Sept. 29, 2026 | Volvo freezes hiring; GM’s Mark Reuss at Automotive News Congress

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Welcome to Daily Drive for Tuesday, September 29th, 2026. I'm Kellen Walker in downtown Detroit where we're live at General Motors headquarters at Hudson's Detroit for the 2026 Automotive News Congress. Today on the show, Volvo hits the brakes on white collar hiring. Nissan's making a huge bet on hybrids to catch up with Toyota and Honda. And Ford's about to start selling secondhand commercial trucks and vans. Plus, GM President Mark Reuss joins Automotive News publisher Casey Crane on stage here at Congress, fresh off accepting the Automotive Hall of Fame's Industry Leader Award.

Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry. Volvo has frozen white collar hiring across the globe. It's clamping down on outside spending, too. That's according to an internal memo obtained by Automotive News. Demand's cooling in two of Volvo's biggest markets, the US and China. And this isn't the first move. Volvo already cut roughly 3,000 office jobs last year under a $1.8 billion cost savings plan. Factory workers are safe for now, but across the industry, the belt's getting tighter. We'll have more on the story in a minute with our own Irvash Kakaria.

Nissan is going all in on hybrids. America's chairman Christian Mun says gas electrics will become the brand's primary powertrain in North America by 2030. Here's the plan: a US-built e-power Rogue landing in Smyrna, Tennessee in 2028, and e-power kicks around the same time, and V6 hybrids across new trucks. Nissan's targeting 30 to 40% hybrid share in the Rogue segment. It's a bid to catch Toyota and Honda and boost margins after largely missing the hybrid boom. And Ford's commercial vehicle arm wants in on the used commercial truck business. Starting in October, Ford Pro is launching a certified pre-owned program, a first for the industry, selling used class 1 through 7 trucks and vans through more than 700 dealer service centers. Fleet owners are feeling the pinch from high fuel prices. And Ford Pro's Alicia Bowler Davis tells Automotive News the company sees an opening. The vehicles will mostly come from defleeted rental and fleet trucks, not off the new vehicle lot. Bowler Davis says that's by design, so the program won't eat into new sales. And those are today's headlines. You can find more details on all those stories at autonews.com.

Volvo has about 20,000 white collar workers globally and roughly 700 of them are here in the US and Canada. Our own Irvash Kakaria covers Volvo for Automotive News. He talked with our own Jake Near about how the automaker got here and whether it's an outlier or just the latest domino to fall. Irvash, welcome back to Daily Drive.

Hi Jake, thanks for having me back. Happy Tuesday.

Happy Tuesday. All right, so recently we got news about Stellantis' hiring freeze at Auburn Hills at its North American headquarters. We also know that JLR has done something similar and now Volvo seems like maybe a trend is emerging. But what is it for Volvo? What is it that they are experiencing that makes them think now is the time to freeze?

