Tesla Is Using Social Media Pressure To Push For FSD Approval In Europe – Jalopnik

Happy Wednesday! It’s October 7, 2026, and that is The Morning Shift — your each day roundup of the highest automotive headlines from all over the world, in a single place. This is the place you will discover crucial tales which might be shaping the best way Americans drive and get round.

In this morning’s version we’re Elon Musk’s social media pushes for FSD in Europe, and Porsche’s plans to boost costs. We’ll additionally have a look at Honda shuffling its U.S. manufacturing, and Nissan’s horrible horrible no good very unhealthy gross sales yr. 

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Elon Musk determined that Tesla is an AI and robotics firm, quite than a automotive firm. Of course, the corporate nonetheless makes its cash from promoting vehicles, so Musk is doing his finest to push for the corporate’s singular AI-ish product — the FSD software program suite — wherever attainable. Right now which means Europe, the place the software program has but to see full approval by the bloc. From Reuters: 

Elon Musk’s firm has pushed regulators instantly to cut back the rigor of security opinions, submitted its personal analysis making daring crash-reduction claims, and used social media to mobilize Tesla fanatics to demand speedy approvals.

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But Tesla’s marketing campaign is constructed on defective firm security analysis that may’t assist the corporate’s claims to officers or the general public, in line with seven traffic-safety researchers who examined its methodology for Reuters.

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During that Netherlands overview, Tesla repeatedly sought to cut back the depth of the regulator’s examination, and it pushed – with some success – to set the phrases and strategies of its analysis and testing, in line with a Reuters overview of correspondence between the automaker and the regulator, which has not been beforehand reported.

FSD wants these flawed security opinions as a result of the software program is inherently compromised by its reliance on appropriate {hardware}: Computer imaginative and prescient, a poor substitute for the LiDAR scanners utilized by the extra competent autonomy builders. If Tesla might present regulators that FSD was safer than human drivers with out resorting to massaged numbers and pressured regulators, it actually would. The proven fact that the corporate is resorting to such underhanded strategies is telling.  

Earlier this week, we talked about how Porsche desires to extend profitability by reducing prices. Today, the corporate is elevating costs on its priciest fashions by 20%. Charging extra for much less is an effective long-term transfer for a enterprise’s well being, proper? From the Wall Street Journal: 

Porsche plans to make its vehicles much more unique whereas persevering with to chop prices and streamline its operations because it targets increased profitability in coming years.

The German sports-car maker stated forward of an investor occasion Wednesday that it’s going to supply extra higher-end automobiles and goal to extend the typical promoting worth of those fashions by about 20% to 330,000 euros ($371,596).

By 2030, it plans to launch at the least one “brand-defining” new product yearly, it stated.

This is not about worth modifications on the very best trims of the Macan — although I would not be shocked if these costs crept upward too — however about fashions just like the 911 Dakar and Sport Classic. There’s an actual marketplace for promoting costly paperweights to wealthy jerks who won’t ever drive them, so these jerks can ultimately commerce the vehicles round to one another for tax write offs, and that is the place Porsche sees its future. When nobody else can afford your sports activities vehicles, you must cater to the few people keen to shell out unbelievable quantities of cash yearly for the most recent shiny toy. This is an indication of a superb and wholesome financial system, by the best way. 

Honda has a brand new CR-V within the works, nevertheless it’s not popping out but. Instead, the corporate is placing its U.S. manufacturing assets in direction of manufacturing ever extra of the present mannequin — to the purpose of reducing off deliberate manufacturing of the Civic in Indiana. From Automotive News: 

Honda has delayed manufacturing of the next-generation CR-V by three months and canceled plans to construct the following Civic sedan in Indiana, a provide chain supply advised Automotive News.

Start of manufacturing for the redesigned CR-V has been pushed to April 2027, stated the individual, who requested to not be recognized as a result of the knowledge has not been made public. Honda additionally has decreased first-year quantity deliberate for the crossover by 6.7 p.c, to 41,315 items.

The changes come as Honda recalibrates its North American manufacturing footprint to account for strong hybrid demand.

When you make one thing that sells in enormous volumes, and worldwide commerce will get unsure, it is advisable to shore up native manufacturing quick. Dealers solely have 17 days price of CR-Vs on their heaps, and Honda desires to bump these numbers up particularly if factories will probably be paused sooner or later to retool for a future era of the automotive, it is good to get stock available now. 

Nissan has been doing its finest to show issues round below CEO Ivan Espinosa, however the firm is not out of the woods but. Its 2026 gross sales are wanting tough, and catching as much as even final yr’s numbers would require some herculean efforts. From Automotive News: 

The automaker delivered 1,932,725 automobiles worldwide within the first eight months of 2026 — 9.2 p.c lower than in the identical interval final yr, in line with figures launched Sept. 29.

That places the corporate on tempo for a full-year whole of two.9 million. The final time Nissan fell wanting 3 million in a calendar yr was 2003, when it bought 2.968 million automobiles.

Reaching 3 million by the top of 2026 would require promoting practically 267,000 a month from September by means of December, a 29 p.c bounce from Nissan’s August tempo.

Good luck, Nissan. Please final lengthy sufficient to service a GT-R within the occasion I win the Powerball and get to purchase one. Also, construct that T-top Z whilst you nonetheless can. What, is it gonna harm your numbers? If issues are this unhealthy, you could as effectively get bizarre with it and throw stuff on the wall. 

Much like victory within the War On Drugs decisively going to Drugs, can we are saying that the War On Terror was received by Terror but?

It looks as if even the markets have misplaced the flexibility to foretell something past the following 5 minutes, and fuel costs are simply bouncing round wildly. Today they’re steady. Yesterday they went up. The day earlier than, they went down. 

I’m fairly certain Annie Clark and I would not get alongside if we ever met — particularly after what she did to Sleater-Kinney — however I wakened with “Birth In Reverse” caught in my head and now it is your flip.