Happy Tuesday! It's June 3, 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, Americans are losing interest in EVs, and Toyota is facing accusations of shortchanging shareholders. Plus, Ford is issuing yet another recall, and 20,000 Volkswagen workers have agreed to retire early.
American buyers have never been as all-in on EVs as our European counterparts, but new data says we're less interested in electrification than ever. A new survey from AAA says just 16% of people are looking at adding an EV to their garage, while 63% certainly won't. From Automotive News:
Interest in electric vehicles has sunk to its lowest level since 2019, according to a consumer survey commissioned by AAA.
Only 16 percent of respondents reported being "likely" or "very likely" to purchase an electric vehicle as their next car.
"While the automotive industry is committed to long-term electrification and providing a diverse range of models, underlying consumer hesitation remains," said Greg Brannon, director of automotive engineering for AAA.
The percentage of customers who indicated they would be "unlikely" or "very unlikely" to purchase an EV as their next vehicle rose to 63 percent from 51 percent, the highest since 2022.
There could be a number of reasons for this shift. EVs tend to be expensive, and everyone's mired in economic uncertainty right now — buyers may see electrification as a luxury they can't afford, or they may simply be fed up with the state of America's charging infrastructure. Regardless of the reasoning, though, one thing is clear: Placing the continued habitability of our planet in the invisible hand of the market hasn't gone well.
Toyota owns many companies, some of which are also Toyota. Don't worry about it. One of those sub-companies, Toyota Industries Corp, has long been owned by shareholders — shareholders Toyota is now throwing cash at, in order to take the company fully under its wing. There's just one problem: Those investors want more money than Toyota is offering. From Bloomberg:
The Toyota group's proposal to privatize Toyota Industries Corp. is drawing criticism from investors and analysts, who argue the ¥4.7 trillion ($33 billion) deal significantly undervalues the company and risks alienating shareholders with what many view as an unpalatable transaction.
The planned tender offer of ¥16,300 per share from a group led by Toyota Motor Corp.'s Chairman Akio Toyoda represents an 11% discount to Tuesday's closing price for the company, which makes textile looms, forklifts and car components.
"The tender offer price is very low compared to our estimate of intrinsic value," said David Mitchinson, chief investment officer at Zennor Asset Management LLP, which owns Toyota Industries stock. "Many of our concerns around governance have been amply justified by this news."
If a company has investors, it has to provide a return for them — it can't simply build car parts for cheap for Toyota, someone's gotta make their cut of profit off that transaction. It makes sense for Toyota to bring Industries Corp deeper into the fold, but it may be more costly than the company would like.
Ford's been having a big recall year in 2025, and it shows no signs of slowing. The latest recall is for the F-150 Lightning, thanks to some suspension components that were improperly tightened at the factory. From Automotive News:
Ford Motor Co. is recalling 29,501 electric trucks in the U.S. because of the risk of a detached control arm, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a May 31 report.
The recall covers the 2024-25 F-150 Lightning battery-electric truck. The vehicle, a key part of Ford's electrification strategy, has been the subject of 11 U.S. recalls since it was launched in 2022, including the latest callback, according to NHTSA data.
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In affected vehicles, the upper control arm ball joint was tightened incorrectly, allowing the front upper control arm to separate from the knuckle assembly, NHTSA said. If the control arm becomes detached, drivers can experience loss of directional control, increasing the risk of a crash.
Luckily, the fix here is an easy one — and one that Ford will reimburse owners for, if they've already paid for third-party fixes. Having a slew of recalls means Ford is watching its customers' complaints carefully, but it also means the company might want to turn the same attention towards its assembly lines.
Volkswagen wants to trim the fat at its company, which always seems to mean getting rid of lowly paid workers rather than highly paid executives. The company now says 20,000 of those workers have agreed to take an early retirement by 2030, giving them a few more years to grab that gold watch before they walk out the door. From Bloomberg:
Volkswagen AG said about 20,000 employees will voluntarily leave the company by the end of the decade as the carmaker restructures its German operations to cope with uneven demand for its vehicles.
The result shows that the company's restructuring plans are on track, Gunnar Kilian, Volkswagen's head of human relations and board member, told employees Tuesday at a workers assembly in Wolfsburg.
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Europe's largest carmaker is in the process of reducing production capacity and headcount in Germany due to rising costs, weaker demand in Europe and the rapid rise of Chinese competitors. VW brand management and labor leaders struck a deal in December to cut German production capacity by more than 700,000 units and decrease headcount by 35,000 jobs by the end of the decade. Sister brands Audi and Porsche are also cutting jobs to reduce costs.
In the face of unexpectedly strong foreign competition, Volkswagen's solution is to shrink until it can find its footing again. Not the worst idea, from a profit-loss perspective, but how small will VW get?
As a lifelong East Coaster, I know Santa Cruz for its mountain bikes and skateboards — y'know, cool stuff. I didn't know that, back in the '50s, it was the town from "Footloose."
Apparently we've never had Death Grips for our On The Radio gear? That's a crime that needs to be rectified immediately.