Welcome in, today is Monday, September twenty-first, and we begin with a letter to the White House from the US auto industry, reported by Reuters. Following our earlier report on the industry's push for a congressional ban on Chinese vehicles, that ask has now moved to the president's desk. Six groups representing General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen, Ford, Hyundai, Stellantis and Tesla wrote to President Donald Trump on Friday, urging his administration to keep the door firmly shut to Chinese automakers seeking to sell, import or manufacture vehicles inside the United States, according to Reuters. The letter went in ahead of his meeting next week with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Chinese brands hold zero share of the US market today, so what is conceded at that meeting decides whether a protected position stays protected. The same reporting says the groups argue Chinese investment would shift jobs away from manufacturers that have made generational investments in the US. The White House said it is working with American automakers while safeguarding national and economic security. The trigger was Trump telling Fox News he would accept Chinese car companies building cars in the United States if they hired American workers. Industry reaction leans skeptical of that jobs framing, with a recurring pushback that heavily automated plants would add few jobs. Also today, Volkswagen Group has cut its twenty twenty-six margin outlook to one percent, after booking ten billion euros, about eleven and a half billion dollars, in charges tied to its Porsche stake, worker buyouts and China, per Automotive News. That revision includes six point nine billion dollars of one-off charges at Porsche, hit by collapsing China sales and a costly reversal of its electric strategy. The same account notes China's market has fallen more than twenty percent this year. A one percent group margin resets what suppliers, dealers and investors can expect from Europe's largest carmaker, and it follows our earlier reporting on the roughly sixteen billion euro restructuring bill. Staying with the cost side. Toyota Group will invest one trillion yen, six point four two billion dollars, a year from twenty twenty-eight to modernize its factories and deploy four hundred thousand robots worldwide, including AI-powered humanoids that learn the skills of veteran workers, Automotive News reports. Automotive World adds that letting robots learn by watching workers generates training data organically rather than depending on simulation. Spending at that annual rate sets an automation benchmark rival manufacturers and their suppliers will be measured against. Industry reaction leans toward discounting the headline figure, with a recurring note that the count spans every machine type, not only humanoids, and that unbudgeted integration and retraining work is what tends to erode returns. Separately, Volvo Cars has named Skoda chief executive Klaus Zellmer to succeed Hakan Samuelsson. Automotive News reports he takes over by October twenty twenty-seven, and that he has led the Volkswagen Group brand to record profits and the number two position in Europe. A handover running more than a year gives suppliers, dealers and partners an unusually long window to plan against. Some in the trade read that long runway as a non-compete gap rather than a planned transition, and read the pick as Volvo leaning harder into Geely group platforms and scale. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Volkswagen has proposed four thousand one hundred further Porsche job cuts to close a seven hundred million euro overhead gap, Automotive News reports, after a one point one percent brand margin last year. Waymo will start a commercial robotaxi service in Singapore in twenty twenty-eight, its first in Southeast Asia, with Jaguar I-PACE cars arriving in the coming months, per Just Auto. Automotive World reports NHTSA is adding pedestrian-protection criteria to its five-star ratings for the twenty twenty-seven programme year, putting front-end design inside the US safety score. And finally, Leapmotor is building its B-ten electric SUV at a Stellantis plant in Spain with enough local content to qualify as European-made, avoiding a thirty point seven percent tariff on Chinese imports, according to Automotive News.