Trade News

Volvo CEO Jim Rowan has made sweeping changes to his leadership team, naming two deputy CEOs and moving four of the 11 executives off the automaker's highest management tier, as Volvo gears up to become an electric-only brand by 2030.

It is Rowan's biggest personnel move made thus far. The former Dyson Group executive succeeded longtime CEO Hakan Samuelsson in March.

The executives gaining promotions are Bjorn Annwall and Javier Varela.

Annwall, who is Volvo's chief financial officer, will become deputy CEO and chief commercial officer. In his second role Annwall succeeds Lex Kerssemakers, who will retire this year and move into an advisory role, joining a newly formed board below Volvo's top-level executive management team.

Annwall was named Volvo's chief financial officer last April and played a key role in the automaker's stock exchange listing last October.

Prior to serving as CFO Annwall was Volvo's head of the Europe, Middle East…

A Tesla Inc. investor accused the electric-vehicle maker's officers and directors in a lawsuit of allowing a "toxic workplace culture" to fester at the company.

According to the complaint filed Thursday by stockholder Solomon Chau in federal court in Austin, Texas, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk and others who run the EV maker breached their fiduciary duty by fostering an environment of discrimination and harassment, exposing Tesla to millions of dollars in potential liability.

"This toxic work environment has gestated internally for years, and only recently has the truth about Tesla's culture emerged, leading to legal action from government regulators and private parties alike," Chau said in the complaint. "Tesla's toxic workplace culture has caused financial harm and irreparable damage to the company's reputation."

Tesla is fighting a suit by California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing over racial discrimination and h…

Two sizable dealership groups, along with two smaller auto retailers, expanded their holdings with first- and second-quarter transactions.

Here's a look at the deals involving import and domestic dealerships and stores in New Jersey, California, Washington and Idaho. One of the transactions involved an auto retailer ranked on Automotive News' list of the top 150 dealership groups.

Ciocca Dealerships of Quakertown, Pa., has purchased a Subaru-Kia dealership in Ewing Township, N.J.

Ciocca on June 7 bought Scott Harvey Subaru-Kia from dealer Scott Harvey of the Scott Harvey Auto Group. The dealership, which features separate showrooms and a combined service department, was renamed Ciocca Subaru-Kia.

Ewing Township is just across the Pennsylvania state line, near Trenton.

These were Harvey's only dealerships, according to the Ciocca group.

With the acquisition, the Ciocca group said it now has 27…

LONG BEACH, Calif. — Kia is committed to launching a battery electric vehicle in the U.S. every year for the rest of this decade, says its U.S. sales boss.

The Korean automaker will have eight BEVs in its lineup by 2029, which includes the EV6 compact crossover that went on sale this year, the redesigned Niro EV and the EV9 three-row SUV that it will build starting in 2023.

"Thirty percent of our sales will come from electric vehicles by the end of the decade, and we'll get to 50 percent in the early 2030s," said Eric Watson, Kia Motors America vice president of sales and operations, during a discussion about the company's plans this month in Long Beach, Calif.

"We're going to be launching these [EVs] into some of the bigger segments," Watson said, referencing the fast-growing midsize crossover segment. Last year, U.S. sales of midsize crossovers were nearly 1.5 million, representing nearly a tenth of industry sales.

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<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ New tech could address 650K traffic crashes, IIHS says

Advanced technologies such as intersection assistance may be relevant to 650,000 crashes per year and could prevent hundreds of thousands of accidents, new data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows.

"Left-turn assist and other, upcoming intersection-assistance technologies could deliver big safety benefits for drivers in their 70s and 80s," said Aimee Cox, IIHS research associate and author of the study.

With a growing number of older drivers in the U.S, according to the IIHS, new features will help keep drivers of all ages safe on the road.

"We know that older drivers can be at a greater risk for crashing and especially at a higher risk for being in a fatal crash," said Jessica Cicchino, IIHS vice president of research.

Front-crash prevention features could alert drivers through a warning chime or apply the brakes to avoid a collision. Though…

WASHINGTON — Despite caveats in NHTSA's first-ever release of data on crashes linked to advanced driver-assistance systems and automated-driving systems, safety experts say the effort is still a useful step toward greater transparency.

The nation's top highway safety agency this week said it received reports of nearly 400 crashes involving driver-assist systems and 130 crashes involving fully automated vehicles since it began forcing automakers, suppliers and tech companies to disclose the data last June.

As automakers add more advanced driver-assistance features such as adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping assist to their vehicles, NHTSA said it wants to use the more timely data to better understand their role in crashes, whether they're caused by design flaws in the technology or misuse by drivers, and ensure their safety.

