Camila Domonoske

Many new cars sold today can take preemptive action to help prevent crashes — hitting the brakes before a collision, steering around obstacles or alerting drivers to hazards in their blind spots.

Those safety features — collectively known as advanced driver-assistance systems, or ADAS — reduce the risk of crashes. It might seem logical to assume that as a result, they'd reduce the cost of car insurance.

Updated at 9:13 p.m. ET

Seventeen of the world's largest automakers have asked the White House and the state of California to restart talks and come up with one set of greenhouse gas standards for cars.

The Trump administration has been pushing to roll back regulations, while California has been holding tight to its tougher rules for auto emissions. The carmakers, meanwhile, call for "common sense compromise."

President Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on goods imported from Mexico, starting next week, if Mexico doesn't take action to reduce the flood of Central American migrants across the Southern border of the U.S.

The proposed tariffs — which would start at 5% on goods crossing the border and could ramp up to 25% over time — would play havoc with supply chains in the auto industry.

To understand why, consider a vehicle's wiring harness — the car's nervous system, consisting of a complex network of wires that connect electronic components throughout the car body.

For most companies, losing $1 billion in a quarter would be a big disappointment. But Uber's first report as a publicly traded company was actually better than it had warned investors to expect.

The ride-hailing and food-delivery giant brought in more than $3 billion in revenue in the first three months of 2019 — a 20% jump from the same quarter a year earlier.

The U.S. Postal Service is experimenting with self-driving trucks to move mail across state lines.

The USPS has partnered with San Diego-based TuSimple on a two-week pilot program focusing solely on a 1,000-mile route between Dallas and Phoenix.

Know a young driver who's ignoring your pleas to buckle up? Chevrolet suggests you might try to see if they'll listen to a different authority figure: their car.

The automaker is introducing a feature, specifically for teen drivers, that will temporarily block the auto from shifting into gear if their seat belt isn't buckled. A message will alert the driver to buckle up in order to shift into gear.

After 20 seconds, the vehicle will operate normally.

Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET

Ford is eliminating about 7,000 white-collar jobs — or about 10% of its salaried workforce — as part of a previously announced companywide global restructuring.

About 800 U.S. workers will lose their jobs between now and August. Another 1,500 U.S. employees took voluntary buyouts last year.

Globally, some of the 7,000 affected workers are being laid off, while others are being reassigned, Ford says.

The Trump administration's trade war with China continues to roil markets and draw headlines. But that's not the only trade tension in town.

For about a year, the White House has been weighing the possibility of imposing tariffs or quotas on cars and car parts imported from close allies in Europe and Japan.

The auto industry is united in opposition to the tariffs. But carmakers and auto suppliers may have to keep waiting to find out whether their pleas have been heard.

Updated at 6:00 p.m. ET Friday

The ride-hailing company Uber made its stock market debut on Friday, and promptly saw share prices dip.

Uber priced its shares at $45, the lower end of the possible range, aiming for a total diluted market value of about $82 billion. After a delay of two and a half hours, trading started with the stock at $42, down more than 6 percent over that initial price.

Uber will go public on Friday in a highly anticipated initial public offering that will be the largest since 2014 — and one of the biggest in U.S. history.

After speculation that the ride-hailing company could be valued at as high as $120 billion, Uber is now targeting a valuation of $80 billion to $90 billion. At the same time, it has never made a profit — and has instead been burning through cash at a prodigious rate.

New York City is preparing to become the first urban area in the U.S. to adopt congestion pricing — a fee for drivers entering the city center, designed to reduce gridlock and help fund the city's struggling subway system.

And nearly two years before the fees are put in place, a poll by Quinnipiac University found that 54% of New Yorkers are opposed to the change in policy. That's no surprise to experts on transportation policy.

Robots have revolutionized auto manufacturing, making plants safer and products more reliable — and reducing the number of people involved in the process. But walk inside a modern auto plant, and you'll quickly realize that robots have hardly replaced the human touch — at least, not in some areas.

On the steps of New York City's City Hall last week, about 100 people gathered to enthusiastically chant their support for a landmark climate bill.

It didn't target cars or coal, but another major emitter — in fact, the source of nearly 70% of New York City's greenhouse gas emissions. It's a sector that dominates New York's skyline, but has largely managed to dodge the spotlight when it comes to climate change.

"Dirty buildings," they shouted, "have got to go!"

Volvo is a Chinese-owned Swedish company making cars in the U.S. When it decided to set up a plant in South Carolina to build cars to ship around the world, it was following a long tradition.

With its port, Charleston, S.C., has been a shipping hub for centuries. And the state has been home to international manufacturers for decades — BMW, Michelin and Bosch are among the many global firms with footholds there.

But before the plant opened last year, President Trump transformed America's approach to trade policy.