Regulators Don't Love The Tesla Cybercab's Driverless Design

Happy Wednesday! It's September 16, 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, we're looking at the regulatory probe into Tesla's Cybercab, as well as McLaren's plans for a UK-built SUV. We'll also look at Nissan's new plans for a UK-built SUV — presumably unrelated — and Bosch workers' pleas to the European Union. 

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Cars on U.S. roads have a whole list of rules they have to follow, known as the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. These standards define pretty much everything safety-related about cars, up to and including how they're controlled. As you can imagine, the folks in charge of the FMVSS are a little confused at how Tesla thinks its Cybercab — a vehicle that notably has no controls in the interior — meets the standards. From the Wall Street Journal:

Federal regulars are pressing Tesla on whether its steering wheel-free Cybercab may have a way for humans to drive it after all.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asked Tesla in an order published Tuesday whether the vehicle has the ability to be driven with traditional controls and, if so, whether that is why Tesla believes the Cybercab is compliant with federal safety standards.

"State whether temporarily installed human driver controls or other equipment for use by a human driver were a part of Tesla's basis for certifying compliance," NHTSA said in the order.

Technically, there is a way to control the Cybercab from inside — there's a dumb little graph display on the interior screen, that can be used in about the least intuitive manner possible to direct the car around. I haven't read each individual letter of the FMVSS (I have better things to do with my time, like scheduling doctors' appointments or cleaning toilets) but I'm willing to bet that "dumb little touchscreen" isn't among the approved ways to control a motor vehicle. 

McLaren was bought out by a firm from Abu Dhabi late in 2024, and we're now starting to see the changes from that new regime. The company is going after a volume unit, a car that can sell to the masses, and it seems the suits have landed on a hybrid SUV being that scale vehicle. In McLaren fashion, though, it'll be built right in the UK. From Automotive News: 

McLaren Automotive will build a hybrid SUV and invest £1.5 billion ($2 billion) to overhaul its U.K. operations under new Abu Dhabi ownership.

The car will rival luxury performance SUVs such as the Ferrari Purosangue, Aston Martin DBX and Lamborghini Urus and will broaden the company's customer base beyond two-seat supercars as it seeks to return to profitability.

"We will do it very much in a McLaren way," CEO Nick Collins said of the SUV. "It will bring something unique to the segment, which we think the customers will value."

An initial £500 million investment will be spent overhauling the company's 15-year-old McLaren Production Centre in Woking, near London, where the McLaren Formula 1 racing team is also based.

Automotive News frames this new vehicle as an attack on Ferrari's Purosangue, but that would require the Purosangue to be a vehicle that matters to anyone at all. As it stands, that car is produced in such limited numbers and for such an exorbitant price that it's kind of a non-issue in the automotive market. If McLaren is smart, it'll go for Cayenne sales. 

Not to be outdone, Nissan is also making a hybrid SUV in the UK. Given that it's a new variant of the Kicks, though, it's probably going to be a bit less of a performer than whatever McLaren cooks up. It'll also sell, conservatively, one billion times the units. From Reuters: 

LONDON, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Japanese automaker Nissan said on Wednesday it would build a new hybrid ​small SUV for Europe at its UK ‌plant in Sunderland and would invest £170 million ($229 million) to assemble it there.

The company said the Kicks e-POWER hybrid would be made ​in Sunderland alongside the Qashqai, Juke ​and electric Leaf models, but it did not ⁠provide a timeline for production.

A hybrid Kicks would actually be a great entrant into the modern automotive market. The existing Kicks is a fun-looking little crossover, and giving it a bit of an electric boost is only ever a good thing. Here's hoping we get a version of it in the States, despite Google claiming we already do. That Google AI summary is just fueled by AI YouTube channels, unfortunately, none of which are based in facts. We live in hell, and the mere idea of truth is becoming rarer by the day. 

Bosch is axing a huge chunk of its automotive business, and that means axing a bunch of jobs in the process. The people who work those jobs, unsurprisingly, don't love this idea. They have an option to fix things, though — pleading to the EU for protectionist trade policies in the vein of current U.S. trade actions. From Reuters: 

BERLIN, Sept 16 (Reuters) – Labour representatives at auto supplier Bosch demanded on Wednesday political action at ​EU level to stem job losses ‌in the industry by drawing up regulations to promote local production.

"The transformation of our industry will only ​succeed if we keep value creation ​and jobs in Europe," said Frank Sell, ⁠head of the general work's council ​at Bosch's Mobility unit, representing around 70,000 German ​workers.

Bosch is cutting 13,000 jobs in its core automotive business by the end of the decade, part of ​a wave of layoffs in the sector ​as carmakers like Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes-Benz battle Chinese ‌competition, ⁠tariffs and high production costs.

Now, I'm no economist, but if no nation or economic bloc can survive international trade right now — as evidenced by everyone and their mother lobbying for homegrown protectionist trade restrictions — then maybe we've backed ourselves into an economic system that doesn't work on a global scale. I dunno, I'm just spitballing here. 

Luckily, I can't be drafted due to my strict adherence to transgender ideology. It's like a religious exemption, but cooler. 

Experts are predicting some real shock to the fuel price market today, but it's likely to happen after The Morning Shift is published. So, if these prices are wildly out of date by the time you read this, it's not my fault. Blame the invisible hand of the Market. 

So no one was going to tell me that M83 is still just out there making music?