Trade News

Toyota Motor Corp. is inching closer to using up a key U.S. tax credit for hybrid and electric vehicles, a milestone the automaker argues will raise its costs and hinder adoption of climate-friendly cars.

The law allows automakers to offer a $7,500 tax credit to buyers of fully or partly electric cars, but only up to 200,000 per company. Demand for Toyota's plug-in hybrid vehicles has steadily grown, especially as gasoline prices have surged past $4 a gallon, pushing up its cumulative sales of eligible vehicles to 183,000 as of the end of 2021, according to an analysis by BloombergNEF. The company reported sales of another 8,421 plug-in hybrid and electric cars in the first quarter.

The Japanese manufacturer has been at the center of a debate in Washington over whether extra tax credits should be extended to unionized carmakers, and is poised to become the third manufacturer to hit the limit, joining General Motors and Tesla. Toyota executives have said they ar…

BERLIN - Volkswagen Group has set up a partnership with U.S. chip maker Qualcomm to develop automated driving technology, Handelsblatt reported.

The automaker will use Qualcomm's system-on-a-chip, developed specifically for automomous vehicles, across all its brands worldwide starting in 2026, the newspaper said citing company sources.

Sources say the deal will cost VW about $1 billion, with the contract set to run until 2031.

VW Group CEO Herbert Diess traveled to Qualcomm's headquarters in San Diego in mid-April, where the companies agreed to the conditions of the deal, Handelsblatt said.

BMW, General Motors and Stellantis are among other automakers teaming up with Qualcomm for advanced software functions.

VW's choice of Qualcomm as a partner for self-driving has surprised industry watchers. They expected the automaker to join with Mobileye, its long-time tech partner, Handelsblatt said.

Mercedes-Benz is working with Nvidia to jo…

As electric vehicles grow more common, some of us in the driving community will miss the rumble of a finely tuned engine. Among this nostalgic group, some will be EV developers.

That is because the familiar sounds of internal combustion engines and their mechanical subsystems have long masked other, more subtle noises that become easily heard while riding under electric propulsion. Among these are the sound of air rushing past the vehicle exterior, tires rolling on the pavement below and the whir of the HVAC system. Given that EVs have neither engine nor exhaust, these sounds are becoming increasingly irritating for those working to deliver a pleasant cabin noise environment. Their customers have even higher expectations of quietness when operating an EV.

The good news for designers and drivers is that tools exist to mitigate these auditory irritants. Better yet, development teams at automakers are increasingly familiar with them. During the…

ZF Friedrichshafen has tempered expectations for 2022, saying growth will be "moderate" because of rising inflation, supply chain bottlenecks tied to the war in Ukraine and the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the cautious outlook, ZF CEO Wolf-Henning Scheider, 59, is confident the world's third-largest auto supplier will outperform the overall market based on the early numbers the company sees from Europe, North America and China. He is also bullish about ZF's ability to become a key supplier to full-electric cars. He explained why in an interview with Automotive News Europe Managing Editor Douglas A. Bolduc. Here are edited excerpts.

Q: What is ZF's outlook when it comes to its transition to electric vehicles?

A: ZF, without question, believes the world will be fully electric, and for passenger cars it will be battery-electric. When will this happen? We expect that by 2028 there will be a 50-50 share between the number of combustion-engine only vehicles…

Supply chain bottlenecks continue to constrain inventories at the nation's public dealership groups, all of which reported having fewer than 30 days' worth of new vehicles at the end of March.

And those dealership groups' leaders say they don't anticipate a surge of vehicles reaching their lots anytime soon.

"Our focus is to sell more aggressively up the pipeline, which is a new skill for the industry in the U.S., and make sure we're turning the inventory as fast as possible when it lands," AutoNation Inc. CEO Mike Manley said last month.

Manley told analysts on the company's first-quarter earnings call that he doesn't expect new-vehicle inventory levels to change much until the second half of the year.

Vehicle supplies on dealership lots across the U.S. remain sparse as shortages of critical semiconductors have led automakers to curtail vehicle production. Yet consumer demand remains strong.

The supply-de…

Lithia Motors Inc., which became the nation's second-largest new-vehicle retailer in 2021 because of its aggressive acquisition strategy, appears well on its way to overtaking AutoNation Inc. for the No. 1 spot this year.

AutoNation reported selling 56,442 new vehicles in the U.S. during the first quarter, while Lithia reported new-vehicle sales of 64,942 for the period, including a small but undisclosed number sold in Canada.

"We really characterize our performance as resilient," Tom Dobry, Lithia's vice president of marketing, told Automotive News last month. "Our team did a good job of emphasizing that our decentralized structure that allows our stores to be nimble and agile in their local markets, to buy more used vehicles, or lower prices to turn inventory faster, were keys to our performance."

Dobry didn't respond to a request to comment on Lithia's sales outpacing AutoNation.

Publicly traded dealership groups continue to feel the impact o…

Asbury Automotive Group Inc., once the smallest and perhaps quietest of the U.S. public dealership groups, is now a bona fide giant after a stunning 20 months of deal-making. And even as it digests big acquisitions like Larry H. Miller Dealerships, Asbury is still gunning for the kind of growth that could vault it past rivals and make it one of the two biggest new-vehicle retailers in the country.

Asbury last week raised its 2025 revenue goal by 60 percent to $32 billion, a number more than three times Asbury's 2021 revenue of $9.84 billion. CEO David Hult said $6.2 billion of the additional revenue would come from buying more dealerships.

And buying dealerships is something Hult has gotten a lot of experience with since closing on the purchase of prized Texas group Park Place Dealerships in August 2020. Acquisitions made in 2021, led by the whopping Larry H. Miller deal, almost doubled Asbury's pro forma annual revenue, which now stands at $15 billion, Hult s…

The senior director of new ventures at The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. explains the strategy behind her fund’s portfolio, innovating at a 123-year-old company and where the rubber meets the road ahead.

How do I subscribe?

Apple Podcasts: “Shift: A podcast about mobility” is available on the iTunes Store and through the ‘Podcast’ app pre-installed on all iOS devices. Click here to subscribe.

Spotify: "Shift: A podcast about mobility" can be streamed through Spotify on your desktop, tablet or mobile device. Click here to subscribe.

Google Play: "Shift: A podcast about mobility" is available on Android devices through the Google Play store. Click here to subscribe.

Much is made of the vehicle parts that will be lost in the transition to electric vehicles. But even many components that remain could be in for big changes.

Take wheels, for example. Unless the flying cars of science fiction ever become reality, cars and trucks will continue to move on wheels, regardless of power source. But as automakers seek to cut weight and increase EV range, suppliers of wheels and tires are under pressure to find ways to make those parts lighter.

Relative newcomers are looking to shake things up. Carbon Revolution, a 15-year-old Australian wheel-maker, is one of them.

The company produces wheels made of carbon fiber. Thus far, they have been seen mostly on high-end performance vehicles such as the Ford GT, Ferrari F8 Spider and Chevrolet Corvette Z06.

CEO Jake Dingle said the company has brought manufacturing costs down to the point where building carbon-fiber wheels on a mass scale is now possible. Carbon Revolution sees…