Hi, everybody. Welcome to Shift, a podcast about mobility. I'm Pete Bigelow, your host and reporter at the Automotive News.

Join on the podcast today by Greg Brannon, Director of Automotive Research at AAA, which just published a new technical evaluation this week that examines how

traffic jam driver assistance features, those that are now reaching the market, how they

actually work in the real world. And the short version is not great. Every 3.2 miles or about

every nine minutes, there was some type of event that the driver had to intervene

and take full control of the system. And 85% of the time they had to do that and try to avoid a

crash. But before we get to that, we have a look at this week's headlines from around the

mobility realm. And for that, I'm joined by my automotive news colleague Mike Martinez. Mike, how are you today? Doing great. Thanks for having me. You bet. This is first shift appearance. A long time in the making, we probably should have done it a long time ago. Hey, it's still an honor. Glad to have you here. And I think all of our listeners probably know you, but just in case

there's some that don't, what is your topic of expertise? What's your beat here at automotive

news? Yeah, I cover Ford and Lincoln and the UAW. So sort of all the big picture of labor type

stuff for us as well. But my main beat is Ford. Well, and that's exactly what I was hoping to talk to you about today.

I think there's still reverberations from the big Ford announcement from a week or two ago.

Tell me about the new Ford EV platform.

What is the scope of what Ford is planning?

Well, the scope is pretty significant.

And they think it's pretty significant not only for the products that they plan to put on this new platform,

but how they manufacture them.

So basically it's a flexible EV architecture that can underpin a number of different vehicle styles and sizes, anything from a two-row

crossover or small pickup to a three-row SUV or even a van.

And Ford says that they're going to essentially try to do what Tesla has been attempting to do

with its unboxed manufacturing process.

That is essentially to tear up Henry Ford's original moving assembly line and to build a

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