Tesla Sends Cybertruck Workers Home

Good morning! It’s Monday, May 12, 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, we’re looking at Tesla idling the Cybertruck and Model Y lines, as well as the 90-day U.S.-China trade war armistice. We’ll also take a peek at Nissan’s plans to cut 20,000 workers, and Mazda’s tariff impact estimates for April. 

The Cybertruck is a sales failure, to the degree that Tesla has trucks piling up in parking lots because no one wants to buy them. There’s not much the company can do about the former issue, besides replacing its CEO and wholly redesigning the pickup, but it can do something about the latter: Stop making so many of the things. So, that’s exactly what it plans to do. From Business Insider:

Tesla told Austin workers on its Model Y and Cybertruck lines to stay home for the week of Memorial Day, three workers told Business Insider.

The break is unusually long, the workers said. Production lines were up and running during the same period last year, they said.

…

The workers said their schedules had been increasingly inconsistent since February. Some said they had been sent home early on multiple occasions.In February, the Austin factory began cracking down on overtime hours, the workers said. Two said they were told by management that if they clocked overtime hours, they could eventually face disciplinary action.

Inclusion of the Model Y here is interesting. The Cybertruck debuted with a litany of problems, but the Model Y was once a best-seller. Maybe Elon Musk has really hurt Tesla’s reputation that much. 

The United States has been big on trade war in the last few months, and China’s been the primary target. Now, though, Americans are seeing the consequences of tariffs: The little treats, the video game consoles and Temu trinkets, have all gotten more expensive. In short, people haven’t been happy. Now the White House is reducing its tariffs on China, but only for 90 days — unless a more lasting agreement can be reached. From Automotive News China:

The U.S. and China said they will temporarily lower tariffs on each other’s products in a dramatic ratcheting down of trade tensions that buys the world’s two largest economies three months to work toward a broader agreement.

The combined 145 percent U.S. levies on most Chinese imports will be reduced to 30 percent including the rate tied to fentanyl by May 14, while the 125 percent Chinese duties on U.S. goods will drop to 10 percent, according to a joint statement and from officials in a briefing Monday in Geneva.

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In a research note, Maeva Cousin of Bloomberg Economics said today’s move “substantially lowers the U.S. average tariff shock on China,” though the remaining import taxes remain high and could still cut U.S. imports from China by about 70 percent in the medium term.

The fentanyl framing only gets funnier with time. It’s so clearly unrelated to the ongoing trade war, but folks in both government and the media keep pretending it means anything. Y’all can give up on the fentanyl thing. 

Nissan hasn’t been looking so hot recently. The company tried to merge with Honda, stopped trying to merge with Honda, ousted its CEO, and that was all before the tariffs hit. Now the company is cutting a massive swath of its workforce, which is never a good sign. From Bloomberg:

Nissan Motor Co. will eliminate 11,000 more jobs than previously planned, NHK reported Monday, as part of a plan to restructure its flailing business.

The Japanese carmaker said in November it would cut 9,000 positions after weak sales in the US and China led to a 94% drop in first-half net income. Now those job cuts will be closer to 20,000, or around 15% of the entire workforce, according to Japan’s national broadcaster. The redundancies will occur both at home and overseas, it added.

Cutting 15% of all your employees, globally, is a massive reduction. If the talks with Honda were the corporate equivalent of opening up your relationship in a desperate last bid to save it, what does that make this? Sending the kids to stay with Grandma for a bit?

Automakers give earnings estimates to their investors annually, in a document called a guidance. In 2025, pretty much every automaker has been rescinding that guidance and saying there won’t be a replacement until the trade war settles. Mazda is just the latest to pull the same move, but the company did issue some sort of estimate: A $68 million tariff hit in just one month of 2025. From Bloomberg:

Mazda Motor Co. withheld its annual profit guidance after its short-term future, along with most global carmakers, was muddied by US President Donald Trump’s trade war.

The Japanese automaker’s forecast for the fiscal year that will end March 2026 has yet to be determined due to uncertainty over factors including US tariffs on car and car parts, Mazda said Monday, adding that it will announce its expectations when it becomes possible to establish a reasonable projection.

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For Mazda, the impact could amount to as much as ¥10 billion ($68 million) just in April, Chief Executive Officer Masahiro Moro said Monday. Mazda was reporting its full-year financial results. Net income came in at ¥114 billion, lower than the company’s own guidance of ¥140 billion.

Remember that April was still an introductory period for tariffs, with pre-tax stock sitting on dealer lots. As that supply dwindles, the numbers aren’t likely to get better for Mazda. Someone should lobby for a Miata exemption. 

Richards “had no idea” he wrote “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Probably because a ghost did it, and merely used Richards as an instrument with which to engage in the mortal realm. 

I just woke up with this one stuck in my head today. Not sure why. It’s a good track, though, so you all get to hear it too.