Good morning! It's Tuesday, November 25, 2025, 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, Mercedes-Benz has big plans to fix and grow its U.S. sales with the help of high-performance EVs, Tesla is caught lying about Full Self-Driving being approved in Europe, Canada and the U.S. are still a ways away from resuming trade talks and GM's AI chief left the job — hopefully to do something more worthwhile with his life.
Mercedes-Benz hasn't led the U.S. luxury sales market since 2018. Hell, it's actually fallen to third place behind BMW and Lexus, but it's got an ambitious plan to shake things up and get things back on track to the tune of 400,000 retail sales per year by the end of the 2020s. That's one-third more — about 100,000 additional vehicles — than what it delivered last year, so this isn't exactly going to be an easy task, but those crazy Germans have a plan.
The key, according to Mercedes, is a pivot to a diverse powertrain mix and simplified dealer programs. Even Mercedes' U.S. CEO, Adam Chamberlain, knows that 400,000 vehicles per year is a huge undertaking, describing it as aspirational but achievable and a "North Star, a rallying cry." From Automotive News:
At the Mercedes dealer meeting attended by global sales chief Mathias Geisen, executives promised aggressive investment to reclaim the top spot in the U.S. luxury segment.
[...]
A focus on top-end luxury with AMG and Maybach cost Mercedes share in the more affordable, higher volume portion of the luxury segment.
"Mercedes allowed BMW and Lexus to jump into the lower end of the market," the dealer said. "It's hurt sales volume and lease penetration."
With a renewed focus on the "core SUV" lineup, Chamberlain expects the GLC, GLE and GLS utility models to generate about 55 percent of U.S. sales by the end of the decade, up from around 40 percent last year.
"We have a huge opportunity with those cars to drive some growth there," Chamberlain said.
A big part of this plan for Mercedes will be building some high-performance EVs, like the AMG GT XX concept car, and upgrading bread-and-butter utility vehicles throughout the lineup. It also plans, in an appeal to U.S. buyers, to bring back bigger engines. Six- and eight-cylinder motors are back on the menu, fellas. That also shows we can expect less of a focus solely on EVs.
Starting with the next-generation CLA arriving in December, future models will be available with battery-only and hybrid powertrains.
"It's not either-or; it's both," Chamberlain said, adding that Mercedes will price its EVs in the "same ZIP code" as their gasoline-powered counterparts.
The automaker also plans to revamp its dealer experience and incentive programs to help get buyers and lessees in the door.
Mercedes-Benz has lost a lot of ground since it was the luxury sales king in 2018, so there's certainly a lot of work to be done if it ever wants to catch up to industry leaders like BMW and Lexus. Those are two companies that are definitely not going to give up without a fight.
It sure looks like Tesla was caught in a lie while trying to get its Full Self-Driving software approved for use in Europe. A Dutch regulatory organization is denying information posted by the Austin, Texas-based automaker on X, the everything app, saying that its "main path" to getting FSD green-lit for Europe is through RDW (the organization that handles the approval and registration of vehicles in the Netherlands).
In a follow-up post, Tesla said that RDW "has committed to granting Netherlands National approval in February 2026." Here's the thing, though: that's not true. The authority issued a denial earlier this week, saying that Tesla is expected to be able to demonstrate FSD come February, but it hasn't committed to approving the system. From Bloomberg:
"We do not share details about ongoing applications from manufacturers, as this concerns commercially sensitive information," the authority said in a statement on its website. "Both RDW and Tesla are aware of the efforts needed to reach a decision on this matter in February. Whether this timeline will be met is yet to be determined in the coming period."
Musk has repeatedly voiced frustration with the regulatory approval process for FSD in Europe, including during the company's annual shareholder meeting earlier this month. Since that meeting, the company has updated the website where it reports FSD safety data. Experts have questioned the validity of Tesla's data due to what they say are flawed comparisons and other methodological issues.
"Pressure from our customers in Europe to push the regulators to approve would be appreciated," Musk said during the annual meeting.
