Polestar Needs More Than Just Embarrassed Tesla Owners To Turn Things Around

Good morning! It's Monday, March 3, 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'll check in with Polestar and see how a ploy to poach Tesla drivers may not be enough to turn around fortunes at the Swedish EV maker, and Honda may move production of the Civic out of Mexico to skirt president Trump's impending tariffs. We'll also find out why Volkswagen recalled 60,000 EVs across VW and Audi, and see what sparked a delay to planned updates at Stellantis' Brampton plant in Canada.

Swedish electric vehicle maker Polestar is facing a tough time of it right now, with sales floundering, its CEO departing and interest in EVs cooling around the world. To try and turn around its fortunes, the automaker launched a ploy to poach Tesla buyers looking to distance themselves from Elon Musk's increasingly right-wing ideas. While the plan bolstered sales, it will take more than a few embarrassed Model 3 owners to turn things around at Polestar.

Polestar offered as much as $20,000 in incentives to any Tesla owner in America who was happy to make the switch to one of its models. The deal appears to have worked, with InsideEVs reporting that the Geely-backed brand "saw some of the highest order days for Polestar 3" last week.

The incentives include a $5,000 discount to any household that currently owns a Tesla EV, as well as another $15,000 of incentives to lessees. This is proving to be just the encouragement that some Tesla owners needed to jump ship, as Jordan Hofmann, Polestar's U.S. head of sales said on Linkedin:

The response to our Tesla Conquest Offer has been incredible. Manufactured in the USA, Polestar 3 is turning heads and drivers are making moves — it's clear they like what we bring to the table.

That's all well and good, but the problems at Polestar run deeper and may not be so quick to solve. In fact, the same day that Polestar was celebrating "incredible" sales here in the U.S., it was also asking for a $450 million loan and confirming that it would delay publishing its quarterly results, adds Reuters.

Like every other EV startup trying desperately to make it, Polestar is burning through cash at alarming rate as it rolls out new models, ramps up production and rushes to get its name out to the world. The EV maker announced it had secured more than $800 million in 12-month loans in December, reports Reuters, and confirmed last week that it had secured another $450 million, which would be spent on "general corporate use," the site adds.

The automaker also delayed publishing its quarterly results once again, which is a worrying trend for the brand. Instead of publishing its latest finances in March, they will now be made public in April, which Reuters adds led some "investors to question the firm's accounting measures."

The Honda Civic is one of the best-selling cars in the U.S. with the Japanese automaker shifting around 200,000 of them every year. Much to the irritation of president Donald Trump, however, the cars that are sold here aren't even built here! The cheek of it, I know.

Now, that could be about to change, though, as Honda is reportedly considering shifting Civic production to Indiana in order to skirt impending tariffs that the "Home Alone 2" actor is hoping to hit imported cars with, reports Reuters. The Civic is currently made in Canada as well as Ohio and Indiana, which means that, come March 4, some of the models will be hit with a new tariff courtesy of Trump.

The next-generation Civic was set to go into production in Mexico, where it would also have fallen foul to Trump's tariffs. To avoid this, Honda will shift production for the new model to U.S. when it kicks off in 2028, reports Reuters:

It now plans to build the new Civic model in Indiana from May 2028 with an expected annual production of around 210,000, one of the people said. Honda would look to import from nations not hit by tariffs if production in Indiana falls short of demand, one of them said.

The list of countries that Honda could import extra Civics from appears to be shrinking every day, however. So far, Trump's proposed tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, and he's already ramped up import fees on products from China. Tariffs could also soon hit Europe, as Trump is angry that Americans buy more European cars than Europeans buy American models.

The move of Civic production from Mexico to the U.S. marks the first move from a Japanese car maker to respond to Trump's tariffs. Should they come into force tomorrow as Trump promised, the additional fees could mean price rises across the board for car shoppers here in the U.S.

German automaker Volkswagen recalled 60,000 electric vehicles across its Audi and VW brands this week. The automaker uncovered a software issue with the Volkswagen ID 4 and Audi Q4 e-tron, reports Autoevolution.

Under certain circumstances, issues with the two models' brake control unit software prevents the neutral gear position from being displayed on the instrument cluster. When this happens, drivers aren't able to identify neutral to shift their car out of gear, which can increase the risk of a rollaway, as Autoevolution adds:

ZF Active Safety GmbH is the supplier of the suspect brake control unit software versions. Regarding the recall population, most of it comes in the form of the ID.4 from Volkswagen. The recall documentation lists 25,210 units produced for the 2023 model year at the Chattanooga plant and 25,761 further units of the Zwickau-built ID.4 from the 2021 and 2022 models years.

The recall also impacts 2022 through 2023 Audi Q4 e-tron models and the 2022 through 2023 Audi Q4 Sportback e-tron. In total, 60,490 cars produced between December 15, 2022 and October 12, 2023 will be impacted by the recall.

If you are worried that your car might be affected by a recall, there are a few easy ways to check if it's the case. First up, the NHTSA has a super handy app that you can use to see if your vehicle is impacted by a recall, or you can head to the regulator's website and plug your VIN into its recall search tool.

While the threat of tariffs forced Honda's hand over production of future models, the current climate for cars is also impacting moves at Stellantis. The Jeep manufacturer reportedly delayed updates to its Brampton plant in Canada that would have seen the facility pivot to assembling electric models for the automaker.

Instead of kickstarting battery-powered Jeep production in Canada, Stellantis will instead focus on smaller gas-powered models, reports Automotive News. The shift in focus means that retooling of the Brampton is delayed by around six months, the site explains:

The plant in the Toronto suburbs was being primed to produce the battery-electric version of the Jeep by the end of 2025, followed by a gasoline-powered version. But consumer hesitance about EVs and high demand for low-cost models gives an internal-combustion-engine Compass far more momentum, said Fiorani, vice-president of global auto forecasting at U.S.-based AutoForecast Solutions.

Retooling work at the Canadian facility is now expected to take "until at least the middle of 2026," Automotive News adds. That date will mark almost three years since the facility idled once assembly of the Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger and Dodge Challenger ended in Brampton in December 2023.

Stellantis hasn't yet confirmed whether the delay means that production of the gas-powered Compass will take priority and Brampton, but did at least make a statement to confirm that the move did "not change our previously announced investment plans for Brampton."

We did it, another month down means we're basically out of winter and heading straight for spring, right? That's what I'm telling myself as the days get nicer, anyway. One thing that's great to do on a nice day is head outside and see what the wilderness has in store and, handily, that's exactly what a government agency born on this day was all about encouraging. That's right, today is the 146th anniversary of the founding of the United States Geological Survey, isn't that exciting!

The agency was founded as a means of exploring and mapping the western states, where lawmakers were keen on unearthing new terrain and minerals. Lots of important minerals, as History explains:

Although the rough geographical outlines of much of the American West were known by 1879, the government still had astonishingly little detailed knowledge of the land. Earlier federal exploratory missions under men like Ferdinand Hayden and John Wesley Powell had begun to fill in the map, yet much remained to be done. Congress decided to transform the earlier system of sporadic federal geological explorations into a permanent government agency, the United States Geological Survey.

Despite celebrating its 146th anniversary this year, the USGS isn't immune to the sweeping cuts that are plaguing the U.S. government right now. In fact, the department previously warned that staffing levels in some offices could face cuts of 30 to 50 percent at the hands of Trump and his pet billionaire, Elon Musk.