Trade News

Combined sales of the BMW and Mini brands in China slid 28 percent to 170,220 in the second quarter, because of the negative impact from pandemic-triggered lockdown measures.

In the first half, BMW Group delivered 378,727 BMW and Mini vehicles, a 19 percent drop from a year earlier, the German luxury carmaker said this week, without breaking down volume for the two marques. 

Combined sales of full electric vehicles at the two brands surged 75 percent during the six-month period, BMW Group added, without disclosing specific volume. 

The BMW brand sells five EV models in China – the iX3, i3, i4, i7 and iX. 

In June, BMW Group opened its third plant, a 15 billion-yuan ($2.2-billion) Lydia factory, in the northeast China city of Shenyang. It is jointly operated with partner Brilliance Automobile Holdings Group Co. and designed to produce EVs for BMW brand.

BMW Group has also established a joint venture with Great Wall Motor Co. t…

Retail sales at Ford Motor Co. and its two joint ventures in China fell 22 percent to 119,187 in the second quarter due to the negative impact from resurgent coronavirus cases in April and May.

The company’s latest quarterly sales included 44,015 Ford-badged passenger vehicles, 11,743 Ford Transit vans and 18,215 Lincoln models, Ford’s China unit said last week.

Ford China didn’t disclose second-quarter sales of JMC-badged trucks, pickups and SUVs built at Ford’s joint venture with Jiangling Motors Group.

Ford also operates a Chinese partnership with Changan Automobile Co., producing sedans, crossovers and SUVs under the Ford brand only. 

In the first quarter, Ford’s China deliveries dropped 19 percent to some 125,000 due to tight semiconductor chip supplies and lingering coronavirus infections in the country. 

In the first six months, the U.S. automaker’s sales slipped 20 percent to roughly 244,000, according to data from Ford Ch…

It’s not the best known of China’s U.S.-listed electric car upstarts, but Li Auto Inc. has lofty ambitions -- an audacious target of conquering 20 percent of the world’s biggest EV market, or selling two million vehicles a year, by 2025.

To get there will require the Beijing-based maker of luxury crossover EVs to go where no automaker, let alone a startup, has gone before.

“We’re very serious about this 20 percent and we’re building everything around the target,” President Kevin Shen said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. That includes shoring up the carmaker’s supply chain, developing a more comprehensive vehicle lineup, boosting manufacturing capacity and accessing more funding.

It would seem a challenging goal for the seven-year-old upstart, which only launched its second model last month -- a premium utility vehicle -- and delivered around 60,000 cars in the first half of 2022.

Li Auto will have to surge past China’s No. 1 new-energy vehicle…

SHANGHAI – China’s major automakers didn’t start making cars until the late 1990s and early 2000s. 

After steadily improving engineering, design, quality, while adding scale, at home, more recently with electrified vehicles, they are targeting two key segments long dominated by Japanese brands: China’s gasoline-electric hybrid market and Southeast Asia’s key car markets.

They are starting to deliver results on both fronts. 

Hybrids

The hybrid segment of China’s car market has long been the reserved territory of two major Japanese automakers – Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. 

But the balance is changing as six major Chinese auto manufacturers – Geely Automobile Holdings, Great Wall Motor Co., GAC Motor Co., Changan Automobile, Chery Automobile Co. and Dongfeng Motor Group – have launched a wave of hybrids since the third quarter of 2021. 

GAC has obtained key hybrid technology from Toyota, a joint venture pa…

Ford Motor Co. and South Korean battery maker SK On Co. along with its subsidiary on Thursday finalized setting up a joint venture for building and operating battery production facilities in the United States.

The JV, BlueOval SK LLC, will establish a battery plant for EVs in Tennessee and two other facilities in Kentucky, the U.S. automaker said in a regulatory filing.

Ford will contribute up to $6.6 billion in capital to BlueOval SK over a five-year period ending in 2026, the automaker said.

Both companies had signed a memorandum of understanding for the JV in May last year. BlueOval SK is expected to produce about 60 gigawatt hours of power annually that could be raised further.

Several battery makers have announced plans to invest in the U.S. as part of an industry trend to meet the expected growth for EVs and reduce reliance on production in China, as well as cut the related supply chain risks.

South K…

Nissan is facing up to the fact that it struggled for more than a decade to sell a pioneering electric vehicle that the U.S. market was not ready for — and which, in the end, fell behind the competitors that followed it.

Long before Tesla made EVs cool, Nissan attempted to spark the segment with the first affordable, mass-market electric car, launched in the U.S. in late 2010.

