Trade News

Die casting manufacturer Pace Industries LLC plans to close a plant in Michigan and lay off 244 employees due to "financial trouble."

The permanent layoffs at the factory in Muskegon, Mich., will start Dec. 20 and be complete by the end of the year, according to a WARN notice filed to the state. Employees are not represented by a union.

The notice does not expound on the financial trouble leading to the closure. Crain's Detroit Business, an affiliate of Automotive News, could not immediately reach the company for comment Monday.

Pace has four manufacturing locations in the Muskegon area, according to its website.

The layoffs are the latest for a manufacturing sector that has been hit hard by inflation and supply chain troubles over the past two years. Several small manufacturers and local tool-and-die shops have filed for bankruptcy protection amid the pressure.

Last year, Pace moved its headquarters from Arkansas to suburban Detroit, whe…

The Federal Trade Commission is sending payments totaling more than $9.8 million to the thousands of consumers affected by a discrimination lawsuit against Napleton Automotive Group.

The agency is distributing 66,355 checks averaging $147 each to car buyers it says were affected by unlawful practices at group stores. Consumers should cash the checks within 90 days, the FTC said in a statement Monday.

Napleton Automotive, of Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., in March was the subject of a suit the FTC and the State of Illinois filedalleging that employees were adding illegal junk fees for unwanted add-ons to vehicle purchases and charging more in financing for Black consumers.

The joint complaint cited eight Napleton dealerships in Illinois, Florida, Pennsylvania and Missouri and a general manager of two Illinois dealerships accused of adding junk fees and other products illegally, such as paint protection, in contracts as long as 60 pages.

In April, the de…

CEO Mary Barra plans to tell investors this week that GM expects its EVs to be profitable in 2025. Stellantis locks in a new chip supplier. Toyota is set to unveil its fifth-generation Prius. Plus, Nauto Founder and CEO Stefan Heck talks about how his company’s AI cloud data platform can be used to crack down on drowsy driving for fleets.

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Every morning, as freezing winds blow across his construction site in northern China, Liu Jianhong gathers his workers for a cup of hot tea. Liu, whose business in Shaanxi province often operates beyond the reach of power grids, plugs a hairdryer-like charger into his hybrid electric vehicle, a crossover from Chinese automaker BYD Co. The other end of the charger connects to his kettle. A few minutes later, it lets out a whistle and tea time begins.

“With the help of the electric car, we can drink tea whenever and wherever we want. My workers are over the moon,” says Liu, 57, who used to schlep hot water in a too-small thermos from a nearby village each day, forcing his employees to take turns enjoying tea breaks. Liu’s EV has come to the rescue before, like when he needed to charge a power drill at a newly-built home he hadn’t realized wasn’t connected to a utility. “If it were not for my car, I would have wasted all the time and energy going there,” he says.

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BERLIN -- Stellantis has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with German chipmaker Infineon for a multi-year supply of silicon carbide semiconductors.

Infineon will reserve production capacity and will supply the power semiconductors directly to Stellantis suppliers in the second half of the decade.

Well over 1 billion euros' ($1.03 billion) worth of chips could be involved, Infineon said in a statement on Monday.

The chips would be meant for electric vehicles under the Stellantis brands, Infineon said.

Stellantis plans to convert its brands in Europe including Peugeot, Fiat, Opel and Alfa Romeo into all-electric marques by the end of the decade, ahead of the European Union's plan to effectively ban internal combustion engines by 2035 by requiring all new cars sold from then to produce zero emissions.

Chip shortages over the past couple of years have forced global automakers to cut back on production.

Stellantis CEO Carl…

JAKARTA -- The Indonesia Investment Authority, the country's sovereign wealth fund, will set up a green electric vehicle fund of at least $2 billion with Chinese battery maker CATL and CMB International, the fund's CEO said on Monday.

The announcement was made in a live-streamed business conference on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

INA CEO Ridha Wirakusumah then signed an agreement for the partnership with company executives from CATL and CMB International.

