Welcome to The Downshift, or TDS for short, The Drive’s morning news roundup serving the biggest automotive headlines from around the world.
The Downshift summarizes news items in a few sentences, with links to other sites to get the deeper story. Here’s your bulletin for Tuesday, August 11, 2026.
🪫 General Motors and Samsung’s joint battery plant in Indiana won’t involve GM at all, it turns out, as the automaker has decided to sell its 49.99% stake in the $3.5 billion project to its partner, making it fully owned by Samsung. The facility was announced three years ago and is still in development. [Automotive News]
🚐 Stellantis decided to bring a Chrysler Pacifica nobody asked for to Roadkill Nights, and it actually looks pretty sick? The VANkulture Pacifica sports a VIS Racing bodykit, 20-inch Vossen wheels, fat track tires, big Rotora brakes, coilovers, matte-metallic red paint to fit it soundly in the SRT family, and…no powertrain improvements whatsoever, aside from a Magnaflow exhaust. So close. [Stellantis]
🌏 Car sales within China continue to fall, with July marking the 10th straight month of decline and approximately 21% fewer sales than a year earlier. However, exports by Chinese automakers to other markets soared by 88%, continuing a trend that’s played out through 2026 so far. [Reuters]
🖌️ Designer David Woodhouse, who previously served at Lincoln and Nissan, has joined McLaren as its Chief Creative Officer. [Ford Authority]
🔋 Speaking of which, do you need a new battery pack for your McLaren P1? Fortunately, a company by the name of V Engineering in England has introduced a new battery that is about 50 pounds lighter while also sporting over double the energy capacity of the original unit, specifically for McLaren’s hybrid halo hypercar of a decade ago. It all goes to show how far EV technology has advanced. [Autocar]
🧑⚖️ A Virginia woman is suing Tesla for $10 million after crashing the Model Y she was test driving into a nail salon because it was allegedly set to “Insane Mode,” which allows it to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in as little as 3.3 seconds. [Automotive News]
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