Good morning! It’s Thursday, May 14, 2026, 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, The Big Three laid off a big 20,000 salaried workers combined, Elon Musk is giving ends to his friends and the profits will be stupendous, Subaru is the latest automaker to cancel an EV thanks to tariff costs, and Mexico is cracking down on Ubers at airports just in time for a huge influx of flyers.
Detroit automakers slash 19% of their combine workforce
Anyone in the job market right now knows things look exceptionally bleak for human beings who need to trade labor for survival. That’s especially true of anyone who works a white-collar job for Ford, General Motors, or Stellantis. From CNBC:
The “Detroit Three” automakers have together cut more than 20,000 U.S. salaried jobs, or 19% of their combined workforces, from recent employment peaks this decade, according to public filings and employment data from the companies.
Reasons for the job declines vary by automaker, but in general are tied to evolving technological changes in the automotive industry, with the rise of software-defined vehicles, autonomous and all-electric vehicles, and, most recently, AI.
“Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said in July at the Aspen ideas Festival. “AI will leave a lot of white-collar people behind,” he added later.
People are starting to get left behind already. GM is responsible for the largest drawdown of white collar jobs, letting go of roughly 11,000 people since 2022. That’s sort of an inflated number apparently, since GM hired roughly the same amount of people from 2020 to 2022. Most of the gigs lost were in things like office management, IT, finance, and coding (remember “learn to code?” yeah, about that…) GM is also on a hiring spree looking to AI workers who will eventually eliminate even more jobs. I guess it is this why Mary Barra makes the big bucks.
2nd Gear: Elon Musk To Reward All His Buddies Who Invested Stuck With X Investments With SpaceX IPO
In case you needed another reminder this economy was not built to benefit you in any way today: Elon Musk is set to make his friends a buttload of cash thanks to his One Weird Trick of having all of his companies own all of his companies in one bit ol’ company soup. Folks who stuck with Musk through the seemingly disastrous purchase of Twitter (now X) are looking at a 200% return on their investment. Why? Because by owning X stock, they now own SpaceX stock which also owns XAI.
If SpaceX manages an IPO of $2 trillion valuation then Musk’s friends will be living on an even easier street than before, from Bloomberg:
Ross Gerber, chief executive officer of investment-management firm Gerber Kawasaki and a Twitter investor, said it’s proof of the importance Musk places on his private company investors.
“They’re his best friends,” said Gerber, who invested less than $1 million in Twitter alongside Musk. “The same people own all of Elon’s companies.”
If I had to count myself as one of Elon Musk’s best friends I’d be looking for a return on investment as well. Right now, XAI, X, Tesla and SpaceX are all wrapped up in each other, so it’s unclear which company is propping up which. Elon Musk stands to become the world’s first trillionaire should he play his cards right. Since he’s holding the whole deck and owns the casino I think he’ll probably make it there just fine.
3rd Gear: Subaru’s Profits Cratered 90 Percent Thanks To Tariffs And EV Drawdown
There’s no denying it; the first year of Trump’s return to office has been rough on automakers, especially non-domestic ones. Subaru is the latest to announce massive losses and changes to plans for future product based on problems with tariff costs and the EV drawdown. Subaru is just a little guy here in the U.S. though, so the impact is bigger. From Automotive News:
The Japanese automaker will open production at Oizumi with internal combustion and hybrid vehicles and add EVs later, depending on demand.
CEO Atsushi Osaki outlined the shift May 15, while announcing that operating profit cratered 90 percent in the fiscal year ended March 31.
U.S. tariffs erased ¥226.9 billion ($1.42 billion) from earnings, while EV-related write-downs and impairments chopped an additional ¥57.8 billion ($362 million).
You’re not alone Subaru. EV restructuring has cost automakers $70 billion so far, and that’s before we even get to tariffs, which have collectively cost carmakers $35 billion. No wonder automakers are trying to shed expenses like human workers.
4th Gear: Mexico bans Uber from airports just in time for the World Cup
When is it a perfect time to start enforcing a law that restricts ride-share drivers from operating at the airport? Why, when you have a huge influx of tourists of course! Mexico is hosting 13 World Cup games next month, but back in March, it started unevenly enforcing a law that restricts rideshare drivers from shuttling travelers out of the airport. From Bloomberg:
Under pressure from traditional taxi companies, Mexican authorities began towing cars and fining app-based drivers in March. While enforcement has been spotty, airport authorities announced that they’d deploy additional National Guard personnel to bolster the dragnet this week.
[…]
The crackdown intensified following an early March meeting between licensed taxi companies and national airport authorities. The firms requested help from the National Guard in response to ongoing construction that has crowded out pickup areas at airports in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, the three host cities.
It’s the age old problem that cab drivers have to be licensed and vetted up the wazoo, while ride-share drivers can be any person with an app and a car. Why should the folks who did things the right way lose money because of an app that treats its drivers like strangers rather than employees? All Mexico is doing is asking Uber to adhere to the rules and permits set down by the airport, but following rules isn’t disrupting enough.
Reverse: I’m confident this will be the new big drivetrain!
A lot of cool stuff happened in history on this day, including breaking ground on the Monza Raceway in 1922 and the first jet-propelled fighter for the Allies took the skies in 1941. But as cool as those historical nuggets are, none can compare to the unveiling of the Chrysler Turbine car in 1962. Jet power had a hold on people’s minds as the most technologically advance engineering at the time. While other cars donned fins and jet fighter names, Chrysler said “f**k it, we jet-power a whole car.” It wasn’t a great idea and Chrysler ended up crushing most of the 55 examples built. Surviving examples are in museums and private collections.
The Fuel Up
Trump just ended two days in China where he had hoped to get Beijing to put pressure on Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, but it sounds like it didn’t quite work that way. Gas prices haven’t moved much since yesterday, but crude prices are climbing back up, with both WTI Crude Oil Futures and Brent Crude rising three dollars each to $104 and $108 respectively.
AAA
Currently, the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular in the U.S. is $4.52 — down a whole penny from yesterday.
On The Radio: The Mountain Goats – The Fall of The High School Running Back
You thought I was referencing the Notorious BIG in the first part of TMS didn’t you? Sike! I’m not the cool. This song taught me several things; what a running back does, what a successful season for that running back looks like, and the fact that selling acid is a bad idea and selling it to a cop is a worse one.
