Trade News

Sonic Automotive Inc. CEO David Smith, following the June 22 death of his father and company co-founder Bruton Smith, has been elected chairman of the board of the dealer group, according to a document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The filing said Sonic's board elected David Smith, 47, on July 27.

In the same filing, Sonic said former CEO Scott Smith was elected, also on July 27, to fill the vacant board seat left open by his father's death.

Scott Smith, 54, who co-founded Sonic with Bruton Smith in 1997, was the company's CEO from July 2015 until he resigned in September 2018 and was succeeded by his brother David. Scott Smith had been on Sonic's board from 1997 until 2018.

The regulatory filing noted that Scott Smith is a "greater than 10 percent beneficial owner of the company." Scott Smith's term on the board is set to expire at Sonic's 2023 annual meeting of stockholders, the filing said.

Scott Smith, who So…

Nikola Corp has agreed to buy battery supplier Romeo Power Inc. for about $144 million in stock, the electric truck maker said on Monday, in a move that will help jumpstart its efforts to make battery packs.

The offer values Romeo Power at 74 cents on a per-share basis, or a 35 percent premium to the stock's Friday close. The company's shares were up 22 percent in trading before the bell.

Romeo Power is one of the company's battery suppliers for its prototype electric trucks along with LG Energy Solution and Proterra Inc.

Nikola will be able to accelerate the development of its EV platform with the acquisition of Romeo Power, Chief Executive Officer Mark Russell said in a statement.

The company said in June it was evaluating the option of making its own battery packs in 2024 to boost volumes and reduce costs.

Battery material costs have risen over the past few months, exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine forcing electric vehicle maker…

DRESDEN, Germany — Hundreds of workers are scurrying through Robert Bosch's newly opened microchip factory here now, hurrying to turn out more chips to a world that's starving for the tiny things.

The newly trained employees are wearing hair nets, gloves, lab coats, disposable booties and face masks, all intended to keep every speck of contaminant off every chip. And by year's end there will be still more workers on the job, working in the eerie yellow light of the new hyper-clean plant that Bosch spent $1 billion to build.

Bosch Chairman Stefan Hartung said operations at Dresden were accelerated to meet the situation.

"They are being ramped up faster than planned, after having started a whole six months earlier than scheduled," he said at the new line. "Given the supply bottlenecks in our industries, we don't want to lose any time."

But the more telling industrial site might be the big dirty vacant lot next door. That's where B…

Toyota has traditionally been very disciplined about its product cycles, with redesigns scheduled well in advance and midcycle freshenings — both minor and major — splitting those periods up evenly like a pie at a family dinner.

But the broader market growth of battery-electric vehicles and the continued dwindling popularity of sedans have thrown Toyota's previously predictable long-term planning into flux.

What is known is that Toyota will expand its BEV offerings, continue its redesigns of body-on-frame pickups and SUVs and bring new vehicles, such as the Crown, to the U.S. to boost the lineup and keep consumers coming back.

bZ4X: The battery-electric compact crossover launched in the first half of 2022, but it tripped out of the gate when a stop-sale order was issued because of a problem unrelated to its electric powertrain. It's the brand's first product to ride on Toyota's e-TNGA dedicated electric vehicle platform. Toyota's BEV product life…

Acura has a small lineup but big aspirations. Though the premium brand has not been specific about its electrification goals, parent Honda Motor Co. is targeting a large shift to electrification in North America in this decade.

Acura has said it's planning a pivot to electric that's even more aggressive than Honda's, and it anticipates that EVs will represent as much as 60 percent of its annual sales.

Acura has also said it will skip hybrids altogether and move right into electrification, but there is still a chance that some of its nameplates — MDX, RDX, Integra — will get some sort of hybrid powertrain to bridge the gap between gasoline and electric. And while it was expected that the Integra would be the final all-new internal-combustion model for Acura, the brand might still bring a subcompact gasoline-powered crossover from China to sell in the U.S. for one generation.

Electric crossover: Acura plans to debut its first electric crossover in 2024, …

Japanese luxury brand Lexus will eventually become Toyota Motor North America's full-electric brand, beginning early next year with the introduction of the RZ. But the transition from now to the company's 2035 target date may start slowly.

According to Toyota Motor Corp. CEO Akio Toyoda, Lexus will have a battery-electric vehicle in each of its segments by 2030 and will go full-electric — selling only BEVs — by 2035. That means that its current internal combustion engine and hybrid products will have only one, or perhaps two, full product cycles left before they switch powertrains or are replaced by similar battery-electric models.

