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Welcome to Daily Drive for Monday, June 23rd, 2025. I'm Jamie Butters, executive editor of Automotive News in Detroit.
And I'm Kellen Walker in Las Vegas.
Today on the show, Filosa keeps the reins on the crucial North America business, Toyota raises prices in the US, and Tesla starts running robo taxis in small numbers. Plus, Stellantis chairman John Elkann discusses his family's legacy and the state of the global auto industry. I think that we are in a very interesting moment for the European Union in terms of what it wants to do. Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry. Stellantis has a new CEO as of today. Antonio Filosa officially took over and named his leadership team. Most top executives remain in their current roles. One notable exception is Maxim Piccott, the head of purchasing and a former head of the Europe region, who is leaving the company. The new purchasing chief is Monica Geneovves, who has been with Fiat since 1995.
Perhaps most important, Filosa is retaining responsibility as the head of the North America region and the traditional American brands, Jeep, Ram, Dodge, and Chrysler. The leadership team includes a total of 13 members. CFO Doug Osterman will take responsibility for M&A and joint ventures and Jean-Philippe Imparato will remain as head of Europe and European brands including Maserati.
Toyota said it will raise prices for some vehicles sold in the US by an average of $270 starting in July. The automaker's decision follows President Donald Trump's imposition of a 25% tariff on imported vehicles and auto parts, but a Toyota spokesperson denied the tariff directly influenced the price increase. The latest price hike is part of our regular review of the prices, Toyota spokesperson Nouanaga said June 21st. Prices for Lexus models, Toyota's luxury brand, would also increase by an average of $28. He said Mitsubishi, Subaru, Ford, and Tesla are among the brands that have recently signaled price increases.
The UAW's leadership is mired in turmoil over allegations of an investment blunder that officials say cost the union about $80 million in potential gains from its financial portfolio. That's according to seven UAW officials and employees and union documents reviewed by Reuters. The investment funds were liquidated to pay striking workers in 2023, but weren't reinvested for more than a year. According to the documents and the UAW officials and staffers who spoke on condition of anonymity, the details of the investment dispute at the union, including the estimate of foregone gains, had not previously been reported. The loss is an estimate of what the union could have earned had the money been invested in the stock market and other assets in accordance with the union's policy during that time.
And Tesla launched its robo taxi service with a small pilot in Austin, Texas for investors and social media influencers, who gushed over CEO Elon Musk's long delayed moonshot to cement the company's future as an AI and robotics powerhouse. The June 22nd launch with a dozen or so autonomous Tesla vehicles appeared to go without any major problems. According to the invitation-only riders and their posts on social media, the Tesla robo taxis operated in the city alongside autonomous taxis from rival Waymo. During the Sunday event, social media posts by Tesla influencers showed a typical ride-hailing experience using a smartphone app similar to Uber. The robo taxi didn't have a safety driver, but did have a safety monitor in the front passenger seat, the posts showed.
And those are today's headlines. So Jamie, Antonio Filosa starts today as the new CEO of Stellantis. Much of his top executives will remain in their current roles. But one thing that is interesting, Filosa is retaining his responsibility as head of the North America region. What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, it was probably the biggest decision he had to make in how he wanted to arrange his team. And on one hand, I would look at it and think North America is the biggest challenge, the biggest opportunity that he maybe could use some more help there, but I think he's done so much work over the past 6 months or so to repair relations with dealers and with suppliers. He really wants to stay focused there, maintain those relationships, not try to, you know, hand them off to a new COO. So it makes some sense. We've seen this kind of thing in the industry before. You know, we'll see if he can keep that rolling and get the company back on track. Obviously, Jeep and Ram are the most important brands. When this company makes money, it's on the strength of those brands. So, he's got to stay really tight with those dealers and those operations.
Gotcha. Coming up, Stellantis chairman John Elkann discusses his family's legacy and the state of the industry with Automotive News publisher Casey Crane. That's next on Daily Drive.
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Welcome back to Daily Drive. I'm Jamie Butters with Kellen Walker. As part of Automotive News Centennial Year in 2025, we've been celebrating individuals and families that have shaped the industry over its past and into the future. The Agnelli family founded Fiat and grew it into one of the world's largest automakers. This month, Automotive News publisher Casey Crane interviewed John Elkann, chairman of Stellantis, and the great-great-grandson of Fiat co-founder Giovanni Agnelli. They spoke in Turin, Italy at the Automotive News Europe Congress. Here's part of their conversation.
You just named a new CEO. Antonio Filosa is a seasoned executive with deep experience in North and South America. I'm assuming, and you only hinted at a couple interviews you did for this job, but what made him the right leader at this time given all the pressures and all the challenges he's going to be facing and what are some of the expectations?
We went under a very thorough process and Antonio ended up being unanimously the choice that the board of Stellantis made. I believe that Antonio has a very strong empathy and he's very good with people and our company is a company that's very large, very much spread and having a leader who understands people and is able to understand people across many different cultures is a strength because at the end of the day any organization and Stellantis are made of people. Antonio's ability in understanding what we do from how a car is being engineered, designed, manufactured, sold is important because if you are running a car company, you need to know what you're doing and you need to be passionate about what you're doing, which he is. And ultimately, we want to build great cars to delight our customers. And having your CEO who really knows that, wants that is important. And lastly, we are getting in a world which is shifting our industry from being a global industry to being a multi-regional industry. And the experience that Antonio had running Argentina, running Brazil, running South America, and recently running North America is very much in phase with how the world is going between regulations, tariffs, how you ultimately navigate that constructively with political forces.
