Sept. 2, 2025 | What tariff court ruling means for auto industry; Qualcomm’s Anshuman Saxena

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Welcome to Daily Drive for Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025.

I'm Kellyn Walker in Las Vegas.

Today on the show, a core rule is that most of President Trump's tariffs are illegal.

Mazda output plunges amid trade barriers, and Jaguar Land Rover is hit by a cybersecurity

incident disrupting production and sales. Plus, Qualcomm's Anshuman Saxena talks about

the company's driver assistance partnership with BMW.

Things which the BMW team does much better is handled by the BMW team.

The things where Qualcomm can bring the technology know how.

Qualcomm brings that capability.

Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.

A US appeals court has ruled that most of President Trump's tariffs are illegal.

The decision addressed the legality of what Trump calls reciprocal tariffs as well as a

separate set of tariffs imposed in February against China, Canada, and Mexico.

The court's decision does not affect tariffs issued under other legal authorities such as

Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

The court allowed the tariffs to remain in place through October 14th

to give the Trump administration a chance to file an appeal with the US Supreme Court.

The Treasury Department and the US Trade Representative's Office

and the Commerce Department had no immediate response to the ruling.

We'll hear more about this story in a minute with our own John Irwin.

While US courts iron out what's legal and what's not,

Trump's trade war continues to make business difficult for foreign automakers.

Mazda saw production and exports from its home base in Japan plunge in July.

That's as the car maker cut back on low-margin vehicles amid US tariffs.

Output at Mazda's factories in Japan fell 28% in July.

Worldwide production fell for the sixth consecutive month, this time by 23%.

Mazda's exports from Japan fell 18% during the month,

with exports also trending lower for the sixth straight month.

And Jaguar Land Rover says its production and retail activities

have been severely disrupted following a cybersecurity incident.

The British automaker is owned by India's Tata Motors.

It says the intrusion forced it to shut down its systems.

The company says there's no evidence customer data was stolen.

It did not provide further details.

And those are today's headlines.

You can find more details on all those stories at AutoNews.com.

Joining me now to talk about the latest court ruling about tariffs is our own John Irwin,

who covers the supply chain and trade policy for us at Automotive News.

John, welcome back to Daily Drive.

Thanks for having me.

So John, what do we know right now about what this means for the auto industry specifically?

Yeah, as of right now, at least for the next few weeks, nothing much changes just because

the ruling keeps the tariffs in place until mid-October.

But kind of big picture, it's important to note that this ruling does not apply to the auto tariffs

or it does not apply to steel and aluminum tariffs.

Those are kind of separate applied under a different law.

So what we're talking about here with this ruling is specifically the reciprocal tariffs,

those that are leveled on individual countries.

That does impact the auto industry though, just because there are only certain parts

that are covered under the auto tariff, meaning that if a part is not on that list,

they are instead subject to the reciprocal tariffs.

So this is something that would impact the auto industry,

specifically a lot of the smaller parts that don't end up on the auto parts tariff list.

So we'll wait to see what happens over the next several weeks as the Trump

administration is going to appeal.

They've said that they're confident they would win an appeal.

We'll see what happens.

But as of right now, at least until mid-October, nothing changes for sure.

And then we'll see what happens when the Supreme Court rolls.

And this is the latest in a string of court rulings against President Trump's use of tariffs.

Do we have any idea how long it will be before we have a final answer

to what's legal and what's not?

That's a good question.

And I think the answer is yes and no, at least in the short term.

We do have this specific ruling we're going to see an appeal.

And we'll find out hopefully at some point, relatively soon,

whether these specific tariffs apply under the IEPA, these reciprocal tariffs,

whether they'll be ruled legal or not by the Supreme Court

or the appeals court ruling will stand or whatever ends up happening.

That said, in the long run, I think it's likely that we're going to continue to see

a whole string of lawsuits, a lot of democratic states,

and small business groups have been challenging these tariffs in court.

I think that's likely to continue.

Obviously, some cases have more merit than others.

The IEPA, those tariffs are the only ones that have really had any sort of challenge in court

that's really been upheld so far, at least.

