Trade News

HAMBURG – Volkswagen Group supervisory board has called on management to present a reworked plan for the automaker's software division, which forms the backbone of its strategy but has run into problems, two people familiar with the matter said.

The board is expecting an update at the last supervisory board meeting before the summer break, one of the people said, adding no date has been set yet.

"What the [management] board has presented is not enough," said the other person.

VW declined to comment.

VW has called its software division, Cariad, which is the central element in its autonomous driving push, "the most ambitious project of our entire industry to tap into the most relevant profit pools of the future."

Cariad plans to challenge existing software incumbents, including Apple and Tesla, but has hit bumps in the road, which could become a problem for VW boss Herbert Diess, who is responsible for the unit on the group's management boa…

It took Wally Darwish more than 20 months to bring his first dealership purchases across the finish line — something he said he had prepared decades for.

Darwish last month purchased 10 franchised dealerships in New York state from Billy Fuccillo Jr. and Fuccillo Automotive Group, picking up four Ford dealerships and three Stellantis stores, plus Mitsubishi, Volkswagen and Nissan outlets to form Wally's Auto Group. In total, he was awarded 19 franchises.

The acquired stores are located in Nelliston, Seneca Falls, Adams, Watertown, Latham, Schenectady, East Greenbush and Amsterdam.

"This is the never-ending deal," Darwish said. "I made this deal right when COVID hit."

Darwish, formerly a minority partner in a New Jersey Audi dealership and a platform manager for Napleton Automotive Group, said that after entering into an agreement with Fuccillo in August 2020, he ran into several delays. His lawyer's office shut down because of COVID-19, and Darw…

Executive Editor Jamie Butters gives you the top headlines and Fixed Ops Journal Editor Dan Shine talks about the challenges dealers are finding fully staffing their service departments and how they can ease that problem with Dave Foy, fixed operations VP at Quantum5 and host of the "Fixed Ops Mastermind" podcast.

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Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter late on Thursday to denounce as "utterly untrue" claims in a news report that he had sexually harassed a flight attendant on a private jet in 2016.

Business Insider reported earlier on Thursday that Musk's SpaceX paid $250,000 in 2018 to settle a sexual harassment claim from an unnamed private jet flight attendant who accused Musk of exposing himself to her.

The article quoted an anonymous person who said she was a friend of the flight attendant. The friend had provided a statement as part of the private settlement process, according to the article.

"I have a challenge to this liar who claims their friend saw me 'exposed' – describe just one thing, anything at all (scars, tattoos, …) that isn’t known by the public. She won’t be able to do so, because it never happened," Musk tweeted.

Reuters was not able to verify the Business Insider account. Musk and SpaceX did not respond to Reuters requests for comment…

The four-door Vision AMG show car previews full-electric models from the Mercedes-Benz Group's high-performance brand that will be sold starting in 2025.

The Vision AMG – which Mercedes calls an "electric supercar" -- is based on the automaker's AMG.EA platform, which will be used for full-electric performance models.

"With this study, we are now offering a first glimpse of how we are transferring the AMG DNA in the all-electric future, starting in 2025," Mercedes-Benz Group CEO Ola Kallenius said in a statement at the concept’s unveiling on Thursday in Nice, France.

Under Kallenius, the AMG brand will play an increasing role in Mercedes’ profitability, along with other so-called Top End vehicles from Maybach, G-Wagen and the coming Mythos limited edition series.

Mercedes already sells a number of AMG-branded EVs, but there will also be dedicated models in the future.

The platform and electric drivetrain for the Vision were developed "fro…

TOKYO – Nissan and Mitsubishi took an important next step in their electric vehicle ramp up plans with the start of production of a pair of jointly developed mini-EVs for the Japanese market.

The sibling nameplates, the Nissan Sakura and Mitsubishi eK X EV, aim to tap huge domestic demand for tiny runabouts in the minicar segment by floating a new all-electric variant.

Mini vehicles comprise around 40 percent of Japanese light-vehicle sales. But EVs have only a paltry presence, accounting for just 1.7 percent of total Japanese passenger car demand.

The new entries join Toyota’s C+Pod 2-seater as the only mini EVs on the passenger market. Mitsubishi also sells a full-electric commercial vehicle called the Minicab MiEV.

