Welcome in, today is Thursday, September third, and we begin with Automotive News on Uber cutting ten percent of its workforce. Uber Technologies will lay off about three thousand three hundred employees, ten percent of staff, in its largest cuts since the pandemic. That is Automotive News, citing Reuters. Per that account, the company is responding to mounting competition from autonomous vehicle operators including Waymo, and preparing for a robotaxi future. Read it as a sizing signal. The largest aggregator of ride-hailing demand is telling fleet operators and OEM mobility partners how it expects to be staffed for a driverless market. Industry reaction leans skeptical of that competitive framing, with some pointing to recently reported profitability and reading the move as margin oriented rather than defensive. A recurring thread treats it as one step in a longer sequence of reductions rather than a one-off. Also today, a development in the Canadian tariff story we reported last week. In a note to clients covered by Yahoo Finance, JPMorgan Securities head of global auto equity research Jose Asumendi argues the exposure from the threatened fifty percent tariffs on Canadian-built vehicles lands first on Toyota and Honda, not on the Detroit automakers. Canadian-built vehicles accounted for nearly a quarter of Honda's United States sales last year, and seventeen percent of Toyota's, per that argument, and the two build more than three quarters of all cars made in Canada. That read puts two of America's best-selling SUVs, the RAV4 and the CR-V, in the tariff line, and would redraw which supply chains and price points come under pressure. Oxford Economics, in the same piece, estimates new-vehicle prices sit only about four tenths of a percent above their pre-tariff trend, with automakers and dealers absorbing most of the earlier cost. Separately, and following our earlier reporting on BYD's overseas crossover, net income rose thirty percent in the latest quarter, Automotive News reports, rebounding from the prior quarter's fifty-five percent profit decline. International deliveries climbed eighty-two percent, and per that account overseas operations returned margins of nineteen and a half percent, against sixteen point seven percent at home. That margin gap is the number to hold. China's largest automaker now earns a higher margin abroad than in its own market, which reframes how exporters and their overseas rivals read Chinese pricing pressure. A recurring analyst view is that the margin hold came from battery and volume cost savings offsetting falling average selling prices, not from pricing power. Now to the August numbers in the United States. The seasonally adjusted annual rate hit a twenty twenty-six high of sixteen point eight four million even as volume fell, Automotive News reports. Sales edged up at Honda, Kia and Subaru and fell at Toyota, Ford, Hyundai and Mazda, per that reporting, with Honda advancing for a fifth straight month and hybrid demand surging. Just Auto puts the headline drop at five point six percent year on year on preliminary estimates, to one point three nine million units. A selling rate at a yearly high sitting on top of falling volume is the split dealers and sales planners carry into fourth-quarter inventory and incentive decisions. Some observers read softness in newly launched crossovers as a production-ramp issue rather than weakening demand, noting hybrid variants of the same models held up better. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Waymo has opened public rides in Denver, San Diego and Tampa, Automotive World reports, a simultaneous three-city launch that tests how quickly the model replicates. Staying with Brampton, Mayor Patrick Brown says BYD approached him about taking over the idled Stellantis plant to build buses, per Bloomberg via Automotive News. Neither company has confirmed it. Just Auto, citing Reuters and an internal document, reports Honda is targeting one and a half trillion yen in savings by twenty thirty, about nine point four billion dollars. Honda has not confirmed the target. The Volkswagen showdown we flagged arrives with little sign of compromise. Automotive News, citing Bloomberg, reports labor and regional officials still oppose Oliver Blume's restructuring plan. And finally, Chinese automakers are targeting eighteen-month development cycles using artificial intelligence, Automotive News reports, with regulators intensifying safety oversight on concerns that speed compromises quality.