The fund will invest in the EV value chain to capture a market that is expected to grow fast globally, driven by countries' pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Ridha said.

"With CATL and CMB International as the main partners, we are looking for limited partners to invest in the green EV fund, to seize this EV value chain opportunity primarily in Indonesia," Ridha said.

Indonesia's own EV market is on track to grow, with 2.1 million electric motorcycle and 400,000 electric vehi…

How innovative packaging is boosting EV battery performance

As we wait to see if solid state batteries or another major EV chemical breakthrough finally emerges, keep a close eye on how battery makers are packaging today's batteries.

"That's where the real advancements" in EV battery performance stem from today, Conrad Layson, senior alternative propulsion analyst at AutoForecast Solutions LLC, told me.

In this week's Automotive News, we take a look at the challenges facing the industry in finding that breakthrough in battery technology.

From a chemical standpoint, lithium ion battery development has more or less plateaued. But the industry doesn't need to rely only on chemical breakthroughs to see marked improvements in battery performance. Innovative ways of packaging battery cells can also yield higher ranges, faster charging times or lower production costs.

Tesla's 4680 battery is one of the most high-profile examples, with its cylind…

As the number of sensors in vehicles grow, so, too, is auto companies' understanding of how drivers interact with the vehicle.

Supplier Forvia, for example, has invested heavily into its IRYStec unit, which developed "perceptual image processing" technology that incorporates knowledge of the mechanics of the human eye to boost image quality in a vehicle display. As part of its push into that space, Forvia said this year it developed a MyDisplay platform that mimics how the human eye works to enhance the display's color and brightness based on a driver's age and needs, creating a "more personalized visual experience."

BMW has tapped Amazon's Alexa platform to smarten the automaker's next- generation vehicle voice assistant.

The German luxury marque currently offers voice connectivity on some vehicles using Amazon's Alexa home wireless service.

But the latest BMW-Amazon collaboration will create deeper integration and improve functionality.

The first vehicles with the new generation of BMW's voice assistant will launch within the next two years.

Stephan Durach, 51, is senior vice president of connected company development for BMW Group. He spoke with Staff Reporter Urvaksh Karkaria about how the Amazon partnership integration will bolster BMW's voice assistant offering. Here are edited excerpts.

Q: How does the Alexa platform help BMW improve its voice assistant technology?

A: The Alexa tech stack is the next step in improving the BMW [Intelligent] Personal Assistant. It enables an even more natural dialogue between driver and vehicle so that dri…

As drivers watch the road, their cars will be watching them.

While some automakers use sensors on the steering column to track the driver's attention, Magna's Driver Monitoring System is built into an auto-dimming rearview mirror. The system analyzes the driver's head, eyes and body to detect distracted or drowsy driving. The camera-based system also uses infrared sensors. It can predict when a driver might not be paying enough attention and send an alert using a vehicle's audio or visual notifications.

In October, Magna and Seeing Machines announced a deal to co-market the rearview mirror device.

Automakers are preparing for European regulations in 2026 that will require that all new vehicles have some driver-monitoring technology, among other advanced safety features. This fall, the National Transportation Safety Board called for a new rule in the U.S. that would use in-cabin monitoring to prevent drunken driving.

The art of future cockpits is not just a rethinking of one or two components, but a melding together of several technologies, seen here in COMFI — a cockpit concept that South Korean supplier Hyundai Mobis unveiled this year that stands for "convenient, comfortable, optimized, mobile, functional and illuminated."

In addition to supplying finished cockpits, Mobis makes a wide range of products that already interact with the cockpit, including airbags, headlights, brake systems, steering parts, multimedia systems, instrument panels and front-end modules. COMFI proposes an integration of the technologies, with such features as a pop-up steering wheel, a retractable table to give passengers a quick work surface, sliding side mirrors, a movable controller and display screen, and 3D pattern lighting to create a futuristic ambiance in the cabin.

"As autonomous car technologies are being deployed at a larger scale, the linchpin of automotive control is the shift from …