The Sakura is Nissan’s first all-electric entry in the segment. Mitsubishi pioneered the technology with the now discontinued i-MiEV, an EV minicar launched in 2010.

Honda said in April it is also developing a new EV platfor…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ Airports give robotaxis runway ahead

Airports are a linchpin in the long-term success of robotaxis. Roughly a quarter of all ride-hailing customers seek trips to or from airports, a substantial portion of business. Perhaps perplexingly, few self-driving companies have tested their systems in this realm.

So it felt like an underappreciated moment when Waymo unveiled testing at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on Wednesday. Waymo said it would start allowing employees to hail rides between downtown Phoenix and the airport, with backup human safety drivers aboard. Initial service will start with the company's Jaguar I-Pace electric vehicles pictured above.

It's an incremental step, but an important one. When I visited Waymo last fall, the locations missing from the company's coverage area in metro Phoenix (the international airport and the campus of Arizona State University) stood out as much as the technical competence wi…

Rules. Every racing series from quarter midget to NASCAR to IndyCar requires teams to adhere to what seems like a byzantine labyrinth of rules.

The requirements — which govern everything from the size, thickness and placement of decals to the engine's size and power output — help ensure cars from different teams are close to identical in specification. That can make for extremely close races, where the skill of the driver and the team's strategy of managing the race becomes more important than raw horsepower.

The section that governs aerodynamics in the 2022 IndyCar series rulebook covers 10 pages. After reading those regulations, you might think there isn't much Honda's aerodynamic engineers working in the company's new $124 million wind tunnel in East Liberty, Ohio, can do to improve the performance of Honda-engined cars running in the NTT IndyCar Series races such the Indy 500 on Sunday, May 29.

You'd be wrong.

Whil…

TOKYO — Valeo, a pioneer in commercializing lidar technology, is developing a more advanced version of its laser-emitting safety systems for debut in 2024 that promises a twelvefold increase in resolution, a tripling of range and a much wider viewing angle that can see details the human eye, cameras and radar cannot.

The lidar lineup, called Valeo Scala, is part of a big ramp-up Valeo sees through 2030.

The first generation, Scala 1, debuted in the Legend Hybrid EX sedan that Honda began leasing in Japan last year. Scala 2 goes into the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class, which received international approval for Level 3 automation last December. That system, bundled under Mercedes' Drive Pilot system, arrives this year in Germany. The company also plans to seek regulatory approval in California and Nevada.

Scala 3, the version planned for 2024, will enable autonomous emergency maneuvers at highway speeds up to 80 mph, Valeo says.

The French supplier say…

China’s used light-vehicle market skidded 25 percent to some 882,100 in April after slipping 15 percent in March amid a flare-up of the coronavirus outbreak, according to the China Automobile Dealers Association.

The market has never racked up double-digit declines two consecutive months, the trade group said last week. 

CADA blamed the unprecedented contraction on strict measures such as lockdowns adopted by cities to curb the latest COVID-19 outbreak.

Every market segment shrank severely in April, with used sedans sales tumbling 28 percent to some 650,700, according to CADA.

Used multi-purpose vehicle deliveries slipped 27 percent to around 63,500, while second-hand minibus sales fell 23 percent to about 25,800.

The volume of used crossovers and SUVs also slipped 12 percent to roughly 142,100. 

In the first four months, sales of used light vehicles in China shrank 7.4 percent to approximately 4 million, according to CADA.…

Two auto retailers continued their growth with dealership purchases in May and April, a Nissan dealer and partner added two stores in the first quarter and another group bought a store and sold another early this year.

Here's a look at the deals involving import, luxury and domestic stores and dealerships in Tennessee, Iowa, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Washington.

Umansky Automotive Group of Memphis, Tenn., continued its expansion in the state this month with the purchase of two Bill Gatton dealerships.

Umansky on May 10 bought Bill Gatton Acura and Bill Gatton Mazda in Johnson City, Umansky Automotive owner Dan Umansky told Automotive News.

Bill Gatton died in April at age 89. Umansky said Gatton had agreed to sell him the dealerships before he died and the transaction was finalized by his estate.

Umansky renamed the dealerships Johnson City Acura and Johnson City Mazda.

These aren't the first dealerships the group purchased from Ga…