But the compact Leaf has since been largely elbowed off the road by a wave of more stylish and more capable offerings.

Nissan does not plan to bring out a next-generation Leaf and instead will replace it with a new model more tuned to the needs of the modern EV buyer, three sources told Automotive News. Sources were split on whether the Leaf name would continue. Production of the current Leaf should end by mid-decade.

Nissan spokesman Brian Brockman declined to speculate on the future of the Leaf but noted "renewed" customer interest due to the vehicle's "value proposition…

General Motors is partnering with EVgo and Pilot Co. to bring electric vehicle chargers to highway corridors across the U.S. The companies plan to install 2,000 fast chargers at as many as 500 Pilot and Flying J travel centers starting this year.

GM's previous partnerships with EVgo and other charging networks focused on metro markets. This initiative marks the first expansion to charging along highways. GM also is working with its dealers to install 40,000 Level 2 chargers in their communities.

"We are committed to an all-electric, zero-emissions future, and ensuring that the right charging infrastructure is in place is a key piece of the puzzle," GM CEO Mary Barra said in a statement Thursday. "With travel centers across North America, Pilot Company is an ideal collaborator to reach a broad audience of EV drivers."

The charging stations will be co-branded "Pilot Flying J" and "Ultium Charge 360," GM's charging brand, and powered by EVgo, the companies …

Tesla Inc.'s top artificial intelligence executive and a key figure behind its driver-assistance system Autopilot is leaving the electric-car maker after a months-long sabbatical.

Andrej Karpathy, who joined Tesla in 2017, announced his departure in a series of tweets Wednesday. He was senior director of AI and led the Autopilot computer-vision team that's tried for years to render the company's cars capable of driving autonomously.

"It's been a great pleasure to help Tesla towards its goals over the last five years and a difficult decision to part ways," Karpathy wrote. "In that time, Autopilot graduated from lane keeping to city streets and I look forward to seeing the exceptionally strong Autopilot team continue that momentum."

The departure adds to a long line of turnover atop the Autopilot group, which has struggled to realize Elon Musk's autonomous ambitions. The chief executive officer raised billions of dollars in 2019 after …

McLaren and Fisker this month announced they had branded their individual auto finance ventures — private-label programs that resemble captive finance companies but are supported by Chase.

The McLaren Financial Services brand is now in place for the supercar manufacturer's loans and leases, and an associated website for online payments and statements is live under that name.

"This is the first time we have done this and it is primarily to promote the brand and visibility to our [high-net-worth] customer base and underline our endorsement of the products offered to our customers," spokesman Roger Ormisher wrote in a July 6 email.

Fisker said on July 7 that it expects Fisker Finance to start originating deals in the fourth quarter, which coincides with the start of production on the electric Ocean, its first vehicle, in November. Fisker on July 1 began taking $5,000 deposits on the limited-edition Ocean One variant of the SUV.

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Growing Morrie's Auto Group, which entered a new state late last year, made its first acquisition of 2022 and bolstered its Minneapolis presence with the purchase of a trio of domestic dealerships this month.

Morrie's Auto on July 1 bought Forest Lake Chevrolet and Forest Lake Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep & Ram in Minnesota from dealer Randy Wilcox of Forest Lake Auto Group.

The Stellantis dealership has a separate facility for the Jeep franchise, which recently was built, but Morrie's considers it one dealership. The stores were renamed Morrie's Forest Lake Chevrolet and Morrie's Forest Lake Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram.

Morrie's Auto CEO Lance Iserman said the group was aggressive in trying to acquire the stores, which lie in the group's backyard.

Forest Lake is northeast of Minneapolis. Morrie's is based in Minnetonka, Minn., just west of Minneapolis.

"You don't get these opportunities to buy two really high-performing stores and in the metro whe…

Edward Hightower was named the CEO of Lordstown Motors Corp. on Tuesday, making him the first Black CEO of a U.S. automaker in more than 100 years.

"It's something I'm proud of. I'm proud of my heritage, I'm proud of my race," Hightower told Automotive News on Tuesday. "The thing that I spend the most time focusing on is how I deliver for my customers and how I deliver for the team. I think my background helps."

Hightower was promoted to CEO after being president of the company. Lordstown Motors also announced several other management moves.

Though other Black men have risen to high automotive executive roles — such as Ed Welburn, General Motors' former vice president of global design, and Ralph Gilles, the chief design officer at Stellantis and a member of its top executive team — Hightower has made history with his new position.

Hightower, 57, hails from Chicago and earned a bachelor's degree in general engineering from the University of Illino…