GM And Hyundai Team Up, But Not For EVs

Happy Thursday! It’s August 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, we’re looking at the new collaboration between General Motors and Hyundai, as well as how Trump’s tariffs will hit union auto workers in the pocketbook later this year. We’ll also look at Subaru’s reconsidered EV plans, and Toyota’s new tariff-defying factory.

It’s a weird time to be selling cars right now. You’ve got trade wars to deal with, an ever-shifting regulatory environment, and a bunch of Chinese automakers as competition who are just too damn good at their jobs. What’s an American or South Korean carmaker to do? Well, apparently, team up with the other. From Reuters:

General Motors and Hyundai Motor on Wednesday outlined plans to develop five vehicles together as they seek to lower costs amid growing competition from nimble Chinese rivals, although some analysts questioned whether the plan would work.

Four of the vehicles — a compact SUV/car/pickup, and a mid-size pickup — are targeted for launch in Central and South America in 2028 and support both internal combustion and hybrid powertrains.

…

“The partnership itself is a win-win strategy, since GM can learn the hybrid technology from Hyundai while Hyundai can use the relationship with GM as leverage for trade negotiations with the United States,” said Teddi Kim, head of auto research firm Mirae-Mobility Research & Services.

The cars of this partnership aren’t intended for our market, but Hyundai wants to use this to look good to the Trump administration. Maybe that’s part of why this new partnership will face off against Chinese EVs with old-fashioned ICE and hybrid vehicles, to appease a ruler who thoroughly loathes electrification. Or, maybe both companies are just prioritizing quarterly sales numbers over the planet lasting another quarter. 

The United Auto Workers have a fascinating contract clause: Bonuses tied to company performance. Unfortunately for the UAW, those bonuses may plummet this year as automakers take the hit from Trump’s trade war. From Automotive News:

Import tariffs costing the Detroit 3 billions of dollars as well as other rising expenses are threatening to shrink profit-sharing checks for their factory workers to the lowest average in more than a decade.

Hourly UAW members at Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Stellantis receive the bonuses based on their employer’s prior-year financial performance.

The payouts have reached record levels recently — topping $10,000 at all three automakers last year — but are on pace to drop at least $3,000 to $5,000 based on the companies’ first-half results and their latest guidance for the rest of 2025.

Workers at Stellantis, which lost nearly $2.7 billion from January through June, are in danger of getting nothing for the first time since 2010.

This form of profit sharing, where the workers who actually keep the company running get a cut of the profits that the suit-and-tie bigwigs would otherwise nab for themselves, is a good way to remind the folks upstairs who’s really important to the Big Three. An empty suit is easily replaced, the person bolting seats into your F-150 is crucial. Have you considered unionizing your workplace?

Subaru’s big on the outdoors, moreso than any other car brand. The company wants you to get out there, to hike and bike and own a dog, but it seems to be turning a new leaf about actually keeping the environment itself in good shape — where the company once promised to electrify every vehicle in its lineup, it’s now walking back that promise. From Automotive News:

Import-reliant Subaru dodged about $1 billion in potential tariffs thanks to the dial down of U.S. duties, but the Japanese carmaker is still bracing for profits to fall by half this year.

Amid the weakening earnings, CEO Atsushi Osaki also said the company was re-examining the timing and allocation of its ¥1.5 trillion ($10.4 billion) investment in electrification.

…

Subaru Corp. has previously said it wants to electrify all its vehicles — with either standard or plug-in hybrid setups or full battery-electric systems — in the first half of the 2030s.

Now it says it expects to achieve a 50 percent all-electric lineup sometime after 2030.

This is once again an example of the classic issue: ICE vehicles are more profitable in the short term, EVs keep a habitable planet around longer. Every time a company picks one of these over the other, you can just take it as shorthand for the things that company cares about. Subaru’s two and a half EVs, all rebadged Toyotas, are apparently just too much too fast. 

Trump’s tariffs have rattled nearly every automaker that does business in the U.S., but there’s one that seems unfazed: Toyota. The company is putting its cash towards spinning up another factory, but not where you’d expect — it’s adding production capacity in Japan, which will mean a further tariff hit for bringing cars to the States. From Automotive News:

Toyota said it will build a new assembly plant in Japan even as it braces for a ¥1.4 trillion ($9.68 billion) tariff bill for importing vehicles to the U.S. this year.

The new plant, announced Aug. 7, comes as the world’s largest automaker predicts that, despite the added cost of tariffs, its full-year operating profit will decline by only a third.

Even with the extra burden of import duties, Toyota still expects to reap a respectable 6.6 percent profit margin and book annual operating profit of more than $22 billion.

…

“Since we see a very unstable global business environment, Toyota’s mother country is Japan, and whatever happens, we have to make sure that we are able to continue our business, continue our employment and develop people and our operations,” Hiroyuki Ueda, chief officer of external and public affairs, said of the plans while announcing the latest financial results.

It’s very easy to read this as Hiroyuki Ueda thinking the tariffs simple won’t last, but it’s also a nice reminder that the United States is not the center of the universe. Other things are happening, we are not the end all be all of everything. I ask again: How long until we start to see foreign automakers pull out of the States entirely?

I wasn’t there, did Vietnam go well? 

I fully forgot they were making a new ‘Tron’ movie. As much as I love Daft Punk’s score/soundtrack for ‘Legacy,’ Nine Inch Nails is bringing a grit to ‘Ares’ that I’m into so far.