Trade News

Mercedes-Benz of Sugar Land is building customer loyalty and making roads safer at the same time.

Since 2014, the Texas dealership has sent more than 260 teenagers through a driving safety school that uses an array of Mercedes vehicles to teach various maneuvers.

The initiative started as a perk for dealership clients' children as part of a VIP benefits program, but it was expanded in 2019 to include the local Clements High School as the store made the experience available to those outside its customer base for the first time.

The training has been a hit with Mercedes-Benz of Sugar Land clients in the dealership's "First. Class. Access." program, which is built around a package of lifestyle sweeteners. Besides the teen driving school, these customers get offers through businesses such as travel concierge services, member pricing at a spa and special rates at the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar in the Bahamas, to name a few.

"We pitch it as taking care of o…

Employees of Nationwide Motor Sales Corp. in Timonium, Md., will be able to sue the company and its owners in federal court and not seek an arbitrator, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.

The 3-0 decision April 25 came after employees at Nationwide, which retails new and used vehicles, filed a lawsuit in district court claiming "fraudulent payment practices that reduced employees' sales commissions and final paychecks." Nationwide, in response, filed to compel arbitration in accordance with its employee handbook, which contains an arbitration agreement requiring all disputes between employees and the company to be settled using an arbitrator.

According to the opinion, the employees claimed the arbitration agreement was invalid because of a modification clause in the handbook that said Nationwide "retains the right to change, abolish, or modify the Handbook's policies, procedures, and benefits." Maryland law states arbitration clauses are invalid i…

Online used-vehicle retailers such as Carvana Co. and Vroom Inc., after riding high on consumer and investor interest during the COVID-19 pandemic, are facing a reckoning.

Carvana slashed 2,500 jobs and suspended executive pay after losing $506 million in the first quarter. Vroom tapped a new CEO and said it would consider cutting jobs after reporting a big loss. Shift Technologies Inc. cut its corporate staff by 10 percent last month.

The now-humbled disrupters, which just last year were tormenting franchised dealers with aggressive Super Bowl ads, are seeing their stock prices fall as their losses grow. Rising interest rates and high prices generally — especially for gasoline — are undermining retail demand, while wholesale prices remain high. For companies pushing to grow in a hot market, the first quarter brought a rude awakening.

"You have to plan your infrastructure to support growth over the next year," said Sharon Zackfia, who covers all three …

Cruise LLC, the self-driving startup controlled by General Motors, is working with the automaker’s BrightDrop electric van business on a plan to develop autonomous delivery vehicles, people familiar with the matter said.

Cruise and BrightDrop have started early-stage work that could eventually put a self-driving system into the electric vans, potentially creating a driverless package-delivery service, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the collaboration. The nascent project could be a logical next step for GM, whose Cruise unit has mostly been focused on getting its robotaxi business running and generating revenue.

Despite the preliminary work, the people cautioned that Cruise is still dedicating most of its resources to the robotaxi effort, and said that other self-driving vehicle programs will get additional attention once that business is established. The company has been offering free rides in San Francisco without a safety driver a…

Honda Motor Co. on Friday reported a larger-than-expected operating profit for its fiscal year that ended March 31 but forecast a 7 percent drop in annual earnings for the current year amid higher raw material costs and the ongoing chip shortage.

The automaker recorded a full-year profit of 871 billion yen ($6.7 billion), topping its own projection of 800 billion yen ($6.2 billion). For the quarter ended March 31 Honda reported an operating profit of 199.5 billion yen ($1.5 billion).

Global automakers have been forced to slash production due a shortage of microchips, and now face an increase in costs as China's COVID-19 curbs have shuttered factories and the war in Ukraine further strains supply chains.

Honda projects its profit for the fiscal year through March 2023 will be 810 billion yen ($6.3 billion). The company said it expects about 300 billion yen ($2.3 billion) in costs to cover rising material, labor, and logistics expenses this year, a roughly…

MEXICO CITY - General Motors has agreed a 8.5 percent wage hike with the new, independent union at its pick-up truck plant in the central Mexican city of Silao, labor representatives said on Thursday, one of the highest recent raises in the country's auto industry.

A GM Mexico spokeswoman confirmed the raise in an email to Automotive News. The plant builds the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra.

The deal with union SINTTIA also marks the first major raise since the start of a new trade deal, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which aims to reduce the vast wage gap between U.S. and Mexican workers.

