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Denso, one of the world’s top automotive semiconductor manufacturers and a key supplier to Toyota, might consider spinning off its chip business, which generates around 420 billion yen ($3.1 billion) in sales, the company’s chief technology officer said.

Denso ranks second on the Top 100 suppliers list and has also quietly built up a presence in automotive chips.

Now, with semiconductor-related capital expenditures totaling around 160 billion yen over the past three years, Denso ranks as the world’s fifth-largest supplier of automotive chips by sales.

"We need to think about whether the time will come when we sell semiconductors, alone, externally," CTO Yoshifumi Kato said in an interview at Denso's headquarters in Aichi prefecture on Friday. "It's worth looking into whether that kind of structure is possible," he said.

Today, the semiconductors Denso makes in-house go into automotive parts that it then sells to carmakers or other suppliers. Whe…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ By 2035, BEVs forecast to be majority of global sales

Battery-electric vehicles will account for a majority of new light-vehicle sales worldwide by 2035 as government mandates begin and automakers roll out new models, according to a forecast by Boston Consulting Group.

BCG anticipates 59 percent of all new vehicles sold worldwide will be BEVs by 2035, a double-digit upward revision from its estimate in 2021, which called for a 45 percent market share. Likewise, the consulting firm anticipates BEVs will make up 20 percent of worldwide sales in 2025, up from last year's forecast of 11 percent.

"We really think the switch has been flipped," said Aakash Arora, managing director at BCG. "It used to be a few years ago that for many companies, both OEMs and suppliers, EVs were a very important piece of their strategy but still just a project. Now, we're seeing that EVs are the company and that ICE is the project."

BCG's report …

Kellen Walker gives you the top headlines. The Biden administration proposes minimum standards for electric vehicle charging stations. A new forecast says “the switch has been flipped” on EV growth. The 2023 Nissan Altima gets a new design. Plus, George Hines of Lithia & Driveway talks about the company’s aim to bring car-buying into the digital age.

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Cadillac is going dramatic with a prototype of its third-generation endurance race car, the Project GTP Hypercar.

Introduced Thursday, it previews the race car Cadillac will use to contest the 2023 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and the FIA World Endurance Championship, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The Project GTP Hypercar, co-developed by Cadillac Design, Cadillac Racing and Italian race car builder Dallara, incorporates some of the brand's key design characteristics such as vertical lighting and floating blades.

It is powered by an all-new 5.5-liter double-overhead-camshaft V-8 engine that will be paired to IMSA's common hybrid system.

"The Project GTP Hypercar is a unique convergence of form and function and showcases Cadillac's future performance aesthetic," said Chris Mikalauskas, lead exterior creative designer at Cadillac. "We have plenty more to come, from the upcoming race car to amazing production…

Ford topped new-vehicle registrations for electric vehicles among mainstream brands in the first four months of the year, followed closely by Kia and Hyundai.

But Tesla dominated the EV registration charts overall in the U.S. and remained the top luxury automaker regardless of fuel type, according to new numbers from Experian.

California-based EV startups Rivian Automotive and Lucid Group continued to struggle with their production ramp-ups, according to the registration data, with just over 1,700 combined through April.

Ford's 11,751 EV registrations came mostly from the Mustang Mach-E crossover at 10,740, along with 908 E-Transit vans and 103 of the new F-150 Lightning pickup, the four-month data showed. Ford EV registrations doubled from the same period the previous year.

New EV registrations for Kia came in at 11,483 in the January-April period, compared with just 1,549 in the year-earlier period. Kia's EV6 compact crossover made up 7,303 of …

Tesla Inc. has staged a remarkable comeback in terms of vehicle production in China, with May output more than tripling despite the electric carmaker only recently getting a Shanghai factory back up to speed after the city’s punishing lockdowns to contain COVID-19 outbreaks.

The U.S. electric vehicle maker produced 33,544 vehicles at its Shanghai plant last month, versus 10,757 in April, China Passenger Car Association data released Thursday showed. Shipments came in at 32,165 units, with 22,340 of those EVs exported to markets in Europe and the rest of Asia, and 9,825 of the vehicles going to domestic buyers.