Yeah. So, you know, Volvo has been under pressure on multiple fronts in the US particularly, but this hiring freeze, according to an internal memo that we've looked at, it's a global hiring freeze. It comes on the heels of several cost cutting plans that Volvo is planning. You know, last year they announced a, you know, several multi-million dollar cost reduction plan. They also idled about 3,000 salaried workers, laid off 3,000 salaried workers. More recently, they've closed their Stockholm office. They're headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, but they closed their Stockholm office and moved a lot of the responsibilities to Gothenburg. So, you know, this is sort of the latest cost cutting measure that Volvo seems to be, you know, trying in order to sort of rein in their expenses. And for Volvo in particular, I mean, this is an industrywide problem, but in Volvo particularly, they import the majority of their vehicles right now into the US, so therefore they basically face these steep tariffs. They're trying to make some moves to increase production at their South Carolina plant. Currently it builds the EX90, which is a low volume electric car. But later this year they'll start production on their best seller, which is the XC60. So that should bring them significant relief from tariffs because a large portion of their US sales are the XC60. And then down the road they're going to bring a, you know, high volume, long range hybrid, basically the size of, larger than the XC90. So again, it's one of those US specific products that should help them bring relief. The other problem that Volvo faces is that their workhorse vehicles, which is the XC60 and XC90, are relatively old. They haven't had redesigns in quite a while. Though, you know, recently, Volvo has announced that they're going to bring, you know, some significant updates to these cars. These are not obviously full redesigns, but as we reported earlier this year, they're going to increase the electric only range of these vehicles, almost doubling them, more than doubling them. So that should again, you know, make them more competitive. The biggest problem Volvo had was until recently, as recent as 2024, it was going to go all electric. And then finally it sort of, you know, followed the rest of the industry and they realized that, you know, they couldn't be all electric everywhere globally. So they kind of pulled back, but part of the problem was they had invested all their product development into future EVs. And so they're now kind of pivoting towards, okay, what can we do to bring more hybrids to the US? And I think that's their biggest struggle. So, you know, the demand is low, the EV bet hasn't paid off, so Volvo kind of has to do what it can to reduce its expenses, and this is kind of a, you know, one way to do it by having a hiring freeze both internally and externally.

So you mentioned a lot of things there, both external pressure and internal pressure too. I'm curious, how alone is Volvo in this entire equation? You know, are they an outlier in automakers that are struggling right now, or is this kind of just what it looks like for automakers with limited production and volume in the US?

Absolutely not. I mean, Volvo is kind of in the same soup as the rest of the, at least the legacy automaker industry. You know, a lot of the pressures that Volvo is facing, you know, tariffs, competition from, you know, aggressive Chinese startups especially in the EV space, affect everyone in the industry, you know, both on the luxury side as well as the mainstream side. I mean, look at what's happening to Mercedes-Benz and BMW and Porsche on the luxury side. Mercedes has recently told employees in Germany that they may have to close two factories in Germany, which is, you know, sort of the third rail, unless they can get significant cost reductions out of those factories. JLR in England has canned 4,000 jobs. You know, even in Detroit, you've got Ford, General Motors, and as you said, Stellantis, they've all had to cut jobs. They've all gone into sort of belt tightening campaigns. Stellantis, as you mentioned, recently is also doing a hiring freeze. So, you know, Volvo is not alone. And, you know, there are much bigger competitors that are having to do this, and I think the impact on their organizations are going to be far more significant than on Volvo, which in the grand scheme of things is sort of a smaller company. They have about 20,000 white collar workers globally, and in the US and Canada, which is essentially what they call North America, they have about 700 plus white collar workers. So from a, you know, compared to Stellantis, I mean, this is nothing, but I mean, tell that to the Volvo employees affected.

Yeah, the 700 Volvo employees, it's not small for them, but, you know, I do believe that there is something bigger to this story that extends across the industry. The thing with hiring freezes is it may not affect the existing employees in the sense that they still keep their jobs, but they're more likely going to have to do more for the same pay in order for Volvo to grow.

Absolutely. Yep.

Irvash Kakaria is Atlanta bureau chief for Automotive News, and Volvo is one of the several automakers that he covers for us at Automotive News. Irvash, thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you, Jake. Coming up, GM President Mark Reuss talks partnerships, affordability, and when it makes sense for an automaker to own tech integration instead of buying it. That's next on Daily Drive.

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Welcome back to Daily Drive. I'm Kellen Walker in downtown Detroit. Moments ago here on stage at Automotive News Congress, GM President Mark Reuss accepted the Automotive Hall of Fame's Industry Leader Award presented by Lear Corporation. The award recognizing exceptional executives and transformative figures in the global auto industry. Right after that, Reuss sat down with Automotive News publisher Casey Crane to talk about GM's partnerships with suppliers and dealers, the tension between demand for new technology and affordability, and when it makes more sense for GM to own tech integration outright versus partnering with outside companies.

I know Hyundai is our host sponsor, but I think you might have an office in this building.