But I'd expect it's fair to see that we're going to see more challenges.

And even if the Supreme Court rolls, or if the appeals court ruling is upheld,

that these reciprocal tariffs are illegal,

the Trump administration is likely to continue to pursue tariffs

through alternative means.

Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, is quoted by Reuters on Monday saying,

yeah, we're confident that the will win an appeal,

but we're preparing some plan Bs in case that doesn't happen.

It's important to note, though, that a lot of those plan Bs

would be more restricted in scope.

One idea that's been floated out there has been the use of the 1930s

Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which allows the president to implement tariffs

up to 50% on goods coming from a country,

if that country is deemed to be unfair to U.S. commerce,

but those tariffs can only be in place for five months.

It's also possible that they could pursue tariffs

through the Section 232, which is the same avenue

that the administration has used to implement tariffs

in the auto industry, steal and aluminum, and that sort of thing.

But that requires an investigation.

It would take months and it could potentially narrow the scope

of a lot of what they're looking to do.

So I think there's a lot still to be learned.

We'll have an idea of the legality of these IEPA tariffs pretty soon,

but as for the bigger picture,

I think we're still a lot that remains to be seen.

Perfect. John, thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me.

Coming up, Qualcomm is on a mission to deploy

its self-driving technology on a global scale.

We'll hear about how that's moving forward with BMW next on Daily Drive.

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Welcome back to Daily Drive, I'm Kellan Walker.

Qualcomm will soon hit a milestone with its long simmering goal

to deliver driver assistance technology on a global scale.

Those efforts will debut on BMW's Neue Class platform

during the IAA Mobility Showcase in Munich this month.

Anshuman Saxena leads ADAS in automated driving at Qualcomm.

He recently spoke with our own Pete Bigelow on Shift,

a podcast about mobility.

Here's a piece of their conversation.

You've been hard at work for many years building

driver assistance technology,

and that work is about to pay off in a big way.

Tell us about what Qualcomm is going to unveil alongside BMW

within a matter of days in Munich.

That's a great way to start the conversation.

Yes, it has been a pretty nice journey in Qualcomm,

building up step by step the brakes that we have put for the foundation

for driver assistance systems and automated driving,

where safety is critical, comfort driving is critical,

as we have been talking about Snapdragon Digital chassis.

The most important piece that we added, I would say,

the latest.

It's not new, but the latest, I would say,

in the whole Snapdragon Digital chassis has been the Snapdragon ride umbrella of products,

which is our driver assistance and automated driving thing.

We talked about how we are going to be working with BMW,

I think back in 2021-22 time frame.

Kickstarted a program where we will bring in

mass market automated driving solution for highway and urban systems,

alongside working with BMW on Snapdragon ride SOCs,

using our own vision stack and a collaborative development of the automated driving

solution with BMW.

That's what we are going to be bringing to the roads.

Again, BMW has been talking about it as their newer class.

The next big thing, the brand that they are building up for

Model 826 launches, they will be unveiling a lot more details at IAA,

and we are really proud to be a partner of that as we talk about the 8S stack

that we have brought into that solution.

All right, I've got a lot of questions.

I'm going to start with this one.

Tell me more about the 8S stack and parts of it were developed jointly with BMW

in a full-fledged joint venture, and parts, as I understand it,

were developed from Qualcomm in-house.

What's what and how does that come together?

That's again a great way to bring this whole picture together.

What does it take to build an ADAS system?

What is the use case?

So that's where it starts.

Automakers know this very, very well.

That's why BMW partnership puts a driving force of what exactly is required.

So that's what is called as the ODD.

We start with the ODD.

Urban and highway driving system.

Then there are the levels of autonomy,

because there is a hands-off, eyes-off kind of systems, etc., etc.

So they decide what is the end goal of the system.

Then you start decomposing the system into what are the sensors?

What is the whole safety case going to be?

And as we started working on that,

we had a compute footprint requirement,

which is kind of serviced by Qualcomm Snapdragon ride SOCs,

which again, you have been tracking for quite some time.

