Good morning! It’s Friday, January 31, 2025, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know.
1st Gear: Musk And Trump Don’t See Eye-To-Eye On Everything
President Donald Trump and Tesla boss Elon Musk may seem like an odd match on the surface, but they’ve been getting on like a house on fire since Trump realized he needed Musk’s billions to get back into the White House. Less than a year after the pair became best buds, trouble might be brewing and it appears as though they no longer see eye-to-eye on everything.
Trump lamented electric vehicles for most of his campaign, promising to bring an end to support for the switch to electric power as soon as he set foot back in Washington. Despite appearing to soften those views once Musk’s millions started rolling in, the “Home Alone 2” actor made good on those promises once he took office and has already pushed to scrap a $7,500 tax break available to EV buyers and pulled support for new EV charging infrastructure across America.
When Musk was asked about Trump’s moves to slash support for electric vehicles, the Tesla boss made a rare departure from the party line and said he thinks “sustainable transport is inevitable,” reports InsideEVs. Musk’s comments came when he was asked if the new administration’s cuts could hit uptake of EVs in the U.S.:
“At this point, I think that sustainable transport is inevitable,” Musk said. “I’m highly confident that all transport will be autonomous, electric, including aircraft, and that simply, it can’t be stopped.” He likened the rise of electric vehicles to the advent of the steam engine or the internal combustion engine.
“Even if you’ve been the biggest horse advocate on Earth... like, ‘horses are the way, not these new-fangled automobiles,’ you can’t stop the advent of the automobile and you can’t stop the advent of electric cars,” Musk said. “It’s going to happen.”
He added, “The only thing holding back electric cars was range, and that is a solved problem.”
It’s annoying to admit, but Musk might have a point. Last year, sales of electric cars in America hit record levels, and while deliveries of Tesla cars are dropping, sales of EVs made by other automakers are rising every month. What’s more, sales of combustion engine cars have been in decline since 2018, with electric and hybrid models taking up the slack.
Musk’s opinions on the future of transport also echo what fellow EV startup boss RJ Scaringe said just last week. The Rivian boss said that the future of personal transport was “going to be electric” no matter what the Trump administration said about drilling for more American oil.
Trump staked his claim to the White House on the backing of billionaires and businessmen, but is this the first sign that his policies are out of touch with what his backers want?
2nd Gear: High Warranty Costs Are Crippling JLR
Let’s take a break from the awful world of American politics with a quick check in to see how things are in the awful world of Jaguar Land Rover. As you might expect, they’re not great and the company saw profits drop as it struggled with mounting warranty costs.
Across Jaguar and Land Rover, the two brands raked in $651 million during the fourth quarter of 2024, reports Automotive News. Deliveries for the year were down by 2.6 percent, but it was the amount JLR spent on repairs that really hit its latest results:
Operating profit fell 17 percent to 523 million pounds ($651 million) in the quarter compared with the same period the year on higher costs for sales incentives. Automakers globally had to increase discounting last year to boost sales as inflation hit consumers’ spending power.
“We are not immune to the market conditions,” Richard Molyneux, JLR’s chief financial officer, said on parent company Tata Motors’ earnings call on Jan. 29.
Warranty costs shaved 163 million pounds from the overall profit figure, the company said. Molyneux partly blamed the increase on rising sales in the U.S. “where warranty costs are high.”
As well as lost money thanks to all those fixes, Jaguar also lost out as sales for the year were down. Deliveries took a big hit due to reduced demand in China, and the company decided to stop selling any brand new cars in the UK in 2024.
The drop in deliveries in select markets did mean that JLR had a new sales king for the past year. That’s right, America bought more cars from the British automaker than any other global market. The boost Stateside was reportedly due to demand for the Range Rover and Defender models, which Jag said “resonate strongly with the U.S. consumers.”
Now, if only Jaguar could come up with a car that resonates with real people rather than fictitious British bad guys, then the whole company may see its fortunes improve. But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here.
3rd Gear: Tesla Income Boosted By $600 Million Bitcoin Gains
If Jaguar did want to find a quick fix for its money troubles, it could take a leaf out of Tesla’s book and plow millions into Bitcoin. The American automaker reportedly pocketed almost $600 million last year thanks to its digital assets, according to its latest financial results.
New accounting regulations mean that Tesla includes gains from digital assets in its profit tally for the year, and last year the automaker made millions thanks to its Bitcoin stash, reports Business Insider. Tesla’s gains on Bitcoin accounted for nearly $600 million of its net income in the fourth quarter of 2024:
Tesla’s finance chief, Vaibhav Taneja, confirmed on the company’s earnings call that there was a “$600 million mark-to-market benefit from bitcoin due to the adoption of a new accounting standard for digital assets.”
The Financial Accounting Standards Board recently changed its policy to allow companies to mark their digital assets to market each quarter. Previously, they had to report their holdings at the lowest value those assets had ever reached under their ownership.
Tesla had been carrying its bitcoin hoard on its balance sheet at $184 million but marked it up to $1.076 billion last quarter. The fair market value of its digital assets was $729 million at the end of September, meaning they rose in value by nearly $350 million last quarter as bitcoin soared to record highs.
Tesla plowed roughly $1.5 billion into Bitcoin back in January 2021 as a means of diversifying its investments, explains Business insider. At the time, the token was valued at around $40,000, but is now worth more than $100,000.
That enormous increase in value doesn’t mean that Tesla saw its investment in the cryptocurrency rise by 250 percent, as it actually offloaded about 75% of its Bitcoin stash in 2022. If Tesla had held on to that initial $1.5 billion investment it could now be worth as much as $375 billion.
4th Gear: Honda Recalls Almost 300,000 Cars With Engine Issues
Finally let’s round out another week of Morning Shifts with one final recall. This week, we’ve already clocked recalls from the likes of Ford and Kia, but now it’s Honda’s turn to uncover a glaring issue that impacts thousands of cars.
The Japanese automaker has announced a recall of almost 300,000 cars over fuel injection issues in select Honda and Acura models, reports ABC News. The recall is due to software issues uncovered with the fuel injection electronic control unit:
“Due to improper programming of the FI-ECU, sudden changes in the throttle could illuminate the check engine light and cause the engine to lose drive power, hesitate and/or stall, increasing the risk of a crash or injury,” the company stated in a Jan. 29 press release. “American Honda self-diagnosed this issue by monitoring telematics information and determined the need to perform the software update of the supplier part.”
Honda said it will contact registered owners of all affected models by mail in March, at which time they can take their vehicle to an authorized Honda or Acura dealer to update the software free of charge.
American Honda said it announced the recall “to encourage owners of affected vehicles to take them to an authorized dealer for repair as soon as they receive notification.”
The software glitch has been uncovered in 2023-2025 Honda Pilot models, as well as the 2022-2025 Acura MDX Type S and 2021-2025 Acura TLX Type S. So far, Honda says it “has not received any confirmed reports of crashes or injuries related to this issue,” adds ABC News.
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 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 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.