Aug. 24, 2025 | Bonus Episode: Autos Drive America CEO Jennifer Safavian; Slate’s Tisha Johnson

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Hey, it's daily drive executive producer Jake Neer here in Detroit.

On this bonus episode of the show, more of our own Laurence Ilyff's conversation with

slate auto design chief Tisha Johnson about the EV startup's vision to make an affordable,

customizable electric pickup. But first, one of the big stories of the past week was a new trade

framework between the US and the EU. We heard a clip of Auto's Drive America CEO Jennifer

Safavian reacting to the news on Friday's episode of the show. We thought you'd be

interested in her full answer to the question from our own Hannah Lutz on last week's Automotive

News Congress Conversations live stream. So here you go. Jennifer, I want to start with you. We had

some tariff updates this morning, specifically on the EU and the US. The deal today or the

framework said that they intend to accept and provide mutual recognition to each other's

standards on vehicles. There's a lot of details we know that are still, you know,

yet to be sorted out. But what could that recognition look like? And what do you

make of the framework overall? Yes, hi. Thanks Hannah for that question and thanks for having

with you. Yeah, we were honestly pleased to see this framework be announced this morning. It's

something that we've been waiting for now for a couple weeks since the deal was reached

a few weeks ago and waiting for similar ones, similar frameworks in writing with Japan

and with South Korea as well, which I think you're going to take a little bit more time.

So what we were most pleased about in the finally seeing something in writing is when it

comes to the autos, right, for the auto portion of it, you know, right now, even though there are

these deals, right, these verbal kind of agreements in place, you know, the automotive

industry is still paying 27.5% tariffs on every imported vehicle and in a lot of instances on

imported auto parts as well. And so that's having obviously a significant impact on the

industry as a whole. So what this framework showed us today was, you know, that they've

agreed to a 15%, they'll lower the 27.5% to 15%. At the beginning of the month when the EU introduces

a legislative proposal, right, that sets forth sort of this agreement and everything they're

supposed to do on their end. And, you know, what we're hearing is that the EU is planning

to work very quickly and try to introduce something this month even. So if that is the case,

then that means going back to the beginning of the month, August 1st, imported vehicles and parts

would drop from that 27.5% to 15% because even though we have these deals, these agreements,

the industry is still paying 27.5 tariffs. So that's why this was really critical to see this

come out today and we hope to see something very similar quickly for Japan and South Korea as

well. So again, that's going to be very helpful when it comes to imported vehicles and parts. But

I would say, you know, as far as the standards, there's a lot we still don't know, right? There's

a lot that wasn't, you know, it was only a couple page framework that we saw today.

And to me, I think like I said, the biggest piece of it was talking about when that 15%

was going to actually be enacted and be started. Right. So really solidifying that rate that

we heard about and giving a more definitive timeline. Okay, that's helpful, helpful context.

How are the automakers and suppliers navigating these tariff changes on a global scale? There's

been so much that's happened. And like you said, still waiting for to see the paper on a lot of it.

Yes, you know, it's been it's been really impactful for the industry, as you can imagine,

right? I mean, these auto tariffs on imported vehicles and parts, you know,

we're looking at a lot of these since early April. And again, like I said, 27 and a half percent,

you know, whereas we went from what, two and a half maybe or 0% to 27 and a half percent,

that's a significant increase that kind of happened overnight, right? And while I will tell

you, you know, certainly my members are very supportive of the president's goal of more

auto production here in the United States. It doesn't happen overnight. And yet these

tariffs happened overnight. And they are really significant and really having an impact

on the on the automakers, but also the suppliers, right? And I think it's really important to talk

about the suppliers here, because without the parts without the suppliers, we can't produce here in

the US, right? If there's any slowdown, or shutdown of a supplier, that's going to have a

significant impact on the production here in the US. You know, just to reiterate from my

member's perspective and their international automakers here in the United States,

you know, they have been committed for a very long time to the US market. And you know, they have

actually, you know, over the years, they have invested 124 billion in their US operations

to show how committed they are to the US. And that continues every year that grows. And they're

willing to do more of that. You know, they produce 48% of all US production here in the

