Trade News

The U.S. light-vehicle market, hobbled by parts shortages and other production bottlenecks, has stalled in what is normally a robust spring selling season.

But the exotic and ultraluxury market is rolling on and revving up.

Rolls-Royce and Bentley are coming off record sales in 2021 and on pace for more gains in 2022.

Those two companies — along with Tesla, BMW, Mini and Genesis — were the only brands to post higher U.S. sales in the first quarter.

Alan Haig, president of Haig Partners, a dealership buy-sell advisory firm, said combined U.S. sales at seven exotic and ultraluxury brands — Lamborghini, Maserati, Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, McLaren and Aston Martin — jumped 5 percent from 2018 to 2021.

"The market is far less volatile and more lucrative today because of the rise in affluent households," Haig said. "And the manufacturers are responding with new product and higher prices."

Steady gains in real estate values and on W…

Carvana Co.'s disclosure Tuesday that it shed 2,500 employees set off a ripple of reactions in the stock market and among social media users who said they were employees included in the layoffs.

On Twitter and Reddit, several people who said they worked at Carvana wrote that they received little or no heads-up from the company that they would be let go Tuesday. Some posted screenshots of an apparent companywide email Carvana CEO Ernie Garcia III sent early Tuesday morning, before official layoffs occurred later in the day.

The email, which Carvana did not confirm or deny to Automotive News, said the layoffs come as the company is grappling with financial fallout from high inflation and interest rates, dwindling consumer and investor confidence and supply chain disruption.

"The impact of all of these forces on our industry has been severe," Garcia said in the email. "All-time-high car prices are slowing sales to recession levels. We…

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, this can be a com…

CDK Global Inc. is being sued in federal court by a shareholder who alleges the company left out key information in its solicitation statement following its announced sale to Brookfield Business Partners.

CDK and Brookfield unveiled the planned $8.3 billion deal on April 7. Brookfield agreed to purchase all of CDK's outstanding shares for $54.87 per share when the sale is completed this year.

Morgan Stanley & Co. and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison were financial and legal advisers for CDK, and Davis Polk & Wardwell was legal adviser for Brookfield.

The lawsuit — filed May 4 in the U.S. Eastern District of New York — names the automotive technology company and all nine of its board of directors as defendants. Matthew Hopkins, who owns CDK common stock, is listed as the plaintiff.

The suit alleges that following the announcement of the sale, the defendants on April 22 filed a statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Co…

TOKYO – Nissan Motor Co. bounced back into the black in the latest quarter as the recovering automaker clawed through the pandemic and semiconductor crises to post its first full-year profit in three years, after tanking in the wake of the arrest of former Chairman Carlos Ghosn.

The rebound underscored Nissan’s progress in regaining financial health after a period of management upheaval when it slumped to the largest operating loss in the company’s history.

For the just-ended fiscal year, which finished March 31, Nissan erased that red ink as operating profit surged to 247.3 billion yen ($2.03 billion).

The advance brings Nissan closer to achieving CEO Makoto Uchida’s goal of delivering a sustainable 5 percent operating profit margin.

The automaker’s margin finished at 2.9 percent in the 12-month period to March 31, beating Uchida’s target of 2 percent for the fiscal year under his mid-term revival plan.

Uchida in 2020 staked his job on a…

TOKYO -- Electric vehicle laggard Subaru Corp. will step up its pace in the battery-car race by adding a dedicated in-house EV assembly plant in Japan from about 2027.

The move is part of a multibillion-dollar investment in electrification over the next five years.

Subaru’s outlay shows the all-wheel drive specialist is finally turning its focus to full-EVs after introducing its first serious contender, the Solterra crossover EV, only this year.

Unlike the Solterra, the EVs produced in the latter half of this decade will be manufactured directly by Subaru.

The Solterra, which shares a Toyota-developed EV platform with the Toyota bZ4X, is made at Toyota’s Motomachi assembly plant on the same line as the sibling nameplate.

Subaru CEO Tomomi Nakamura outlined the plans on Thursday while announcing fiscal year earnings.

Subaru will begin making its own EVs in mixed production with internal combustion vehicles at its Yajima plant in Jap…

BMW cars underpinned by the company's Neue Klasse (New Class) electric platform will be "as profitable as vehicles with state-of-the-art combustion engines," CEO Oliver Zipse said.

The Neue Klasse platform will have a new battery chemistry and new cell formats to increase power output, Zipse said at the automaker's annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday.

