Trade News

The Biden administration on Wednesday issued long-awaited final rules on its national electric vehicle charger network that require the chargers to be built in the U.S. immediately, and with 55 percent of their cost coming from U.S.-made components by 2024.

The Biden administration hopes the new rules, issued after nearly eight months of debate, will jump-start the biggest transformation of the U.S. driving landscape in generations. It seeks to give consumers unfettered access to a growing coast-to-coast network of EV charging stations, including Tesla Inc.'s SuperChargers.

Companies that hope to tap $7.5 billion in federal funding for this network must also adopt the dominant U.S. standard for charging connectors, known as "Combined Charging System" or CCS, and use standardized payment options that are smartphone-friendly.

Tesla, the nation's largest EV maker and charging company, plans to adopt the CCS standard and expand beyond its proprietary connec…

For automakers such as Nissan Motor Co., familiarizing consumers with a new vehicle model presents a marketing challenge.

So, when it came to promoting the official launch of its first all-electric crossover, the Nissan Ariya, the automaker decided to embrace a new approach for the company — deploying a TikTok-first campaign with the help of more than 1,500 creators on the platform. 

With this TikTok push, which began Jan. 30, Nissan aims to embed the vehicle’s name in people's minds by teaching them the correct way to pronounce “Ariya.”

But, to avoid boring consumers with a dry pronunciation lesson, Nissan instead invited TikTok creators to share how they pronounce a series of words, including “Ariya,” with an AR filter game. Players are able to choose between two possible ways to pronounce a word with a tilt of their head, so long as their video is labeled with the campaign hashtag, #HowDoYouSayAriya. 

Rather than directly contacting …

Commenting on his competitors' slower move to electric vehicles, Volvo Cars' new chief Jim Rowan said it's a bad idea to tiptoe toward an electric future while continuing to develop combustion engine models.

Hedging bets by investing in internal combustion engine and battery-electric vehicles "risks missing the market," Rowan said on an earnings call last week.

"We don't want to risk missing the market."

The Swedish automaker has one of the industry's most aggressive electrification timetables, with plans to go all-electric globally by the turn of the next decade.

Volvo will bookend its crossover lineup with two new electric models this year and launch a new EV model every year for the next three or four years. The EX90 large crossover and an entry-priced small crossover will go into production by the end of this year, said Rowan, who took over the top job last year.

Rowan said an aggressive investment strategy will position the luxury aut…

The auto industry needs lidar to become less expensive and solid state.

That's the assessment of Ouster CEO Angus Pacala as he starts to integrate the operations of the Velodyne lidar business following the closer of a $355 million merger of the two companies last week.

The merger between the two companies will provide laser-based sensor technology to a combined 850 customers across 50 countries in the automotive, industrial, robotics and smart infrastructure industries. It will trade on the New York Stock Exchange as Ouster.

The merger will help the combined company survive a consolidation in the lidar industry, said Ouster CEO Angus Pacala.

Lidar developers Quanergy Systems of Sunnyvale, Calif., and Ibeo Automotive Systems of Hamburg, Germany, both filed for bankruptcy reorganization last year.

Pacala said the Ouster-Velodyne combination "is really about providing a future for tech development and building a business that's financially …

Maserati's second-generation GranTurismo sports coupe is launching with full-electric and gasoline engine versions.

The latest GranTurismo remains a classic Maserati coupe, the first of which was the A6 1500 in 1947, but it will compete in a dwindling supercar market as wealthy buyers switch to premium SUVs or four-door cars such as the Porsche Panamera from coupes. The GranTurismo's rivals include the Ferrari Roma and the Aston Martin DB11 coupe.

The full-electric version of the GranTurismo supercar, badged as the Folgore, marks the Stellantis luxury brand's first full-electric car, a historic shift for a brand famed for powerful internal-combustion engines.

A battery-electric variant of the GranCabrio, the convertible version of the GranTurismo, is set to debut by the end of 2023, along with a full-electric Grecale midsize SUV.

The GranTurismo's gasoline engine variants, Trofeo and Modena, feature Maserati's Nettuno 3…

BERLIN -- Ford plans to cut 3,800 product development and administration jobs in Europe in the next three years, the company said, citing rising costs and the need for a leaner structure as it pivots production to electric vehicles.

The reductions amount to about 11 percent of the automaker's European workforce, with Germany and the UK hardest hit.

About 2,300 jobs will go at the carmaker's Merkenich-Cologne and Aachen sites in Germany, 1,300 in the UK and 200 in the rest of Europe, Ford said, adding that it intends to achieve the reductions through voluntary separation programs.

