Ford Touts $1 Billion In Kentucky Truck Plant Investments After Sean Duffy Publicly Whined About Its Ties To Chinese Automakers

Good morning! It's Friday, September 11, 2026, 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, Ford is investing big at its Kentucky Truck facility on the heels of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy saying it was helping Chinese automakers gain a foothold in America, the Trump administration's fight with California over stricter vehicle emissions hits a roadblock in court, China sets a 70% electrified vehicle goal for new car sales in the next five years and Jeep is recalling hundreds of thousands of Grand Cherokees for suspension bits that can pop off.

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Ford is investing $1 billion for a new paint shop at Kentucky Truck, its most profitable assembly plant, and the news comes just days after U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy publicly wagged his finger at the automaker for allegedly helping Chinese companies gain a foothold Stateside. While I'm sure the two aren't connected, the timing is certainly funny.

Work at the Super Duty, Expedition and Lincoln Navigator plant is slated to start later this year. Every cent spent there is mighty important, and it brings in about $25 billion in revenue annually. Ford touted other Kentucky investments, including $2 billion on repurposing a newly built battery plant in Glendale, after it killed a joint venture with a South Korean battery maker. It'll now reopen next year as a battery energy storage systems manufacturer. From Automotive News:

U.S. battery manufacturing was among the topics Duffy cited in a Sept. 8 letter to CEO Jim Farley accusing the automaker of "actively intertwining its future with Chinese state-backed enterprises."

The automaker is licensing the use of technology from China's Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. to make batteries at a plant in Marshall, Mich. Ford owns and operates the plant, which has begun producing cells.

Ford pushed back against Duffy's criticism, saying that it produces more vehicles and employs more hourly manufacturing workers in the U.S. than any other automaker.

In a statement, a Ford spokesperson said Duffy's letter was "a wrongheaded attempt to capture headlines," and that Ford had "done more for American manufacturing than virtually any other in the nation's history."

It's not totally clear why Duffy would throw remarks like this across Ford's bow, especially when the Blue Oval and the Trump administration have had a pretty solid relationship thus far. Perhaps it's because he's a dope.

In more egg-on-face news for the Trump administration, a fight between its EPA and California over the state's stricter emissions standards has encountered another roadblock as a recent court action favored the Golden State. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction against the EPA, ordering it to withdraw or correct a recent set of actions that would have continued the agency's elimination of the waivers.

The court accused the EPA of "gamesmanship" and "mind-numbing word calisthenics" for its attempt to reclassify six waivers in an attempt to give Congress the opportunity to get rid of the standards. They govern everything from passenger vehicles and trucks to small lawn care gear like mowers and chainsaws. From Automotive News:

It "may seem like a clever policy move, but undermines honest compliance with the law, which is what Americans should expect from executive branch agencies," said Judge Beryl A. Howell in the memorandum opinion explaining the preliminary injunction.

A spokesperson for the EPA told Automotive News in an email that it is "considering immediate appeal options."

The injunction raises the stakes in one of two major legal battles over the waivers, which have ripple effects far beyond the Golden State.

Sixteen states and Washington, D.C. have adopted versions of one of the California standards at issue in the injunction case, governing roughly 37 percent of new U.S. light-duty vehicle sales.

The injunction affects what is essentially the fallback plan for auto companies hoping to prepare for the trajectory of California's increasingly ambitious emissions targets.

For decades the EPA has granted California waivers to write its own emissions policies to prevent air pollution. The EPA approved California's regulations using this mechanism during the Biden administration.

The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have come up with a controversial way of using Congressional authority to strip the state of its waivers. The method involves reclassifying the waivers as "rules" which are subject to Congressional approval or disapproval.

So much for states' rights, huh?

In 2025, the Trump EPA successfully reclassified three waivers: Advanced Clean Cars II, Advanced Clean Trucks and the Heavy-Duty Low Nitrogen Oxides rule. The reclassification process enabled the EPA to send those rules to Congress for disapproval and President Donald Trump signed those changes into law in June 2025.

A separate court case in California is addressing those waivers. Many auto industry players considered ACC II overly strict and unrealistic, as it would have required 100 percent of new vehicle sales to be zero-emissions vehicles (including some plug-in hybrids and hydrogen-powered vehicles) by 2035.

