Trump tariffs are extra taxes on cars and parts coming into the U.S. that make things more expensive for car companies. This means car makers have to pay more money to bring in parts or cars from other countries.
Pop-out door handles are door handles that hide inside the car's body and pop out when you want to open the door. They help make the car look smooth and can save energy when driving.
EV safety rules are special safety laws made for electric cars to keep people safe, especially because electric cars have different parts than regular cars.
A yoke steering wheel is a steering control shaped like a small handle or airplane control instead of a round wheel. Some new electric cars use this to look futuristic and give the driver a better view.
Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are cars that have both a gas engine and an electric battery you can charge by plugging in, so they can drive some distance on electricity alone.
A multi-energy platform is a car design that can work with different kinds of engines, like all-electric, partly electric, or regular gas-electric hybrids.
Physical buttons are real buttons you can press with your fingers, instead of using a touchscreen. Having these buttons for things like turn signals helps drivers use them quickly and safely.
The government agency called the FTC wants car dealers to be honest about prices in their ads. They have to show all fees except taxes so buyers don't get surprised by extra costs later.
Reciprocal tariffs are taxes that countries put on each other's cars or parts as a way to respond to taxes they were charged first. It's like a trade disagreement.
Manufacturing presence means having factories where cars or parts are made. Even if a company has factories in the US, they might still bring in parts from other countries.
This means the company works on different kinds of car technologies at the same time instead of just one. That way, they are ready for whatever type of cars people want in the future.
Thermal management means keeping parts of the car, like the battery, at the right temperature so they work well and last a long time, especially when it's very hot or cold outside.
LIVE
Welcome to Daily Drive.
For Monday, March 16, 2026, I'm Kellan Walker in Las Vegas.
Today on the show, Trump's tariffs have cost automakers at least $35 billion since last
year.
China Bands pop out door handles and yoke steering wheels in new EV safety rules.
And the FTC puts 97 dealership groups on notice about advertising practices.
Plus, we'll hear from Bosch's Mohammed Fatturi about how suppliers are dealing with changing
EV projections.
With this multi-lane approach or multi-energy platform, you can design a system that not
only fits into the battery electric vehicles, but also it can be fit into the plug-in hybrid
electric vehicles or hybrid electric vehicles.
Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.
Trump's tariffs have racked up at least a $35 billion tab for automakers since last
year.
That's according to an automotive news analysis of financial reports.
Toyota is getting hit the hardest, facing more than $9 billion in costs through this
month.
The Detroit 3 shelled out $6.5 billion last year alone.
How much each company pays depends on where they build their cars and get their parts.
A lot of automakers ate those costs at first, but now they're passing them along to buyers.
We'll have more on this story in a minute with our own John Irwin.
China is positioning itself as the world's new EV safety cop, and given the size of its
market, the rest of the industry may have no choice but to follow along.
After deadly fires trapped people inside Xiaomi EVs when pop-out door handles lost power,
Beijing banned the sleek technology outright.
Starting in 2027, new rules also nicks yoke steering wheels and require good old-fashioned
physical buttons for turn signals and hazards.
No more hunting through touch screens.
Here's why it matters.
According to the China Passenger Car Association, China controls 68% of global EV sales.
That kind of market power means when Beijing set standards, automakers worldwide pay attention.
What happens there matters everywhere.
Europe and North America are already reviewing similar safety concerns, including Tesla's
door handles.
And the Federal Trade Commission is putting 97 dealership groups on notice about their
advertising practices.
The agency says advertised prices need to include all required fees, except for government
charges like taxes.
That means no surprise add-ons at the end of the deal.
The FTC flagged six practices it says are illegal.
Things like advertising cars that don't exist, or prices that only work if you finance through
the dealer.
Here's the catch.
The letters say the agency is concerned these groups might be breaking the rules, but hasn't
actually concluded they are, and ADA says most dealers play by the rules.
And those are today's headlines.
For more on those stories, head over to AutoNews.com.
Joining me now to talk more about how much President Trump's tariffs have cost automakers
in the past year is our own John Irwin, who covers the supply chain as well as GM for
us at Automotive News.
