Overview
- The Senate Commerce Committee, chaired by Senator Ted Cruz, scheduled a Jan. 14 hearing to examine whether safety and environmental requirements are driving up new-vehicle prices and limiting consumer choice.
- Executives summoned include GM’s Mary Barra, Ford’s Jim Farley, Stellantis’s Antonio Filosa, and Tesla executive Lars Moravy, though GM and Ford say they are still deciding on CEO attendance and Stellantis declined comment.
- Republicans cite rising average transaction prices, now above $50,000, as evidence that mandates and climate rules have inflated costs despite recent rollbacks under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
- Safety advocates counter that regulation ensures broad deployment of effective technologies, pointing to roughly 40,000 U.S. road deaths annually and arguing mandates like automatic emergency braking save lives.
- The hearing comes as NHTSA’s rule requiring automatic emergency braking on new cars beginning in 2029 faces industry pushback and potential timeline adjustments tied to next year’s surface transportation reauthorization.