Greetings from London!

Many in Europe’s car industry are left with a dose of the summertime blues as they wait for the lower tariffs promised as part of the U.S.-EU trade deal announced at the end of July.

As part of that ballyhooed deal, border taxes on U.S. car imports were set at 15% instead of the 27.5% imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this year.

But now Europe has been left waiting for Trump to follow up and lower rates, with Germany giving a public, yet diplomatic, nudge this week for the United States to, ahem, lower the tariffs as agreed so a wider trade deal can be finalized.

In particular, automakers who raced to get ahead of Trump’s tariffs in April are now holding back amid the uncertainty over what the tariff rate is actually going to be.

After all, who wants to pay a 27.5% tariff when the 15% rate may just be around the corner?

Which brings us to today’s Auto File…

So far, 2025 has been an annus horribilis for Tesla in Europe, with sales down 33.2% across the continent in the first half of the year – with a 43.7% decline in the EU, which is often attributed to CEO Elon Musk’s fondness for far-right political parties, combined with increased competition for the company’s ageing model lineup.  

But as Reuters colleague Marie Mannes reports, Norway has become an outlier with sales up 24% in the first six months of 2025, making it Tesla’s second-largest market in Europe.

You can read more about it here.

It’s not that Norwegians like what Musk is doing – polls show they do not. But unlike much of the rest of Europe, Tesla has deeper roots in Norway than elsewhere.

Electric vehicles make up virtually all of Norway’s new car sales and Tesla got into the market over a decade ago.

Musk was seen as cool back then and even though he personally has lost a lot of fans, Norway has a high proportion of Tesla owners that makes protesting against the company difficult.

Besides, many Norwegians like their Teslas and have decided to look beyond Musk, which is a tougher option in markets where the company has not been around that long.

South Africa's car dreams are not going to plan - REUTERS/Rogan Ward.

South Africa has long had ambitions to build up its auto industry and turn it into a production powerhouse.

A number of global automakers have assembly plants in South Africa, but as Reuters colleague Nqobile Dludla reports things are not going according to plan.

You can read more about it here.

Sales of locally produced cars are falling well short of government targets, forcing a dozen auto-related company closures over the last two years with the loss of 4,000 jobs.

Competition is intensifying in South Africa as Chinese automakers from Chery to BYD want a piece of the country’s car market. This has encouraged Toyota to launch three EVs in South Africa next year.   

One possible bright spot for South Africa’s car industry is that Chery and Chinese rivals are talking about building assembly plants there.

 VinFast founder Vuong ponies up more cash - REUTERS/Phuong Nguyen. 

We may have mentioned once or twice before on the Auto File that getting to scale in the auto industry is phenomenally tough and hugely expensive – a lesson learned many times over in the last couple of years by the likes of Fisker, Arrival and others who burned mountains of cash before flaming out.

It helps to have a wealthy backer, as Vietnam’s VinFast has in founder Pham Nhat Vuong, who has ponied up cash once more to keep the loss-making EV maker going as it scales up deliveries to customers.

This time, Vuong has agreed to buy VinFast’s research and development arm for $1.52 billion.

The question with any of the EV startups left in the game now is how long their backers will continue to funnel cash their way. Lucid has received a lot of cash from the Saudi wealth fund and Rivian has had a hefty investment from Volkswagen.

Vuong owns about 98% of VinFast, which has relied heavily on him for funding.

The EV maker lost $712.4 million in the first quarter, but revenue jumped 150% to $656.5 million.

That must leave Vuong hoping that he won’t have to spend much more to keep VinFast afloat.

A common gripe among some of the less ardent Tesla investors is that after leading the way for years with EVs, the company has not launched a new mass-production car since the Model Y in 2020.

This while competitors are rolling out new EVs left, right and center.

Though Tesla has still not launched a new major model – excluding the Cybertruck, which has been an embarrassing flop – the company at least came up with a new version of the Model Y.

And now it is promoting a bigger, six-seater version of the EV called the Model Y L, which Tesla critics have said should have happened years earlier.

Immediately following that announcement, the EV maker said it is taking orders for the Model Y L in China, where the automaker faces serious competition from local manufacturers.

Four major truckmakers, including Daimler and Volvo, sued California to block the state from enforcing strict emissions standards that U.S. President Donald Trump declared void in June.

Global EV sales grew 21% year-on-year in July, the slowest rate since January as momentum in plug-in hybrid sales in China slackened, market research firm Rho Motion said.

Volkswagen's largest shareholder, holding firm Porsche SE, said it will invest more in the