We have really differentiated the SOCs that we bring to multiple customers,

including BMW for this solution.

Then the other part was a really critical part was this camera perception solution,

the vision perception solution, where you bring in multi-cameras

to ensure that everything on the road required for NCAP regulations,

required for the regulatory requirements in Europe or US,

or it will be launched over 100 countries through the life of the program.

All that is serviced as it has been serviced in the past.

That is Qualcomm's own in-house development of what we call as the vision stack

provided into the system.

And then what do those sensors give?

How does it, the whole thing fuse together from radars, cameras,

multiple other sensors, the location, maps,

all that comes together as a collaborated EDAS-ED stack,

servicing those multiple customer functions and integrating into the car.

That's what is done as a joint work between BMW and Qualcomm.

I see. This is pretty unique.

If I kind of recall, you and BMW have something,

approximately 800 people working as part of this full-fledged joint venture,

and is that unique in the auto industry in some way?

That sounds very integrated.

Yeah. No, I think the numbers, the engineering force that has been put in

between BMW and Qualcomm, yes, it's a pretty big team.

But then the task is really, really big.

We are talking about bringing in a safety grade stack

with really complex driving functions

with different sensors, ecosystems, simulations, et cetera,

to be tested and validated and brought onto the road.

This is a really important big task where Qualcomm and BMW teams with their expertise.

So things which the BMW team does much better is handled by the BMW team.

The things where Qualcomm can bring the technology know how,

Qualcomm brings that capability.

So that's how it has been set up a very, very well-working relationship

and a whole engagement model that has been set up between BMW and Qualcomm,

which takes us to this newer class of launch.

If I get in the weeds here a little bit, forgive me,

but in terms of what Qualcomm brings to this,

obviously a lot of long-time expertise on the silicon side,

is this comparable to the same silicon that is on the other aspects of Qualcomm's business,

or is this developed specifically for driver assistance technology?

Yeah, so Snapdragon ride SOCs are something that we have been talking about quite a bit

with the very recent addition of Ride Elite last year,

which again, we talked about in previous conversations.

These are SOCs that we build with the system know how in place, right?

I mean, we are not just bringing in yet another SOC and trying to service the market.

It is like, again, back to the top-down approach,

what exactly are we trying to solve?

What kind of sensing is required?

What is the sensor processing that is required,

whether it is the cameras, radars, whatnot?

How do you fuse it all together?

How do you do the AI planning, etc., etc.?

All those things have to be designed to specific blocks on your SOC,

whether we use AI engines like NPUs, graphics scores,

which can do a lot of brilliant parallel processing that we have on our Adreno GPUs,

or you really need a high-end CPU cluster to do a lot more sequential processing

when you are doing the planning of the tasks.

That is what we do in Ride SOCs,

which is, again, used in the BMW program and multiple other global OEM programs

that we have been discussing in the past.

Now, that's not all. Ride SOCs is clearly what we have been doing for years.

To connect the vision perception,

it's also a significantly important technology asset that we have brought.

If you remember, we have acquired this company Arriver,

which was a part of the Vionier as a tier one,

and they had all the brilliant know-how of building a vision

system, deployed it in multiple vehicles with the NCAP 5-star ratings.

That was the know-how that we had for technology and production scaling

that we brought in is an integral part of this whole

ADAS solution that you would see on the road in Munich.

You can hear Pete Bigelow's full conversation with Qualcomm's

Anshuman Saxena on Shift, a podcast about mobility.

That's available now wherever you get your podcast.

That's Daily Drive for today. I'm Kellan Walker.

Thanks to automotive news executive producer Jake Nier,

as well as our own John Irwin and Hans Grimel for their reporting for today's podcast.

You can get the latest news on tech and innovation,

tariffs, and everything happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com.

Come back tomorrow for a conversation with Michigan State Senator

and U.S. Senate candidate Mallory McMarrow.

We were leading the world in EV development, infrastructure development,

advanced mobility technologies, and then all of a sudden it became this political football.

We'd love to hear from you.

Let us know what you think of the show and the topics we covered today.

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