Good morning! It’s Friday, April 25, 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 talking about the safety protocols the Trump administration will let autonomous vehicle makers skirt in order to get more of their cars on the road as well as how tariffs are massacring the Audi Q5‘s price. We’re also checking out how Waymo plans to offer robotaxis for personal ownership in the future and Toyota’s plan to buy out a $42 billion supplier.
It’s another busy Friday in the car world. Buckle up.
1st Gear: Self-driving vehicles are shedding their safety nets
The Trump administration says it plans to speed up to the deployment of self-driving vehicles on public roads by getting rid of some of the safety requirements that kept folks like you and me safe. They also want to ease requirements for reporting safety incidents. Great. I’m sure this has nothing to do with the plans for autonomous vehicles Tesla CEO Elon Musk laid out at an earnings call earlier this week or the fact the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration probed Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software while President Biden was in office.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the new framework would be a big boost for U.S. autonomous vehicle makers competing with Chinese rivals. Here’s what the revised rules will now allow to operate. From Reuters:
[They]Â will allow some autonomous vehicles that do not comply with federal safety standards such as having rearview mirrors to operate on U.S. roads. The rules will also allow carmakers to report less severe crashes monthly, and add a property damage reporting threshold for less severe crashes involving self-driving vehicles.
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As part of the revision, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it would expand a program to exempt some self-driving vehicles from safety requirements and streamline the reporting of safety incidents for advanced driver assistance and self-driving systems.
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The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing nearly all major automakers, praised the USDOT.
The industry has “been hamstrung by government inaction … This announcement shows the administration is also proceeding with a sense of urgency, so we don’t cede AV leadership to China and other countries,” it said.
Not everyone is a fan of the Trump Administration’s decision. Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety told Reuters it was disappointed in the U.S. DoT, saying it “chose to dilute, instead of enhance, the reporting requirements.” The group also said it was worried about the safety exemptions because “without safeguards, safety regulations, transparency and accountability, the success of AV deployment is imperiled at best and could result in deadly consequences at worst.”
2nd Gear: Tariffs are making the Audi Q5’s life hell
The Audi Q5 is the German automaker’s best-selling vehicle, and it’s caught right in the middle of President Trump’s tariff fiasco. Since it’s built at Audi’s plant in Mexico — but not complicated with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade, it’s getting a massive price hike to go along with its third-generation redesign which is set to go on sale in the U.S. in May.
The Q5 is facing a daunting number of tariffs. The compact crossover has to deal with a 25% tariff on imported autos and the non-U.S.-made parts they contain. It also is subject to a 25% levy on shipments from Mexico and a 2.5% tax for not complying with the free-trade agreement Trump signed in his first term. From Automotive News:
One consultant told Bloomberg that the Q5 would be unsellable in the U.S. because of the tariffs. However, sources within the company told Automotive News that Audi is committed to bringing the Q5 to market and making it attractive for customers.
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“The relief for Audi, and the Q5 especially, would be the greatest if those tariffs would be changed to what they were originally,” Volkswagen Group of America CEO Kjell Gruner said during an April 16 roundtable at the New York auto show.
Because of this mess, the Q5 is a hell of a lot more expensive than it was before. The redesigned Q5 starts at $53,495 (including destination), and the Sportback starts at $57,195. The previous Q5 started at just $46,695. SQ5s will also see a price increase to go along with their more powerful motors. The regular SQ5 will now start at $66,095 — a $6,400 year-over-year increase, and the SQ5 Sportback will now start at $68,895 — a $5,800 jump.
3rd Gear: Waymo wants to offer personal ownership
One day, you might be able to buy your very own Waymo self-driving vehicle, according to the company’s CEO. There’s no word on any sort of timetable for something like this. I mean, as it stands, there are just 700 vehicles in the company’s fleet, so it’s a long way away from actually selling cars to people. That being said, it is ahead of its competition since it’s the only unsupervised robotaxi company that actually collects fairs.
Of course, this news comes on the heels of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s comments about Waymo during a nightmarish earnings call earlier this week. From Reuters:
Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently commented on the higher cost of Waymo cars compared with Tesla’s.