United States, if I'm looking at 2024 figures. So that's nearly half of all production is done

by international automakers. And they have 31 facilities across the United States. So they're

very committed. And they're continuing to build up facilities and continuing to retool

their facilities. But that all takes time, right? And it takes investment. And I think as you've

seen recently, there's been, you know, several automakers who have reported earnings,

their earnings, and they've talked about the impact that tariffs are having on those

earnings. And I think the cumulative number that I've seen recently is almost like, it's like

$12 billion from those automakers who have reported their earnings. So it's having a significant

impact on the automakers and their ability to continue to grow and invest here in the United

States. So I would say, you know, they continue to look for relief, you know, from assistance

when it comes to all of this. Again, they're willing to do more, more investment, more

production here in the US. But you can't move suppliers overnight. You know, there's a

lot of things that just take some time. And I think that that's kind of, you know, one of the

things, one of the talking points and messages that we try to really relay is they're doing a lot,

they want to do more, but it takes some time to do that.

That was Autos Drive America CEO Jennifer Sevevian on our recent automotive news

Congress Conversations livestream. If you missed it, no worries, you can catch

the whole conversation on demand on our LinkedIn, Facebook, or YouTube pages.

Coming up, the final part of our own Lawrence Ilyfs interview with Slate Auto Design Chief Tisha Johnson.

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Welcome back. On Thursday's episode of Daily Drive, we brought you the first part of Automotive

News staff reporter Lawrence Eiliff's interview with Tisha Johnson, head of design for Slate Auto.

That's the Jeff Bezos-backed EV startup that plans to sell a low-cost electric pickup

that can be highly customized even to be converted to an SUV. If you miss that part of the

conversation, go back and check it out. Here's the final part of that interview.

When I talk to people in the industry and people do consumer surveys and all this,

they think the most controversial part of it is there's no four doors.

Kids and dogs and all that type of stuff. I know you've created a situation in which

you have a back seat but then you compromise the bed. Was that a hard choice? Did they tell

you you have to do that or are you part of that decision? You don't even have to tell me

that but what do you think about it? So there's a few questions in there but let's start with

is it a compromise? There's some controversial conversations maybe around that you're saying.

First of all, the truck bed itself is effectively a standard for a small-sized

truck. It's fully capable of handling normal utility so it's got great capacity.

So no compromise on the truck bed. We made a decision early on to have a two-door because

we said all right when we start looking at what people want, what people need,

people are asking for a low cost vehicle. They're asking for something that they can afford.

So we looked at it from the standpoint of passing dollars back to our customers.

That was our future customers and we to this very day when we are working on the vehicle,

we're saying to ourselves is this something then that we can pass on dollars to our

customers. Yes we can. That's a sound decision to make. So when you have less doors, you have less

cost, you have less weight and it actually gives you a measure of utility back. So what we've done

then is said okay how can we make sure then that we're able to give back in that scenario.

If we have two doors what are other ways we can give back? So we have on the passenger side

an extended track for the front seat. That means it slides forward more than the average seat.

That gets you easily in and out of the vehicle to that second row if you want a five-seater

configuration. Yeah you know I think that that we've kind of got a little lazy as consumers

in a way in that we all used to have to climb into the back seat. You know I mean my

you know we had a lot of Volkswagen bugs when I was a kid like climbing into the back

and she's like oh we have to climb in the back of the seat but now you know everybody wants a four

door I think that only five percent of the market buys two doors. Do you think that

customers are willing to say well wait a second it's a low cost it does a lot of things you

know I'll get over it. Well you know the the reason we got together and created this vehicle

is because we believed that customers would show up for it future customers would understand

all that they get here and they would want it and and sometimes it is as much what you get as

as what we intentionally deleted. We are definitely hearing back from the market saying thank you

for giving us a roll-up window I don't need to pay for that motorized version I am happy to have

a crank window and you know I have I can do that and likewise we're hearing from people

I'm fine to open up one set of doors and get into the back of the car it is

I'm happy to do that for the sake of having a less expensive vehicle.

Slate auto design chief Tisha Johnson spoke with our own Lawrence Eyelift during an event at Monterey

Car Week in California. Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of Daily Drive. We'll be back

on Monday with a brand new full episode of the show.

Aug. 24, 2025 | Bonus Episode: Autos Drive America CEO Jennifer Safavian; Slate’s Tisha Johnson

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