Good morning! It is Friday, August 9, 2024, and this is The morning shiftYour daily summary of the biggest headlines from the automotive industry around the world in one place. Here are the most important stories you need to know.

1st gear: Tesla orders canceled due to Musk’s support for Trump

Tesla boss for months Elon Musk supports convicted felon Donald Trump and his campaign for re-election. This culminated in July when Musk officially supported the Trump campaign and has reportedly invested millions in his re-election. Now it sounds as if the efforts Musk’s company Tesla will suffer greatlywith orders being cancelled due to his close association with the campaign.

For the first time, a canceled order for Tesla cars was attributed to Musk’s ties to Trump. Reports Assets. The sale was a corporate order from a pharmaceutical company that has now put the order on hold due to “Musk’s vocal support for Trump”:

“Elon Musk makes no secret of his support for Donald Trump. Trump has repeatedly called climate change a hoax – this attitude is in stark contrast to Tesla’s mission to contribute to environmental protection through the production of electric cars,” said Raoul Rossmann, spokesman for the management of Rossmann, in a statement.

34 of Rossmann’s 800 vehicles are Teslas, a company spokesperson told Fortune. The company wants to continue using these vehicles in order to achieve “sustainability and resource conservation.”

Rossmann is the first major company to cite Musk’s political stance as a reason for stopping future Tesla purchases. Other European companies have withdrawn orders from Tesla for other reasons. For example, the software giant SAP announced that it would no longer offer Teslas as company cars to its employees, as Musk’s numerous price cuts – unlike other car manufacturers – are causing additional uncertainty.

Musk’s support for Trump has already damaged Tesla’s reputation among buyers here in America. Democrats are reportedly trying to distance themselves from anything related to Trump, and Republicans are not really that concerned about purchasing electric vehiclesThis is not a good move for a company struggling with falling profits due to price cuts and declining sales.

Moreover, Musk’s support for Trump is not the only reason why buyers are getting rid of their Teslas. At the beginning of the year Car rental giant Hertz announced a massive effort to sell its fleet of electric vehicles as it struggled with rising repair costs and a reduction in its sales profits, a result of the never-ending EV price war which Tesla has launched.

2nd gear: BMW recalls 100,000 cars due to starter fault

August is proving to be a big month for recalls after another deadly airbag problem Millions of cars across America have been found to be affected. Hyundai recalls 50,000 Santa Fe SUVs and Tesla has fixed a bug that had an impact more than 1.6 million cars. Now BMW is getting involved and carrying out a recall that affects more than 100,000 crossovers.

The German carmaker has 105,588 X5, X6, X7, 7 Series, 8 series And 3er Models due to problems with the starters of the cars, Reports Automotive NewsA software error in the engine starter of the affected models could cause damage to the cars and prevent them from starting. Automotive News Reports:

If drivers repeatedly attempt to start the engine over a long period of time, the engine may become electrically overloaded. An overheated starter motor can ignite flammable material near the engine compartment, increasing the risk of fire, the NHTSA report states.

The recall includes the BMW X5 (2019-20), the X7 xDrive40i (2019-20), the 7 Series Sedan (2020-21) as well as the X6 (2020), the 8 Series Convertible, the 8 Series Coupe, the 8 Series Gran Coupe and the 3 Series Sedan.

BMW first became aware of the problem in March 2023, according to the NHTSA filing, after receiving reports of engines not starting and thermal damage in the engine compartment. By August 2023, possible failure patterns were identified. Further reviews that year linked certain engine starter configurations that could be linked to the reported failures. On July 25, BMW decided to initiate a voluntary safety recall.

So far, only 12 cases of this problem have been reported locally, but no injuries have been reported. a result of the software errorFortunately, no hardware is affected by the problem and BMW’s solution is simply a quick software update for all cars affected by the recall.

If you are concerned that your car may be affected by a recall, There are a few easy ways to check this if that’s the case. First of all, the NHTSA has a super handy app that lets you see if your vehicle is affected by a recall, or you can go to the agency’s website and enter your VIN in his callback search tool.

3rd gear: Delta loses $380 million in revenue due to system errors

delta has been in trouble since a computer crash caused by antivirus The software CrowdStrike has its systemsNow it turns out that the ongoing software problems plaguing Delta could cost the company more than $380 million.

Delta expects revenue losses of more than $380 million as a result of the CrowdStrike outage. Reports BloombergThe outage, which occurred in late July, forced the airline to cancel thousands of flights. Now the airline hopes to recoup some of those losses in a legal battle with CrowdStrike:

Delta, which canceled around 7,000 flights over several days following the July 19 outage, had previously said it expected about $500 million in damages and had hired the law firm of well-known attorney David Boies to represent it. The airline confirmed on Thursday that it is taking legal action against CrowdStrike and Microsoft Corp. to seek compensation.

The CrowdStrike outage caused a “catastrophic shutdown” of more than 8 million computers worldwide, including 37,000 at Delta, Boies said in a letter to the technology company’s lawyer on Thursday. The outage affected more than 1.3 million of the airline’s customers, and about 60% of its “mission-critical” applications, including backup systems, depend on the Microsoft Windows operating system and CrowdStrike, he said.

Delta, CrowdStrike and Microsoft are arguing over who is responsible for the lost sales and the carrier’s refunds. This follows allegations by the two computer companies that Delta declined for their assistance in dealing with the aftermath of the outage caused by a software issue that affected Microsoft systems around the world.

When the CrowdStrike outage occurred, Hundreds of airports were affected and network operators around the world, leading to the Cancellation of almost 50,000 flights in which countless passengers were stranded.

4th gear: Toyota lowers production targets after factory closures

While Delta lowers profit forecasts, Toyota also relies on the hack Block. The automaker has announced its production targets for the year Investigations forced in Japan This leads to production being interrupted in some factories.

Toyota had to temporarily stop production while an investigation into vehicle certification was underway. The slowdown will reportedly affect production for the year, Reuters reported that The company has reduced its targets for 2024 by five percent:

Toyota Motor has cut its global vehicle production plan for the 2024 calendar year by about 5% due to a production shutdown at domestic factories, the Chubu Keizai newspaper reported on Thursday.

The Japanese automaker has informed key suppliers that it expects to produce 9.8 million vehicles worldwide, compared to 10.3 million previously expected, the newspaper reported without citing sources.

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker by volume, has set a target of assembling more than 10 million cars in 2023, putting the company nearly a million cars ahead of second-place Volkswagen Group. The downgrade of its 2024 forecasts marks the first time in four years that Toyota has targeted a production figure below last year’s targets, Reuters reports.

In fact, if Toyota hits its 9.8 million car target, it would be the company’s lowest annual production since 2022, when the automaker worked to recover from declining sales during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Reverse gear: What a way