Tesla Is Getting Desperate In The UK

Happy Monday! It’s August 18, 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’s decline in the UK, as well as Germany’s negotiating around a U.S. trade deal. We’ll also look at how auto industry insiders are feeling about the future, and the air quality concerns with EV charging. 

Tesla’s ship has been taking on water for quite a while now, as the company’s CEO has peeled back his centrist mask and EV buyers around the world have roundly shunned his personal politics. The UK is no exception, and Tesla is now resorting to desperate measures to move cars in the country. From Reuters:

British motorists can now lease a Tesla electric vehicle for just over half of what they would have paid a year ago, The Times reported on Monday, citing industry sources.

Tesla has been forced to offer discounts of up to 40% to car leasing companies to shift more units, the report said.

The discounts are also due to the lack of storage space for Tesla vehicles in the UK, the report said.

Tesla UK is a low-cost volume play now, aiming to sell more units rather than make more money on each unit sold. There simply isn’t enough space on the island to store all the Teslas that buyers don’t want otherwise. 

Countries around the world are negotiating shiny new trade deals with the United States’ mad king, and the European Union has come to at least some bits of an agreement. Germany, in the midst of the EU making a deal, doesn’t want to put pen to paper until the U.S. proves it’ll follow through on what’s already been agreed. From Reuters:

Germany said on Monday that the United States would have to follow through on agreed lower tariffs on Europe-made cars before a wider agreement on trade can be finalised in writing.

“In particular, car tariffs must be reduced quickly as agreed. We are also aware of the considerable burden on the export-orientated economy. … Our role here is to continue to fully support the European Commission in this process,” a German government spokesman said in a press conference.

Car exports are big for Germany, and an agreement-free tariff situation would be untenable for the nation. No wonder companies are looking to other markets, like South Africa, to de-prioritize the United States. 

Automotive News unveiled a shiny new survey yesterday, in which it asked folks across the automotive world how they think the rest of the year will look. The answer? Pretty universally bad. From Automotive News:

In its initial soundings, from surveys completed at the end of the second quarter, the Auto Industry Confidence Index returned an overall industry score of 55.5.

Within the four major industry components, financial services firms had the rosiest outlook for their current and future conditions and was the only sector to score above 60. Not surprisingly, suppliers had the least optimistic assessment of both their businesses and the industry but were still slightly above neutral.

Tellingly, all four sectors of the industry had something in common: Respondents from each felt far better about the industry and their company’s current performance than they did about prospects for the coming six months. Both the supplier and franchised dealer sector scores for the second half of 2025 were pessimistic — that is, below a neutral score of 50. The indexed score of respondents from the automaker sector were barely above the midpoint, while financial services providers were most optimistic about future business conditions.

Predicting the future is tough right now, given how capricious our leadership seems to be. Figuring out how people feel about the future, though, is simpler: They feel bad. 

EVs are a necessary half-measure towards keeping our planet habitable, but they’re not perfect. Their weight sends more tire debris out into the world, their lithium supply chains can be fraught with human rights violations, and they still don’t get around the whole issue of a car being a horribly inefficient way to move a single person. Now, there’s a new issue: The chargers themselves pollute nearby air. From Automotive News:

Hundreds of public fast chargers are popping up across the U.S. to serve electric-vehicle drivers seeking a cleaner alternative to gasoline-powered cars. But they come with a surprising risk: Charging stations create air pollution.

While EVs contribute vastly less to air pollution than combustion-powered vehicles, fast-charging stations are what a recent study called an “overlooked source of air pollution.”

…

The emissions are likely tied to the fans used in direct current fast chargers’ power cabinets. While they help keep equipment cool, the recent study indicates they likely have the unintended side effect of kicking up particles from tires, brakes and dust into the air.

…

Gas-powered cars are still a much more potent health risk, both because of their emissions and gas stations’ environmental impact, said Joe Allen, an air quality expert and professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who was not involved in the study. Research shows fueling stations are major sources of volatile organic compounds, a category of chemicals that includes the carcinogen benzene, while internal combustion vehicles produce smog-forming pollutants. Greenhouse gas emissions also adversely affect health due to their influence on climate change.

Can we just try trains and busses? Just give it a shot. I know we’re not fans of those in this country, but maybe we can’t knock them until we really try them. 

At some point in my life, I heard an entirely reasonable explanation of where the Roanoke settlers went. Fortunately, I can’t remember what it was, so I get to live in the reality where it’s some creepy mystical thing. 

I couldn’t tell you why, but today is a Tallahassee day. Please tune your listening accordingly.