Happy Wednesday! It’s April 15, 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, we’re looking at Uber investing in robotaxis, and Nissan pushing back against tariffs on Mexican production. We’ll also look at Lucid getting some new cash in, and Honda recalling minivans.
1st Gear: Uber will spend $10 billion on robotaxis and their makers
Uber has done its best to kill taxis, and now it’s turning on drivers — starting with the drivers on its own app. The company is putting $10 billion into buying either robotaxi fleets or stakes in robotaxi companies, in hopes of cutting those pesky drivers out of its profit margins. From Reuters:
Uber has committed more than $10 billion to buying thousands of autonomous vehicles and taking stakes in their developers, breaking from its asset-light “gig economy” business model to avoid disruption from robotaxis, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Uber did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Uber is positioning itself as a marketplace for multiple robotaxi operators, and has partnered across much of the autonomous vehicle industry, including with, Baidu, Rivian and Lucid, and has outlined plans to launch robotaxi services in at least 28 cities by 2028.
These deals put Uber on track to invest more than $2.5 billion in equity stakes and spend over $7.5 billion on robotaxi fleets in the next few years, FT reported citing their calculations based on analyst estimates and people familiar with Uber’s deals. The agreements are contingent on its partners hitting certain deployment milestones.
Between Uber and Waymo, we may soon reach a point where we can hire a rideshare without a cent of our fare ever having to go to a real human person. Won’t that be nice? When no one can afford groceries any more, because we’ve all been made redundant by the companies that built their profits on our labor?
2nd Gear: Someone finally told Nissan about tariffs on Mexican-built cars
Nissan imports some cars to the U.S. market from Mexico, but it seems the company has suddenly woken up from a yearlong coma to find that doing so now costs money in tariffs. After weighing the financials, it seems Nissan has decided the most profitable route forward is to lobby against those tariffs. From Automotive News:
Nissan Motor Co. has studied moving production of its Sentra sedan and Kicks crossover from Mexico to the U.S. to avoid a 25 percent tariff, but the economics don’t add up, senior executives said.
“These two products are sourced from Mexico because of the affordability requirements of the segment,” CEO Ivan Espinosa told Automotive News at a media event here.
“At the moment, it’s not feasible to move them to the U.S.,” he said. “We need to continue working on the cost competitiveness.”
Nissan is aggressively cutting internal costs, optimizing its lineup and increasing U.S. content in its Mexico-built vehicles to improve affordability in the cutthroat sub-$30,000 segment.
The Trump administration’s 25 percent tariff on imports from Mexico is “unfair,” particularly compared with the 15 percent charged on vehicles from Europe and South Korea, Nissan Americas Chairman Christian Meunier said.
These tariffs aren’t new, so it’s not really clear why Nissan is only now putting up a fight. Maybe it took the company a while to run the numbers, or maybe everyone behind the scenes finally got a backlog of newspapers that had been going to the wrong address for a year. Either way, it’s an interesting start to the Nissan Century of Greatness — but if it gets us a new XTerra, I can’t complain about the methods.
3rd Gear: Lucid gets a new influx of cash from Saudi Arabia and Uber
Lucid makes some high-dollar luxury vehicles — I had my first experience with the brand’s cars last week, and they’re certainly good — but the company still needs a bit of extra investor help to keep its feet on solid ground. Enter the Saudi Public Investment Fund, and Uber. Hey, a callback to first gear! From Automotive News:
Lucid Group Inc. named a new CEO and announced $750 million of fresh investment from its two biggest backers as the electric car maker looks to shore up operations at a crucial juncture.
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Separately Tuesday, Lucid said it received a commitment for another $550 million from an affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the EV maker’s majority shareholder. Lucid also expanded its relationship with robotaxi partner Uber Technologies Inc., which will invest another $200 million and purchase more vehicles than it initially agreed to last year.
Carmakers partnering with AV-interested rideshare companies always confuses me from a business standpoint, since those two have antagonistic goals: One wants to sell as many cars as possible, the other wants to perform the duties of an owned car with the smallest viable fleet. Uber robotaxis would mean lower vehicle ownership, but it seems Lucid is content to take the money for now. Who cares about long-term results when there are quarterly profits to be had?
4th Gear: Honda is recalling 441,000 Odysseys for airbag issues
Honda is recalling Odysseys for airbag issues, but they’re not related to Takata — or, in fact, any hardware fault with the airbags at all. Instead, a software issue can apparently cause the side airbags not to deploy. From Reuters:
Honda is recalling 440,830 Odyssey minivans in the U.S. over a software error that may unexpectedly deploy airbags, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Wednesday.
Here are some details:A software programming error can cause the side and side-curtain airbags to deploy unexpectedly, according to the auto regulator.
The agency said that dealers will reprogram the software, as required.
If you drive an Odyssey, head on over to NHTSA’s recall checker and punch in your VIN. Maybe don’t be in the car while you do it.
Reverse: Jackie Robinson Day
A Brooklyn Dodgers player! Greatest city in the world, baby.
The Fuel Up
Prices are continuing to drop! Surely this will keep up unabated forever. Everyone buy Hummer H2s right now.
On The Radio: Two Door Cinema Club – ‘Cigarettes in the Theatre’
It’s gorgeous out, which means it’s Two Door Cinema Club season. Yesterday was honestly a little much on the heat front, I came home from the gym and went straight to laying naked on my bed in front of my air conditioner. I may have to invest in this newfangled invention called “shorts.”
