Elon Musk's Far-Right Politics Have Cost Tesla Millions

Happy Tuesday! It's October 28, 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 the effects of Elon Musk's far-right politics on Tesla sales, as well as the F-150 as a symbol of American trade. We'll also look at Ford's latest production plans for China, and an investigation into more engine failures at GM.

Elon Musk has spent the past few years falling down a far-right rabbit hole, moving from being a weird-but-harmless dork who wanted to save the environment to actively developing an encyclopedia that accepts fringe right-wing narratives as fact and who keeps trying to make the world's most racist AI — a real feat when AI is by default pretty racist. Anyway, it turns out the whole "rapid descent into fascism" thing isn't super popular with the kinds of progressives who generally buy electric cars, and Musk's image has been really hurting Tesla. From Reuters:

Tesla CEO Elon Musk's polarizing political actions since acquiring Twitter, later rebranded X, in 2022 dramatically hurt the automaker's U.S. sales, underscoring how deeply its fortunes are intertwined with the billionaire's persona.

The findings quantify for the first time how the political actions of the world's wealthiest person – including his role in U.S. President Donald Trump's administration – may have cost Tesla billions in lost vehicle sales while benefiting rival electric carmakers.

Tesla's U.S. sales would have been between 67% and 83% higher, or about 1 million to 1.26 million additional vehicles, from October 2022 to April 2025, had it not been for what researchers call the "Musk partisan effect", according to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research by Yale University economists.

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The NBER paper said Musk's actions also hampered California's progress toward its zero-emissions vehicle goals, concluding that the state would likely have met its 2026 targets "had it not been for the Musk partisan effect".

Alienating not only your company's core audience, but the very core of human decency itself, has not yet proved to be a winning business strategy. This report is unlikely to change Musk's views or actions, though. 

President Donald Trump wants foreign countries to buy more from the United States, but he doesn't seem to have a great grasp of why they're not buying things now. Take the Ford F-150, which Trump recently suggested Japan start importing in bulk — despite the country's smaller roads, packed cities, and general inhospitability to such enormous cars. Nations like Japan, though, are still willing to buy the truck as a show of goodwill. From Reuters:

Long associated with American ruggedness, burly pickup trucks such as Ford's top-selling F-150 have now become a symbol of international trade talks, showing how far countries such as Japan will go to win over U.S. President Donald Trump.

When Trump met Japan's new prime minister and first female premier, Sanae Takaichi, in Tokyo on Tuesday, an F-150 was parked prominently outside the Akasaka Palace venue.

Big U.S. pickup trucks are a rare sight in the Japanese capital, where the streets are narrow and turns can be painfully tight.

But the placement of the F-150, not even typically available for sale in Japan, sent a clear message about Tokyo's willingness to buy more cars from its ally, an issue that has been a sore point for Trump for decades.

Last week Reuters reported that Takaichi's government was working on a package to buy F-150 trucks, an idea originally floated by Trump, as well as soybeans and gas.

Japan will buy a few F-150s to operate as snow plows! We did it. We saved international trade forever. 

Ford's been doing well in China, and now the company is looking to make further investments in the country. That starts with new products, a pair of electrified Bronco Sports (Broncos Sport?) made in China, for China. One will be fully electric, the other will have a gasoline range extender. From Automotive News:

Ford Motor Co. notched a profit for the ninth-straight quarter in China as exports from the world's biggest auto market bolster its bottom line.

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On Oct. 25, Ford China also announced that locally built electrified Ford Bronco SUVs will arrive in the market "soon." The vehicle was exhibited at an auto show held in the southwest China city of Chengdu in August.

According to information Ford China disclosed at that event, the vehicle will be made available in battery electric and range-extender versions.

The full-electric variant, fitted with dual motors and a 105.4-kilowatt-hour battery pack, delivers a range of 650 kilometers (404 miles) on one charge, under the China Light Vehicle Test Cycle, or CLTC, which is considered more lenient than the U.S. EPA cycle.

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The range-extender features a 1.5-liter turbocharged gasoline engine, dual motors and a 43.7kWh battery pack. It has a range of 220 km (137 miles) on batteries only. With one tank of gasoline and fully charged batteries, it can drive for 1,220 km (758 miles).

These new crossovers actually seem pretty cool, and it would be neat to get them on our shores someday. Given current trade relations with China, that's unlikely, but we can dream. 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is looking into even more GM engine failures, widening its scope to include another 286,051 Silverados, Sierras, Suburbans, Tahoes, Yukons, and Escalades. From Automotive News:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has expanded an investigation into an engine failure issue for an additional 286,051 General Motors vehicles in the U.S.

The preliminary investigation was opened in January and resulted in a recall in April.

The investigation now covers 2019-21 and 2024 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and GMC Sierra 1500 pickups, as well as 2021-24 Chevrolet Suburbans and Tahoes, GMC Yukons and Yukon XLs, and Cadillac Escalades and Escalade ESVs.

There's no recall yet, but don't be surprised if this leads to one down the road. 

Napster came back as a streaming service for a bit, and is now promising to relaunch with some sort of AI slop. Back in my day, though, it was where you got your music and malware for free. RIP to a real one. 

Apparently last night tied for the longest World Series game by innings, but wasn't the longest by time. The longest, though, was before the pitch clock largely fixed baseball as we know it. Let's see how tonight goes!

I woke up with Porter stuck in my head, and I have absolutely no complaints about that.