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The Drive 🤝 your inbox. Every weekday The Daily Brief wraps up the biggest stories and our exclusive reporting on the auto industry and car culture. Hi there! Welcome to The Downshift, a daily news roundup curated by The Drive’s editorial team. (Really, it’s just me, Caleb. I’m filling in for my amigo Adam today. Thanks for having me!) Each story gets a short summary and a link to the original source if you want to dive deeper. Here’s what’s bubbling on Thursday, Sept. 24: 🚐 Volkswagen pulled the ID. Buzz from the U.S. market in late 2025, saying it…

The 2027 Mercedes-Benz GLC is on dealer lots now with confirmed VIN-specific listings at Mercedes-Benz dealers across the country and a remarkably consistent discount pattern already documented on current inventory. Multiple confirmed dealer listings show GLC 300 4MATIC units at $1,649 below sticker across different optioned configurations , including a GLC 300 4MATIC at $55,076 against a $56,725 MSRP, another at $55,776 against $57,425, and a third at $57,876 against $59,525. One outlier listing at Mercedes-Benz of Laguna Niguel shows a unit at $58,107 against a $57,985 MSRP , $122 above sticker , confirming that multi-dealer comparison remains…

UPDATE: 2026/09/24 10:45 EST BY DAN CLOUGHER It’s What Isn’t There That Customers Love The Most We’ve included a section which explains how the RX’s lack of moving with the times is actually what makes it such a timeless and desirable place to sit in 2026. Ten years is a long time in the automotive world — long enough for most luxury SUVs to fade into beige irrelevance. Leather splits, trim panels loosen, and that once-aspirational cabin starts feeling like a hotel shuttle. Yet the 2016 Lexus RX keeps defying that trajectory. A decade on, its interior still draws favorable…

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed SB 1069, a SEMA‑sponsored bill that creates a conditional approval pathway for qualifying emissions‑related aftermarket products. The new law is intended to help compliant parts reach the California market faster while the California Air Resources Board (CARB) completes its final review. SB 1069, authored by Sen. Tim Grayson, allows manufacturers that submit complete CARB Executive Order applications, including required emissions testing and technical documentation, to receive conditional approval to sell, advertise and install covered products during CARB’s review period. “SB 1069 is an important win for our industry, giving manufacturers that have invested in…

Visitors at Nio’s booth at the Beijing Auto Show in April 2026. Credit: CnEVPost. The event will mark the Beijing Auto Show’s first edition in an odd-numbered year. The next Shanghai Auto Show is scheduled for April 23-May 2, 2027. The next Beijing Auto Show will run from March 27 to April 5, 2027, extending the Beijing International Automotive Exhibition (Auto China) with a specialized exhibition that broadens its scope to smart manufacturing and future mobility. Organizers announced the full schedule at a press conference on Thursday. The event will mark the Beijing Auto Show’s first edition in an odd-numbered…

The satellite, equipped with Google’s Tensor Processing Units, will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on October 1st, allowing it to harness the power of the sun in low Earth orbit. As noted by Google, the goal of the mission is to measure how well its TPUs “handle the physical stress of spaceflight and the radiation and thermal extremes of space.”This is just one step toward Google’s goal of putting a constellation of chip-equipped satellites into space — an idea Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt have also floated as an alternative to data centers…

Nissan hasn’t offered an open-top Z since the 370Z Convertible bowed out after 2020. That could change, with the automaker teasing a T-top version of its latest sports car this week at the ZCON gathering in Phoenix, Arizona, where it unveiled the stunning Z Kaze Concept. Although the Kaze is strictly a one-off built as a showpiece for the annual gathering of Z fans, a senior official has revealed that Nissan is also using it to gauge whether there’s enough interest to put a T-top version into production. Fans Need To Get Vocal Nissan Z Kaze ConceptNissan Speaking to The…

Photo: Waymo Waymo has released new crash data which claims not only an 82% reduction in crashes, but for the first time says the number of injuries that have been avoided by its robotaxi operation. We’ve seen various Waymo crash data before, with Waymo claiming crash reductions. That’s all well and good when the company says it, but we’ve also seen independent data confirming similar (though lower) crash reduction numbers. So it does seem like Waymo has an advantage over human drivers, at least in the limited areas it operates in. The problem is, crashes are relatively rare, and crashes…

You might be eligible if you’ve bought an iPhone in the last couple of years. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images U.S. Apple customers who purchased some iPhone models should submit claims for compensation for the company’s delayed introduction of Apple Intelligence features it originally announced in June 2024. Payments could be worth $25 to $95 per device. To qualify, you must submit your claim by December 21, 2026. Apple was hit with a class action lawsuit on the basis that people purchasing iPhones between June 10, 2024, and March 29, 2025, did so believing it would ship Apple…

The 2027 Nissan Kicks is on dealer lots now with confirmed VIN-specific listings at Nissan dealers in Tennessee, Virginia, and Texas, and real discounts already documented on early inventory. A confirmed dealer listing shows an SV AWD at $28,455 against a $29,465 MSRP saving $1,010 at Mathews Nissan in Clarksville, Tennessee. TrueCar confirms a starting MSRP of $24,335 with a starting market average of $24,645 across early transactions. The 2027 Kicks’ headline addition is the new Rock Creek trim , the first time Nissan’s adventure-focused Rock Creek grade has been applied to the Kicks , with standard AWD,…