Why India is in Trump’s crosshairs when crude is not even sanctioned
Technicians stand next to an oil rig which is manufactured by Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Limited (MEIL) at an Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) plant, during a media tour of the plant in Dhamasna village in the western state of Gujarat, India, August 26, 2021.
Amit Dave | Reuters
U.S. President Donald Trump added further pressure to India on Wednesday by bumping up tariffs to 50% — but calls for India to immediately stop buying Russian oil could cause global crude prices to spike, industry sources told CNBC.
Trump has accused India of “fueling” Russia’s war machine and said the country is “directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil.” As a result, the U.S. imposed an additional 25% tariff on India, bringing total levies against the major U.S. trading partner to 50%.
India was once encouraged to buy Russian crude by the United States, and, unlike LNG, Russian crude isn’t sanctioned, but traded under a price cap to limit Moscow’s ability to profit from its sale. India is one of the biggest buyers of Russian oil, according to data from Kpler which shows total Russian crude exports amount to around 3.35 million barrels per day, of which India takes about 1.7 million and China 1.1 million.
In New Delhi, there must be “confusion,” Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group and former White House energy advisor to former President George W. Bush, told CNBC.
“Joe Biden went to India after the invasion of Ukraine and begged them to take Russian oil, the Indians hardly imported any Russian oil, and they begged India, ‘please take the oil,’ so that crude prices would remain low, and they did. Now we’re flipping around and saying, ‘why are you taking all this oil,'” McNally added.
Industry sources in the Indian petroleum sector told CNBC the country has abided by all international sanctions, and that India is doing the global economy a “favor” by buying Russian oil which in turn, stabilizes prices. The sources did not wish to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.
India has argued that it if it were to stop buying Russian oil, a plan must be put in place to stabilize energy markets, along with a contingency to fill the shortfall in supply if Russian barrels are taken off the market.
“In case India decides to cut Russian oil imports, the refineries likely would try to find alternative barrels from the Middle East, as they used to rely on those barrels until 2022. Likely other buyers would not step in,” Giovanni Staunovo, a commodity analyst at UBS told CNBC.
Russia is the third largest global crude producer, after the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Moscow produces nearly 11 million barrels of oil per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. India’s Russian crude oil imports was 38% in both 2023 and 2024 and is currently 36% in 2025. Total Indian crude imports are increasing each year with rising demand, and as a result, imports of Russian crude in 2025 are their strongest annual pace yet.
If this supply was to be removed from the market, prices would skyrocket, according to the industry sources in the Indian petroleum sector. “If India were to stop buying Russian crude oil today, global crude prices could jump to over $200 per barrel for all global consumers,” an industry source told CNBC.
“Very near term, there is a risk of a pop in brent prices to $80 or above,” McNally told CNBC, signaling that the impact of additional tariffs and a potential cut to Russian oil imports would be significantly less catastrophic.
U-turn
“When they didn’t want India to buy something, they told us,” an industry source in the Indian petroleum sector said. This was indeed the case when India was once purchasing Iranian crude, which New Delhi no longer buys and is now sanctioned as Washington doubles down on its maximum pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic.
Hardeep Singh Puri, India’s petroleum minister, last month told CNBC’s Dan Murphy: “The price of oil would have gone up to 130 dollars a barrel. That was a situation in which we were advised, including by our friends in the United States, to please buy Russian oil, but within the price cap.”
Sara Vakhshouri, the founder and president of SVB Energy International, told CNBC the hefty duties announced by Trump are a “negotiation tactic,” aimed at “reclaiming lost U.S. oil market share in India and oil export declines since 2022, and securing equivalent export of other commodity to India.”
“India has always coordinated closely on US oil policy, including sanctions on Iranian oil. At the same time, for the Trump administration, energy security, affordability, and reliability are priorities” Vakhshouri added.
Russian crude has been placed under a price cap by the European Union since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. That price cap, set at $60 per barrel, allows Russia to export its crude, but at a price lower than the commodity generally trades. The aim is to limit Moscow’s revenue from oil exports, constricting the country’s ability to finance its war in Ukraine. The policy was implemented by G7 nations, hoping to maintain a stable supply of Russian oil on the market.
Sources within the Indian petroleum sector told CNBC “the price cap is a $1 to $2 difference” and insists New Delhi is not buying Russian crude at a major discount per barrel.
Even Russian LNG is not “completely under US secondary sanctions, Europe still buys gas from Russia via pipelines and LNG. Only some Russian LNG export terminals (e.g. Artic LNG 2) are under sanctions, but not all LNG exports,” UBS’ Staunovo, told CNBC.
In 2021, Russia was the largest supplier of petroleum to the European Union. After the bloc’s ban on seaborne imports of Russian crude, the share of imports from Moscow fell from 29% to 2% in the 2025. The EU still imports 19% of its LNG from Russia, according to data from the first quarter of 2025 from Eurostat.
Russia is a member of OPEC plus, established alongside Saudi Arabia in 2016. The group works to stabilize oil prices, adjusting output based on market fundamentals and trends in supply and demand. A group of eight producers just moved days ago to raise output in September, fully unwinding cuts and helping calm fears of Russian supply concerns.
