Trade News

James Collins Ford is more than a source of income for some of its workers.

The Louisville, Ky., store has served as a lighthouse during stormy periods for staffers who have been incarcerated and battled addiction as they work to turn their lives around.

It has employed more than 50 men from the Beacon House, a Louisville transitional living facility founded in 1997.

The dealership has worked with the Beacon House for nearly a decade to support men during their recoveries and allow them to flourish, with some becoming master service technicians and leading salespeople. It starts them off in lower-level positions such as porters and gives them a chance to prove their reliability before moving them up the ladder, said Daniel Mekuria, the store's managing partner.

About 40 percent of the staff today came from the Beacon House. Workers say having colleagues they know from the facility has proved invaluable because they understa…

VinFast's bold ambitions to sell electric cars to consumers in the US have suffered another setback with production at its as-yet-unbuilt facility in North Carolina now not expected to start until 2025.

The Vietnamese company had most recently said it planned to start trial production at the plant by 2024. Earlier this week a company spokesperson said VinFast had "received the air permit and we are preparing for sub-contractors bidding and will start the construction soon."

An updated filing for VinFast's planned U.S. initial public offering released Friday however said that commissioning of the facility is targeted for 2025.

"Pre-construction work for phase one commenced in the third quarter of 2022, with commissioning targeted for 2025," the filing said. "Phase one of the facility is expected to have an initial capacity of 150,000 vehicles a year" rising to 250,000 cars upon completion of phase two.

Tesla Inc.'s factory in China, by way of compa…

Great Wall Motor Co., the maker of Haval SUVs and pickup trucks, unveiled a new energy vehicle strategy late Friday, pledging to double down on plug-in hybrid electric technology and becoming the latest traditional Chinese auto company to play catchup as the shift toward cleaner vehicles accelerates.

The Chinese automaker said new technology can bring the fuel efficiency of a two-wheel drive to its four-wheel SUVs. It does that by placing one motor at the front of the car and one at the back, and employing intelligent torque control.

For the so-called Hi4 technlogy, “H represents hybrid, i for intelligent, while 4 means 4 wheel drive,” the company said in a statement. “All EVs of Great Wall brand will carry the 4WD tech in 2024, while in future the company intends to make it open source.”

The realignment comes as Great Wall posted a 17 percent sales decline in 2022, the first time a drop has occurred since 2018. Its lineup is light on electric vehicles, …

Lordstown Motors began the year with a big setback: An electrical issue was leading its debut model, the Endurance pickup, to lose propulsion while driving, forcing the company to stop production and deliveries. The manufacturer recalled 19 trucks that were with customers or in internal use.

Its woes got worse this week. Chief Executive Officer Ed Hightower warned that while Lordstown Motors has a "clear line of sight" to fixing quality issues and resuming production, ramping up will require finding a larger automaker that's willing to partner up and help with purchasing and sales.

The Endurance simply doesn't pencil out and is costing the company more to build than it can charge.Lordstown Motors stock understandably didn't fare well from this one-two punch, plunging 31 percent in the last two weeks. The company is learning along with Rivian, Lucid, Nikola and others that it's much easier to sell investors slide decks modeling out how quickly electric vehicle …

Tasca Automotive Group of Cranston, R.I., entered two states and added a brand to its portfolio with two fourth-quarter and two first-quarter deals.

In its most recent acquisition, the group bought a Stellantis store in New York.

Tasca Automotive on Feb. 28 bought Central Avenue Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge-Ram in Yonkers, north of New York City, said Carl Tasca Jr., one of the group's owners.

Jonathan Grant and Daniel Oliveri, both dealer principals of the store, and managing partner Jim Ingenito all stayed on with Tasca Automotive as partners, Tasca Jr. said in an email to Automotive News.

He said the auto retailer bought a majority stake in the dealership, while Grant, Oliveri and Ingenito retained ownership stakes. Specific percentages weren't disclosed.

The dealership's name remains.

Grant, along with two different partners, sold a majority stake in a Stellantis store in nearby White Plains, N.Y., to LMP Automotive Holdings Inc. in Oct…

The year-end earnings reports filed by major parts suppliers over the past several weeks show that for many companies, revenue has returned to — and in some cases even surpassed — levels seen in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic threw the global supply chain into a tailspin.

That's good news for a supply sector that has been ravaged by production shutdowns, high materials costs, a tight labor market, geopolitical uncertainty and other problems for more than three years.

But it doesn't tell the whole story.

While revenue figures are returning to pre-pandemic levels, profits at many suppliers remain well below where they were in 2019. Earnings continue to be weighed down by higher labor, logistics and energy costs, in addition to persistent factory interruptions due to the global microchip shortage and the massive costs of investing in electrification, software and advanced driver-assist systems.

