Good morning and welcome to The Downshift, a daily sweep of top headlines from the auto industry and car culture, curated by The Drive’s editorial team. Each story gets a short summary and a link to the original source if you want to dive deeper.
Here’s your bulletin for Thursday, November 5, 2026:
A new episode of The Drivecast, The Drive’s weekly podcast, went live yesterday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.
While the upcoming Ford Fathom electric pickup will start under $30,000, Andrew Frick, who runs the automaker’s combustion and electric car businesses, said upper-trim versions of the truck will top out around “the high $30,000 range.” That’s encouraging, but don’t forget how the Maverick was supposed to start under $20,000. It did—for a brief time—and today you can’t get one for less than $29,990. The F-150 Lightning’s advertised base pricing, too, proved short-lived, so we’ll have to wait and see how long the company can keep the Fathom on target for buyers. [Detroit Free Press]
General Motors is recalling 67,380 Cadillac Lyriq, Vistiq, and Celestiq (yes, even the Celestiq!) vehicles, as well as Chevy Blazer EVs, for a wheel-slip sensor glitch that can result in a temporary loss of braking power. This problem has been linked to reports of 20 accidents and two minor injuries. Fortunately, it should be fixable via an over-the-air update, though owners can of course take their cars in for service to have the software patch applied. [Electrek]
Nissan has trimmed its final design approval process for new vehicles to a four-person panel including CEO Ivan Espinosa and the heads of design, planning, and R&D, in an effort to accelerate development, according to an interview with the automaker’s new design boss, Matthew Weaver. Apparently it used to involve 12 people. [Automotive News]
Ayrton Senna’s personal Honda NSX outperformed auction estimates to sell for a cool $1.17 million in London last weekend. [Motor1]
Currently, Waymo robotaxis in Austin and Atlanta must exclusively be ordered through Uber. That will change come the start of 2028, as the two companies are vacating the agreement and Waymo will employ its own ride-hailing software. Waymo’s co-CEO said in an interview that the user experience through Uber simply wasn’t consistent enough. [Bloomberg]
China is getting its own special version of BMW’s new gas-powered 3 Series that’s more than four inches longer than the global model. That makes it only an inch shorter than a 5 Series between the wheels. [Carscoops]
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