Trade News

NEW YORK — The Stellantis design team has been busy crafting concept cars that show where each of its brands is headed in the age of electrification.

One of the latest creations, the Ram 1500 Revolution concept that debuted in January, is setting the tone for the truck brand ahead of its foray into the world of zero-emission haulers. Its design language can be seen in the tuning-fork lighting scheme of the electric 1500 REV that was shown this month in New York and is slated to go on sale in late 2024.

Stellantis design chief Ralph Gilles said the Revolution concept is being used as a discussion piece to see what the public wants in electric pickups. It has features such as removable third-row jump seats and a rail attachment system that allows the seat and console to be repositioned for greater cabin flexibility.

Other recent Stellantis electric concepts include the Chrysler Airflow crossover and the Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Banshee.

Gilles sa…

Steve McQueen's 1967 Ferrari is expected to sell for up to $7 million when it goes on the auction block this summer.

McQueen, the actor best known for driving a Ford Mustang in the 1968 film Bullitt, bought the Ferrari 275 GTB/4 and owned it for more than four years. The car, which has been written about in numerous magazines and exhibited in Maranello's Museo Ferrari and at the Villa d'Este Concorso d'Eleganza, was restored to McQueen's specifications from 2010 to 2013 by Ferrari Classiche.

It's likely to command the highest price among the items RM Sotheby's is putting up for bids at its 26th Monterey Auction in California in August. Other lots expected to top $1 million include a 1972 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona Spyder, a 2021 Ford GT Heritage Edition, a 1938 BMW 328 "Special Competition" Roadster and a 1956 Chrysler 300B Coupe Speciale.

Former megadealer Bernie Moreno is taking a second stab at running for U.S. Senate.

In 2022, Moreno dropped out of a crowded Republican field vying for one of Ohio's Senate seats after former President Donald Trump asked him to step aside. Now, Moreno has filed paperwork to run in 2024, and Trump is encouraging his candidacy.

Moreno, 56, is attempting to unseat Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is seeking his fourth term.

"Over the past few weeks, Bernie has talked with voters, business leaders, conservative activists and donors throughout the state and has received overwhelming encouragement to run," a source close to Moreno told NBC News last week. The source told NBC that Moreno was expected to make a formal announcement this week.

Trump posted in support of Moreno on his social media site, calling him a "highly respected businessman" who "would not be easy to beat."

Moreno was among more than a dozen Repu…

China's rising automakers will go head-to-head in their home market with Europe's top brands at this year's Shanghai auto show, which once more becomes a major event in the auto calendar after being upended by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Germany's Volkswagen Group is sending CEO Oliver Blume, along with the head of its VW brand, Thomas Schaefer, and Audi CEO Markus Duesmann, in a sign of the importance of China, which is the group's biggest global market. Mercedes-Benz CEO Oliver Kallenius will also attend the show.

As competition intensifies at home, especially for electric cars, Chinese brands have set their sights on Europe with EVs that have high-tech features and top NCAP safety ratings.

SAIC's MG last year doubled its sales to 113,917 cars in Europe, putting it ahead of other Chinese newcomers to the region such as BYD, Great Wall, Xpeng and Nio. In Shanghai, Nio and Xpeng, along with startup brands HiPhi and Geely's Zeek, will debut Europe-bound EVs.<…

It’s not like I believe in deja vu, like, as a mystical, time-travel thing. But sometimes you get an eerie feeling, a recognition of a similar pattern that makes you think “this ... reminds me of something.”

Sitting in Conference Room 5A of the Crain Communications building in Detroit recently, talking on a conference call with Kyle Vogt, the CEO of Cruise, I had one of those moments. At a time when conventional wisdom is that fully autonomous urban driving might just be too hard to be reliably achieved, he’s talking about expanding his robotaxi business in new cities, each one faster than the last — reaching much of America with a business as large as Coca-Cola before half of the new vehicle market goes electric. 

I started to think: “(Profanity deleted): This could actually happen.”

