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Happy Friday! It’s February 13, 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 Trump administration joining the war on climate change on the side of climate change, as well as the harm it’s done to EV sales in the United States. We’ll also look at how Americans are buying cheaper cars, and China’s war on screens.
1st Gear: Trump decides that greenhouse gases are fine, actually, or perhaps a hoax invented by Obama
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United States President Donald Trump has long hated regulations on vehicle emissions. Now he’s doing his best to get rid of them altogether, starting with their scientific underpinning: The fact that greenhouse gases endanger human beings. The Trump administration has decided that, actually, no they don’t. From Automotive News:
President Donald Trump’s EPA has repealed the agency’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public, creating a fresh round of uncertainty for the auto industry.
Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding at a press conference at the White House Feb. 12.
…
Trump said that the repeal eliminates all greenhouse gas standards for light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles and heavy-duty engines. Trump said the repeal purports to scrap all greenhouse gas standards starting with those established in 2012.
The document containing the details of the final rule has yet to be posted.
The EPA decision, if upheld, castrates the government’s regulatory authority over pollutants from vehicles. It hollows out the rationale underpinning more than a decade of regulation meant to protect the public from the dangers of pollution and climate change.
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Emissions are growing, the Earth is getting hotter and weather events are getting more extreme. The last three years were the hottest on record. In 2025, there were 23 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the U.S., costing a total of $115 billion in damages, according to Climate Central, a climate science nonprofit.
The Trump administration deciding something is no longer fact doesn’t make it so. Greenhouse gases do harm human beings, climate change is real and deadly, and rule changes like this will only make life worse for all of us. I for one look forward to dying in a freak flood before I can be conscripted into a turf war between clans for our last remaining water reserves.
2nd Gear: EV sales tank after $7,500 tax credit disappears
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The Trump administration also ended EV subsidies, and we all knew how that would go. Turns out, we were right — fewer people are buying electric cars. From Automotive News:
Electric vehicle registrations fell last year for the first time in at least a decade following the repeal of the federal EV tax credit, although the drop was modest.
EV registrations declined 0.4 percent compared with a year earlier to 1.3 million vehicles, according to S&P Global Mobility. The data does not include hybrids.
EV share of the light-vehicle market fell to 7.8 percent from 8 percent a year earlier, the data showed. For all vehicles, regardless of fuel type, 2025 registrations rose 2.2 percent to 16.25 million vehicles.
The tax credit isn’t the only thing negatively impacting EV sales — we’re all broke and EVs are still expensive, plus charging in the U.S. is universally pretty terrible — but it’s a major consideration.
3rd Gear: Americans are buying more base models because we can’t afford the top trims
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Well, at least all those regulatory cuts and sunset subsidies have brought the cost of cars down. What’s that, you say? They haven’t, and in fact car prices are still sky-high while wages remain depressed and buyers are increasingly wary of the state of the economy and reluctant to make big expenditures? I am agog, I am aghast! From Reuters:
For American buyers, affordable cars have not been this hot since the Gulf War sent gas prices climbing and Japanese automakers took market share by offering a simple proposition: “fill it, forget about it”.
Steep sticker prices on new cars are pushing Americans to opt out of premium trims for basic models, lifting sales of entry-level variants and prompting some automakers to adjust production.
Pickup trucks and crossovers have cemented their place as top-sellers despite their hefty price tags. But average transaction prices have hovered around $50,000 for nearly a year, according to Cox Automotive, putting many fully loaded models out of reach.
The strain extends beyond the showroom. Widening wealth gap in the U.S. and a sharp rise in costs for housing, insurance and healthcare are squeezing lower-income households, with President Donald Trump’s tariffs adding more pressure.
Is anyone else feeling like things might be bad, and getting worse? Just me?
4th Gear: China wants buttons back in cars
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At least someone’s doing some good in the automotive world: China. The nation has decided that new cars are too touchscreen-heavy, and is considering regulations to bring back buttons. From Bloomberg:
China is taking aim at stripped-down, screen-dominated car interiors favored by the likes of Tesla Inc. and Xiaomi Corp., requiring that essential safety functions be controlled by physical switches or buttons.
In a set of proposed regulations, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that functions including turn signals, hazard lights, gear selection and emergency calling must have fixed buttons or switches with a minimum surface size of 10mm x 10mm.
The move marks a direct challenge to the minimalist interior design popularized by Tesla and adopted by Chinese electric car makers such as BYD Co. and Xiaomi amid growing safety concerns about driver distraction and screen failures. It comes after China earlier this month became the first country to ban concealed door handles on EVs, which have been linked to a spate of fatal incidents around the world.
Ferrari Luce interior designer Jony Ive seems to agree with the Chinese and automakers in general are looking at bringing back the button these days.
Reverse: They just want to make their watches and army knives in peace
Thus we get all those fancy Geneva conventions.
Neutral: Solidarity forever
Our friends at Car and Driver, Road & Track, and all their Hearst sister sites have been fighting an uphill battle in their union negotiations with management. Today’s the drop-dead date — if the union and management can’t come to an agreement today, all 410 members of the company’s bargaining unit are set to walk out.
Hopefully that won’t be necessary, but if it comes to a strike, lend your support to the Hearst folks. Donate to their strike fund, stay off their websites, and make sure management knows that you read those sites for the writers who fill the pages with life. Without the workers, the writers and editors, there are no websites.
On The Radio: Rush – ‘YYZ’
I bought a bass the other day, and it turns out I still can’t play “YYZ” on it. That makes three out of a total three instruments on which this track has bested me.