John, welcome back to Daily Drive.
Thanks for having me on.
All right, John, $35 billion is a staggering number.
Walk us through how you arrived at that figure and what surprised you most when you dug
into these financial reports?
Yeah, basically, you know, as we're approaching the one-year anniversary in April of the auto
tariffs going into place, as well as the reciprocal tariffs that have since been struck
down by the Supreme Court, we thought it'd be a good idea to look at, you know,
to dig through financial reports and take a look at how automakers have, you know, been
faring, given all the tariff costs have been piling up for them over the past year, basically
dug through every single automakers financial reports over the past year, looking at basically
trying to, you know, tally up over the course of the past, you know, 12 to 15 months, how
much automakers have reported paying in tariffs and that $35 billion number is actually probably
a little bit higher than what we're saying with $35 billion, because when you dig through,
some automakers have basically just reported 2025 figures and have yet to break out real
numbers for this year, because, you know, the first quarter is still going on.
Maybe they've had projections, but not real numbers yet.
So we didn't include those other automakers whose financial calendars fall, you know,
into the end in March of 2026, for instance, like Toyota, they do have numbers kind of
through last year and more specific projections, just through March of this year, we ended up
including those were basically just like through March, what have automakers paid?
And that's how we ended up with this $35 billion figure varies very much by, you know,
automaker, how big of a number this is, you know, some automakers were talking like Toyota,
for instance, $9 billion or so, other automakers, smaller figures, a lot of that just depends
on how much of their vehicle lineup they're importing, how large their sales figures are,
how much of the key components that they import into the US for vehicles that they build here
imported from outside of North America, etc. These numbers range pretty significantly.
But I think what kind of, I don't know if it's a surprise per se, but I think one thing that
really was driven home for me when I was digging through these numbers was just that this is
impacting everybody, regardless of, you know, if you're based in North America, or you have,
you know, pretty significant manufacturing presence in the US, you're still because of the global
nature of the supply chain, you're still importing a lot of your parts into the US, a lot of automakers
are still building vehicles, obviously outside of the US importing them in, they're trying to,
you know, move things around where they can, but there's only so much they can do.
So at the end of the day, they're paying these tariffs and, you know, for a lot of companies,
it's well over a billion dollars that they've paid so far. And got to keep in mind too,
that last year that that's really just for a portion of the year, most of these tariffs that
they've been paying really only went into effect starting in April for vehicles and in May for parts.
So we're looking at a full year now coming ahead for tariff impacts. And we'll see,
obviously automakers have been trying to minimize the financial fallout as much as they can. But,
you know, these tariffs are going to be here to stay, it appears, at least the auto tariffs. So
we'll see what these numbers look like next year. And I'll be curious to see if the figures are
higher or lower, how automakers have maybe shifted things around to try to minimize the
impacts as best they can. Well, as you mentioned, Toyota is bearing the brunt of this with over,
gosh, $9 billion. But what is driving the disparity between Toyota and other automakers?
