Tesla Market Share Is Slowly Recovering In The U.S.

Happy Monday! It's September 14, 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 Tesla's sales recovery after last year, and the company's pinkie promises of a new Roadster. We'll also look at Trump's interest in American-made Chinese cars, and yet another Ford recall. 

If you'd like a recap of the latest auto news sent to your inbox each weekday, you can sign up for Jalopnik's free Morning Shift newsletter here.

Remember the halcyon days of last year, when people were plastering their Teslas with "I bought this before I knew Elon was crazy" stickers? When Musk's financial backing of the global far right and personal oversight of cuts to U.S. foreign policy that will kill 14 million people globally by 2030 made buyers wary of spending money on Tesla (and thus further enriching Musk personally)? Well, those days are over. Competitors are cutting their EV programs, and Tesla's sales are shrinking more slowly — leaving the company with a bigger piece of a smaller pie. From the Wall Street Journal: 

Recent auto-sales data indicates that Tesla is once again gaining ground in the U.S. EV market as legacy automakers retreat from battery-powered cars. Musk's company is back to comprising more than half of the U.S. EV market, with a 52% share in 2026 through August, up from 43% a year earlier, according to Motor Intelligence.

The company hasn't escaped the wider EV downturn. Tesla's 325,351 U.S. sales so far this year represent a 16% decline from a year earlier. However, the overall EV market has contracted more, down 30%.

According to estimates, the death toll from Musk's destruction of USAID more or less matches the total automobile deaths in the U.S. since 1899 — plus the entire Holocaust. Every Tesla sale personally enriches this man, but some people just gotta have that FSD. Again from the Wall Street Journal:

Jon Ward, a Los Angeles marketing executive, bought a Model Y in April—his third Tesla. While intrigued by Rivian's new R2 SUV, Ward never seriously considered another brand mainly because of his reliance on Tesla's automated driver-assistance software, called Full Self-Driving (Supervised), he said.

Trading in his 2018 Model 3 meant he and his wife no longer had to fight over FSD, which they had equipped only on their 2023 Tesla.

"I use it basically all the time," Ward said. "It's almost like, why would I bother driving? This does it so well."

Boy, I sure am glad Jon Ward doesn't have to "bother driving" any more! Surely that's worth it. 

Tesla, meanwhile, still claims a new Roadster is coming. Sure, it's been nearly a decade since the second-generation Roadster was "revealed," but a new event set for October means it's coming for real this time. Totally. 100%. From Automotive News:

Tesla teased an Oct. 1 event to showcase its next-generation Roadster vehicle, a niche product that CEO Elon Musk first unveiled in November 2017.

...

"SpaceX option package for new Tesla Roadster will include ~10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around car," Musk posted in 2018. "These rocket engines dramatically improve acceleration, top speed, braking & cornering. Maybe they will even allow a Tesla to fly."

Brightening the promo image here reveals the words "WHERE WE'RE GOING," a "Back to the Future" reference that once again implies the new Roadster will fly. The image itself, though, looks inspired by James Bond's underwater Lotus from "The Spy Who Loved Me" with the width and shape of the wing and the way either bubbles or stars are passing overhead — a sad reminder that Musk owns one of the cooler Bond cars of all time. 

Donald Trump has long been an opponent of China and Chinese technology, including the nation's vehicles. Build those cars in the U.S., though, and apparently everything's all hunky-dory. From Reuters:

WASHINGTON, Sept 11 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Friday he would not oppose Chinese automakers building ​cars in the United States despite widespread opposition from U.S. lawmakers ‌and car companies.

"If China wanted to come in and open a plant to build their cars here, I'd be okay with that," Trump said in an interview on the Fox ​News program "The Ingraham Angle."

"Japan does it, but they hire our people. The ​big thing is they hire our people," he said.

Fans of Trump would probably have words to say about him comparing Japan (an ally) with China (not that), but his goal has always been a resurgence of U.S. manufacturing — he wants the return of jobs where big strong American men hit metal with hammers and sparks come out. He's less interested in the macroeconomics of it all, and in where the money from those car sales actually goes. Trump doesn't seem to mind if profits go to a Chinese corporation, so long as that Chinese corporation employs blue-collar American folk. 

Guess what? It's a day ending in Y, and Ford is recalling nearly a quarter of a million F-150s for fuel tanks that can fall off while you drive. Truly, no one is doing more innovation in the field of "ways to build cars wrong." From Reuters: 

Ford ​is recalling 223,472 vehicles ‌in the U.S. due to leaky and improperly secured ​fuel tanks that may ​detach from the vehicle while ⁠driving, the U.S. National ​Highway Traffic Safety Administration said ​on Saturday.

Here are some more details from the NHTSA advisory:

- A ​detached tank can create ​a road hazard, increasing the risk ‌of ⁠a crash, while a fuel leak can cause an engine stall or increase ​the risk ​of ⁠a fire.
- Certain 2023-2027 F-150 vehicles will be ​recalled due to ​this ⁠concern.

We all like to clown on Ford for recalling seemingly every vehicle the company makes, but this is truly a new one. I can't recall another example of a company building gas tanks that fall off while driving — can you? This is something that Max Rockatansky would build into a car as a defense mechanism, yet here it is, happening to the most popular vehicle in the United States. 

The Soviets did every single step of the space race before us, except for "putting a human person on the moon." We totally won, though, and definitely didn't just move the goalpost.

I was out for much of last week with a concussion — if there are any typos in this blog, I blame the head injury — but apparently I missed some big swings in fuel prices. We're up 15 cents a gallon from the last time I checked, which is what we in the business refer to as "less than ideal." Diesel is in even worse shape. 

I spent a lot of this past concussed week with this stuck in my head, simultaneous with "Ruler of Everything" by Tally Hall. If you're wondering how well those two tracks mix, I would say poorly.