Welcome in, today is Wednesday, October twenty-first, and we begin with a deal struck in the European Parliament to loosen the twenty thirty-five emissions target, per Automotive News. Following our earlier report on the Franco-German push to ease European Union vehicle emissions rules, that push now has a parliamentary deal behind it. Automotive News, citing Bloomberg, reports key groups in the Parliament have agreed to relax emissions rules for the sector, moving automakers closer to respite from an effective ban on combustion engines from twenty thirty-five. The changes, if approved, would end the requirement that new cars sold from that year be climate neutral, letting combustion vehicles stay on sale past the cutoff. Lawmakers from three major blocs back the looser rules, according to that reporting, which also notes critics warning of ground lost to China. This is a political agreement among blocs, not adopted law, so planners get a longer potential combustion runway rather than a settled one. Industry reaction leans toward welcoming it on technology-neutral grounds, framed as buyer choice across mixed powertrain line-ups, with some calling the flexibility half of what the sector asked for. Also today, General Motors. Net income more than doubled in the third quarter on strong sales of profitable pickups and surging software and subscription revenue, Automotive News reports. Adjusted earnings came in at three dollars and seventy cents a share against consensus near three dollars sixty-three, on revenue of fifty billion dollars, per AOL, which puts North American adjusted operating profit up forty-three percent to three point five nine billion. The same account says the stock still fell about six percent, after management narrowed full-year adjusted operating profit to between fourteen and a half and fifteen and a half billion dollars, leaving the midpoint unchanged, and approved a twenty billion dollar buyback. Commodity inflation, including memory chips, is now expected at the top of its prior range, which reads through to the cost base. Reaction leans toward treating the drop as a guidance story rather than an earnings one, with some flagging falling US electric-vehicle volumes underneath record truck profit. Separately, Europe. Chinese automakers more than doubled their September sales there to a record one hundred ninety-four thousand seven hundred sixty vehicles, lifting their market share to fourteen point six percent, according to Automotive News. Chery Group passed BYD and MG to become the region's top-selling Chinese brand for the first time, per that reporting, which credits plug-in hybrids and a summer export surge. Chery's Jaecoo seven was the bestselling Chinese model, and the first Chinese vehicle to crack Europe's overall monthly top ten. That follows our earlier report arguing Europe is where China's consolidation gets decided, and this is the benchmark incumbents now set share plans against. Industry reaction leans toward reading the surge as a tariff-design story, with a recurring observation that the bloc's duties were built around fully electric imports, so plug-in hybrids route around them. Now to Volkswagen, where our earlier report on the terminated wage agreements with IG Metall has an opening position attached to it. Volkswagen Group is pushing for a global pay freeze through twenty thirty, according to the automaker's worker representatives, in an account carried by Automotive News. The company has not confirmed it. That reporting says the push comes as fresh wage negotiations get underway in Germany, with the union seeking five percent. Just Auto reports the measure could reach staff across international operations employing around six hundred thousand people. A freeze on that scale would set the labor-cost assumptions German plants and their suppliers plan against for the rest of the decade. Reaction leans skeptical that a long pay freeze counts as a turnaround plan, with some weighing the real-terms erosion of pay rather than the nominal figure. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. European new-car sales rose ten percent in September, with electric-vehicle demand up sixty percent on a year earlier and Tesla up seventy-one percent, per Automotive News. The same outlet reports Leapmotor has started building the B ten crossover in Spain and opened a local battery plant with Stellantis help, the first Chinese automaker making both in Europe. Britain is edging toward tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles ahead of an EU summit, Automotive World reports, weighing China's leverage over individual exporters against British plants' standing under prospective Made in Europe content rules. And finally, Subaru has unveiled its first in-house electric-vehicle prototype as it moves to go solo from Toyota, saying in-house development halves build time, though executives would not confirm a launch date, according to Automotive News.