Happy Friday! It’s August 16, 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 how the loss of fuel economy credits is hitting Rivian, as well as Stellantis’ plans for EVs in China. We’ll also look at Toyota’s goal to bring EVs to South Africa, and Ford’s latest recall.
1st Gear: Fuel economy credits are dead, and Rivian’s out $100 million
It’s open season for fuel economy in the United States, with automakers now allowed to build whatever makes them the most money with zero regard for its impact on the planet. This is bad for anyone who plans on continuing to live on this planet, but it’s particularly bad for automakers like Rivian that rely on selling fuel economy credits to less-efficient automakers. From the Wall Street Journal:
Electric truck maker Rivian says the rollback of fuel economy rules in the U.S. is holding up $100 million of revenue, a sign of how changes to automotive policy under the Trump administration are starting to hurt the electric-vehicle industry.
Rivian and its rivals have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue selling credits tied to the nation’s fuel economy rules. But after the Trump administration removed penalties for violating those standards, the nation’s top automotive regulator stopped issuing paperwork necessary to finalize those credits, leaving EV makers in the lurch.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the change was part of moves to overturn Biden-era EV rules and address Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, known as CAFE. “NHTSA is focusing on fixing CAFE standards to make cars more affordable again,” a NHTSA spokesperson said. “When that process is complete, we will return to issuing compliance letters to manufacturers.”
Most of us are probably familiar with these credits from the days when Tesla made its money on them. It took years for that company to actually see a fiscal quarter in the black without the assistance of those credits, and now Rivian’s in the same place — only, suddenly, without the credits.
2nd Gear: Chinese officials want Stellantis to get cracking on electrification
Newly minted Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa is making the global rounds, shaking hands and kissing babies to ensure all of the company’s important contacts can place his face to his name. This included a trip to China recently, where a local official asked Filosa to please get Stellantis’ ass in gear around electrification in the country. From Automotive News:
A top government official in central China’s Hubei province is urging Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa to speed up the company’s transition to electrified vehicles in China.
Filosa, who was named CEO of Stellantis June 23, visited Hubei’s provincial capital of Wuhan in late July, according to a release from the Hubei provincial government.
In a July 31 meeting in Wuhan with Filosa, Wang Zhonglin, secretary of the Chinese Communist Party for Hubei, expressed hope that Stellantis can invest more in Hubei to accelerate its shift to intelligent and connected electrified vehicles, the Hubei government said in the release on its website.
Stellantis operates a joint venture with Chinese automaker Dongfeng, as all automakers that entered the country before 2022 had to, but that joint venture only sells a single EV. That’s simply not enough in China’s electrification-hungry market.
3rd Gear: Toyota is bringing 3 EVs to South Africa
Toyota’s been slow on the EV uptake, having been lapped by everyone from EV upstarts like Rivian to lumbering, traditional behemoths like General Motors on actually getting electric cars into consumer hands. It seems the company has learned its lesson with the U.S. market, though, because it seems loath to repeat the same mistake in South Africa. From Reuters:
Toyota plans to introduce three fully-electric models in South Africa in 2026, a senior executive said on Thursday, entering a nascent EV market where Chinese rivals such as BYD are already competing with European carmakers.
Volvo currently dominates EV sales in South Africa, followed by BMW and Mercedes-Benz, but Chinese EV makers are starting to flood the market too as they seek new markets amid restrictions on exports to the United States and Europe.
…
“We’re launching battery electric vehicles at the beginning of 2026, so we will have three new battery electric vehicles,” Toyota South Africa CEO Andrew Kirby told Reuters on the sidelines of an auto components conference, without providing further details.
Those “three new battery electric vehicles” could simply be new to the South African market, but perhaps they’ll be entirely clean-sheet vehicles added to Toyota’s global lineup. It remains to be seen whether we’ll ever see them, though — this entire South Africa push is meant to circumvent U.S. tariffs by simply looking at other markets. If only someone had predicted that this would happen.
4th Gear: If you’re playing the Ford recall drinking game, take a sip
I’m not sure what’s happening over at Ford, but the company just issued its 102nd recall so far in 2025. The company makes up 40% of all NHTSA recalls in the United States for the year, and it’s well ahead of the total recalls from second-place automaker Stellantis (sitting at 21). This latest recall concerns 21,000 Mustangs, Mustang Mach-Es, and Lincoln Nautiluses, which may have issues with their head or tail lights. From USA Today:
Ford has issued a recall for over 21,000 vehicles due to an issue that may cause headlights to malfunction, increasing the risk of a crash.
Impacted vehicle models include the 2025 Lincoln Nautilus, 2025 Mustang Mach E and 2025 Mustang vehicles, Ford said in an announcement on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) website.
According to Ford, which owns Lincoln, the LED Driver Modules may contain a device that can cause the low-beam and high-beam headlights, daytime running lights, front position lights and front turn signals to malfunction.
If you’re playing the Ford Recall Drinking Game, something I presume exists, I’m now concerned for two reasons. The first is that there have to be more interesting things to do drinking games about, but the second is simple concern for your physical health. I certainly haven’t had 102 drinks this year.
Reverse: The Scottish play
It’s kind of weird that we have such an exact date for this, isn’t it? There’s no reason we wouldn’t, it’s a real historical event that came long after the creation of our modern calendar, but it’s also a Shakespeare play. Do we have a date for when Alonso’s ship washed up on Prospero’s island?
On The Radio: Wombo – ‘Danger in Fives’
I can’t get over how much Wombo’s vocalist sounds like Clementine Creevy from Cherry Glazerr, but I also love Cherry Glazerr and I’m more than happy to hear more bands with this sound.
