Ford And Amazon Team Up To Sell Used Cars Online

Good morning! It’s Tuesday, November 18, 2025, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you’ll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.

In this morning’s edition, Ford says it’s going to start selling certified pre-owned cars on Amazon, Tesla gets out of a 6,000-employee class action lawsuit alleging racism because of a judge’s ruling on a technicality, Toyota is laying out its nearly $1 billion plan to increase hybrid production in the U.S. and Nissan cuts some production in Japan because it can’t source enough chips.

Are you looking to buy a certified pre-owned Ford? If that’s the case, you can now head over to Amazon Autos to shop, finance, purchase and schedule a pickup for a Ford Blue Advantage certified used car from a participating dealership. Pretty neat, huh? Right now, it’s only available in Los Angeles, Seattle and Dallas, but it’s expected to expand to other markets in the coming months.

The Blue Oval says that by streamlining the initial shopping and financing steps with Amazon Autos, it frees up time at the dealership. That allows the dealers to actually focus on building the in-person experience for the buyer and helping them learn about the car they just purchased. From the Detroit Free Press:

The Amazon Autos storefront at www.amazon.com/amazon-autos will connect customers with participating Ford dealers across the country.

Ford said customers can browse a participating Ford dealer’s Ford Blue Advantage certified pre-owned inventory within a 75-mile radius of their home. They can search certified pre-owned vehicles by make, model, year and color.

Each listing will include the price, vehicle history, and specifications, allowing customers to comparison shop from their computer or smart phone.

Once a customer decides on a used vehicle, they may be eligible to secure financing, start paperwork, and schedule a pickup time at their participating local Ford dealer.

Ford says all Blue Advantage CPO vehicles sold on Amazon Autos will undergo a thorough inspection. They come with a 14-day/1,000-mile money-back guarantee through Ford Blue Advantage if all eligibility requirements are met.

Amazon first launched its Autos brand with Hyundai back in December of 2024. It has since partnered with dealers in over 130 cities across the U.S. Over the summer, it said it would expand its services to include used and CPO vehicles from various automakers, so I guess this is one example of that plan following through.

A California state judge has ruled that more than 6,000 Black workers at Tesla’s Fremont assembly plant cannot sue the automaker over alleged racial harassment as a class. It revises an earlier ruling and is a major victory for CEO Elon Musk and Tesla in the fight against people who want a safe, non-racist working environment.

California Superior Court Judge Peter Borkon ruled that the 2017 lawsuit couldn’t move forward as a class action because many of the 200 workers chosen at random to testify before the 2026 trial weren’t willing to do so. The judge, appointed in 2021 by Governor Newsom, said he could not trust that the experiences of a smaller sample of workers could be applied to the entire class. Awful. From Reuters:

A different judge had certified the class in 2024, but Borkon said that was based on the belief that a trial in the large-scale case would be manageable.

[…]

Lawrence Organ, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said that many of the people who were randomly chosen to testify are low-income workers who cannot afford to miss work to participate in the case.

“Either together with other victims, or separately, these courageous Black workers will overcome Tesla’s endless delays and continue fighting to hold the company accountable,” Organ said in a statement.

The named plaintiff, former assembly-line worker Marcus Vaughn, alleged that Black workers at the Fremont, California, factory were subjected to a range of racist conduct including slurs, graffiti and nooses hung at their workstations.

A trial had been scheduled for next April, two months before a separate trial involving similar claims against Tesla by a California state civil rights agency.

Tesla is still facing race discrimination claims in federal court in California brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal anti-discrimination laws. The Austin, Texas-based automaker also settled other race discrimination lawsuits involving single plaintiffs, according to Reuters.

Toyota is rolling out details on its massive plans to drop $912 million in an effort to increase hybrid output across five U.S. states. It’s part of a broader $10 billion U.S. commitment over the next five years. It also comes just a day after Chairman Akio Toyoda went MAGA all over everybody’s asses at a NASCAR-inspired event in Japan.

Anyway, factories in West Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee and Missouri will see 252 new jobs as a result of the initiative, and that’s certainly welcome. From Bloomberg:

The move underscores Toyota’s bet that hybrids will dominate US sales in the near term as consumers balk at high EV prices following the end of tax credits. The investment may also strengthen the Japanese carmaker’s foothold in the market as Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and other US carmakers scale back EV ambitions and revisit hybrid strategies to meet shifting demand and emissions targets.

Toyota now offers hybrid-only versions of the RAV4 compact crossover and Camry sedan in the US, thanks to robust demand for gasoline-electric powertrains with better mileage.

The Japanese manufacturer, which has long advocated for a more measured approach to sell a broad range of vehicle options for different markets, said that its “philosophy is to build where we sell,” and that its North American manufacturing sites assemble some 76% of the vehicles sold in the US.

Last week, the automaker said it would drastically boost spending in the U.S. following President Trump’s push to shift more production to the U.S. In 2024, Toyota imported about half the vehicles it sold in the U.S. Most were from Canada and Mexico, but about 281,000 came from Japan.

Nissan cannot catch a break, man. The automaker just cut production at its Kyushu plant in Japan by another 1,400 vehicles as it deals with the fallout from a chip supply disruption linked to China’s Nexperia. The move follows a 900-vehicle reduction in output last week, and it’ll impact the Serena minivan and X-Trail crossover (their Rogue). From Reuters:

Nissan said in a statement that it would work to minimise any impact on customer deliveries once supplies stabilise.

“We are taking necessary production adjustments to manage associated risks,” it said, declining to provide more details.

The disruption comes at a bad time for Nissan. It reported a 16.5% plunge in retail sales in Japan for the first half of the fiscal year, fuelled by customer worries over its financial situation.

The Kyushu plant, operated by subsidiary Nissan Motor Kyushu in Fukuoka prefecture, resumed normal operations on Monday, but will scale back output again starting from November 24, according to the person.

The plan may still change if the company addresses the chip supply situation in time, such as by securing alternative components.

Separately, Nissan will produce fewer Note compacts than initially planned at its Oppama plant near Tokyo for the second week running, the person said, adding that production plans for December at both plants were still under review.

One day, Nissan will get out of this hell it has been living in for the past few years, but today is not that day.

History.com

If you ask me, the entire United States should operate on Eastern Standard Time, since that’s the only one that actually matters. Is it practical for the West Coast? Do I care? No. Anyway, if you want to learn more, head over to History.com.

It’s getting desperately cold in New York, which means I’ve got to find new ways to warm myself up. I think “Summerboy” is going to do just that.