Tesla has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep its factory in China up and running during Shanghai’s months-long lockdown to eliminate the spread of Covid-19. The facility, which is capable of making 2,100 EVs a day in normal times, was shut for three weeks through mid April and staff were only recently able to resume double shifts, working around the cl…

Digital auto retail and finance platform AutoFi tapped Santander Consumer USA head of pricing and strategy Josh Baer as its president.

Baer, whose resume also includes more than a decade at Capital One, will run AutoFi's lender and enterprise segments. AutoFi on Thurday said he will focus on speeding growth in those businesses with "transformative retail and financing experiences" which will help clients meet consumer preferences.

AutoFi's software allows consumers to browse dealership inventory and see financing offers tailored to the dealership's preferences. It handled more than 1 million financing requests to lenders and was associated with more than $3 billion in sales last year.

"AutoFi is a pioneer in the digitization of the auto industry," Baer said in a statement Thursday. "The company is uniquely positioned with manufacturers, retailers, and lenders to deliver digital experiences that will drive the future of the market. The opportunity to shap…

Volkswagen Group is offering compensation to employees at a car assembly plant in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, if they agree to quit voluntarily.

The offer of financial compensation and medical insurance until the end of 2022 is available to about 200 people working at the plant, a VW spokesperson said.

The VW Taos compact crossover, along with the Skoda Octavia, Karoq and Kodiaq models, are produced at Nizhny Novgorod.

VW said in March that production at its Kaluga and Nizhny Novgorod sites would be suspended until further notice because of Western sanctions, and vehicle exports to Russia would be stopped with immediate effect.

While VW owns its Kaluga plant directly, employing around 4,200 workers there, it does not own the Nizhny Novgorod plant but has a contractual agreement with owner GAZ Group to assemble its models there.

The U.S. treasury department in January shortened two licenses for GAZ Group, which has been sanctioned since 2018 …

Mercedes-Benz expects electric vehicles to account for about half of its U.S. sales by 2030, executives revealed at the brand's national dealer meeting this month.

The German luxury marque is in the early days of an EV product offensive that will bring a handful of zero-emission models over the next year.

That effort will be critical to Mercedes' aspirations of delivering about 350,000 vehicles in the U.S. next year, according to a retailer who attended the event.

Mercedes aims to sell up to 45,000 EQ-branded electric vehicles in 2023, said the dealer, who asked not to be identified. In contrast, Mercedes sold 352,129 units in 2019, before the pandemic and a global supply chain crisis kneecapped production industry-wide.

Mercedes launched its all-electric EQ subbrand with the debut of a battery-powered S-Class sedan late last summer. This year, the automaker will unleash three EV models in the U.S., including the EQB compact crossover, EQE midsiz…

Nissan Motor Co.'s second-bestselling model — the Altima midsize sedan — is being freshened with an updated design, more standard safety features and new technology.

The 2023 Nissan Altima will go on sale in the fall. Pricing was not disclosed.

Nissan sold 38,295 Altimas in the U.S. during the first quarter, up 20 percent from a year earlier.

The updated Altima is offered with two four-cylinder powerplants — a 2.0-liter Variable Compression Turbo or a 2.5-liter double-overhead-camshaft engine.

The VC-Turbo, available on the Altima SR front-wheel-drive model, provides the acceleration of a V-6 engine with the fuel economy of a four-cylinder.

The front fascia features an updated interpretation of Nissan's V-Motion grille that adopts the redesigned brand logo, Nissan said. The SR trims sport a "black chrome" grille finish and a unique grille design.

Other exterior elements include now standard LED headlights with integrated turn signa…

PARIS -- The auto industry’s main lobbying group, ACEA, said it was "concerned" that the European Parliament had rejected efforts to weaken a 100 percent reduction in CO2 emissions from new cars from 2035, essentially outlawing sales of internal-combustion engines in the bloc after that date.

"Given that the transformation of the sector is dependent on many external factors which are not fully in its hands, ACEA is concerned that MEPs voted to set in stone a minus 100 percent CO2 target for 2035," the group said in a statement on Thursday, following Wednesday night’s vote by the parliament.

ACEA expressed general support for the target, however, and called for a halfway progress report to determine post-2030 targets

"Such a review will first of all have to evaluate whether the deployment of charging infrastructure and the availability of raw materials for battery production will be able to match the continued steep ramp-up of battery-elec…