Trade News

General Motors will launch electrified versions of the Chevrolet Corvette sports car starting next year, GM President Mark Reuss said Monday.

Reuss told CNBC that GM will launch an "electrified" version of the Corvette in 2023, followed by a fully electric version later.

The all-electric Corvette will be powered by GM's proprietary Ultium battery platform.

In September 2020, GM reassigned engineers who worked on the midengine Corvette to an EV team in an effort to give future EVs a high-performance flair. 

GM aspires to have an all-electric lineup by 2035.

So far, the Chevy Bolt, GMC Hummer pickup and Cadillac Lyriq crossover EVs are on the market. GM has also announced plans for an electric GMC Hummer SUV and Sierra pickup, along with an electric Chevy Silverado, Equinox and Blazer. Cadillac's Celestiq flagship EV is expected to go on sale next year.

"We are ramping up the launches right now," Reuss said. "Our Ultium platform…

SHANGHAI -- Volkswagen Group's Shanghai factory has started gradually resuming production, the automaker said.

The company’s factories in the northeastern Chinese city of Changchun, which it runs in a joint venture with China's FAW Group, continues to ramp up production volumes, it added.

VW halted work at its factory in Shanghai, which is a joint venture with SAIC Motor, as the city introduced a lockdown aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19.

DETROIT -- General Motors has launched a feature within its Ultium battery platform that repurposes energy to enable longer range, faster charging speed and sportier driving.

The Ultium energy recovery feature is standard on all electric vehicles powered by the automaker's proprietary Ultium battery platform, GM said in a statement Monday. It has already helped enable the GMC Hummer pickup's Watts to Freedom mode, which accelerates the pickup from 0 to 60 mph in three seconds by pre-cooling the propulsion system.

"Having a ground-up EV architecture gives us the freedom to build in standard features like Ultium's energy recovery capabilities," Doug Parks, GM executive vice president of global product development, purchasing and supply chain, said in the statement. "This helps us squeeze more efficiency, performance and overall customer benefit out of our EVs."

The system is based around an automotive-grade heat pump that repurposes wasted energy, wh…

Executive Editor Jamie Butters gives you the top headlines and talks about Tesla CEO Elon Musk's goal of building a fully automated vehicle by 2024 with Automotive News reporter Laurence Iliff.

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NEW YORK -- Elon Musk clinched a deal to buy Twitter Inc. for $44 billion cash on Monday in a transaction that will shift control of the social media platform populated by millions of users and global leaders to the world's richest person.

It is a seminal moment for the 16-year-old company that emerged as one of the world's most influential public squares and now faces a string of challenges.

Discussions over the deal, which last week appeared uncertain, accelerated over the weekend after the Tesla Inc. CEO wooed Twitter shareholders with financing details of his offer.

Under pressure, Twitter started negotiating with Musk to buy the company at the proposed $54.20 per share price. Read full story

"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," Musk said in a statement.

Musk, one of Twitter’s most prolific users with more than 83 mill…

With the microchip shortage and other supply chain hiccups making new vehicles hard to come by in 2021, auto retailers boosted their focus on selling used cars and trucks as they faced heightened consumer demand.

Big publicly owned retailers with a hefty online presence expanded their used-vehicle sales volumes in 2021, and traditional dealership groups put their backs into reeling in more used cars to bolster their inventories. The resulting sales became a lifeline for their businesses as they dealt with fewer new vehicles to offer customers.

Those efforts were reflected in Automotive News’ annual list of the top 100 retailers ranked by used-vehicle sales. The vast majority of companies on the list reported gains in the number of used vehicles they retailed in 2021.

CarMax Inc. kept its spot as the No. 1 used-vehicle retailer in the nation, with 924,338 sales in its fiscal 2022, which ended Feb. 28. That reporting period most closely corresponds to th…

TOYOTA CITY, Japan — Lexus, which sold fewer than 6,000 electric vehicles worldwide last year, says it will be ready to make 1 million EVs annually by 2030, a mere eight years from now.

But achieving sustainable operations at such volume remains a tricky business, executives say.

Entering the EV era will require Toyota Motor Corp.'s premium brand to not only engineer battery-electric vehicles but reengineer the production process that builds them, says Takashi Watanabe, chief engineer of Lexus Electrified, the division charged with making the marque gasoline-free.

That will mean more flexible manufacturing — including more EV- dedicated lines and even more mixed production with the mass-market Toyota brand. The shift will also mean relying on a new automotive operating system across the Toyota Group that will speed product development.

Most importantly, it will require greater focus on demand trends with nimble reflex…

Volvo Cars' venture capital arm has invested in battery technology startup StoreDot, betting the company's fast charging tech could be a game-changer as the automaker rolls out new electric vehicles.

"We believe StoreDot has very interesting battery technology," said Alexander Petrofski, head of the Volvo Cars Tech Fund. "They specialize in anode material, improving charging times quite significantly. Given that electrification is a major priority for Volvo Cars, this is technology that is of significant interest to us."

Volvo did not disclose how much it invested in StoreDot, which has received funding from companies including Daimler, VinFast and BP in previous rounds. Petrofski said Volvo's investments usually account for less than 10 percent of a company's value.

"We don't want to control the company because if we wanted to control it, we could buy it," he said. "But we don't want to. We want it to prosper standing on its own legs."

StoreDot,…

Lincoln Motor Co. may have stumbled onto its next slogan.

Oscar-winning actor and brand spokesman Matthew McConaughey was on hand for the reveal of the Lincoln Star concept in Los Angeles last week, conducting an unscripted question-and-answer session with Lincoln President Joy Falotico.

Things got a bit philosophical when she asked McConaughey what makes a great journey.

"What makes a great journey? Never arriving," he said. "Sounds like an ad campaign: 'Never arrive but always show up.' Something like that."

McConaughey said he's excited for Lincoln to transition to electric vehicles and was impressed with the Star concept.

"It has a wonderful identity," he said. "It's not a new page; it's a new chapter."

LOS ANGELES — Lincoln Motor Co. spent the better part of the past decade reinventing itself around the idea of a sanctuarylike driving experience it calls "quiet flight."

But with electric vehicles popularizing the idea of quiet cabins even on mass-market models, Ford's luxury arm is looking to differentiate itself even further. The Lincoln Star concept, unveiled here last week, signals the brand plans to do so by engaging nearly all of the driver's senses.

Key to the concept's interior are what the brand calls "rejuvenation moods" that include audio, ambient lighting, video animations and even scents pumped through the cabin and tailored around specific themes. Executives hope those moods, along with interior design flourishes such as the curved, full-width display and new exterior lighting cues, will help Lincoln's first wave of EVs stand apart and appeal to a different type of buyer looking to go electric.

"We get the opportunity to start over again,…

Mazda is trumpeting its new CX-50 compact crossover as an alternative to its popular CX-5, but some observers predict the automaker will do what it has done in the past — eventually kill the older product in favor of the newer one.

"CX-5 should be around for a couple years, and then it's gone," said Ed Kim, president of AutoPacific.

"Mazda is spinning it as having two models in the same segment for different buyers. But in reality, it's just like what happened when they introduced the CX-30," Kim said. "CX-3 stuck around a couple of years and then was gone."

The CX-30 launched for the 2020 model year and offered buyers a slightly larger footprint than the CX-3 subcompact crossover. One year later, Mazda announced that 2021 would be the CX-3's final model year.

Another analyst predicts the same scenario.

"The CX-5 will only stick around for another one to three years after CX-50 sales pick up," said Ivan Drury, senior manager of insights a…