<b><strong>Future EVs from GM and Ford Travel Parallel Paths</strong></b>

Happy Thursday! It's October 22, 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 Tesla's sales goals for the Cybercab, as well as investors' response to the company's AI pivot. We'll also look at Toyota's European goals, and worsening international relations between China and the UK.

Roger Biermann is an automotive journalist of 13 years and has been the Managing Editor at CarBuzz since 2021. With no formal post-high school education, Roger launched his career as an automotive journalist by test driving cars at dealerships and putting his thoughts online before launching his own website in 2012 and running Torquing Cars until he made the move to CarBuzz full-time in 2019. He has been fortunate enough to interview some of the car world’s most impressive personalities, including Tobias Moers, Christian von Koenigsegg, and Frank van Meel of BMW M fame, with his interviews cited by a plethora of global publications, including Car and Driver, MotorTrend, The Drive, and many more. Mercedes-AMG's four-cylinder C63 experiment was a failure. No matter how technologically advanced it might have been, no one wanted the plug-in hybrid four-cylinder when it was replacing an iconic V8. So, Mercedes announced the C63 was dead, and in its place would be a new inline-six-powered AMG C53. But the C63 might be revived after all, and in a surprise turn of events, there could be not one but two cars wearing the AMG C63 badge.

Kia’s electric sports car beat out the Tesla Model Y Performance and BYD’s Sealion 7 in a recent comparison test by the German magazine Auto Motor und Sport, ranking first overall. Kia EV6 GT takes first in German performance EV test

Honda has been teasing us with an HRC (Honda Racing Corporation) performance parts division for a couple of years—and as of Thursday, we have word that it’s finally here. HRC is using the 2026 SEMA Show in Las Vegas as a launching pad for the initiative, as it’s planning on showing off a few ready-to-buy parts in addition to prototypes of future parts. Just as you might suspect, the current Honda Civic Type R and Acura Integra Type S are the stars of the show, and will be the two cars where most of these parts can be installed. HondaInitially, HRC will be offering a new forged aluminum wheel made in partnership with 2elle-engineering for the Type R and Type S. (This Italian wheel-maker supplies the wheels for the Acura ARX-06 race car, so it only makes sense to extend the partnership to the road.) A 19-inch wheel in either gray or bronze will be offered: it’s 0.5 inch wider than the factory wheel, and drops 5.5 pounds per corner; the offset is 55mm versus 60mm from factory. Honda says it tested the wheel on the Nürburgring, noting its reduction in unsprung weight, wider width, and increased negative offset all help improve handling.

Classic gems, tasteful customs, legendary supercars - for Silvian, they're all fair game. He's been in love with cars and motorcycles for as long as he can remember, so it made perfect sense to eventually turn that passion into a full-time writing career. Around six years and more than 3,000 articles later, he is still going strong and doesn't plan on hitting the brakes anytime soon. Carmakers’ ambitious plans for electrification are getting scrapped left, right, and center in America as a result of weak demand. The rollback on federal tax incentives is largely responsible for dwindling consumer interest, and manufacturers have shifted their focus toward hybrids in response. It came at a painful cost to several brands out there, with Ford writing off nearly $20 billion from its EV business, for instance. General Motors was caught off-guard in a big way, as well, with third-quarter US deliveries of electric vehicles dropping 62.1% year-over-year in 2026. And it’s not like GM has an abundance of in-demand hybrid models to absorb some of that fallout, so its finances today are far from rosy.

We're not exactly spoiled for automotive TV shows right now, and we're even more deprived of car television that isn't just three dudes in cars. When we do get a show that tries something different, it's usually bad. But that's because these TV execs are the ones coming up with the shows, not us car enthusiasts — we know what we want to see in an automotive TV show. Really, we should be the ones coming up with things. That's why, earlier this week, I asked you all for your elevator pitches for new automotive TV shows. I said to pick out the network or streaming platform that would give you a blank check for your dream TV show, and then tell me what it would be — biopics on car designers, car plant investigations, or anything else. Plenty of you had your own spins on the Three Guys In Cars theme, but a number of you had your own more out-there ideas. Let's take a look at both.