Trade News

NEW YORK — General Motors and Ford Motor Co. have laid down the gauntlet in the electric pickup space on range and performance.

Stellantis' Ram brand, still two years away from releasing its own battery-powered pickup, can't beat them on timing, so it's working on setting a new benchmark instead.

Ram will be watching closely as Ford starts selling the F-150 Lightning this month, and its designers and engineers are using the lag to learn what consumers really want from an electric pickup.

The brand, using insights gleaned from its Ram Revolution insider program and a series of town hall conversations called the Ram Real Talk Tour, hopes to swoop in with a superior offering after its rivals cultivate a market that barely exists today. It plans to show an electric pickup concept for the first time this year.

Ram CEO Mike Koval said the brand will pair what it learns from pickup owners with the knowledge it already has about the capabilities of comp…

There is no place inside an electric vehicle for the transmission parts Production Saw & Machine Co. has produced the past 50 years.

In the automotive transition to EVs, there is no long-term future for the supplier in Clarklake, Mich., said its owner and president Jeff Vancalbergh.

Like hundreds of other small machine shops and suppliers facing the same uncertain fate in North America, Vancalbergh has two main options: He can keep the engine business running until it sputters out, overtaken by EVs, which many experts say is a foregone conclusion. Or he can totally rebuild the engine business around electric motors or new industries, but that would be a costly undertaking with fierce competition and no promise of success.

"It's a family business," Vancalbergh said. "I'm second generation, and third generation is here in the building, looking to take over. Looking to take over what, I'm not sure … Not sure if there's gonna be anything to take over a…

AutoNation Inc. will reduce its board of directors' seats to eight after Steven Gerard died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer.

The board voted not to fill the vacancy, the company said in a proxy supplement that went to stockholders Friday.

"The board expresses its gratitude and appreciation for Mr. Gerard's service to the company and its stockholders, and sends its condolences to his family and friends," Executive Vice President Coleman Edmunds said in the supplement.

Gerard, 76, joined the board in 2019 and was a member of the audit and finance committees, his obituary said.

From October 2000 to March 2016, Gerard was CEO of CBIZ Inc. He stayed on after retiring and continued to serve as chairman of its board of directors.

SHANGHAI — China said on Friday that it will help hundreds of companies in key industries resume production in locked-down Shanghai, the commercial capital at the center of the country's latest COVID-19 outbreak, as businesses warn of the growing economic toll of restrictions.

The announcement comes as a growing number of business leaders and analysts warn that China's strict "zero-COVID" policy is triggering economic disruptions that are rippling through global supply chains for goods from electric vehicles to iPhones.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will work with 666 companies making semiconductors, automobiles, and the medical sector to get back to work, it said in a statement late on Friday.

Teams have been sent to Shanghai to ensure the resumption of work at these key industrial companies, the regulator added.

Electric-vehicle maker Xpeng and technology giant Huawei warned of looming industry-wide bottlenecks if supplier…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ Qualcomm to power tech platforms on all 14 Stellantis brands

Stellantis will use Qualcomm's Snapdragon Digital Chassis to power the automaker's upcoming Brain and SmartCockpit technology platforms, the two companies said.

The collaboration will include vehicles across all of Stellantis' 14 brands, starting with Maserati in 2024, Stellantis software chief Yves Bonnefont said. By 2026, the technologies will be integrated across the group's brands, he said.

"We are talking about millions of vehicles," Bonnefont added.

The STLA Brain platform is the main electric/electronic and software architecture for future Stellantis vehicles. It is integrated into the cloud to facilitate over-the-air updates. The SmartCockpit platform is built on top of the Brain, and uses AI-based applications to deliver infotainment features and services, including in-vehicle payments and voice commands. It is being designed and engineered together wi…

TOKYO — Honda's reliance on General Motors in the global electric vehicle race may be as much about buying extra time as it is about forging true alliances.

CEO Toshihiro Mibe amped up Honda Motor Co.'s electrified ambitions this week, pledging to achieve production capacity of 2 million EVs in 2030 — or about 40 percent of its global total at that time.

It appears that Honda, a stubbornly independent automaker with a tradition of in-house engineering solutions, is now leaning surprisingly hard on GM to achieve its EV goals, especially in the critical U.S. market, Honda's biggest and most profitable. Honda will turn to GM for two all-electric large crossovers from 2024 and then a range of affordable EVs from 2027. And crucially, it will tap GM for its supply of batteries.