If lying wasn't bad enough, Tesla's European X (the everything app) account shared a link to RDW's contact page. It encouraged people to "thank" the authority for its alleged approval. Forgive me if this sounds more like Tesla was trying to get its fans to harass a regulatory body into letting Tesla get its way. It seems RDW felt this way, too.
"We thank everyone who has already done so, but would like to urge people not to contact us about this matter," the regulator said. "It takes up unnecessary time for our customer service. Furthermore, this will have no impact whatsoever on whether or not the schedule will be met."
If only the U.S.'s regulatory systems were as stringent, perhaps there would be a few fewer fatal crashes attributed to Tesla's driver assist systems — allegedly, of course.
There's still no timeline for when the U.S. and Canada could resume trade talks after President Trump last month suspended them over an anti-tariff advertisement put out by Ontario's provincial government.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said discussions will resume between the two countries "when it's appropriate," adding that he didn't have any pressing issues to address with Trump. Ah, how great. How fun. How lovely. From Reuters:
"We are very busy with the future of Canada, and with new partnerships. There will be conversations with the president, probably in the next two weeks," Carney told reporters on the sidelines of the G20 leaders' meeting in Johannesburg. "We will re-engage when it's appropriate."
Carney reiterated that he was open to dialogue.
"I don't have a burning issue to speak with the president about right now. When America wants to come back and have the discussions on the trade side, we will have those discussions."
Canada wants a deal to lower import tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos imposed by Trump.
Maybe we can get Zohran to visit the White House again to talk some sense into Trump. As I'm sure you know, the U.S. and Canada are a fairly critical alliance, so having them at odds is, well, less than ideal.
You ever just hope someone had a come-to-Jesus moment, even though you know they didn't? Just eight months ago, General Motors hired its first-ever chief artificial intelligence officer, and he's already quit. Barak Turovsky came with years of AI experience, working at companies like Cisco and Google, and there's no real word on why he left GM. I've got my fingers crossed that he realized the whole thing is pointless, and now he's going to be one with nature or something, but I know that's not what happened. From the Detroit Free Press:
"Friends, I just wanted to share that as of today I am no longer with GM. Physical AI is just as exciting as LLMs (large language models) and it was a genuine pleasure to work again with brilliant folks like John Anderson, Davey Weissberg, John Richardson, and many others," Turovsky's LinkedIn post read. "I will be taking a little sabbatical to work on some exciting new ideas. I look forward to catching up with everyone during the upcoming holiday season and stay tuned!"
Maybe those exciting new ideas include doing something worthwhile. One can only hope.
"We are strategically integrating AI capabilities directly into our business and product organizations, enabling faster innovation and more targeted solutions," GM spokesperson Chaiti Sen said in an emailed statement.
Turovsky worked out of GM's Mountain View Technical Center in California, which opened last year. He also previously held leadership roles at Google as head of product for languages artificial intelligence.
"In this newly created role, he will take GM's AI roadmap to the next level, setting the vision and strategy for AI at GM and how it impacts everything from (autonomous vehicle technology) to enterprise logistics to manufacturing," GM said in a statement at the time of his hiring.
Turovsky reported directly to Dave Richardson, GM's senior vice president of software and services engineering, who departed the company on Oct. 31 ― one week after appearing onstage at a media event in New York to outline the company's software-defined strategies. The former Apple exec started at the company in 2023 to overhaul its software department. He, too, was based in California.
Both of these departures come at a point where GM's software is poised to be a massive profit driver for the automaker. It expects to make as much as $25 billion in revenue by 2030.
I don't know where Turovsky will go next, but it can't be much more bleak than making AI for cars or whatever the hell he was doing at The General.
This is wonderful news if you're a New Yorker or a goddamn American, and it's terrible news if you're — God forbid — British. If you'd like to know more about these losers' humiliating defeat, head over to History.com.
At the tail end of the summer, I was on one hell of an Oasis kick. That has since subsided, but in the last few days, "Slide Away" has been stuck in my head like nothing else. Now, you've got to deal with that.