Saudi Arabia Is Trying New Methods To Keep Selling Oil

Happy Monday! It's March 9, 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 Saudi attempts to keep moving oil, as well as dealer attempts to keep moving EVs. We'll also look at Ford's move into home electricity storage, and its battery supplier's layoffs. 

Saudi Arabia is in a tough spot right now. It relies on income from oil and tourism, and neither of those are moving while bombs fall across the middle east. The solution? Sell oil that's already made it past the Strait of Hormuz, through some unusual avenues. From Bloomberg: 

Saudi Aramco has offered prompt crude supply through a series of rare tenders, as the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz traps shipments and forces a rerouting of flows via the Red Sea.

The world's largest crude exporter has offered three grades — Arab Extra Light, Arab Heavy and its flagship Arab Light, according to traders with direct knowledge of the matter. It's offered a total of roughly 4.6 million barrels of those varieties in recent days, said the traders, asking not to be named as they aren't authorized to speak to the media.

Some of the oil was offered on a delivered basis from a supertanker, carrying 2 million barrels of crude, positioned near Taiwan, which was eventually purchased by a Japanese refiner at a $30-to-$40 a barrel premium to official selling prices, traders said. The remainder would be for loading at the port of Yanbu on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast, as well as from Ain Sokhna in Egypt.

Usually oil is sold as futures, paying now for oil to be delivered later. The spot market, how Aramco is moving oil right now, is based on real-time exchanges — trading oil for cash, today. That works while Aramco has inventory outside the Persian Gulf, but it won't help much once that supply dries up. 

EVs haven't been doing so hot recently, what with the death of the tax credit and the continually underfunded state of our charging infrastructure in the United States. Now dealers are taking it upon themselves to put cash on the hood just to get EVs off their lots. From Automotive News: 

It's harder to sell an electric vehicle in 2026 without a federal tax credit that effectively wiped $7,500 off the price.

So automakers and dealers are working to entice buyers with sweetened deals of their own — in some cases, putting close to $15,000 on the hood.

Not every EV has such lucrative discounts, and on the whole, incentive spending on battery-electrics hasn't surged since the Trump administration ended the Inflation Reduction Act tax credit after Sept. 30.

But analysts say the generous markdowns on some models reflect the changed reality of today's U.S. EV market — one with fewer buyers, concerns about lingering inventories and a desire to maintain market share.

Find a desperate enough dealer, and you could actually get a better deal now than you could've under the $7,500 tax credit. It'll have to be a particularly desperate dealer, though. 

Speaking of EVs falling on hard times, Ford has backed off its ambitious electrification plans. Unfortunately, it did so after spending a bunch of money on those plans, and the company's now scrambling to find other projects to put all that research towards. The latest? Home energy storage. From Automotive News: 

Ford Motor Co.'s move to salvage underutilized factories by building battery energy storage systems likely kept its $21 billion electric vehicle write-down from ballooning further.

Ford's pivot into a new business with established players could prove challenging. Still, the automaker might be able to turn a profit more easily than if had it stuck with making batteries for money-losing EVs, particularly amid rising demand created by data centers.

"Under the current circumstances, where you have an administration that's fundamentally opposed to EVs, it is probably the best scenario for Ford," Sam Abuelsamid, vice president of market research at Telemetry, told Automotive News. "At least now they'll have a revenue stream from that factory."

Everyone seems to be bullish on home energy storage, but I can't say I know anyone who's actually bought a big battery to keep in their house. Granted, I don't know many homeowners, but I haven't heard about it much either. Surely someone must be buying these, if automakers keep seeing a market for it, but who's dropping all the cash? 

EVs in the U.S. are in such a rough state, actually, that even battery makers are cutting workers in the States. SK Battery America, a subsidiary of Korea's SK, is laying off over a third of its workers after demand for batteries dried up. From the Associated Press: 

Battery company SK Battery America Inc. laid off nearly 1,000 workers at a manufacturing plant northeast of Atlanta on Friday amid automakers' changing electrification plans and uncertain consumer demand for EVs.

The company said Friday marked the last working day for 958 plant employees, about 37% of its workforce, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, notice filed by human resources chief Chuck Moore. Impacted workers will be paid through May 6. The plant will continue to employ about 1,600 workers.

SK opened the $2.6 billion battery plant in Commerce, Georgia, in January 2022. The Korean company notably supplied the Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck. Ford announced plans to cancel the fully electric version of the truck in December.

Looking forward to choking on unbreathable air within the next few years! That is, if World War III doesn't get us first. What a fun time to be alive. 

As a fellow reportrix, I can say my job would be way harder if I wasn't allowed to talk to the people I'm reporting on. 

Looking bad, folks! Regular is up over 15 cents from Friday, and it doesn't look like prices will be going down any time soon. 

I much prefer this take on the original to John McCain's version.