AutoGuide Hot Takes: Ferrari Wants Its Soul Back

1) Trouble in paradise as Elon Musk and Peter Navarro are fighting about tariffs. Navarro publicly doubted the credibility of Tesla’s made-in-America claims. To which Elon Musk called him a moron. Amazing stuff from the people in charge of the country—truly amazing.

2) Ferrari is apparently interested in bringing back the manual transmission for exclusive models. Maybe that will translate into serially produced models as well; they could ask for an absurd upcharge, and people would absolutely pay for a Ferrari with a spine-tingling soul.

3) Kia announced plans to bring an electric pickup truck to America. Instead of trying to compete in the dwindling full-size ev pickup segment with “unreconcilable economics,” the automaker will instead look to build a mid-size EV pickup to cater to an underserved segment of the market. Midsizers are more likely to be lifestyle-focused, so look for it to pinch buyers from the Hyundai Santa Cruz and Honda Ridgeline.

4) Subaru literally just announced it would debut a new EV at the New York Auto Show next week. Look for it to be a reskin of the Toyota C-HR+ announced earlier this year. Look for Subaru to sell dozens of them, maybe fewer, considering the tariff stack bounty.

5) General Motors announced a temporary halt in the production of its electric commercial van at its Ontario assembly plant due to slow sales. The six-month pause will result in the temporary layoff of 1,200 workers. It’s not surprising that no one wants the vans, and GM is running out of empty parking lots to stash them in. GM barely sold 1,500 of the electric commercial vans in America last year, and the new 25% tariff on imported vehicles isn’t going to help sell more this year. The plant previously produced the Chevrolet Equinox until 2022.

6) GM also announced layoffs at its flagship Factory Zero, where it produces the Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC Sierra EV, GMC Hummer EV SUV, GMC Hummer EV Pickup, and Cadillac Escalade IQ and IQL. This comes to better align the plant with market demand. Go figure, GM is having a hard time finding a marketplace for the multiple six-figure EVs it produces in suburban Detroit—who could have foreseen this?

7) All of this comes amid the latest poll from Gallup indicating that Americans are becoming less interested in EVs as time goes on.

8) Tariffs have made the Audi Q5 economically irrelevant to shoppers. It’s a vehicle that was designed to capitalize on freewheeling global trade agreements—now, because it’s imported from Mexico and not built to USMCA compliance, it’s subject to multiple tariff stacks, increasing its MSRP by 52.5%.

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