Trade News

TOKYO — In the age of electric vehicles, the hydrogen fuel cell tends to look either hopelessly too far behind the times or too far ahead. As automakers prepare for a market of full battery-electrics, even fuel cell proponents seem to be dragging their feet on hydrogen-powered cars.

Last year, fuel cell pioneer Honda Motor Co. pulled the plug on its Clarity sedan, leaving the company without a fuel cell offering for the first time since 2008. Industrywide, fuel cell vehicle volume remains a dribble compared with the fire hose of EVs coming online.

But the technology is still taking shape.

Two Asian rivals, Toyota Motor Corp. and Hyundai Motor Group, now make the only two fuel cell passenger vehicles on the market.

Japan's biggest automaker has rolled out a second generation of its Mirai fuel cell car, and Hyundai sells its Nexo fuel cell-powered crossover. Hyundai is confident enough in the Nexo that it reentered the Japanese market with the mod…

TOKYO — Electric vehicles are finally finding traction as sales and investment plans rapidly expand. But automakers say EVs will really take off with the arrival of solid-state batteries.

The next-generation power packs promise safety, cost, weight and performance improvements over today's lithium ion batteries. And crucially, they could spur wider EV adoption in popular segments such as pickups, large SUVs and sporty cars, where weight and size are issues.

Japanese automakers are among the more bullish about the technology. Toyota, Nissan and Honda see solid state coming to market in the latter half of the 2020s. European players are also splurging on solid state. Volkswagen envisions having the technology on the road by 2025.

In Japan, where automakers took an early lead in battery technology with their push into gasoline-electric hybrids, companies have high expectations for the solid-state era.

Toyota Motor Corp. has working prototypes and s…

The growing demand for electric vehicles is upending the automotive supply chain at a time when it was already stressed by the coronavirus pandemic, rising material prices and semiconductor shortages.

The industry's push for new technologies and solutions is enormous, and R&D work is underway around the industry.

During 2019 and 2020, the world's top 20 automakers alone spent nearly $94 billion on R&D as EV product plans take hold, according to a report last year by the financial firm BDO.

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares has warned suppliers that they, too, must be prepared to absorb the cost of the technological transition.

"In this transformation of the industry, it's not only about the OEMs," Tavares said during a late February earnings call. "It's also about the supplier base."

The need is for innovations in motors, batteries, materials and production processes to get automakers up and running at mass-production scale in the new…

Electric vehicle drivers of the future might not need to plug in to charge their batteries — and they may not even need to stop.

Projects underway in Florida, Indiana, Michigan and Utah are testing a technology that would charge vehicles as they move along special road surfaces.

The basic idea is similar to those employed by wireless charging stations, or even wireless phone chargers, said Nadia Gkritza, a professor at the Lyles School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. Coils installed in roadways circulate a high-frequency current to generate a magnetic field. Receivers on the vehicle pick up that energy, allowing it to charge the battery or power the motor directly, she said.

Purdue has partnered with the Indiana Department of Transportation and the Aspire Initiative, an engineering research center funded by the National Science Foundation, to develop the technology. The program is also working with German startup Magme…

A new recycling industry, with the technology to break down end-of-life lithium ion batteries and prepare the rare metals they contain for reuse, is taking shape to support a sustainable North American electric vehicle supply chain.

Recycling is not just an environmental move — it is a cost issue, said Tim Johnston, co-founder and chairman of Toronto-based Li-Cycle Holdings Corp.

"Once the materials are pulled out of the ground and refined, it's much more efficient to recycle them than it is to mine more materials."

The emerging business sector may never fully eliminate the need to extract new metals, but it will bring the industry closer to helping EVs live up to their promise of running clean.

"The ultimate end point is that we should be able to get to about 90 percent of those raw materials from a recycled source," Johnston added. But it will take time — and the technology of recycling has not yet been put to the test on the …

The last time U.S. gas prices surged above $4 per gallon, in 2008, some pundits wrote the obituary for vehicles with low fuel economy.