"Even if a supplier has the same revenue or is gett…

Chris Walsh learned he would become president of Reynolds and Reynolds during his performance review. It was unexpected, to say the least.

"It came as quite a surprise. When my boss (CEO Tommy Barras) brought me in for my annual review and went through [it], the last page was 'Here's what I want [you] to do going forward,' " Walsh, 58, recalled.

The second-generation Reynolds employee became president of the retail automotive software giant Jan. 27, 2022. His mandate: To help the Dayton, Ohio, company continue efforts to simplify its dealership management system contracts and improve relationships with dealer customers who saw Reynolds as inflexible, particularly under the leadership of controversial longtime CEO Bob Brockman, Barras' predecessor.

Walsh, a 36-year veteran of the 157-year-old company, didn't hesitate to take on the challenge.

"It was the next step in our company's journey," Walsh told Automotive News. "…

TOKYO — Rebounding Mitsubishi Motors will pour more than $10 billion into electrified vehicles and battery production through 2030 as it expands its battery-powered lineup in advanced markets such as North America, partly by leaning on help from Nissan Motor Co. and Renault.

CEO Takao Kato unveiled the push Friday while announcing a new midterm plan.

The sweeping road map focused heavily on electrification but included a slew of business targets including a global sales goal of 1.1 million vehicles for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026.

That goal is up from an expected 866,000 units this fiscal year. But the target still doesn't quite build back to Mitsubishi Motor Corp.'s pre-pandemic worldwide volume of 1.127 million vehicles.

Kato's electrification plan calls for investing between 1.4 trillion and 1.8 trillion yen ($10.26 billion and $13.19 billion) in R&D and facilities for electrification through 2030.

That will partl…

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Marco Rubio on Thursday introduced legislation that takes aim at Ford Motor's deal to use technology from Chinese battery company CATL as part of the automaker's plan to spend $3.5 billion to build a battery plant in Michigan.

Rubio, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, introduced legislation that would block tax credits for electric vehicle batteries produced using Chinese technology, saying it would "significantly restrict the eligibility of IRA tax credits and prevent Chinese companies from benefiting."

Ford said in response to Rubio that "making those batteries here at home is much better than continuing to rely exclusively on foreign imports, like other auto companies do. A wholly owned Ford subsidiary alone will build, own and operate this plant. No other entity will get U.S. tax dollars for this project."

Last month, Rubio asked the Biden administration to review Ford's deal to use technology from CATL.

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TOKYO — Electric vehicles took center stage when incoming Toyota CEO Koji Sato outlined plans to introduce a new EV platform and "drastically change" the way the company does business.

But another overhaul is underway that's just as important to Toyota's bold electrified future — the development of the software needed to run those battery-powered automobiles.

Woven Planet Holdings, Toyota's critical software-first company tasked with programming its next-generation digital cars, is itself going through some reinvention.

Among changes Sato identified in last month's business road map were tweaks affecting the spinoff, founded in 2018 as Toyota Research Institute-Advanced Development.

Woven CEO James Kuffner, the goateed American computer guru who has led the high-tech company since its beginning, will be taken off the board of directors at Toyota Motor Corp.

Kenta Kon, meanwhile, outgoing Toyota Motor CFO, will give up that role but keep hi…

In our most recent survey of both car shoppers and dealers we once again try to uncover what points in the car buying process were crucial to deliver a positive experience. Just as importantly, in our 2023 Friction Points study we discovered what needs improvement.

Car buyers spent more time at the dealer in 2022 than they did in 2021 — and what they had to wait on is surprising. And while these shoppers gave a slightly higher NPS score in 2022, we found specific actions that should boost that number.

In the study you’ll find:

What dealers told us was their top focus for 2023, 5X more than managing inventory That the amount of time spent at the dealer dramatically impacts promoter and satisfaction scores The tasks in the purchase process that cause the most pain How staffing has changed and where dealers are placing bets on manpower

Two analytics companies are joining forces to try to provide a real-time look into electric vehicle battery behavior and increase production speed.

The partnership announced Thursday is between PDF Solutions and Voltaiq.

PDF Solutions is based in Santa Clara, Calif., and collects data during manufacturing, performs analytics and employs machine learning for semiconductor companies. Voltaiq is a Cupertino, Calif., company that makes software to analyze battery function.

The companies said in a news release that they're working on an "integrated solution" to examine battery quality earlier in the production process.

"Our partnership with PDF Solutions will help battery manufacturers adopt the agile mindset to better compete in the global transition to battery power," said Tal Sholklapper, Voltaiq's founder and CEO.

The companies say the partnership will correlate issues visible through data collection with root causes, giving battery manufact…