I was somewhat transported to the glass-walled conference room of the Bloomberg News office in Southfield, Mich., in 2009. The notion of a General Motors Corp. bankr…

Not everyone in Marshall, Mich., where Ford Motor Co. is building a $3.5 billion battery plant, is thrilled about the plan.

"I think their idea that we need 2,500 jobs here is just nuts," 72-year-old Dale Borders, who lives in a log cabin several miles from the Ford site, told The Detroit News last week, "because we don't."

The newspaper found others anxious about how much the plant, scheduled to open in 2026, will change life in the city its headline called "quaint." Some of Marshall's 7,000 residents have put up signs pleading "Stop the megasite" and consulted with lawyers about fighting the project.

"I feel like the guy in Tiananmen Square standing in front of the tanks," said Fred Chapman, 62.

A Ford spokesperson said the automaker is "committed to ongoing engagement with the community to share updates on our plans." Officials don't expect the opposition to slow construction on the 1,900-acre site.

Frank Brownell, 63, lamented that his …

BMW's newest and most powerful M model, a plug-in hybrid crossover introduced for the 2023 model year, is getting more oomph with an exclusive performance package.

The 2024 XM Label Red will crank out a maximum 748 hp and peak torque of 737 pound-feet from a twin-turbo V-8-powered hybrid drivetrain. The extra power comes from new tuning on the 4.4-liter engine.

That's enough for it to rip from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds — 0.4 second quicker than the standard XM, BMW says. Top speed is electronically capped at 155 mph, BMW says, or 175 mph with the optional M Driver's Package.

U.S. sales of the XM tallied 409 in the first quarter. It is the first standalone vehicle from the M performance brand since the M1 launched five decades ago.

BMW said the XM Label Red will debut at the Shanghai auto show that starts this week, with only 500 to be produced at its factory in Spartanburg, S.C. The U.S., China and Middle East are ex…

Applications are open for the 2023 Automotive News PACE Awards and PACEpilot program.

The PACE Awards recognize traditional and nontraditional suppliers around the world for new product, process and business model innovations. Entries must be innovations that have been commercialized by a sale to an automaker.

PACEpilot recognizes post-pilot pre-commercial innovations in automotive and future mobility. These represent product, software/IT system or process and idea incubators that have the potential to revolutionize an automaker's business and products.

Entries will be reviewed by an independent panel of judges.

The deadline for applications is June 16. Visit autonews.com/pace for more information.

New-vehicle inventories rose slightly last month to their highest point in nearly two years as production constraints continue to ease, according to data compiled by Cox Automotive and the Automotive News Research & Data Center.

Cox's most recent estimate of the U.S. inventory is 1,893,855 vehicles, a 56-day supply. That is up from the 1,828,290, or a 58-day supply, in the previous month, and about 70 percent above where inventory was a year earlier. Still, it remains down roughly 540,000 vehicles compared with the same point in 2021, when inventories began shrinking quickly.

Cox computes days' supply based on the selling rate of the previous 30-day period.

Cox said midsize, compact and subcompact cars continued to have the tightest supplies among volume segments, while full-size cars and full-size pickups had the highest days' supply among nonluxury vehicles.

Inventory levels for Detroit 3 brands were returning to…

WASHINGTON — In contrast to President Joe Biden's nonbinding zero-emission vehicle goal, the EPA's aggressive new campaign would have the legal authority to force the automotive industry to make some tough decisions as it hastens its electrification strategies.

The agency last week unveiled its strictest-ever vehicle pollution standards for cars and light trucks for the 2027-32 model years, requiring 13 percent fleetwide average emissions reductions each year and a 56 percent reduction in average emission target levels from the 2026 model year.

If finalized, the proposed standards could mean electric vehicles would make up more than half of new-vehicle sales by the 2030 model year and two-thirds by 2032. It would mark a massive leap from the current market, with EVs accounting for 5.6 percent of U.S. light-vehicle registrations, according to Automotive News data.

"This is a big step toward the sunset of the combustion engine," sa…