“While OPEC+ countries hold spare capacity to tackle supply disruptions, a full drop in Russian crude production/exports would see that spare capacity completely dwindling. The Biden administration was aware of this,” UBS’ Staunovo said.
The Russian price cap aimed “to reduce the revenues of the Russian government by allowing Russian oil to remain in the markets and to prevent an oil price spike,” Staunovo added, noting that these decisions were made in the run up to a presidential election in the U.S.
Now, after winning that very election, Trump means business. Before slapping an additional 25% tariff on India on Wednesday, he told CNBC that India “hasn’t been a good trading partner.”
It means that U.S. ties with New Delhi, a key security and defense partner, could be at risk. India responded sharply to Trump’s criticism on Wednesday, saying it was “unjustified and unreasonable” and that it bought Russian oil with U.S. support.
There you are, motoring along in your Volvo XC90 PHEV with the Pilot Assist engaged alongside a big 18-wheeler at a comfortable 70 mph cruise when the interstate starts to slowly sweep left. From the drivers’ seat, that semi on your right looks awfully close. As the steering wheel turns itself in your hand, you start to wonder if that truck’s a bit too close. The car isn’t doing anything wrong, but it’s too close for your comfort and you give the wheel a little nudge to hug the inside of the lane just a bit more.
These deeply personal preferences are tough to quantify, and highlight a simple fact about Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) that the industry at-large hasn’t yet to come to terms with: when it comes to self-driving cars, one size does not fit all.
The Volvo experience I outlined above was very real, happening just as the wife and I were arguing about the relative merits of our very different choice in running shoes. She prefers the supportive, cushion-y ride of the HOKA Clifton 9s, which I’ve become convinced are The Devil™, preferring instead the zero-lift, no-cushion feel of my Xero Prio runners. The intervention with the Volvo interrupted that particular argument and started another. Namely, the one about why I had chosen that moment to “interfere” with the Pilot Assist.
“It was too close to that truck,” I explained. “Freaked me out.”
“That’s how I feel in the Honda,” she said. “I’m always afraid that it’s going to try and put me into oncoming traffic.”
That’s when the idea for this post came to me. Because, as a car brand, it’s really not possible to just say that your car has ADAS or doesn’t have ADAS in a binary sense. That’s because these systems are not just proprietary to a given brand, they can vary from vehicle-to-vehicle within that brand, and each one can have distinct lane centering behavior, steering feel, lane change aggressiveness, braking distances, timing for its hand-off warnings, and probably a bunch of other stuff that I haven’t even thought of depending on what kind of cameras, sensors, and software the specific vehicle you are in is equipped with.
It’s a bit of a mess, in other words.
Opinion: Honda Sensing gets it right
I first experienced Honda’s ADAS in 2014, driving a then-new CR-V between Chicago and Bay Harbor, Michigan for an Acura press drive. Even in its early generations, I was impressed with the way it handled stop-and-go traffic, the way it guided you through turns, but didn’t do the turning for you, and the speed and intensity it used in braking very much mirrored my own.
Last month, I had a chance to test out the 2025 Honda Civic Sport Touring Hybrid for a week on Cape Cod. I picked the car up at PreFlight Parking outside Boston Logan, jammed it with luggage, and immediately hit heavy traffic, where the Honda Sensing Low-Speed Follow function took me right back to 2014, ratatouille-style, when my experience in that car had led me to believe that self-driving cars were right around the corner.
In the decade-plus since experiencing that first autonomous Acura, I’ve had the chance to experience Ford BlueCruise, Tesla Autopilot and FSD, and Mercedes-Benz DRIVE PILOT. And all, interestingly enough, in and around the Circuit of the Americas in Austin at one time or another over my three years of hosting Electrify Expo events there.
Each different OEMs’ system had its strengths and quirks. I remember Mercedes DRIVE PILOT as impressively precise, even clinical. The Ford system faded into memory. I couldn’t tell you anything about it, which is probably high praise. The Tesla systems, though, stood out — but for all the wrong reasons. Lane changes came too quickly, it accelerated too late, and too aggressively, and I often found myself bracing for collisions that (in fairness) never came.
More than once in those years I’ve wondered if maybe I’d just got it wrong back in 2014. That the tech was so new, and I had been so wow’ed by it initially, that I had got swept up in the hype of self-driving cars … but that drive in my wife’s XC90, back-to-back as it was with the Civic Hybrid, showed me that wasn’t it. Instead, I just didn’t like the way those other cars drove. Just like I don’t like the way HOKAs feel. And, just like my wife isn’t wrong for liking her gross marshmallow shoes (probably), I’m not wrong for preferring a more restrained digital co-pilot.
It’s a matter of fit, not fact — and that’s going to be a tough sell.
Everyone but me is wrong
As the great George Carlin once asked, “Have you ever noticed that anyone who is driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac?”
