Tesla Stock Is Down 45 Percent And Still Dropping

Good morning! It's Monday, March 10, 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, find out how Tesla stock is pushing ever downwards. Plus, Toyota pauses further production lines after last week's explosion, Nissan wants a new boss, and Trump wants India's auto tariffs gone for Tesla.

Tesla is the most valued automaker in the world, and that value skyrocketed after CEO Elon Musk poured a quarter of a billion dollars into President Donald Trump's campaign. The stock peaked on December 17 of last year, when Tesla was worth nearly 6.5 times the total value of Toyota — a company that sells more cars and makes more money. Musk has long claimed that Tesla's value is totally reasonable, given the company's as-yet-unmet annual promise to "solve autonomy," but it seems Wall Street is starting to disagree. From Reuters:

The company's market capitalization has dropped 45% since hitting an all-time high of $1.5 trillion on December 17, erasing most of the gains the stock made after CEO Musk helped finance the election victory of U.S. President Donald Trump.
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Tesla's electric-vehicle business accounts for almost all of its revenue but less than a quarter of its stock-market value, according to a Reuters review of more than a dozen analyses by banks and investment firms. The bulk of its worth rests on hopes for autonomous vehicles Tesla hasn't yet delivered, despite Musk's promises in every year since 2016 that driverless Teslas would arrive no later than the following year.

Generally, investors get into the whole "investing" thing to make money. Sometimes they do it for cult reasons, sure, but a large swath of Tesla shareholders are likely in it for returns rather than the love of the game. How low will the stock have to get before they start cutting their losses and running?

Last week, an explosion at a Toyota supplier killed a worker. Now the company is pausing production lines due to the supply chain interruption, including the line that makes the Rav4 in the country. Production overseas hasn't been affected yet, and may never be, but the explosion has really thrown a wrench in Toyota's domestic production according to Automotive News:

After suspending operations for the March 10 morning shift at two factories, Toyota Motor Corp. decided to extend the shutdown at the affected lines through that afternoon and for the March 11 first shift. A Daihatsu plant supplying Toyota was added to the operations offline.

The halt affects one of two lines at Toyota's Takaoka assembly plant, which makes the RAV4 and Harrier. Also impacted are two lines at Toyota Industries Corp.'s Nagakusa factory that assembles the RAV4. One line at Daihatsu's Kyoto plant is also down. It makes the Probox, a subcompact commercial wagon supplied to Toyota for the domestic market.

The Harrier is better known to us as the Venza, but the Probox is unfortunately not known to us U.S. buyers at all. This is a shame, because it seems like a cool little practical wagon that's not as full of itself as most modern cars. Maybe that's what you get when you revise a model exactly once over the course of its 23-year-and-counting lifespan. Toyota, bring us the Probox once you start the assembly line back up. I guarantee you'll sell at least six. 

Nissan's merger with Honda, a move meant to save the company, is dead by Nissan's own hand. Now the automaker's board of directors is out for blood, and they want it from CEO Makoto Uchida. A committee is set to meet today to discuss Uchida's successor, and tomorrow the company's board will come to a conclusion on the matter tomorrow. From Automotive News:

It is not so much a matter of whether CEO Makoto Uchida steps down but when and how, say people familiar with the thinking of Nissan's board and management.

"The management must change because it has lost trust in implementing the turnaround," said one person familiar with the plans. "We need a fresh start and the benefit of the doubt."

I rewatched some early Succession with my roommate this past weekend, and all this Nissan closed-door scheming sounds very familiar. Who will end up with the reins when all these meetings and debates are over? Personally, I'm throwing my support behind Uzi Nissan's next of kin. 

India has incredibly high tariffs on imported cars. The country prefers that automakers spin up factories over there, rather than just ship cars out, and it seems the tariffs have done a pretty good job ensuring that plenty of automakers have invested in joint ventures with Indian companies to produce cars locally. Folks in India, though, miss out on American cars: Tesla and GM aren't active in the country, though the former wants to change that. It just needs a little help from the White House. From the Detroit Free Press: 

India's high auto tariffs will be central in formal talks for a bilateral trade deal that are yet to begin, said one of the three sources, all of whom were briefed on the matter, paving the way for American electric vehicle maker Tesla, which is gearing up for an India launch.

Taxes on cars imported into India are as high as 110%, which Tesla chief Elon Musk has criticized as being among the steepest in the world. The EV giant last year shelved its plans to enter the world's third-largest car market for a second time. It recently signed a lease deal to open its first showroom in Mumbai, registration papers show.

India's tariff situation sounds very familiar, doesn't it? A country using high import taxes to encourage domestic production? On the one hand, India's method has worked thus far with companies from Stellantis to BMW to Volkswagen all have Indian joint ventures. On the other hand, the country misses out on plenty of vehicles from foreign manufacturers, and that's a country with more people and more registered cars than us. If a market force like India loses out on choice thanks to tariffs, how would the little old United States fare? 

It's hard for me to imagine, since "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" premiered when I was less than a year old, but there was a time before Whedon quippiness. A time when emotional beats were allowed to land, rather than being undercut with a joke every time. Remember stakes? Well, actually, I guess a vampire hunting show would be pretty stake-heavy. 

A friend of mine gave me a playlist containing this track back in college, and I'm only now discovering that no one else seems to listen to it. Under 600 YouTube views! How is that possible? This song is so fun.