Cuts in the UK, which amount to one in five of the workforce there, will be mostly at Ford's research center in Dunton, southeast England.

The Merkenich engineering center, along with the research center in Aachen, develops a large part of Ford's European passenger car range. In Dunton, engineers work on light commercial vehicles.

Ford will retain about 3,400 engin…

Tesla Inc. workers in New York state are launching a unionization campaign, teeing up a potential first for the electric-vehicle maker and the latest labor challenge for Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk.

The employees, who label data for Tesla's Autopilot technology at the company's plant in Buffalo, New York, sent an email to Musk early Tuesday with their intent to unionize. Employees say they're seeking better pay and job security alongside a reduction in production pressures that they say have been harmful to their health.

Workers at the plant told Bloomberg News that Tesla monitors keystrokes to track how long employees spend per task and how much of the day they spend actively working. This leads some to avoid taking bathroom breaks, six employees said.

"People are tired of being treated like robots," said Al Celli, a member of the union's organizing committee.

If successful, the union would be a first for Tesla, which unlike other leading a…

TOKYO — Shoichiro Toyoda, the former Toyota Motor Corp. president who led the company his father founded into U.S. auto manufacturing and unprecedented overseas expansion, died Tuesday at age 97.

The cause was heart failure, according to Toyota, which announced his passing in a news release shortly thereafter. Funeral services will be held for close family members only, with a more public farewell ceremony planned for a later date.

Toyoda piloted his family's namesake company through the trade tensions of the 1980s. He also represented the Toyoda clan on the board for 57 years, making him the automaker's longest serving director. He was also the father of current Toyoda CEO Akio Toyoda.

His tenure as president of the automaker, from 1981 to 1992, was notable for Toyota's plunge into North American manufacturing and the rollout of the Lexus luxury brand.

The Japanese carmaker's move to start building vehicles in the U.S. was partly aimed at defusi…

Billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong has no plans to personally invest any more money in VinFast, the company's CEO said, even as the Vietnamese electric vehicle maker falls behind on factory construction plans in the U.S. and cuts staff.

Vuong, whose net worth is around $4.1 billion, is the chairman of Vingroup, a conglomerate whose operations include real estate, leisure parks and a university.

VinFast was founded by Vuong in 2017, and as of September, the EV maker's owners and lenders had invested about $7.5 billion to fund operating expenses and capital expenditures.

"Currently, Mr. Vuong has no plans" to personally invest further in VinFast, CEO Le Thi Thu Thuy said in response to questions from Bloomberg News.

VinFast lost $1.3 billion in 2021 and close to $1.5 billion in the nine months through Sept. 30, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of VinFast's planned initial public offering. The December filing als…

DETROIT — UAW President Ray Curry said restoring the cost-of-living adjustment for the Detroit 3 workers it represents will be among the union's top priorities in this year's contract negotiations.

Curry, speaking to reporters Monday at a Ford battery plant announcement, said bringing back the automatic COLA raises that the union gave up ahead of the Great Recession is one of the top requests from members in resolutions being sent to the International Executive Board as the UAW develops its bargaining priorities. UAW-represented John Deere workers were able to restore the COLA to their most recent contract in late 2021 after a strike.

"We keep hearing about it repeatedly," Curry said. "If we're in inflationary times, it adjusts and makes sure [workers] have some type of benefit that moves their base wage in conjunction with what's happening in the economy. It can be a good piece for us."

Curry said he doesn't believe General Motors, Ford or Stellantis in…

WASHINGTON - The White House said on Monday that President Joe Biden plans to nominate the acting head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to serve in the top job.

Ann Carlson, the agency's chief counsel, was named acting head of NHTSA in September. Since then, she has overseen the agency's safety investigations into Tesla TSLA.O as well as efforts to shrink traffic deaths and significantly boost vehicle fuel economy requirements.

Magna International Inc. will supply battery enclosures for the 2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV out of its new electric-vehicle parts plant in southeast Michigan, North America's largest parts supplier said today.

Magna will build the enclosures at its new factory in St. Clair, Mich., about 50 miles north of Detroit, where the supplier already builds enclosures for the GMC Hummer EV. Production on Silverado enclosures is expected to begin later in the year when Magna finishes adding 740,000 square feet to the plant.

The expansion is part of a $530 million investment in its metro Detroit footprint. Magna said last year that a coming addition to the plant would add 900 workers.

The new program is significant for the diversified Magna as it works to boost its electrification business. Last week, Magna blamed high costs related to its new EV business, as well as costs related to advanced driver assistance systems and other factors, for its disappointing fourth…