EMBR3.SA), opens new tab like the COVID-19 pandemic did, its CEO warned on Tuesday, flagging risks to U.S. partners.

Francisco Gomes Neto told reporters the tariffs would amount to a trade embargo on the regional jets it supplies to U.S. airlines and could trigger order cancellations, deferred deliveries and tough consequences for Embraer’s U.S. suppliers.

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The U.S. is the main market for Embraer, the world’s third-largest planemaker after Airbus (AIR.PA), opens new tab and Boeing (BA.N), opens new tab, with U.S. clients buying 45% of the firm’s commercial airliners and 70% of its executive jets.

Analysts had warned that the Brazilian planemaker would be one of the most affected by the tariffs.

I’ve never loved my time on Embraer planes — I’m more of a quad jet girlie myself — but there are some routes for which an A380-800 simply doesn’t make sense. We’ll see what happens to those routes when these little planes get prohibitively expensive. 

Did you know there’s an entire subreddit devoted to loving the Romanovs and writing fanfiction about how perfect everything would be had those pesky communists not killed them? There is, it’s real, the world is a fascinating place. 

It’s been a minute since I listened to “Champions of Red Wine,” but y’know what? It’s still a bop!