Honda And Toyota Want A Robotic Future

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It's October 20, 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 a dream of robotic auto manufacturing, and European EV hunger. We'll also look at Waymo's plans for world domination, and yet further recalls from Ford. 

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Honda and Toyota don't want people to build your cars. That's understandable, since car factories aren't the safest workplaces on record. With all that heavy machinery moving around, it's nice to minimize harm to people when you can. Rather than continuing in the decades-long trend of creating robots to do specific tasks, though, the automakers want humanoid robots to do everything. From Automotive News: 

Toyota and Honda are trialing humanoid robots on everything from wire harness installation to final inspection at factories in Japan, as the country's carmakers race to compete with the wave of next-generation, artificial intelligence-powered robotics from the U.S. and China.

Honda is looking to design future vehicles for assembly in plants staffed by humanoid workers.

Japan's two biggest auto manufacturers previewed their droid technologies at the Japan Mobility Show, held Oct. 13-16 in conjunction with the country's biggest electronics trade fair.

"Plants staffed by humanoid workers" is very funny to me, because human beings are also humanoid workers. Without specialized hardware, I have to say I'm a little confused about what the automakers actually want to do here. Do bipedal robots have the dexterity to work with manufacturing processes as delicate as harness wiring? Is this all just to avoid paying human beings?

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It seems like this comes up just about every day, but Europeans simply cannot get their hands on enough EVs to sate their needs. Sales are up on the continent once again, and EVs now make up about a third of cars sold in the bloc. Good for them. From Reuters:

Battery-electric ​vehicle (BEV) registrations in Europe rose 70.3% in ‌September, as high oil prices, subsidies and the availability of more affordable models continued to lead the growth.

Around a ​third of cars sold across 17 key ​European markets in September were BEVs, data ⁠from E-Mobility Europe, New Automotive and Fier ​Automotive showed on Monday, amid a deal made by ​France and Germany to soften proposed EU car emissions rules.

* BEV registrations reached 300,202 vehicles in September, giving fully ​electric cars a 32.6% market share
* 1.98 million ​BEVs have been registered across Europe so far this ‌year, ⁠up 38.1% from the same period in 2025

High oil prices are certainly moving the needle here, but the entry of cheaper Chinese brands (and cheaper models from European automakers trying to compete) deserves credit too. If you can get a car that's cheaper to run and cheaper to buy, why wouldn't you? 

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Waymo cars have infected the West Coast of the United States, and now the all-white AVs are lurking around New York corners — still human-operated, for now, but only for now. That's not enough for Waymo, though, and the company wants to double its fleet by the end of next year. The year after that, it wants to double it again, and then some. From Reuters: 

Alphabet's tab self-driving unit Waymo plans to expand its fleet five-fold to 20,000 ​by the end of next ‌year using $5 billion it raised earlier this month, Semafor reported on Monday, citing ​people familiar with the matter.

The ​autonomous ride-hailing service provider, which currently has ⁠4,000 cars, wants to expand it to ​8,000 by the end of the ​year and grow it to 20,000 by the end of next year, Semafor reported

So do we assume that this means 20,000 cab and rideshare drivers will be out of work? I'd be curious to see the numbers, how robotaxis affect employment in the driving sector. I'd also be curious to see whether the ability to summon a car built entirely around your own preferences — your climate temperature, your music, your minimum-friction life — contributes to social atomization and isolation. I'll take the subway or the bus instead. 

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It's a day ending in Y, and Ford is recalling over 100,000 trucks. The issue this time comes from the tachometer, which can "get stuck or move erratically" according to NHTSA. From Reuters:

Ford is recalling 102,159 F-Series trucks ​in the US ‌over faulty equipment, the National Highway Traffic Safety ​Administration (NHTSA) said ​on Tuesday.

Here are details:

* The analog ⁠tachometer, which shows ​engine speed in ​revolutions per minute, and speedometer may get stuck or ​move erratically and ​provide inaccurate readings, NHTSA said
* The ‌recall ⁠covers certain 2025-2026 F-250 SD, F-350 SD, F-450 SD, F-550 ​SD, ​F-600, ⁠and 2026 F-150 and F-750 ​SD trucks

Getting stuck and moving erratically are opposite problems, so I'd love to see the actual underlying issue here. Besides "being built by Ford," I guess, which is very quickly appearing to become recall-worthy in and of itself. 

I don't know how, but I'm pretty sure this is why those Hellraiser movies I watched the other day were so bad. I saw the fourth and fifth entries in the series, without having seen the original. 

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