Yeah, I think for Toyota, a lot of it just comes down to, you know, how much of,
how many vehicles they sell in the US and how many of them are imported. They do have a very
significant presence in North America, obviously manufacturing, but a lot of the key components
for those vehicles are still sourced from Japan or elsewhere. And those parts have a tariff attached
to them. So I think it sort of reflects just the sheer size of Toyota, you know, they're selling
way more vehicles than most other automakers, importing a lot of them. And then when they're
not importing them, they're importing some key parts. So at the end of the day, that figure ends
up being, you know, pretty significant. But Toyota at the same time, you know, you could argue,
despite those high costs, you know, they've highlighted ways that they've tried to,
you know, minimize the impact that that's had on their bottom lines. That's another thing that
kind of stood out to me as I'm digging through these financial figures is that, you know, for some
automakers, especially some of the smaller or niche ones, when you dig into like an Aston Martin,
for instance, you know, they're very explicit saying, you know, we're the Aston Martin said
all sorts of debt issues for years, but they weren't able to cut into that this year because
of the tariffs that they had to pay. Whereas Toyota, you know, it seems at least not to minimize a
$9 billion tariff hit at all, but, you know, they've made some moves to, you know, try to minimize
the impact that that'll have on their bottom line. You know, we'll see coming up here, you know, the
end of their financial year is in the next couple of weeks and, you know, we'll get an earnings
report after that. But it appears like they might be able to weather that maybe a little better than
some other automakers. But yeah, at the end of the day, it's $9 billion that, you know, they could
have had elsewhere, but they had to account for, you know, just because of the, again, the global
nature of the supply chain, even if you have, you know, a lot of manufacturing facilities set up in
the US, you're still importing, especially for a company like Toyota based in Japan, you're still
importing a lot of those parts into the US. So yeah, again, this is just something that, you
know, these numbers keep adding up and at the end of the day, it's just automakers trying to figure
out how they can manage their supply chains. And a lot of those decisions can take a long time to
implement. John Rowan, always insightful, my friend. Thank you so much for joining me. Thanks so much.
Coming up next, Muhammad Fatturi from Bosch talks about how suppliers are adapting to the
tumultuous EV market. That's next on daily drive.
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Welcome back to daily drive. I'm Kellen Walker. The policy whiplash surrounding electric vehicles
has left many suppliers scrambling. Companies tooled up and invested based
on EV projections that ultimately didn't materialize creating financial pressure across the industry.
But some companies are able to navigate through the situation better than others
with help from deeper pockets and more diverse portfolios.
Muhammad Fatturi is director of the engineering and power solutions division at Bosch. He joined
her own Molly Boygon on the latest episode of the automotive news shift podcast. Here's a piece
of that conversation. It's been a very tumultuous couple of years up and down the automotive value
chain, including different companies adapting to the changing projections around EV adoption.
So companies like Bosch tooled up and invested based on EV projections that ultimately didn't
materialize. So how is Bosch dealing right now with the financial pressure of having made those
investments now that the volumes haven't materialized? Of course, yes. As you mentioned, it has been
some tumultuous years coming from the COVID disruptions into the supply chain and the geopolitical
topics in Europe. Now we have some of the more immediate geopolitical topics in the Middle
East and it's all coming at the same time. What is important for us at Bosch is that we always have
the technology neutral multi-path approach when we are developing, deploying both in terms of the
technology development as well as deployment of the investments for industrialization of those
developed technologies. We work very closely with our OEM partners as well as forecasting
the technological trends of the future and we reflect these forecasts in the decisions that
we are making for product development as well as the industrialization. As you mentioned, the
take rate of the battery electric vehicles in the market were not as expected by the industry,
but this was also a trend that we had in our scenario planning. So we had other plans based
on the approaches that we had to be able to shift our product portfolio as well as our
investments commensurate to the needs that we have from the market. Can you talk a little bit more
about that scenario planning? Is that typical for different technology trends you're identifying?
It sounds like you had different potential scenarios that you were planning for. Can you
just explain a little bit more how that works? Yeah, so very specifically for the powertrain
types that we are discussing, we have scenario planning that takes into consideration
multiple factors coming from the consumer, coming from the regulatory perspective,
economic development as well as technology development that we have. And those scenarios
are being updated regularly. This used to be annual, but now it's even more frequent scenarios
that we have. And it has to be very clear. These are not forecasts or predictions. These are rather
scenarios based on very concrete assumptions that we put behind these scenarios. Therefore,
when we are making decisions, we are making the decisions based on the realization of those
assumptions that we had for those scenarios. And that brings us a little bit more flexibility
to shift from a scenario to another. How many scenarios is it typically? Are you able to say?
I won't go to the details, but it is mainly three main scenarios, but there are some,
let's say, sub-scenarios of those or variants of those scenarios.
Okay, got it. So let's say you have, you've created this set of assumptions, as you said,
that's governing three scenarios. And one of them, at a certain point, appears to be the most
likely to materialize. Does that then impact your design of a particular component? Or what
happens once you realize one of the scenarios is appearing to take precedence over the others?
