| Thanks for reading Hyperdrive, Bloomberg’s newsletter on the future of the auto world. Read today’s featured story in full online here. President Donald Trump’s tariffs prompted several of Europe’s largest automakers to withdraw financial guidance, underlining the extent of the chaos unleashed by his fast-changing trade measures. Stellantis and Mercedes-Benz on Wednesday pulled their forecasts for this year, citing the duties that are upending supply chains and driving up car prices. Volkswagen left its outlook largely unchanged but warned it isn’t yet factoring in the impact of the levies.  Newly manufactured Alfa Romeos vehicles at the Stellantis factory in Cassino, Italy. Photographer: Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg The volatility sparked by the duties “is too high to reliably assess” how business will develop this year, Mercedes said. The luxury-car maker warned that operating earnings, cash flow and margins would be hit if the current trade hurdles persist. Carmakers have struggled to tally the impact of the tariffs as the Trump administration continues to change its position, following up initial threats of tough levies with caveats, exemptions and delays. The president signed directives on Tuesday to lift some duties on foreign parts and prevent multiple levies from stacking on top of each other. While the moves are expected to ease some of the burden on manufacturers and their suppliers, major questions remain unanswered. “Companies urgently need more clarity,” said Hildegard Müller, who heads Germany’s auto lobby VDA. Trump’s latest orders fall “far short of what is needed and only reduce the imposed tariffs very slightly.”  Aston Martin is limiting imports to the US. Photographer: Benjamin Cremel/Getty Images Aston Martin said Wednesday it’s limiting shipments of its luxury cars to the US and using up existing stock on dealer lots there to soften the tariff blow. The company doesn’t make any vehicles in the US and plans to raise prices on some cars. Volkswagen is ready to work with US policymakers on its production expansion plan and ways to mitigate the levies, CFO Arno Antlitz said Wednesday. Europe’s largest automaker already manufactures some cars for the US market in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Less than a third of the cars the group sold in the US in 2024 were manufactured there, with the remainder imported from Mexico and Europe. Mercedes, which builds SUVs in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, said earlier this month it’s considering shifting another vehicle to the US to counter the duties. CFO Harald Wilhelm warned tariffs would cut the company’s automaking margin by 300 basis points this year if left unchanged, even when taking Trump’s partial relief into account. That would reduce a previously guided range of 6% to 8% to as low as 3%. S&P Global Mobility, a market researcher whose forecasts are closely followed by Wall Street, slashed its outlook for annual global light vehicle production earlier this month, citing US tariff actions prior to this week’s executive orders. The firm now expects automakers to build around 87.91 million vehicles this year, about 1.56 million fewer than it was estimating a month ago. Earlier this week, Porsche — one of the carmakers most exposed to duties, because it doesn’t have a factory in the US — lowered its profit outlook and warned it’s unable to estimate any tariff impacts from June. And Volvo Car pulled its guidance and announced plans to slash costs by almost $2 billion. — By William Wilkes, Rafaela Lindeberg and Monica Raymunt  Photographer: Photo Illustration by 731; Photos: Getty Images (2). NASA (1) It’s been about 100 days since Elon Musk transformed the US Digital Service into a government cost-cutting initiative named after the Tesla CEO’s favorite crypto coin. With the Trump news cycle as intense as ever and Musk the fastest-moving part of it, the latest episode of Elon, Inc. takes stock of all that’s transpired in the past three and a half months. Listen and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, iHeart and the Bloomberg Terminal. | 