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“Teslas probably cost a quarter, 20%, of what a Waymo costs and made in very high volume,” Musk said after Tesla earnings on Tuesday. “I don’t see anyone being able to compete with Tesla at present.”
Musk has bet Tesla’s future on robotaxis, and has said owners will eventually be able to make money by listing their vehicles on a ride-hailing app.
It’s far too soon to tell if Teslas will actually be cheaper than a theoretical Waymo car you can buy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case. There’s a good reason for that, though: Waymo is far more serious about safety than Tesla. The Alphabet-owned company uses a combination of cameras and advanced sensors, like lidar, to create a three-dimensional map of the road. That multi-pronged approach means there are redundancies built into the car. On the other hand, Tesla depends solely on cameras and AI to see the world around it. Sure, it helps to keep costs in check, but that comes at the expense of safety.
4th Gear: Toyota may spend $42 billion to buy supplier
Toyota’s chairman, Akio Toyoda, has proposed the massive buyout of supplier Toyota Industries in an effort to consolidate his grasp of Japan’s biggest business empire as other companies across the country look to merge with each other. The proposal values Toyota Industries — which makes looms for the textile industry and parts for Toyota’s cars — at about $42 billion. That number works out to roughly a 40% premium over its market capitalization. Damn.
After receiving the proposal Toyota Industries — founded by Toyoda’s great-grandfather — formed a special committee and hired advisors to review its viability. The relationship between Toyota Motors, Toyota Industries and Toyoda himself is a strange one. From Bloomberg:
Although Akio is chairman of Toyota Motor, his direct ownership of the company stands at less than 1%, while Toyota Industries has a 9.1% stake in the carmaker. The buyout would bolster Akio’s holding and influence over the broader Toyota group, which includes suppliers and stakes in other businesses, including rival carmakers.
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The two companies are still deeply intertwined. Toyota Motor and its affiliates own about 38% of the shares in Toyota Industries, while Toyota Fudosan Co., the real estate company that counts Akio as its chairman, owns 5%.
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While now smaller and lower-profile than the auto giant, Toyota Industries has a hallowed position in the Toyoda family lore.
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Akio, 68, stepped aside as Toyota Motor’s chief executive officer in 2023 after leading the family business for 14 years, handing the job over to then-Lexus chief Koji Sato. Even so, the grandson of the carmaker’s founder wields outsize influence over the company.
Toyoda’s support has dwindled in recent years, and it’s not exactly clear if a successful buyout of Toyota Industries would change his relationship with the automaker’s board.
Reverse: 1:23:45
On this date in 1986, the worst nuclear power plant disaster of all time happened at the Chornobyl power plant in the Soviet Union. It killed 32 people and burned dozens more in just the first few days following the accident, but the true death toll is still unknown.Â
If you want to learn more about Chornobyl, you really should check out HBO’s excellent miniseries on the disaster. It’s some of the best TV you’ll ever see, and it’s apparently pretty damn accurate as well. If you’re more into reading, though, here’s some of what History.com says about the events leading to the explosion:
On the evening of April 25, 1986, a group of engineers began an electrical-engineering experiment on the Number 4 reactor. The engineers, who had little knowledge of reactor physics, wanted to see if the reactor’s turbine could run emergency water pumps on inertial power.
As part of their poorly designed experiment, the engineers disconnected the reactor’s emergency safety systems and its power-regulating system. Next, they compounded this recklessness with a series of mistakes: They ran the reactor at a power level so low that the reaction became unstable, and then removed too many of the reactor’s control rods in an attempt to power it up again. The reactor’s output rose to more than 200 megawatts but was proving increasingly difficult to control. Nevertheless, at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, the engineers continued with their experiment and shut down the turbine generator to see if its inertial spinning would power the reactor’s water pumps. In fact, it did not adequately power the water pumps, and without cooling water the power level in the reactor surged.
To prevent meltdown, the operators reinserted all the 200-some control rods into the reactor at once. The control rods were meant to reduce the reaction but had a design flaw: graphite tips. So, before the control rod’s five meters of absorbent material could penetrate the core, 200 graphite tips simultaneously entered, thus facilitating the reaction and causing an explosion that blew off the heavy steel and concrete lid of the reactor.Â
On The Radio: Lorde – What Was That
Folks, it’s officially Lorde summer. Please act accordingly.