ADAS systems live squarely in that same subjective space occupied by other drivers. If the bots brake too hard, steer too sharply, or get too close to the car head before changing lanes, they might not be technically doing anything wrong, but they’re maniacs – and right now, there’s no real way to know how one car’s ADAS is going to behave until you’ve spent some significant time behind the wheel. Like, “Uh-oh. I bought a thing and I hate it,” amounts of time.
That’s a problem for both buyers and sellers (to say nothing of manufacturers and software developers), because why would you risk demonstrating a system that might scare someone? How do you sell “confidence” and “convenience” when what feels confident and convenient to one driver feels reckless to another, and milquetoast to a third?
Lucky for you guys, I have a solution.
Jojo’s ADAS scorecard *
| System | Lane centering bias | Lane change distance (car lengths) | Follow distance (default) | Braking force (max Gs) | Hands-off time allowed | Overall “feel” |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ford BlueCruise | Centered | ~3.5 | Moderate | 0.30 G | Medium | Stable |
| Honda Sensing | Slight left bias | ~2.5 | Safe | 0.35 G | Short | Balanced |
| Mercedes-Benz DRIVE PILOT |
Centered | ~3.5 | Moderate | 0.40 G | Long | Confident |
| Tesla Autopilot | Centered | ~1.5 | Close | 0.45 G | Long (varies) | Aggressive |
| Volvo Pilot Assist | Slight right bias | ~3.0 | Moderate | 0.30 G | Moderate | Cautious |
That asterisk (*) is there because these are completely made up, imaginary values. They’re simply there to illustrate one way for manufacturers and dealers to share objective, quantifiable information about how their different ADAS systems behave. If it’s done right, it might help a car shopper get a better feel for how their next car might drive, and prevent them from spending their hard-earned cash on a car that drives like an idiot. Or a maniac.
That’s my take, anyway – what’s yours? Head down to the comments and let us know what values you’d like to see represented on an ADAS scorecard, and how much you’d be willing to base your next car buying decision on how it drives.
As for me, my X handle might be VolvoJo, but if I’m shopping for a car that’s going to drive me instead of the other way around, I might have to see if “HondaJo” is available.
Original content from Electrek.
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Elon wants the US military to start buying Tesla Cybertrucks – and now they are! The Air Force has ordered two Cybertruck testers for target practice to determine how easy they are to blow up, while Jo makes up a whole new conspiracy theory on today’s explosive episode of Quick Charge!
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An it doesn’t stop there. We’ve also got exciting new home battery backup and V2X options for Tesla owners, and one Texas EV driver that decided to conquer the Texas floodwaters by harnessing the awesome combined powers of electrons and stupidity (it’s pretty awesome).
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Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer project is reportedly over. Bloomberg reports that CEO Elon Musk is killing the project after a mass exodus of talent from the Dojo team to a competing startup.
Dojo was the name of Tesla’s in-house AI chip development to create supercomputers to train its AI models for self-driving.
Tesla hired a bunch of top chip architects and tried to develop better AI accelerator chips to rely less on companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and others.
It has been running into delays for years.
We previously reported on significant setbacks. In 2018, Jim Keller, the famed chip architect who was first hired to lead Tesla’s chip-making effort, left the company.
Ganesh Venkataramanan succeeded him, but he left Tesla in 2023.
For the last few years, Peter Bannon, who worked with Keller for years, has been leading Tesla’s chip-making programs, but he is now reportedly also leaving the automaker.
Bloomberg reports that Musk has “ordered the effort to be shut down.”:
Peter Bannon, who was heading up Dojo, is leaving and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has ordered the effort to be shut down, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. The team has lost about 20 workers recently to newly formed DensityAI, and remaining Dojo workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the people said.
DensityAI is a new startup currently in stealth mode, founded by several former Tesla employees, including Venkataramanan.
It reportedly plans to build chips for AI data centers and robots, much like the Dojo program.
The company recently hired 20 former Tesla employees who worked on Dojo.
While the program appeared to be lagging behind for years as Tesla increasingly bought more compute power from NVIDIA, Musk has been claiming progress.
The CEO said in June:
Tesla Dojo AI training computer making progress. We start bringing Dojo 2 online later this year. It takes three major iterations for a new technology to be great. Dojo 2 is good, but Dojo 3 will be great.
During Tesla’s quarterly conference call in late July, the CEO claimed that Dojo 2 will be “operating at scale sometime next year.”
Electrek’s Take
It’s unclear whether the report is accurate or if it’s an extrapolation from the talent exodus to Elon killing Dojo, or if Elon was lying just a few weeks ago.
Alternatively, this development may be so recent that Elon went from being confident in Dojo a few weeks ago to disbanding the team working on it now.
Either way, I think it’s clear that the project has been lagging, and Tesla has been extremely dependent on chip suppliers rather than making its own.
I think Dojo being likely dead is not a big loss for Tesla.
When it comes to chip making, developing its own inference compute for onboard “AI computers” was always the more important project.
TSMC is set to produce Tesla’s new AI5 chip, which is coming soon, and we have recently learned that Samsung will be manufacturing its AI6 chip.
I think the bigger concern from this report is that it’s the latest example of an ongoing exodus of talent at Tesla.
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