Yeah, so exactly as you mentioned, as we discussed these scenarios, then the next level would be
the trickling down of these scenarios into different divisions and different business units
that are impacted or the scenarios are reflecting their product portfolio. This goes into the
some of the development of the variants or sometimes new platform developments
that would be making the scenarios achievable. So this goes along the lines of both technology
side. And then in parallel to that, we have our business scenarios that are going with the
technology scenarios. At the end of the day, just having the technology is not important.
You need to have a business case. You need to have an industrialization solution or plan for
that scenario. And all in all, across the divisions with the different business units,
we basically go through the process. I know this is sort of a technical question,
but I wonder if you may be able to try to explain how you design a component when it's going to be
powertrain, agnostic or multi-energy platform. Where does the common layer begin and end as far as
that goes? Very good question. And that's the reason that I'm here. I'm responsible for systems
engineering. And in order to have a multi-energy platform, as you mentioned, you need to have
a good understanding of the whole vehicle system. And vehicle system can extend beyond just the
component or the subsystem that we are supplying to the vehicle. It can include the vehicle itself,
or even beyond the vehicle when you're talking about connected vehicles and all of that. It also
has the interface with the rest of the infrastructure, being the charging or the cloud infrastructure.
Depending on the sub-project, this system view is a little bit different. Let's be specific
about powertrain. What we look, of course, you have the technology pillars from classical ICE
towards the hybrids, plug-in hybrids, range extender EVs, and electric vehicles.
Not all of the components of these vehicles are unique, but there are some systems that are or
historically has been designed bespoke to these powertrains. An example that I can mention is,
for example, the thermal management is a big point for the battery electric vehicles.
One of the pain points of battery electric vehicles historically, and I can say it as a
bev driver for the past five plus years, is living in Michigan when you have a whatever 12 degree
winter day outside and you're commuting to work, the range suffers significantly.
This has been part of the technology development, of course at Bosch, but also OEMs and the other
supplier partners of the OEMs. The question now here is that, are you designing a system
that is bespoke that only can satisfy and be retrofitted into the battery electric vehicle
platforms or with this multi-lane approach or multi-energy platform, you can design a system
that not only fits into the batteries, battery electric vehicles, but also it can be fit into
the plug-in hybrid electric vehicles or hybrid electric vehicles. This would mean that you really
need to go at the vehicle level and have from the onset a system design that is capable of this
adjustments and retrofitted into the packaging envelopes, into the technical requirements,
as well as the performance requirements that is significantly different between these platforms.
Mohamed Fatturi of Bosch spoke with our own Mali Boygan. You can hear the full conversation
on the latest episode of the Automotive News Shift Podcast, available now wherever you get
your podcasts. That's Daily Drive for today. I'm Kellan Walker. Thanks to Automotive News
executive producer Jake Neer as well as our own John Irwin, Yang Jian and John Hutter for their
reporting for today's podcast. You can get the latest news on suppliers, tariff costs,
and everything happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com. Come back tomorrow for a
conversation with Ronald Kliwick about how the Iran war is disrupting automotive supply chains.
We'd love to hear from you. Let us know what you think of the show and the topics we cover today.
Send us an email at dailydrive at autonews.com or leave us a voicemail
at 313-444-2774. And if you enjoy the podcast, remember to like, leave a review, and subscribe
so you never miss an episode.
About this episode
Automakers have paid at least $35 billion in tariffs since last year, with Toyota bearing the largest share at over $9 billion due to its import-heavy supply chain. These tariffs, stemming from Trump's policies, continue to impact the industry despite efforts to mitigate costs. China is enforcing new EV safety rules banning pop-out door handles and yoke steering wheels, influencing global standards given its market dominance. The FTC is also scrutinizing dealership advertising practices to prevent misleading pricing. Bosch's Mohammed Fatturi discusses how suppliers are navigating uncertain EV market projections by adopting a technology-neutral, multi-path approach to stay adaptable amid geopolitical and supply chain challenges.
