Trade News

DETROIT — BorgWarner Inc. saw a slight increase in revenue and a slip in net income amid its acquisition of Rhombus Energy Solutions for $130 million, the auto supplier said in its second-quarter earnings report Wednesday.

In a statement, the company said it paid the initial $130 million for the electric vehicle charging provider at closing and will pay $55 million in the form of contingent payments over the next three years.

"We believe that we can leverage the local knowledge and footprint of Rhombus to complement our existing ... charging capability to accelerate organic growth," BorgWarner CEO Frederic Lissalde said in a Wednesday morning phone call to investors. "We plan to leverage both synergies across product quality engineering, supply chain manufacturing and global sales. We also see potential synergies with battery system customers."

Lissalde said the company anticipates the acquisition will add $10 million in revenue in…

WASHINGTON — Automakers represented by the Alliance for Automotive Innovation expressed concern Wednesday that a "significant number" of electric vehicle buyers would be unable to use the tax credit as proposed in the Democrats' revised spending bill.

"We support — 100 percent — Sen. [Joe] Manchin's goal to reduce dependence on foreign nations for minerals and [are] committed to growing America's EV supply chain and adding jobs and capacity here," John Bozzella, CEO of the alliance, said in a statement Wednesday.

"But a likely result of this bill — as currently constructed — is that a significant number of consumers will not be able to take advantage of this credit in the early years when it is needed the most," he added.

Many of the alliance's members, which include the Detroit 3, Toyota and Volkswagen, are forming partnerships with battery suppliers and other EV-related companies in North America as they seek to gain a foothold in a more localized bat…

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Advanced driver-assistance systems are commonly seen as the building blocks of fully self-driving vehicles. However, industry executives increasingly consider advanced driver-assist and autonomous capabilities separate systems evolving at different speeds to serve different markets.

"They use a lot of the same sensors, but the difference is that on the Level 2 vehicle, the most capable sensor in the vehicle is a human," Nick Sitarski, Toyota vice president of integrated vehicle systems, said during a Tuesday panel at the Center for Automotive Research's Management Briefing Seminars here.

Level 4 systems, by comparison, require far more technology because they allow the vehicle to drive itself under most conditions.

"You need to re-create what the human is doing ... and that's a very complex and costly thing to do," Sitarski said.

That's why the first autonomous vehicles deployed onto streets will b…

A giant Chinese supplier of EV batteries decided to push back announcing a multibillion-dollar North American plant to supply Tesla Inc. and Ford Motor Co. due to tensions raised by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan, according to people familiar with the matter.

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., the world's biggest maker of batteries for electric vehicles, has been considering at least two locations in Mexico near the Texas border, as well as sites in the U.S., for the plant. China's CATL has been in an advanced stage of site selection and negotiating incentives, in anticipation of announcing its selection in the coming weeks.

CATL now plans to wait until September or October to make the announcement, the people familiar with the process said Tuesday, asking not to be identified as the information isn't public. The concern is that an announcement could stoke tensions at a sensitive time in U.S.-China ties amid the controversial…

Dealership technology company Cars.com reported a smaller profit in the second quarter but gains in revenue and dealership customers as it navigated an ongoing vehicle inventory shortage and an economy affected by inflation and higher interest rates.

Chicago-based Cars.com on Wednesday reported net income of $5.5 million in the quarter ended June 30, down 7 percent from the same quarter a year earlier. Revenue increased 5 percent to $162.9 million, growth the company attributed largely to its dealership customer base and adoption of its digital software tools.

Revenue from automakers, including for advertising, fell 13 percent from the second quarter of 2021.

"Our platform strategy is working. Revenue is growing and diversifying, and margins are expanding. The business continues to prove resilient and sustainable," CEO Alex Vetter told analysts Wednesday. "Despite the challenges of the current environment, we have confidence in our a…

U.S. new-vehicle sales slump persists in July. General Motors tries to stop quick re-selling. Carvana is back at work in Illinois -- for now. Supercar brands are on a roll. Plus, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer discusses the importance of the Chips and Science Act to industrial employers in her state, including GM, Ford, and Stellantis.

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A revamped proposal in the U.S. Senate to extend the tax credit for new electric vehicle purchases is less about consumers and more about sourcing, said Jennifer Safavian, CEO of industry trade group Autos Drive America.

The EV tax credit proposal unveiled last week by U.S. Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin lifts the cap on the current $7,500 tax credit but adds increasingly stringent critical mineral and battery sourcing requirements for automakers, among other rules.

Safavian, whose group represents the U.S. operations of international automakers such as Hyundai, Toyota and Volkswagen, said the "clean vehicle" credit that is included in the latest iteration of the Democrats' reconciliation bill — now called the Inflation Reduction Act — is "no longer a credit for electric vehicles."

"It's really a sourcing credit," she said Tuesday during a hybrid version of the annual CAR Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City, Mich. "It's not abou…

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