What You Need to Know Before You Start Your Day: VW's Crisis, California's Tracking Showdown, Toyota's Tundra Mess, and a Cheap-EV Reality CheckGrab your coffee — here's what's moving in the car world before you head out the door. From a potential industry earthquake in Germany to a privacy fight that could freeze car sales in America's biggest market, plus another headache for the brand built on reliability and a reality check on the cheap-EV dream, these are the four stories worth knowing as you start your day.1. Volkswagen Weighs Up to 100,000 Job Cuts and Four Plant ClosuresThe biggest story on the radar right now, by a mile. Europe's largest automaker is reportedly weighing as many as 100,000 job cuts and the closure of four German factories — a move that would erase roughly 15% of a global workforce of about 660,000. According to reporting from Manager Magazin and Reuters, management has told employee representatives that the cuts already announced simply aren't enough, and VW is even said to be exploring spinning off its core brand and parts business into separate entities.The causes are structural rather than scandalous: fresh U.S. tariffs have battered VW's export math, Chinese EV makers like BYD have eaten into its once-dominant China position, and its own electric transition has been bumpy. The stock is down more than a quarter this year. Unions IG Metall and the works council have promised to fight any cuts of this scale with everything they have, setting up one of the most consequential industrial showdowns Europe has seen in decades. The question hanging over Wolfsburg: is this the biggest crisis in automotive history? Unlike Dieselgate, this wound isn't self-inflicted — it's a fundamental mismatch between how VW builds cars and where the market is heading.2. Automakers Threaten to Halt California Car Sales Over a Tracking LawHere's a genuine game of chicken. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation — the lobbying group representing GM, Toyota, Volkswagen, and essentially every major automaker — warned that car companies may have to suspend sales of new and used vehicles in California starting July 1 unless lawmakers delay SB 1394. That 2024 law requires automakers to give drivers, especially domestic-violence survivors, a fast, clear way to cut off location tracking and remote access that an abuser could exploit. Hard to argue with the goal.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe industry insists it supports the protections but can't build the required process across every make, model, and connected-services platform by the deadline. Its fix is SB 719, which would push compliance back to July 2027. Critics point out the law has been on the books since 2024 — a long runway for what amounts to a button that says "stop sharing my location." It all fits a familiar pattern, from the FTC restricting how GM sold driver data to insurers to Toyota exploring paying owners for their data. The likeliest outcome is that Sacramento blinks and grants a delay, because a state where you can't legally buy a car is a political non-starter. But the willingness to wave around a statewide sales freeze tells you exactly how much the industry values control of your car's data.3. Toyota's Tundra V6 Recall Comes With a CatchFor a brand whose entire identity is reliability, this one stings. Toyota's updated recall, issued June 15 via NHTSA, covers roughly 270,000 vehicles running the V35A-FTS twin-turbo V6 — but not every engine will get replaced. Owners are called back to the dealer, where inspection software evaluates the #1 main bearing and pulls available drive data. If it can't confirm the bearing is healthy, the engine gets swapped. If it can, you keep what you've got. The root cause is machining debris left in the engine at the factory, which can chew up that bearing and, under enough load, encourage the motor to come apart from the inside.Toyota has already replaced more than 70,000 engines, and this is roughly the third or fourth recall tied to the issue since it kicked off in May 2024 — following an earlier round when Toyota pulled 126,000 vehicles over engine-failure concerns. That's a rough cadence for the most trusted name in the business. The emotional core of owner anger: many want Toyota to simply admit there's an inherent design flaw and replace the engines outright, rather than run a software check and call a theoretical failure a non-issue. Toyota hasn't publicly conceded a design flaw, and it's still building the engine. The trust dent is real — and you don't patch that with diagnostic software.4. The Cheap-EV Reality Check: Slate's $25K Electric TruckThe internet crowned Slate Auto's roughly $24,950 electric pickup the savior of the affordable car market — but the spec sheet asks for a little restraint. We're talking about 205 miles of range, 181 horsepower, two seats, and rear-wheel drive only. The conversation worth having is whether "radically simple" is really just a polite way of saying "stuff is missing," and a reminder that a refundable deposit is not the same thing as a guaranteed product showing up in your driveway. It feeds the bigger debate everyone keeps circling: can a genuinely affordable EV actually work in the U.S. market, or does the math only pencil out by cutting the things buyers care about most?AdvertisementAdvertisementThat's your morning rundown. A few honorable mentions worth a glance: stop-sign enforcement cameras are about to get a lot more common, Trump has directed the DOJ to go after Big Oil over stubborn gas prices, and that viral $1.7 trillion auto-debt panic turned out to be real numbers wrapped in an overstated headline. Now go have a great day on the road.Now we want to hear from you. Is Volkswagen's mess really the biggest crisis in automotive history, or just an overdue reckoning? Would you trust a recalled Tundra after a software "all clear," or demand a new engine on principle? And be honest — would you actually daily-drive a two-seat, 205-mile Slate truck to save the cash? Drop your take in the comments below. The hottest argument might just lead our next briefing.Join our Newsletter, follow our Instagram page, and connect with us on Facebook.