In June 2026, the EPA reclassified four additional waivers with the intent to send them to Congress for disapproval. Those waivers governed greenhouse gas emissions standards from the Obama administration, Advanced Clean Cars I (also from the Obama administration but reinstated under President Joe Biden) and small off-road engines such as those in outdoor power equipment.

In July 2026, the EPA reclassified two additional waivers: those governing large ships docked at ports and commercial harbor craft.

These six are the reclassifications at issue in the case involved in the injunctions. The California Air Resources Board has preserved ACC I standards while ACC II has been tied up in court, but automakers can voluntarily comply with ACC II and its stricter requirements.

China has lofty goals in mind: 70% of its new cars will be EVs or hybrids by 2030 and autonomous driving will be deployable at scale. Beijing also says it wants 40% of new commercial vehicle sales to be electric by 2030, and it expects several of its automakers to be among the world's 10 largest while also having a greater say in setting global standards. BYD, SAIC and Geely were among the top 10 last year when it came to sales volume, but they trailed far behind the top 3 of Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai. From Bloomberg:

While the plan didn't give a target for autonomous vehicles, the focus on rolling out more driverless cars is a positive for the industry after new robotaxi license approvals were frozen for several months this year following an outage of Baidu Inc. vehicles in Wuhan.

China has become the world's largest producer of EVs and is at the forefront of deploying autonomous driving technology along with the US, but its domestic market is facing a series of challenges. Car sales are down 21% in the first eight months of this year and a long-running price war has eroded profit margins and led to safety and quality concerns.

Policymakers have introduced more than half-a-dozen new standards or rules around door handles, driver assistance technology, batteries and more to ensure safety, while the latest Five Year Plan says the government looks to deepen automaker reform, encourage consolidation and the exit of inefficient manufacturers, which can help alleviate overcapacity.

Battery technology and recycling are also on the agenda, with the plan calling for the introduction of standards for new cell chemistry such as solid-state batteries and improvements in the recapture of key metals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel.

While these numbers are high, I wouldn't be shocked if China can actually pull them out. In 2021, it wanted EVs and hybrids to account for 20% of new car sales in 2025. It flew past that target, with sales reaching 54% last year. It's honestly likely that the 70% number will be achieved ahead of time — especially as gas prices continue to climb.

Jeep is recalling 328,381 2022-2023 Grand Cherokees (ICE and 4xe) and 2021-2023 Grand Cherokee Ls because their rear coil springs might not be correctly attached, and when that happens, they can come out of position and detach from the SUV entirely without warning, which is less than ideal. Luckily, just 0.1% of recalled cars are expected to have the defect, and no Grand Cherokees fitted with air suspension are impacted. From the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration:

Dealers will replace the rear coil spring lower isolators, free of charge. Interim notification letters, notifying owners of the safety risk, are expected to be mailed September 29, 2026. Additional letters will be sent once the final remedy is available.

In a bit of good news, Jeep says it's not aware of any accidents or injuries related to this defect.

While Stellantis is still a long way off from the 68 recalls Ford has tallied this year, it's no slouch either. This marks the 33rd recall the company has issued thus far in 2026, which would be gnarly if the Blue Oval didn't exist.

Gas and diesel prices continue to trend in the wrong direction as the U.S. and Israel's war with Iran, as well as Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries, squeeze oil supplies and the global supply chain. These factors have sent WTI Crude Oil futures and Brent Crude prices through the roof, with them sitting at $99 and $104, respectively, at the time of publication. 

Here's where national average prices stand right now, according to AAA:

History.com

What all this means is the average price of a gallon of regular gas was up another 2 cents overnight to $4.30, according to AAA. It sure seems like we're well on our way to breaking the $4.56 2026 high we saw back in May. 

The even bigger news is the fact that we've set a new all-time record high for diesel, with prices eclipsing $6 for the first time ever — now sitting at $6.06. That's an 8-cent jump from yesterday alone. Get ready for things to get a hell of a lot more expensive.

History.com

It's hard to beleive it's already been 25 years. Please head to History.com to learn more about that day.

There was a lot of hopefulness around the idea of coming together in the wake of 9/11 — demonstrated quite well by "The Rising." Of course, with hindsight we know that never happened, but it's nice to imagine what the country would have been like if that happened.