For AVs, which are not yet available to consumers but are being tested and deployed in a limited scale on public roads, the a…

WASHINGTON — As the federal government moves forward with a plan to build a nationwide charging network for electric vehicles, it's "off to the races" for states looking to soothe consumer range anxiety.

"This is not going to be the federal government going and buying chargers and putting them in the ground," Michael Berube, a senior official at the U.S. Energy Department, said of the strategy to build 500,000 EV charging stations by 2030 with funding from the $1 trillion infrastructure law.

Instead, states will take charge.

"Any place where you can put a public charger along the highway corridors is fair game, so that will be operated by the states," said Berube, who is deputy assistant secretary for sustainable transportation in the department's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

The law — signed by President Joe Biden in November — includes $7.5 billion to help build out the charging network and $65 billion for upgrades to the …

Credit Acceptance Corp. has agreed, "in principle," to pay $12 million to settle a lawsuit brought by shareholders.

The subprime auto lender announced the proposed settlement in the federal securities case — brought by various pension funds — Thursday morning in a regulatory filing, writing that "the parties have agreed to negotiate in good faith to execute a definitive stipulation of settlement to be filed with the court."

That process "may take several months," according to the 8-K filing.

The lawsuit was filed in October 2020 in federal court in Detroit and brought by a mix of pension funds invested in Credit Acceptance (NASDAQ: CACC), and named as defendants former CEO Brett Roberts and current CEO Ken Booth.

A Credit Acceptance spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for further comment Thursday morning.

The lawsuit brought by shareholders largely stemmed from a 2020 case brought by the attorney general in Massachusetts, …

The impact of the USMCA trade deal has been difficult to measure given the multiple economic disruptions that have occurred since it went into effect in 2020, but the deal remains a vital enforcement tool for the auto industry and beyond, according to a policy expert.

Kellie Meiman Hock, managing partner at international trade consultancy McLarty Associates, said Thursday that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement, has been effective in its early days at resolving some labor issues.

"USMCA is of a more enhanced importance right now from a trade perspective because it's one of the few functioning dispute mechanisms that's left," Meiman told an audience at the Automotive News Congress in Washington. "You can't go to the World Trade Organization right now because their dispute settlement system is not fully functioning. It puts a bit of a spotlight on us as North America and what we can continue to achie…

Blink Charging Co. has agreed to acquire North American EV charging infrastructure manufacturer SemaConnect Inc. for $200 million.

Blink, an electric vehicle charging station developer, said the acquisition will add nearly 13,000 chargers and 3,800 locations to its business.

Blink said it will update SemaConnect's charging stations to "a single state-of-the-art network" and expand Blink's geographic reach, according to a Tuesday statement.

Blink CEO Mike Farkas told Automotive News that the company, based in Miami, previously designed Level 2 chargers but hired a third-party contractor to manufacture them. With the acquisition, Blink will have control over the operation, development and manufacturing of charging stations, he said.

"We're the only EV charging infrastructure company in the United States that designs the hardware, manufactures the hardware in its own facilities, develops and maintains a network that operates the charging stations and…

Advanced technologies such as intersection-assistance may be relevant to 650,000 crashes per year and could prevent hundreds of thousands of accidents, new data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows.

"Left turn assist and other, upcoming intersection-assistance technologies could deliver big safety benefits for drivers in their 70s and 80s," said Aimee Cox, IIHS research associate and author of the study.

With a growing number of older drivers in the U.S, according to the IIHS, new features will help keep drivers of all ages safe on the road.

"We know that older drivers can be at a greater risk for crashing and especially at a higher risk for being in a fatal crash," said Jessica Cicchino, IIHS vice president of research.

Front crash-prevention features could alert drivers through a warning chime or apply the brakes to avoid a collision. Though features such as Tesla's Autopilot have been unsuccessful — NHTSA opened a probe in May …

Chinese electric carmaker Nio Inc. unveiled a five-seater crossover as it seeks to close the sales gap with local rivals Xpeng Inc. and Li Auto Inc. and other competitors.

Named ES7, the light truck will start at 468,000 yuan ($69,700) with a driving range of 485 kilometers (300 miles), the Shanghai-based automaker said during an online launch event Wednesday.

The ES7 will also feature the latest autonomous driving technologies in-house developed with several high-performance sensing units and four Nvidia Orin chips. Aside from competing with home-grown electric models, Tesla Inc. offers the Model Y at a more affordable 316,900 yuan in China.

The ES7, slated to go on sale in August, “might be our fastest delivery from unveiling,” Nio CEO William Li said at the event.

Nio has long labeled itself as a premium EV producer catering to middle class consumers. The latest model, with an optional electric tow bar, is one of the first certified passenger v…