"That is also what our latest GEN6 drivetrain generation stands for: more output, a new cell chemistry and new cell formats,” he said, without naming the supplier.

BMW is targeting cost savings of 30 percent from the Neue Klasse platform’s new cylindrical cell format, similar in design to that used by Tesla, Bloomberg reported.

Zipse said on the company's quarterly earnings call last week that BMW will initially focus its Neue Klasse architecture on full-electric models for the midsize premium segment, such as future generations of the 3 Series.

The platform goes into production in 2025 a…

Taiwan's Foxconn, best known as the manufacturer of the iPhone, is now in the car manufacturing business.

Lordstown Motors on Wednesday said the $230 million deal announced in the fall to sell its sprawling 6.2 million-square-foot plant to Foxconn has closed.

The deal transfers to Hon Hai Technology Group — which trades under the Foxconn name — ownership of the former General Motors plant in Ohio along with 400 Lordstown manufacturing employees and the responsibility for assembling the battery-electric Endurance, a pickup roughly the size of the Chevrolet Silverado.

Moving forward, Foxconn will serve as a contract manufacturer and assemble vehicles. Lordstown remains responsible for design, engineering, testing, industrialization, sourcing, homologation and launch of vehicle programs. 

Foxconn also said it is investing $100 million to create a joint venture affiliate that will work with Lordstown to engineer EVs based on Foxconn's in-house d…

Rivian Automotive Inc. on Wednesday said it posted a first-quarter net loss of $1.6 billion on revenue of $95 million.

It posted a quarterly loss of $414 million a year ago, but that was before it launched production at its plant in Normal, Ill.

The EV startup reaffirmed its annual production forecast of 25,000 units as it continues to battle supply chain disruptions and high material costs. The Irvine, Calif.-based company's shares rose about 4 percent to $21.42 in extended trading.

Rivian had halved its 2022 forecast in March as it struggled to secure the chips needed to make its R1T pickup truck, R1S SUV and electric delivery van for Amazon Inc.

It delivered 1,227 vehicles in the first quarter, up from 909 units in the previous quarter.

Rivian said it has received over 90,000 pre-orders for its R1S SUV and R1T pickup truck.

The $95 million in revenue for the quarter came in below Wall Street's forecast of $131 million.

E…

WASHINGTON — The Alliance for Automotive Innovation on Wednesday released an industry-created policy framework on reusing, repurposing and recycling the lithium ion batteries used in electric vehicles.

The alliance, which represents most major automakers in the U.S. as well as some suppliers and tech companies, said the plan will support and sustain a domestic circular economy for EV batteries, create manufacturing jobs, boost U.S. energy security and reduce reliance on critical mineral imports.

The policy framework comes as the industry races toward an all-EV future, with investments in electrification reaching $515 billion by the end of the decade, according to the alliance.

The shift to electrification means there will be a greater demand for EV batteries and a need for domestically sourced critical minerals to support the supply chain and bolster U.S. competitiveness.

"This transformation is well underway but requires a significant ramp up o…

MEXICO CITY - General Motors and a new independent union at the U.S. automaker's biggest Mexican plant have reached a deal for a new workers' contract that includes raises and benefits above inflation, the union said on Wednesday.

The negotiations at GM's plant in the central city of Silao in Guanajuato state marked a high-profile test case for a new trade deal's goal of reducing the vast wage gap between U.S. workers and their Mexican counterparts.

The agreement comes after talks began several weeks ago, and forestalls a May 31 deadline for workers to strike.

The Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra are built at the plant.

"The new collective contract improves labor conditions on all levels," the union, SINTTIA, said in a statement. "The agreed deal includes an economic package of salary increases and economic benefits that is above inflation."

SINTTIA did not provide further details about the above-inflation w…

After years of dealer desire, Volkswagen Group on Wednesday confirmed that it will launch a U.S.-based Scout subbrand for an all-new "rugged" electric pickup and SUV that will be on a new platform and unlike anything else in the German automaker's massive global portfolio.

VW Group will build a "separate, independent company" to resurrect the Scout name, which it acquired last year as part of its heavy-truck subsidiary's purchase of Navistar. The German automaker said it plans to show its first prototypes next year and start production in 2026, though details of where remain unclear.

"After Volkswagen's successful turnaround in the U.S., we are now taking the opportunity to further strengthen our position in one of the most significant growth markets for EVs," VW Group CEO Herbert Diess said in a statement. "Electrification provides a historic opportunity to enter the highly attractive pickup and R-SUV segment as a group, underscoring our ambition to become a …