Trade News

PRAGUE -- The CEO of wire harness manufacturer Leoni, Aldo Kamper, praised the efforts of the company's 7,000 employees in Western Ukraine for producing components under pressure.

Speaking at the Automotive News Europe Congress in Prague on Thursday, Kamper called wire harnesses "the nervous system of the car" composed of hundreds of wires totaling between two and three kilometers in length per vehicle.

"It's the first component that goes into the car after the body shop assembly, because everything is connected to it," he said. "There is a huge complexity to wire harnesses, because each one is made specifically for an individual vehicle—it's a real 'just in time' component." 

When discussing the impact the Russian-led war in Ukraine has had on the company's business, Kamper explained Leoni had set up a task force ahead of the invasion to plan for the worst eventuality, which—even after months--he still regards as a shock.

After shutting d…

PRAGUE -- Polestar will price its upcoming South Carolina-built Polestar 3 between roughly $75,000 and $110,000, CEO Thomas Ingenlath last week told attendees of the Automotive News Europe Congress here.

The Volvo Cars electric vehicle subsidiary has pitched the Polestar 3 as an all-electric rival to the Porsche Cayenne and will unveil the model in October, when orders will open. The automaker has not announced delivery dates.

The Polestar 3 will hit the sweet spot in terms of consumer needs, Ingenlath said.

“It’s an SUV, which everyone loves, but it’s also very aerodynamic and very engaging to drive,” he said. “It’s not a car to drive to the kindergarten.”

It will be produced alongside Volvo’s new flagship crossover at the Swedish automaker’s new U.S. factory near Charleston, S.C.

The Polestar 3 is a key element of Polestar’s 2023 goal to sell 124,000 cars globally. The brand more than doubled sales of the Polestar 2 sedan to 21,200…

Four dealership groups purchased single stores in first-quarter and second-quarter transactions, one of which involved a lone Genesis store trading hands.

Here's a look at the deals involving domestic-, import- and luxury-brand dealerships and stores in Illinois, Wyoming, Washington and Florida.

Berman Auto Group of Chicago added its sixth new-vehicle dealership and first Stellantis store in the greater Chicago region, in April buying Mancari's Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram in Oak Lawn, Ill.

The family-owned group, which renamed the store Berman Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram, owns a total of six locations: two standalone Infiniti dealerships, one standalone Nissan store, a Nissan-Infiniti dual under one rooftop, one Subaru dealership and the Stellantis store. They're all in Illinois except Berman Infiniti of Merrillville, across the state line in Indiana.

The seller was Frank Mancari, who planned to retire, said broker Paul Kechnie, a partner for Performanc…

Vietnamese electric vehicle newcomer VinFast began a new chapter in the U.S. this week, opening its first six stores in California as it pushes forward on plans to deliver two newly developed crossovers by the end of the year and carve out a slice of the growing EV market now dominated by Tesla, Ford, Hyundai and Kia.

The half-dozen showrooms by the direct-to-consumer brand are a down payment on 30 physical locations this year in California, which is leading EV sales with nearly 40 percent of the national market, according to registration data from Experian through May of this year. VinFast established its U.S. headquarters in Los Angeles last year.

VinFast's first showrooms are located in shopping malls to promote a relaxed exploration of the mostly unknown brand, a U.S. executive told Automotive News, and will expand to other EV-friendly states next. The first locations are in Santa Monica, San Diego, San Mateo, Corte Madera, Commerce and Berk…

SHANGHAI - Volkswagen China on Friday stuck to a goal of doubling sales of its ID series of electric vehicles this year despite COVID-19 disruptions, with its chief calling the target "promising."

The ID series, which Volkswagen produces at Chinese joint ventures with SAIC Motor and FAW Group, is the backbone of its EV ambitions in China, the world's largest auto market.

VW is expecting to deliver 15,000 to 20,000 of the ID vehicles per month in the current quarter and beyond, Stephan Wollenstein, the company's China CEO, told a media briefing on Friday.

"We hope that we can also get the necessary parts in place," Wollenstein said. "By doing so, we will then be able by the end of the year to have sales of IDs more than double compared to last year."

The champions of the combustion age - European, U.S. and Japanese automakers - are falling behind local automakers in the booming EV market in China, a country that is key to funding and developing the…

Automakers including Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., Stellantis NV and Toyota Motor Corp. will have a major presence at the auto show in Detroit this September, but not in the same way as shows past, according to organizers.

As the Sept. 14-25 event draws nearer, plans are solidifying for the North American International Detroit Auto Show. Note that "Detroit" was inserted into the name of the event for the first time since it took the "international" moniker in 1989. The Detroit show dates back more than a century but has been shelved since 2019 because of schedule changes and the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We want to create something here, a hallmark event that we can build on in the future, that people will want to go to and celebrate what we're all about here in Detroit," Alberts said Wednesday between meetings downtown where he was sizing up the new and expanded show footprint. "And we know that we can do it in such a way that all of downtown is going to be …

Hyundai's second dedicated electric vehicle, the Ioniq 6 with sleek, "streamliner" styling, will be aimed at Gen Z buyers who the Korean automaker hopes will appreciate its distinct exterior design, upscale interior and innovative features.

SangYup Lee, who heads up Hyundai's design center, said the Ioniq 6 was created with "perfect harmony between functionality and aesthetics" with an the interior that is "more the living space than the driving space."

Hyundai officials this week released more details about the car, first shown in Korea late last month.

The Ioniq 6's aerodynamic shape offers a drag coefficient of 0.21 and high energy efficiency. Built on Hyundai Motor Group's Electric-Global Modular Platform, or E-GMP, it is 191 inches long, 74 inches wide and stands 58.8 inches tall. Its 119-inch wheelbase can be supported by either 20- or 19-inch wheels.

A performance "tune-up" system will allow drivers to adjust steering effort, motor power, …

Stockpiles at China’s new-car dealerships averaged 41 days in June, a decline from 52 days the previous month, reflecting the strong rebound in the overall market in the wake of coronavirus resurgence across the country.

The market rebounded after Shanghai lifted a two-month lockdown and the Chinese government enacted a six-month tax incentive for gasoline cars. But light-vehicle output remains limited and vulnerable because of widespread parts shortages, while shipping delays are also disrupting supplies.

Last month, vehicle supplied at stores marketing locally produced, foreign mass-market brands decreased to 42 days from 54 days in a month earlier, according to the tally of the China Automobiles Dealers Association.

The average backlog at dealerships stocking Chinese brands fell to 43 days from 54 days in May.

Inventories at stores distributing luxury brands and imported foreign brands dropped to 35 days from 42 days in May.

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…