Good morning! It's Tuesday, October 7, 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, President Trump announces new tariffs on imported medium—and heavy-duty trucks because he's bored, I guess. Jaguar-Land Rover says some production will be up and running again on October 8. We're also going to be looking at Lucid's third-quarter sales numbers and a recall of the Chevy Equinox EV because it's actually too quiet.
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Good news! Just when you thought we put this whole tariff thing behind us, President Trump decided to throw everyone another curveball. Now, all medium- and heavy-duty trucks imported to the U.S. will face a 25% duty starting on November 1. This represents a significant escalation of his efforts to insulate U.S. companies from foreign competition.
In September, Trump said heavy-duty truck (meaning semis, 18-wheelers, tractor-trailers, etc.) imports would face new duties on October 1 based on national security grounds. He said the new tariffs would protect U.S.-based manufacturers from "unfair outside competition" and that the move would benefit companies like Peterbilt, Kenworth, Mack and Freightliner (even if truck-makers themselves disagreed). From Reuters:
Under trade deals reached with Japan and the European Union, the United States has agreed to 15% tariffs on light-duty vehicles but it is not clear if they will face that rate for larger vehicles.
The Trump administration has also allowed producers to deduct the value of U.S. components from tariffs paid on light-duty vehicles assembled in Canada and Mexico.
Larger vehicles include everything from delivery trucks, garbage trucks, public utility trucks, transit, shuttle, and school buses and tractor-trailer trucks as well as semi-trucks and heavy-duty vocational vehicles.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce earlier urged the Commerce Department not to impose new truck tariffs, noting the top five import sources are Mexico, Canada, Japan, Germany, and Finland "all of which are allies or close partners of the United States posing no threat to U.S. national security."
As it stands, Mexico is the largest exporter of medium- and heavy-duty trucks to the U.S. Apparently, imports of those types of trucks have tripled since 2019 to around 340,000 units today.
Under the North American free trade deal USMCA, medium- and heavy-duty trucks move tariffs free if at least 64% of a heavy truck's value originates in North America, via parts like engines and axles, raw materials such as steel, or assembly labor.
Tariffs could also affect Chrysler-parent Stellantis which produces heavy-duty Ram trucks and commercial vans in Mexico. Stellantis had been lobbying the White House not to impose steep tariffs on its Mexican-made trucks.
Sweden's Volvo Group is building a $700 million heavy-truck factory in Monterrey, Mexico, due to start operations in 2026.
Mexico is currently home to 14 manufacturers and assemblers of buses, trucks, and 18-wheelers. It's also got two engine manufacturers, according to Reuters. Obviously, the country opposes the new tariffs, telling the U.S. Commerce Department in May that all Mexican-made trucks exported to the U.S. have, on average, 50% U.S. content, including diesel engines.
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Jaguar-Land Rover fans, the light may finally be at the end of the tunnel. The British-Indian automaker said some of its factories would restart manufacturing on Wednesday, October 8, after being shut down for nearly six weeks following a massive cyberattack. In an effort to help smaller parts suppliers, JLR also announced it would be providing them with some up-front cash for parts during the restart process.
The automaker has three factories in Britain, which — when operational — produce about 1,000 vehicles per day. Analysts estimate that JLR was losing about $67 million per week from the shutdown, and it was provided with about a $2 billion loan guarantee by the British government late last month to help support its suppliers. From Reuters:
Business minister Peter Kyle said in a statement on Tuesday that his focus was on helping JLR resolve the incident and supporting the long-term health of the auto supply chain, which supports over 180,000 manufacturing jobs.
[...]
JLR said its engines and battery units would restart work on Wednesday, as well as parts of its vehicle production plant including its body and paint shops, meaning the return of some of its 33,000 staff to work.
Production lines for the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport vehicles at its main factory in Solihull will start later this week, the company added.
Qualifying suppliers of parts used in the company's just-in-time production lines will now be paid shortly after the point of order, JLR said, compared to a previous 60-day post-invoice arrangement, helping to allay fears that some smaller businesses could go bust.
It won't come as a surprise to learn that this shutdown has wreaked havoc on JLR's sales for the third quarter of 2025. The automaker sales wholesale and retail sales volume dropped 24.2% and 17.1%, respectively. Ouch. Those numbers reflect the production stoppage, the planned wind-down of legacy models, and the brutal impact of U.S. tariffs. Needless to say, it's been rough going for the storied automaker.
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Lucid's deliveries rose a very robust 47% in the third quarter of 2025 compared with a year earlier, as customers rushed to take advantage of the soon-expiring $7,500 EV tax credit and the automaker spun up production of its excellent Gravity crossover.
Sales of the Air and Gravity hit a record 4,078 units in Q3 (Lucid doesn't break out sales by model) — up from just 2,781 Air sales during the same time a year earlier. Unfortunately for Lucid, it still fell short of analysts' delivery predictions of 4,286. From Automotive News:
The company said in mid-August that cumulative Gravity deliveries were in the hundreds since launch. Interim CEO Marc Winterhoff said in June that Gravity output was lower than desired but ramping up.
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Lucid lowered its annual production forecast to between 18,000 to 20,000 vehicles in August. The previous forecast was 20,000. Through the third quarter, production reached 9,966 and deliveries totaled 10,496, the company said.
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Separate from its official production numbers, Lucid said it prepared more than 1,000 vehicles in the third quarter for final assembly in Saudi Arabia.
While sales are expected to fall a bit in the fourth quarter, Lucid is hoping to keep momentum going at least somewhat by offering a $7,500 lease credit on the Gravity through the end of the year.
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Everybody loves how quiet an electric vehicle is until it's "unsafe" for pedestrians or whatever. Okay, okay, I'm joking, but that's what's happening with the 2024 Chevy Equinox EV, and that's why 23,700 of them are being recalled, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. From Car and Driver:
Documents filed with the NHTSA explain that the affected models potentially fail to meet minimum standards set for hybrid and electric vehicles. Specifically, the vehicles may fail to meet Section S5.4 of Federal Motor Vehicle Standards No. 141, which sets rules for how loud hybrid and electric vehicles need to be when moving below 6.2 mph.
According to the NHTSA, the cars in the recall population may have an incorrect software calibration, meaning they won't produce a pedestrian warning sound outside the vehicle while traveling at low speeds. The noise that the cars produce reportedly has too much variation, which could make it hard for pedestrians to determine if an approaching car is speeding up or slowing down.
The recall documents don't list any signs that their car might display to warn drivers of the issue, but a simple check at low speeds should work. Chevy is still working on a solution for the recall and doesn't have an expected date for when one will become available.
Since this seems to be a software — and not a hardware — issue, the solution will more than likely be a simple software update, and it may even be an over-the-air update, according to Car and Driver. Easy peasy.
Who knows where we'd be today without Ford's innovation? I mean, someone else probably would have come up with it, but still. Good on, Hank. If you want to learn more, head over to History.com.
It's been over a week since I saw "One Battle After Another" in theaters, and I'm still thinking about it. Good thing I'm going again this Friday.
