Ford And Geely Want To Work Together On Manufacturing And Tech

Happy Wednesday! It’s February 4, 2026, 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, we’re looking at the possibility of a deal between Ford and Geely, as well as American dealers’ resistance to Chinese cars. We’ll also look at how many people just can’t afford new cars any more, and Canada’s plans to ask Stellantis and GM for cash. 

Chinese automakers have taken the world by storm in recent years, with the nation now accounting for nearly 10% of new car sales in Europe. This of course means that companies like Geely want more of a manufacturing foothold on the continent, and it seems Ford is all too happy to help out in exchange for tech. From Reuters: 

Ford and China’s Geely are in discussions about a potential partnership, eight people with knowledge of the ongoing talks said, as the world’s carmakers look to share heavier technology and manufacturing costs.

The companies are in talks to have Geely use Ford factory space in Europe to produce vehicles for the region, three people familiar with the matter said. They also have discussed the potential framework for shared vehicle technologies, including for automated driving, according to two different people with knowledge of the talks.

The talks centered on European manufacturing are more advanced, two people said. Ford sent a delegation to China this week to intensify discussions, which followed meetings last week in Michigan between senior Geely executives and Ford leaders, some of the people said.

Reuters says these talks have been underway for months, so don’t be surprised if they lead somewhere — and if there’s some Chinese tech in your next Ford. Of course, that’s assuming our current America First administration would allow such a deal to go forward. 

Dealerships are sort of a font of evil in the United States akin to our very own denizens of Mordor, and they’re committed to ensuring nothing comes between them and extracting profit from people who just need to get around. The latest example: Dealers are rallying together in hopes of banning Chinese automakers from the United States. From Automotive News: 

The head of the National Automobile Dealers Association said the trade group supports blocking Chinese automakers from entering the U.S.

“I will tell you that as an organization, 95 percent of our board, I work for a board of 65 dealers, 95 percent of them agree that the NADA should continue to support the administration’s policies to keep the Chinese OEMs out of this country,” CEO Mike Stanton said Feb. 3 at the Haig Partners Maximizing Value Conference.

“It’s bad for our industry, it’s bad for our country, it’s bad for consumers.”

Bringing in inexpensive Chinese cars would give consumers more options, and give automakers a reason to compete in the lower end of the market. It would also provide competition to existing dealers, which is likely why those existing dealers are upset. Someone else is muscling in on their turf, and they don’t want their protection racket interfered with. 

In the absence of that competition at the lower end of the market, the average price of new cars keeps climbing. The result? People who would otherwise buy entry-level new cars are being pushed into the used market. From Automotive News: 

In today’s affordability environment, many customers who were entry-level new-vehicle buyers are now used-vehicle buyers. To get those buyers into the store and closing deals in 2026, all dealership departments will have to be creative and efficient.

The vehicle affordability crisis has been brewing for years. Automakers’ lineups and prices, higher interest rates, fewer incentives and broader economic challenges all combined to reshape the new-vehicle market.

High-income consumers make up a growing share of new-vehicle buyers, as lower-income consumers are being forced out of the market. In Cox Automotive’s 2025 Car Buyer Journey Study, respondents who make $150,000 or more a year made up 42 percent of new buyers, up from 29 percent in 2020.

This, of course, has a cyclical effect. As new cars get more expensive, new car buyers get wealthier. As new car buyers get wealthier, they demand nicer features and opt for higher trim levels, which drive up prices further. 

Governments love to incentivize companies to move into their territory, and they often do so by footing the bill for production facilities. Take Canada’s government, which paid to refit Stellantis factories to produce new cars — cars that Stellantis quickly moved production of back to the United States. Canada is, expectedly, not happy. From the Wall Street Journal:

Canada estimates that officials will aim to recover “hundreds of millions of dollars” from Stellantis and General Motors after the companies scaled back production in the country, Industry Minister Melanie Joly said Tuesday.

Joly told reporters she would provide more details in the coming days. Seeking compensation of that scale is likely to escalate tension between Ottawa and North American automakers, whose share of automobile production in Canada has declined steadily in the past decade.

Canadian officials and representatives from Stellantis have been in talks since at least November after the automaker said it would shift production of the Jeep Compass from a factory in Brampton, Ontario, to Illinois. Earlier this decade, Canada provided the equivalent of just over one billion Canadian dollars, or about US$731 million, to the automaker to reconfigure the Brampton plant and maintain production in Canada.

We love antagonizing our closest allies with trade wars! This is good governance. 

It’s interesting to hear that EA didn’t have high expectations for “The Sims,” given that by my math it’s eaten about a billion hours of human productivity.

It’s been a minute since we’ve had a non-English song as On The Radio. We should do that more often.