Toyoda showed several Lexus-badged electric vehicles at a December event in Japan. But which of them will end up on sale in the U.S., and when, remains unclear.

RZ: The RZ electric compact crossover is powered by a dual-motor powertrain that pairs two new e-axles developed by Toyota Group supplier Aisin Corp. — a 150-kilowat…

Infiniti Motor Co. is working on fixing its Achilles' heel — a sparse and aging product portfolio.

Last year, the Japanese luxury brand redesigned its bestseller, the QX60, and introduced the QX55 two-row sporty crossover.

Infiniti's next focus: bring electrification to the lineup.

At the brand's make meeting at the NADA Show in March, Infiniti Motor Co. Chairman Payman Kargar offered a peek at the road ahead.

"We are working on the next generations of the models we are going to have for the midterm and long-term plan of the brand," Kargar told Automotive News after the meeting. "We want to make sure that every single model we bring to the market will be a wow product."

Parent Nissan Motor Co. has announced it will build an Infiniti-branded sedan at its Canton, Miss., plant starting in 2025.

That model will replace Infiniti's entry model, the Q50 sports sedan. The vehicle teased in a brief video features a sedan-like profile, a slo…

As competitors prepare to launch more electric vehicles, Honda has been focused on redesigning its crossover lineup and adding fuel-sipping hybrid variants. The automaker believes hybrids will help move customers into EVs in the future while driving down emissions as it approaches tighter regulatory requirements slated to take into effect in the U.S. in 2026.

Of more immediate focus is the redesigned 2023 HR-V. The subcompact crossover grew in size and will now have an equally important role alongside the Civic as a gateway vehicle to the Honda brand.

Honda also is launching a redesigned CR-V compact crossover with two hybrid variants at the top of its lineup. The Sport and Sport Touring hybrids are expected to make up half of all CR-V sales.

Honda has been dogged by one of the industry's tightest vehicle inventories among automakers that continue to report, but it continues to prioritize these launches.

Later in 2022, the redesigned Pilot will …

Nissan is on the tail end of a two-year product freshening that has lifted the brand's sales, customer sentiment and dealer profits.

The Japanese automaker has delivered redesigns of critical models, including the iconic Z sports car, the best-selling Rogue compact crossover and the workhorse Frontier pickup.

Now, Nissan is turning its attention to electrification. Nissan said that all "new-vehicle offerings" in key markets will be electrified by the early 2030s.

This fall, the automaker — an EV pioneer when it launched the Leaf more than a decade ago — will introduce its second all-electric model, the Ariya crossover.

Nissan Americas boss Jeremie Papin described the Ariya as "segment-defining."

"The attention to quality and the innovations we've brought — the central console, how the human-to-machine interface works, how the switches are built into the panels — is a step above what has been available in this segment so far," Papin told A…

SAN FRANCISCO — Rivian's retro-futuristic R1T pickup remains scarce on the streets of the Bay Area, but some locals have discovered a cluster of the highly acclaimed electric truck by the San Francisco airport.

There, in a commercial area near an Amazon warehouse, Rivian's South San Francisco Service Center is chock-full of R1Ts coming in for their first service, a windshield replacement or a new front seat as part of an airbag-related recall.

Curious locals and would-be shoppers sometimes congregate in the parking lot, checking out the hardware. Although the electric vehicle startup sells directly to customers online, the cheerful facility also serves as a delivery center and test drive location.

"Everybody ends up finding our location, so now we have people coming in to take a look at our vehicles. So that's also a selling point," said Nataly Tomafsky, field service manager at the outpost.

Rivian has been building the …

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Retail technology giant Reynolds and Reynolds Co. on Friday acquired Proton Dealership IT, which offers dealerships cybersecurity and information technology products and services.

Reynolds, a Dayton, Ohio-based dealership management system provider, did not disclose a transaction price. Leaders of the two companies said they began speaking about a potential acquisition in March.

Reynolds' deal to buy Proton comes as its dealership customers weigh how to comply with amended cybersecurity and IT guidance the Federal Trade Commission handed down in October. The FTC has set a Dec. 9 compliance deadline for dealerships to adopt its Safeguards Rule amendments. That weighed into the decision to step up services in that area, Reynolds President Chris Walsh said.

"It became evident that our customers are asking about these things and they're really trying to figure it out," Walsh said. "They're trying to make sure that they're compliant and that they're safe, a…