Turns out, the death announcement was premature.

In recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, consumers displayed a strong desire for even bigger vehicles, resulting in steadily increasing SUV, crossover and pickup sales to dominate the U.S. market.

So will the 2022 surge in gas prices, spurred by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, also turn out to be a nonevent for the transition to a low-emission vehicle future?

If it's a short-term blip, then yes. But if there is a prolonged period of elevated gas prices, then there's good reason to believe it will hasten the demise of the internal combustion engine and accelerate the move to electric vehicles.

The key difference from 2008 is that electric and hybrid cars now represent very real alternatives for consumers. When the Great Recession struck, it did result in st…

Thinking about trading in your gas guzzler in China for something battery powered and greener?

Those who hesitated to make the leap earlier have paid for it, with one manufacturer after another raising prices. Indecision could be even more costly going forward.

A slew of automakers are demanding more money to cover the higher cost of raw materials. Tesla, BYD, Xpeng and Li Auto are just some that have raised prices in March.

Tesla’s Model Y Performance now costs 417,900 yuan ($65,600) after two price hikes in less than a week totaling 30,000 yuan. Some of Xpeng’s cars are as much as 20,000 yuan more expensive now. And a BYD model will set you back another 6,000 yuan, after a 7,000-yuan increase in January.

Among the biggest holdouts is Nio, which said last week it won’t be raising prices in the short term.

Let’s not forget China has been offering subsidies since 2009 as a carrot for those willing to become early adopters. It’s certainly wo…

WASHINGTON -- Major U.S. and foreign automakers on Wednesday backed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's new tougher vehicle emissions regulations in a court challenge brought by some states and ethanol groups.

Texas and 15 other states have challenged the EPA's vehicle emissions rules that reverse a rollback of tailpipe rules issued under former President Donald Trump.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, representing nearly all major automakers, said in a court filing the EPA rule "will challenge the industry" but provides automakers with "critically important flexibilities."

Automakers, the group added, want to ensure "critical regulatory provisions supporting electric vehicle technology are maintained."

The states are joined by some corn and soybean growers associations, the American Fuel And Petrochemical Manufacturers and others. Corn growers, a Valero Energy subsidiary and other ethanol producers said the new EPA rules revising emi…

President Joe Biden is poised to invoke as soon as this week Cold War powers to encourage domestic production of critical minerals for electric-vehicle and other types of batteries, according to people familiar with the matter.

The White House is discussing adding battery materials to the list of items covered by the 1950 Defense Production Act -- the same authority wielded by Harry Truman to make steel for the Korean War and Donald Trump to spur mask production to tackle the coronavirus pandemic -- the people said. They asked not to be identified because the details are not yet public.

Shares of MP Materials Corp., the sole U.S. company that produces rare earth metals needed for electric vehicles, and Lithium Americas Corp., which runs a project in Nevada, surged on news of the administration's plans. Piedmont Lithium Inc., which runs a project in North Carolina, erased losses, rising as much as 6 percent

Adding minerals like lithium, nickel, graphit…

It's early in the platform's life, but Sonic Automotive Inc.'s online EchoPark e-commerce tool has so far proved successful at selling finance and insurance products to its initial users.

Sonic launched the EchoPark digital retail option in North Carolina and recently expanded it to South Carolina, Chief Digital Officer Steve Wittman told an earnings call last month.

"Of those cars sold end-to-end online, financing penetration is 100 percent and extended warranty penetration is 50 percent," Wittman said Feb. 16.

Wittman said this vehicle service contract penetration was similar to physical locations and consumers "love the value reframing we do" on the site. He described the latter as comparing the costs of the contract and repairs.

The F&I penetration had surpassed the company's expectations, Wittman said.

"It sure is a great relief," Sonic President Jeff Dyke said. He called it "fantastic news" to see online warranty and financing p…