All this, from the company that pioneered the groundbreaking, efficient CVCC engine and birthed such legends as the Civic, Accord and NSX sports car on a reputation of innovative engi…

Ally Financial worked with 2,702 more dealerships and financed $1.4 billion more in loans and leases during the first quarter, though its volume of applications fell 3.6 percent compared with a year earlier.

CFO Jennifer LaClair said on an earnings call Thursday that Ally's $11.6 billion in auto loan and lease originations represented the "highest first quarter in 11 years." She said the 14 percent increase from a year earlier showed "the agility and scale of our auto business."

Ally reported 3.17 billion loan and lease applications and worked with 21,688 dealerships on consumer loans or other business, such as floorplan, in the first quarter.

Ally said Thursday its auto portfolio yield dropped 0.15 point during the first quarter to 6.75 percent, and the bank projected its return on the first quarter's new auto loans and leases would drop to 7.1 percent, down 0.14 point from a year earlier.

"With low inventory and robust used-car pricing, consumer…

EV startup Rivian Automotive has named its first chief sustainability officer, Anisa Kamadoli Costa, who will oversee the automaker's climate goals, including carbon neutrality in its own operations by 2028.

Costa most recently held the position of chief sustainability officer at Tiffany & Co. and served as president of the Tiffany & Co. Foundation, Rivian said in a statement Thursday.

Costa's appointment is effective Monday, April 18, and she will report directly to Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe. She will also lead Rivian's Forever foundation.

"We could not be more thrilled to welcome Anisa to our leadership team," Scaringe said in a statement. "The sustainability strategies we set today will have lasting influence on our company and our world, and Anisa's mindset positions her extremely well to lead and drive these critical activities."

As part of her sustainability portfolio, Costa will oversee accounting of carbon emissions and other sustaina…

WASHINGTON — California is calling for zero-emission vehicles, including plug-in hybrids, to make up nearly 70 percent of new-vehicle sales by 2030, as part of an aggressive timeline set by the state to phase out the sale of new gasoline-powered cars and light trucks and achieve 100 percent ZEV sales by the 2035 model year.

The ambitious proposal released Wednesday by the California Air Resources Board comes after the EPA in March reissued a waiver under the Clean Air Act allowing California to set its own auto tailpipe rules and ZEV mandates, subsequently reversing a Trump-era rule that sought to block states from doing so.

The plan would require ZEVs and plug-in hybrids to make up 35 percent of new-vehicle sales by the 2026 model year, 68 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2035. ZEVs made up 12.4 percent of California's new-vehicle market share in 2021, according to CARB.

The proposed regulations are estimated to cost automakers $30.2 billion between 2…

Interest rate risk

Cox Automotive in March argued that certain automakers' customers could be more exposed to rising interest rates on auto loans because of their brands' higher new-vehicle prices or higher average interest rates - or both. Cox assessed the risk based on 2021 data and a threshold it set of a $50,000 vehicle and a 4.5% interest rate.

A Cox Automotive analysis of new-vehicle sale prices and average interest rates suggests certain General Motors and Stellantis brands have the greatest exposure to higher rates.

Cox's assessment March 28 came about two weeks after the Federal Reserve raised the federal funds' target rate to 0.25 to 0.5 percent, planned to sell debt holding and anticipated that "ongoing increases in the target range will be appropriate." The Fed's next meeting will be May 3 and 4.

Its actions trickle down to auto loan interest rates. Cox Senior Economist Charlie Chesbrough said monetary policy was ch…

NEW YORK — Ram plans to unveil a concept of its electric 1500 pickup this year.

The Stellantis truck brand has shown a few images of what its first battery-electric pickup could look like, but it's preparing to take the next step with a live concept ahead of the truck's slated 2024 release, said Ram CEO Mike Koval.

Koval said the company is consulting the public about the electric pickup's design through its Ram Real Talk Tour, a series of conversations with consumers at various events. The brand says these interactions will help it better understand what the next generation of Ram pickups and vans "must do to meet their needs."

Koval revealed last summer that a battery-electric 1500 was in the works, adding another contestant to the burgeoning electric pickup space.

"A lot of our Ram Real Talk feedback is influencing that design," Koval told Automotive News during the auto show here. "That design will then influence the product that we bring to m…