Josh Edelson/Getty Images Happy Monday! It's April 20, 2026, 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 tax dodging, and Europe's turn to EVs. We'll also look at some ill portents for Level 3 autonomy, and Ford's fiery F-150 fallout. 1st Gear: Tesla uses offshore financial tricks to dodge U.S. taxes, report alleges hydebrink/Shutterstock Tesla makes some of the best-selling cars in the world. You'd imagine a company in such a position might make a lot of money, and you'd be right. If you'd think that making so much money would mean that the company was taxed on it, though, you'd have another thing coming. Tesla, apparently, has been hiding its profits in offshore companies that use complicated accounting to dodge any taxes. From Reuters: For all but one of the past 20 years, a period in which Tesla reported U.S. revenues totaling $264 billion, the electric-vehicle manufacturer has declared owing no taxes to the American government. The most obvious reason for the low bill is a history of tax deductions related to losses Tesla incurred during more than a decade without profits. Green energy tax breaks offered by the federal government also cut Tesla some slack. But a Reuters review of corporate filings by the company and foreign subsidiaries reveals another, and previously unreported, means of big savings: Tesla units in the Netherlands and Singapore in recent years posted $18 billion in profits that were not taxed in those countries. Without the help of a financial maneuver, moreover, those profits would likely have been reported and taxed in the United States. A common corporate tactic known as profit shifting, the maneuver likely enabled savings of more than $400 million on U.S. taxes, the analysis shows. ... Tesla hasn't publicly acknowledged profit shifting or explained what purpose its Dutch and Singaporean units serve in terms of tax planning. But regulatory filings in Singapore show that a subsidiary there, Tesla Motors Singapore Holdings, received roughly $18 billion in profits between 2023 and early 2025 from TM International, a Dutch unit of which the Singapore subsidiary owns more than 99%. TM International, one of several Tesla units based in the Netherlands, is registered with Dutch authorities as a non-resident "partnership." It lists no employees and isn't required to file financial statements or pay Dutch taxes, the registry shows. Neither Dutch nor Singapore filings give details about the partnership's operations, its dealings with sister units that manufacture and distribute Tesla products, or how or where the partnership's profits were generated. The filings in Singapore show that Tesla Motors Singapore Holdings is not taxed there on income derived from the partnership. Reuters goes on to say that nothing about what Tesla is doing is even illegal — global tax codes are structured in such a way as to allow this. It's totally fine for a massive corporation with deep ties to the United States government to simply owe nothing in taxes. 2nd Gear: Drivers across the EU are fed up with high gas prices, turn to EVs Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images Last time we looked at car sales in Europe, numbers out of Austria pointed towards a move towards EVs to combat the rising gas prices coming from our war on Iran. Now we've got more info from the continent, showing numbers across Europe, and the trend holds: People are buying EVs to save on fuel. From Reuters: Sales of fully electric cars in Europe's main auto markets jumped by almost a third in the first quarter of 2026, as drivers looked for alternatives to combustion engines after the war in Iran caused the highest spike in petrol prices in years. New battery-electric vehicle (BEV) registrations, a proxy for sales, rose 29.4% from a year ago to almost 560,000 in the quarter and were up 51.3% at over 240,000 in March alone in 15 European markets, data collected by trade association E-Mobility Europe and research firm New Automotive showed on Monday. Last year, those markets accounted for 94% of all BEV sales in the European Union and the European Free Trade Association, whose countries align with EU laws regulating CO2 emissions, data by the ACEA auto lobby shows. "March's surge in electric car sales is one of Europe's biggest recent gains in energy security, in a month when oil dependence has become a real vulnerability," E-Mobility Europe Secretary General Chris Heron said in a statement. This is smart, and the same kind of situation we would've seen during the 2008 financial crisis if people had access to EVs back then. Surely this bodes well for our current economy. 3rd Gear: Automakers are giving up on Level 3 autonomy Lawrence Sumulong/Getty Images Automakers are racing for autonomy, working their separate ways up the SAE scale. But while SAE Level 2 has been a boon for automakers, a feature they can charge for, Level 3 doesn't seem to hold the same appeal. In fact, automakers that had once been bullish on the tech are now pulling back. From Automotive News: Mercedes-Benz and BMW, the first two automakers to win approval for so-called eyes-off self-driving systems in Europe, are hitting pause on the technology, citing cost and a lack of consumer interest. The two optional systems, Mercedes' Drive Pilot, and BMW's Personal Pilot, are approved for limited use in Germany; Mercedes also won approval in parts of the U.S. They offer SAE Level 3 autonomy, which means drivers can take their eyes off the road and do other things, but must be prepared to take over when asked. Drive Pilot was launched in 2021 and Personal Pilot two years later, on the two brands' flagship sedans, the Mercedes S-Class and BMW 7 Series. Despite improvements to the systems, they will not be available on the newest S-Class and 7-Series models. "Although BMW has brought the technology to production-ready status, no L3 function will be offered in the revised 7 Series" debuting this year, a BMW spokesperson told Automotive News Europe. "System costs and the expenses associated with validation and regulatory monitoring remain very high." This pullback is primarily seen in Europe, where there are extra regulatory burdens to consider over the laissez-faire American approach to regulating just about anything, but it's a dire omen for the tech writ large: People aren't necessarily willing to pay what it actually costs to build this kind of software. 4th Gear: Ford is still struggling to get F-150s to dealers after fire Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Late last year, a fire at a Ford supplier put a hold on building F-150 body panels. It seems Ford is still reeling from that pause, because dealers are complaining about a lack of their big money-maker as spring sales warm up. From Automotive News: But this year, Ford and its dealers are still reeling from a fire seven months ago that disrupted production at a New York plant that supplies aluminum for the bodies of Ford's pickups and SUVs. Another fire at the same plant in November set back recovery efforts and prolonged the pain. Chuck Anderson Ford, less than 20 miles from Ford's F-150 plant in Kansas City, Mo., usually starts Truck Month with about 70 of the pickups. This year, it had only nine. "It's a heap of a mess," Nick Anderson, the dealership's general manager, told Automotive News. "Outside of COVID, I've never seen an F-150 shortage like this."cFord dealers around the U.S. are grappling with an undersupply of a vehicle that's a reliable profit pillar and the leader in an intensely competitive segment. The automaker is scrambling to boost production but has signaled that inventory levels may not stabilize until the second half of the year. Data firm CatalystIQ, which powers the Automotive News vehicle price and inventory tracker, said F-150 stocks have fallen 43 percent since the initial Sept. 16 fire at the Novelis aluminum plant, all but wiping out a commanding supply lead over its rivals. Will we see another truck beat out the F-150 in sales over this? Probably not, given that Ford doesn't break out F-150 sales from the rest of the F-series. It's not impossible, though, given the sheer dearth of trucks that dealers are seeing. Reverse: Frag out In case you're wondering how the war in Iran is going, Google searches for "fragging" are up recently. So, things are going about as well as Vietnam. The Fuel Up AAA Prices are still trickling down! Looks like the Trump method of "wage war on weekends, negotiate during market hours" is still, somehow, working. On The Radio: Carpenter Brut - 'Maniac' I saw Desire, Carpenter Brut, and Health play this past weekend in Brooklyn, and the three put on an incredible show. I never thought I'd see a pit open up to "Maniac" from "Flashdance," but now I have. What a world we live in.
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