Trade News

General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler parent Stellantis said on Sunday they are reinstating a requirement that employees wear masks in southeastern Michigan where there are high levels of COVID-19.

The Detroit 3 automakers said in early March they would allow auto workers to stop wearing masks at workplaces where U.S. health officials said it was safe to do so.

That month, the automakers said they would adopt revised guidance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allowing workers at U.S. facilities to not wear masks regardless of COVID-19 vaccination status, if those facilities were not in high-risk counties.

The masking guidelines issued in February shifted from a focus on the rate of COVID-19 transmission to monitoring local hospitalizations, hospital capacity and infection rates.

Six counties in southeastern Michigan -- including Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Washtenaw -- are again listed by the CDC as having high COVID-19 …

BERLIN -- Audi is pausing production of key models at one of its German factories because of supply chain problems.

Production of the A4, A5 and A8 cars in Neckarsulm will be suspended from May 16 to May 20, Audi said.

The pause results from the war in Ukraine, the ongoing semiconductor shortage, and COVID-19 lockdowns in China, the automaker said.

The supply situation "remains volatile and short-term changes are always possible," an Audi spokesman told Automoitve News Europe by email.

The A6/A7 model family will continue to be manufactured in Neckarsulm as usual. That also applies to the sports cars R8 and E-Tron GT, which are built at the Boellinger Hoefe site in Heilbronn, according to the spokesperson.

Audi has also extended short time working for employees at its Neckarsulm and Ingolstadt sites until May 31 because of supply chain difficulties.

Renault will sell its majority stake in AvtoVAZ to a Russian science institute, the automaker said on Monday, adding that the deal included a six-year option to buy back the stake.

The Western automaker most exposed to the Russian market said that its holding of nearly 67.69 percent in AvtoVAZ would be sold to the Russian Central Research and Development Automobile and Engine Institute, called Nami.

"The closing of these transactions is not subject to any conditions, and all required approvals have been obtained," Renault said in a statement.

Its 100 percent shares in Renault Russia will go to the city of Moscow.

"Today, we have taken a difficult but necessary decision, and we are making a responsible choice towards our 45,000 employees in Russia," CEO Luca de Meo said in the statement.

The move preserved the group's performance and its ability to return to the country in the future in a different context, he added.

In March, Renau…

Self-driving truck developers are promising they'll launch commercial service as soon as next year. One of the key remaining engineering hurdles involves safely coaxing these 80,000-pound robots to the side of the road when things don't go according to plan.

As driverless-deployment timelines draw nearer, many of the leading companies are focused on perfecting this particular fail-safe maneuver — even more than on expanding their routes or solving other edge-case scenarios.

"We can talk until we're blue in the face about technology capabilities and the maneuvers a truck can handle and the way it interacts with traffic and all that stuff," said Don Burnette, CEO and co-founder of Kodiak Robotics. "But at the end of the day, in order to launch this technology safely, when there is something that isn't quite right, there has to be that capability to then safely pull the truck over to the side of the road."

For a variety of reasons, t…

For the first time in months, North American assembly plants did not add vehicles to their long list of production schedule cuts caused by the global microchip shortage, according to the latest weekly estimate by AutoForecast Solutions.

Factories in Europe, China, South America, the Middle East and Africa also held firm on their production plans, AFS reports. But the global total of vehicle cuts nonetheless rose by about 26,400 units because of chip shortages affecting assembly lines in Asia, outside of China.

Despite the sudden leveling off, after a year and a half of production trims, the shortage is still widely expected to continue denting schedules for the remainder of the year — and beyond.

“The supply of automotive-grade semiconductors continues to hamper global output of trucks and passenger cars, even if the short-term losses do not seem to reflect this slowdown,” Sam Fiorani, AFS vice president of global vehicle forecasting, said in an email.<…

The founder and CEO of Luminar Technologies lays out lidar’s role in dramatically reducing traffic deaths, the company’s march toward industrialization and a new deal with Nissan that brings lidar to the mass market.

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LOS ANGELES — A subsidiary of oil and gas giant Shell will soon support charging for Penske Truck Leasing's light-duty electric vehicles.

Shell Recharge Solutions will provide Level 2 charging stations to support Penske's electric truck fleet in five states by the end of the year, the companies said last week at the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo in Long Beach, Calif. Chargers will be added in other markets starting in 2023, the companies said.

"It's increasingly important that we help fleets make the transition to electric vehicles," said Andreas Lips, CEO of Shell Recharge Solutions. "We want to enable, with our technology and knowledge, that transition in an efficient way without compromising their operational capabilities."

Shell said it would "deliver design, installation and charging network support" through a software platform it developed as well as maintenance support.

The company said 33 Penske Truck Leasin…