The States Want Their EV Funding Back

Good morning! It’s Thursday, May 8, 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 a states’ suit against the Trump administration over EVs, and Mitsubishi’s possible plans to make cars here. Plus, we’ll investigate the tariff hit Toyota’s profits will take in 2025, and Tesla’s odd situation in India. 

The Trump administration has positioned itself as stunningly regressive on energy and climate, from suspending federal EV funds to pushing coal and oil. But while the federal government is apparently full-speed-ahead on ending our planet’s habitability as fast as possible, some of the states aren’t quite sold on the concept. In fact, they’re suing over it. From Automotive News:

California’s attorney general said his state and 16 others are suing President Donald Trump for suspending a $5 billion federal funding program for electric car chargers, arguing his directives to slash U.S. subsidies for plug-in vehicles since taking office are unlawful.

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The lawsuit, filed May 7 in Seattle, also includes the District of Columbia. The suit said the action “will devastate the ability of states to build the charging infrastructure necessary for making EVs accessible to more consumers, combating climate change, reducing other harmful pollution, and supporting the states’ green economies.”

I’ve long said, only somewhat hyperbolically, that the maximum age to serve in government should be 60. Not for any ageist reason, but because I think if you’re making world-altering decisions as your day job you should have to spend a few decades living in the world you wrought without the insulation of a government position. Reaping what you sowed, and all. Of course, that may not be all bad for someone as financially insulated as Trump — after all, the reigning theory is that his pro-climate-change stance actually goes hand in hand with his interest in Greenland.

As Arctic ice melts, it creates new shipping routes controlled by the nearest nations. Accelerating climate change would open the Northern Sea Route faster, and control over Canada and Greenland’s territories would allow the U.S. to impose fees on that route. The fact that it would likely displace or kill millions of Americans through flooding, hurricanes, and other climate change-fueled natural disasters doesn’t appear to be part of the equation. 

Mitsubishi is the smallest of the major Japanese automakers, and that’s not an enviable position to be in when a major automotive market like the United States starts implementing tariffs. So, the company is turning to its bigger friend Nissan in hopes of borrowing some U.S. production capacity. From Automotive News: 

Japan’s smallest global automaker said it is weighing joint production of utility vehicles stateside through joint investment in one of partner Nissan Motor Co.’s U.S. assembly plants.

CEO Takao Kato teased the development May 8 while announcing financial results for the fiscal year ended March 31. But he declined to give details saying the idea is still taking shape.

“Since nothing concrete has been decided yet, I would like to refrain from commenting on specific models, the start of production, or investment, as of today,” Kato said, calling it a potential “win-win situation” for Nissan and Mitsubishi. “But I believe this is a very forward-looking project for both companies to invest together by utilizing Nissan’s capacity at its U.S. plant.”

If you’d told me to lay out predictions at the start of this tariff era, I wouldn’t have put Mitsubishi down for American production. It’s not yet set in stone, but I wouldn’t have guessed it would even get this far — I’d be less surprised to see Mitsubishi take a page from Suzuki’s book and refocus on other markets. We’ll see what happens. 

While Japan’s smallest automaker is making plans, its largest automaker is preparing to batten down the hatches. Toyota is estimating a full trillion-yen hit to its profits for this financial year, or just under seven billion dollars. That’s no small hit to take, even for a company the size of Toyota. From Reuters:

Toyota Motor expects profit to decline by a fifth in the current financial year, it said on Thursday, as weakness in the U.S. dollar and the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs weigh on the world’s largest automaker.

In the latest example of how global trade disruption is hitting bottom lines, the world’s top-selling car manufacturer said it expected operating income to total 3.8 trillion yen ($26 billion) in the year to March 2026, versus 4.8 trillion yen in the year that just ended.

Toyota’s no stranger to dealing with this administration, and it’s entirely possible the automaker will be able to cut a deal with the White House through back channels — other automakers and nations have implied similar negotiations are already underway. 

India is a notoriously difficult automotive market to penetrate, given the country’s isolationist policies, but Tesla is finally starting to crack the nation’s shell. Perfect timing, then, for the company’s head of Indian operations to leave. Without a successor in place. This’ll be fine. From Bloomberg:

Tesla Inc.’s India country head, Prashanth Menon, has resigned just as the carmaker firms up plans to enter the country with its first retail outlets in Mumbai and Delhi, according to people familiar with the matter.

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Tesla’s China teams will oversee India operations, with no immediate successor named, the people said. The rejigging of Tesla’s leadership in India comes just as it appears to edge closer to launching in the world’s third-largest car market.

It makes sense to give India over to the China team for the time being, given that the United States side of the company is likely up to its ears in tariffs, but it is a bit surprising that CEO Elon Musk isn’t more hands-on with things in the country. 

I had “The Golden Girls” on last night, while working on a review, and I happened to catch an episode that had a major character who was trans — and the show wasn’t weird about it at all. No jokes, no misgendering, just a full trans man character in a show in 1987. The weirdest the show got was Rose asking some questions about phalloplasty, in her generally airheaded Rose way. How’d we get from there to here?

I wouldn’t call “Genghis Khan” the best music video out there (that honor still goes to “Shelter” by Porter Robinson and Madeon) but it’s certainly one of my favorites.