Happy Wednesday! It's September 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're looking at Tesla's inauspicious start in India, as well as Acura's all-crossover future. We'll also look at how Kia, Hyundai, and Genesis are succeeding in the U.S. market, as well as how the three
are failing their workers back home in South Korea.
Read more: These Are What You Wanted As First Cars (And What You Got Instead)
1st Gear: Tesla's Latest New Market Isn't Bearing Much Fruit
Tesla finally broke into the notoriously impenetrable Indian auto market, which the company hoped would provide a new income stream — especially as Tesla's efforts in Europe and North America have stagnated, if not worse, under CEO Elon Musk's latest heel turn.
Unfortunately for Tesla, that hasn't proven to be the case. India has only offered Tesla about 600 sales, and the company can't even get that many vehicles to customers. From Bloomberg:
Tesla Inc.'s long-awaited entry into India has delivered underwhelming results so far, with tepid bookings fueling fresh doubts about the company's global growth outlook.
The Elon Musk-led electric vehicle maker has received orders for just over 600 cars since launching sales in mid-July, a number that's fallen short of the company's own expectations, according to people familiar with the matter. That's roughly the number of vehicles Tesla delivered every four hours globally during the first half of the year.
Tesla now plans to ship 350 to 500 cars to India this year, of which the first batch is slated to land from Shanghai in early September, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential matters.
Now I'm no mathemagician, but to my eye 350 is just over half of 600. Is Tesla saying that barely over half of its Indian customers will receive the car they ordered within the same calendar year they ordered it? Maybe logistical issues like this are contributing to the low sales.
2nd Gear: Acura Aims To Become An All-Crossover Brand
Acura once planned to go all-electric, but the company is now slowing its roll on that front. While the company is now looking into hybrids, there's one thing Acura is reportedly no longer looking at: Cars. From Automotive News:
Acura is slowing its transition into an all-electric carmaker and has decided to add hybrids to the lineup to bridge the gap for consumers who aren't ready to make the EV leap.
...
Acura also announced the end of production of its TLX sedan, leaving the Integra as the sole option for the shrinking set of buyers looking outside crossovers. But with the Integra's expected discontinuation in 2028, Acura will join the ranks of crossover-exclusive premium brands such as Lincoln and Buick.
While an electric NSX was previously expected to arrive in 2027 or 2028, the revised near-term product roadmap no longer includes a placeholder for the halo sports car. Nevertheless, at the Monterey briefing, Katsushi Inoue, American Honda's director and senior managing executive officer, said executives fully understand the importance of the nameplate and are "just postponing it."Some analysts believe a sporty passenger car could be imported from Japan early in the next decade. But whether it's an electric NSX remains to be seen.
An electric NSX would be fantastic, though if Acura takes too long to bring it to market the car risks no longer living up to the "New Sportscar eXperimental" name. What's experimental about an EV when everyone else already has one? As for the death of the Integra, it'll be a sad day when that finally leaves our market. I love that car.
3rd Gear: Hyundai, Kia, And Genesis See Record Sales In The United States...
The South Korean conglomerate that is Kia, Hyundai, and Genesis had a very good August. Each brand set a record for either its best-ever August in North America, or (in the case of Kia) its best-ever North American month altogether. Not a bad time to work for Kia/Hyundai/Genesis, it seems. From Automotive News:
Hyundai and Kia both delivered record U.S. light-vehicle sales results in August, helped by promotions and electric vehicles.
Volume rose 12 percent to 88,523 vehicles at Hyundai, its 11th straight monthly gain and an all-time August record. At Kia, deliveries rose 10 percent to 83,007 vehicles — the brand's all-time best month in the U.S.
...
Hyundai's luxury Genesis brand also posted its best-ever August, with U.S. sales rising 7 percent to 7,925 vehicles.
The Korean automaker's star has been shining brightly these past couple years, as the brands' new strategy of "making good, pretty vehicles that aren't as easy to steal as the old ones" continues to pay off. Who would've thought that would work?
4th Gear: ...While Their Workers Prepare To Strike For Fair Pay In South Korea
It's a good time to work for Kia, it seems, unless you're one of the people actually building all those cars that the company is moving. In that case, you might start to feel shortchanged as your wages stagnate in the face of years of corporate growth — in fact, you might even plan to strike over it. From Reuters:
The union of South Korean carmaker Hyundai Motor will stage partial strikes over three days this week at plants across South Korea, in a push for shorter working hours and higher wages, according to a notice sent to members of the union.
The company's Korean union, which has about 40,000 members, will launch the partial strikes at various plants including factories in Ulsan, Jeonju and Asan, the notice said. Workers will leave work for two hours on Wednesday and Thursday and four hours on Friday, it said.
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The union asked management to pay a 30% bonus from the company's net income in 2024, when Hyundai generated record-high revenue from growth in the U.S.
The union also wants to raise the retirement age to 64 from the legally guaranteed 60, as well as switch to a 4-1/2-day work week, a union spokesperson said.
Raising the retirement age feels like a wild choice, but maybe the folks at Kia have done the math and determined that's a worthwhile trade for the bonuses and reduced work weeks. If they manage to get a 4.5-day work week while we in the U.S. are still stuck with a full five days, we'll officially be well and truly behind the curve.
Reverse: Can We All Agree By Now That The American Flag Is Kind Of Gaudy?
It's just so much, y'know? Especially since so many physical flags you see out and about seem to use almost metallic colors for the red and blue.
On The Radio: MGMT - 'Kids'
I'm sure this has been discussed at length, but why does the music video for "Kids" make MGMT singer Andrew VanWyngarden look like Lizzy Caplan in "Cloverfield"?
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