"It's a victory, a step in the right direction," said Gaspar Rivera Salgado, director of the Center for Mexican Studies at the University of California Los Angeles. It remains to be seen if such raises can be easily duplicated, he added.

Following a vote closely watched by U.S. officials, SINTTIA this year became the first independent uni…

Lithium ion battery recycling firm Li-Cycle Holdings Corp. said it received its previously announced $50 million investment from General Motors battery suppliers LG Chem and LG Energy Solution.

The investment, which was announced in December and restated in April, will transfer 220,000 tons of nickel, or enough for 300,000 EVs, from Li-Cycle's Rochester Hub to LG Energy Solution and LG Chem over a period of 10 years. In exchange, the companies purchased $50 million in common stock from Li-Cycle.

"We're thrilled to advance our collaboration with LGC and LGES, two global industry leaders in the EV supply chain," Li-Cycle CEO Ajay Kochhar said in a statement on April 21. "Together, we are driving sustainable global electrification through the creation of this milestone closed-loop ecosystem in the lithium-ion battery supply chain."

LG Energy Solution and LG Chem also recognized Li-Cycle as their preferred North American lithium ion battery recycler as part …

Executive Editor Jamie Butters gives you the top headlines and talks about layoffs at Carvana and troubles at other used retailers brought on by high inflation and interest rates, dwindling consumer and investor confidence and supply chain disruptions with Automotive News Reporter C.J. Moore.

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Elon Musk said Friday his $44-billion deal for Twitter Inc was temporarily on hold, citing pending details on spam and fake accounts.

"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5 percent of users," Musk said in a tweet.

Shares of the social media company fell 20 percent in premarket trading. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company had earlier this month estimated that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5 percent of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter.

It also said it faced several risks until the deal with Musk is closed, including whether advertisers would continue to spend on Twitter.

Musk had said that one of his priorities would be to remove "spam bots" from the platform.

YOKOHAMA, Japan — Nissan Motor Co., fresh off unveiling plans to add electric vehicle production at a second U.S. assembly plant, is now contemplating building a third "factory," possibly for EVs, in the region by 2030.

Chief Operating Officer  Ashwani Gupta said the Japanese automaker would likely need a new "factory" by the end of the decade under its Ambition 2030 long-term plan.

Gupta did not specify that the new facility would be geared exclusively toward EVs, but the context of his discussion revolved around EVs.

"The way we are progressing, I do believe we will need a new plant," Gupta said on Friday at Nissan's global headquarters here.

He said the move fits with the trend toward localization as Nissan makes electrification a focal point of future growth.

Last November, Nissan said it will invest 2 trillion yen ($16.4 billion) in the next five years to amp up an electrified vehicle push with 23 new entries worldwide by the end …

Problems on top of problems have complicated life for automakers and retailers. The great COVID-19 pandemic overturned business plans in early 2020, sent work forces and suppliers fleeing to safety for a year, overturned semiconductor sourcing plans for two years, delayed vehicle development programs and market launches, and resulted in scrambled inventory plans and an industrywide uncertainty about how many vehicles factories might actually be expected to deliver.

And yet life goes on.

Through all this — despite it all — automakers have delivered a wave of products to showrooms since last fall. Significant products, most of them. Big-volume products, some of them. Electric vehicles, many of them. But eagerly awaited products, all of them.

Ford is expected to have the first of its hotly anticipated electric F-150 Lightning pickups in driveways this month.

GMC's Hummer EV pickup, a truck that's one part performance and one part workhorse, made it t…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ How will disabled drivers access EV chargers?

The federal government will spend billions of dollars building a nationwide network of 500,000 electric vehicle chargers. Will drivers with disabilities be capable of accessing them?

That's a question with few firm answers.

As a push for infrastructure that supports a shift to EVs accelerates, advocates for disabled people worry their needs beyond the vehicles themselves are barely being recognized at this formative stage.

"It just shows you how fundamental the changes are that need to occur," said Henry Claypool, technology policy consultant for the American Association of People with Disabilities. "If you have a personal vehicle, how are you going to charge it if you have difficulty getting around the car?"

Claypool's remarks came during a wide-ranging discussion on transportation and innovation hosted by United Cerebral Palsy this month. (Full disclosure: I moderate…