Happy Monday! It’s November 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, we’re looking at the latest updates on Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar Tesla payday, as well as Toyota and Honda’s latest play for India. We’ll also look at Nissan’s downsizing, and the latest factors making cars in the United States more expensive.
1st Gear: Shareholders will vote today on whether Elon Musk gets $1 trillion from Tesla, or leaves the company
Elon Musk may be the wealthiest man in the world, but even that doesn’t seem to sate the man’s eternal need for more. He’s now asking Tesla for a pay package that could be worth $1 trillion, and it’s up to shareholders to determine whether he gets it. That vote happened yesterday, and results will be revealed after the company’s annual shareholder meeting tonight — with Musk promising to take his ball and go home if he doesn’t get his way. From Bloomberg:
Tesla Inc.’s campaign to award its chief executive officer a pay package potentially worth $1 trillion is drawing to a close, and this much is certain: Elon Musk will take it personally.
Board chair Robyn Denholm said as much during an interview with Bloomberg News, offering a view based on direct conversations she’s had with the world’s richest man.
If shareholders vote against the proposal, Musk “will take it as a negative sign on his leadership,” Denholm said last week at Bloomberg’s office in New York. She warned it’s likely that Musk will leave, or not be an active executive at Tesla, if the measure fails.
It’s worth asking how much of an “active executive” Musk is now, given that most of his time seems to be spent spreading far-right conspiracy theories on Twitter. Does he actually contribute to his car company in any way? What exactly would you say it is you do here?
2nd Gear: Toyota and Honda are expanding into India
Two of the world’s major auto markets, the United States and China, are shifting. The latter is getting more competitive, with an EV price war pushing profits down, while the former has decided to suddenly become a protectionist and isolationist trade market. In response, automakers are trying out new markets. Now that list has expanded to India, with Toyota and Honda looking to expand operations in the country. From Reuters:
Toyota, Honda and Suzuki are spending billions of dollars to build new cars and factories in India, a sign of the country’s growing importance as a manufacturing hub as Japanese automakers redraw global supply chains to reduce dependence on China.
Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker, and Suzuki, the leader in the Indian market with almost a 40% share, have separately announced investments totalling $11 billion to beef up manufacturing and export capabilities in the world’s third-largest auto market.
Honda said last week it will make India a production and export base for one of its planned electric cars.
The Reuters piece positions this move as a response to China, but I’ve long said automakers would be smart to look to India as the U.S. market gets more protectionist. India has a massive population, and it’s not all served by public transit. Sure, it’s also a protectionist automotive market, but as the U.S. continues down that path (and as buyers here get poorer and poorer) access to the Indian population likely looks more and more attractive.
3rd Gear: Nissan leaves a 6th plant out of a planned 7, sells off its headquarters
Nissan is downsizing in a big way, cutting factories and suppliers in hopes of making its cars more cheaply. The company just exited its sixth plant out of a planned seven, abandoning a facility it operates alongside Daimler down in Mexico. From Automotive News:
In Nissan’s cost-saving quest to close factories worldwide, it’s six down and one to go.
CEO Ivan Espinosa confirmed that the Japanese automaker would end production by the end of this month at the joint venture factory it operates with Germany’s Daimler in Mexico.
Nissan Motor Co. makes the compact Infiniti QX50 and QX55 crossovers at the plant, known as the Cooperation Manufacturing Plant Aguascalientes, or COMPAS for short.
Exiting COMPAS takes Espinosa one step closer to a grand restructuring plan that involves shuttering seven of the company’s 17 global manufacturing plants. The goal is to slash capacity of some 2.5 million to 3 million vehicles in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2028.
Nissan runs the risk here of simply making its cars too cheap, so they no longer feel worth their cost premium over, say, Mitsubishi. Hopefully Espinosa doesn’t overshoot here.
4th Gear: It now costs even more to bring a car into the United States
The Trump administration has done pretty much everything within its power to penalize companies that bring goods into the United States — Trump seems to think that all products used or consumed within the U.S. should only be produced from materials mined here, with no imports anywhere in the process — and its latest method is an increase in port fees. That could translate to another couple hundred bucks tacked on to automakers’ bills for bringing cars in, which likely means another couple hundred bucks that customers will see as destination fees. From Reuters:
Automakers transporting their cars to the U.S. could face $200 to $300 per vehicle in additional costs, the CEO of car carrier Wallenius Wilhelmsen told Reuters on Wednesday, as the company seeks to pass on new U.S. port fees to customers.
Higher-than-expected U.S. port fees on foreign-built ships took effect in mid-October as part of a trade dispute between China and the U.S. That prompted Wallenius Wilhelmsen, which operates “roll-on/roll-off” carriers that ship cars and heavy machinery worldwide, to withdraw its financial outlook.
“We’re clear that this bill is an additional cost we’ve been given and that we need to pass on to our customers,” Chief Executive Lasse Kristoffersen said.
A late-October agreement between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping granted a 12-month reprieve from the tit-for-tat fees on each other’s ships, delaying changes that could cost shipping companies millions of dollars and disrupt vessel schedules.
Destination fees have already been rising in response to tariffs, and it’s unlikely we’ll see them go down any time soon. Of course, once automakers get used to charging higher fees, it’s unlikely we’ll see them go down ever — whether or not costs to automakers do.
Reverse: What is to be done?
Russia truly had so many revolutions and rebellions before one stuck.
On The Radio: Ida Maria – ‘Stella’
Does anyone have a voice like Ida Maria?
