Trade News

Cruise LLC, the autonomous vehicle company that is majority-owned by General Motors, on Monday named founder Kyle Vogt the full-time chief executive officer.

Vogt had been interim CEO since Dan Ammann left Cruise in December following disagreements with GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra. At the time, GM said it would look for a permanent leader for Cruise.

Vogt confirmed the appointment on his Linkedin.com page.

Vogt said he has "no doubt" Cruise will be "a difficult challenge given our very ambitious plans, but I couldn't imagine doing anything more important or more fun."

He also said that putting people in driverless cars is a "lifelong dream for me. I will never give up."

Putting Vogt atop Cruise could be a way to give the company's tech employees a sense that its mission to develop self-driving vehicles will remain intact despite more involvement from GM. Vogt founded the company before GM bought it in 2016 and has been a guiding force for i…

Dennis & Co. Auto Group, with the purchase of a Chevrolet-Cadillac store in New York in February, has added six dealerships to its portfolio since mid-2021.

Dennis & Co. of West Nyack, N.Y., on Feb. 8 bought Barton Chevrolet-Cadillac in Newburgh, N.Y., from Rob Barton. The dealership — which just prior to the sale had settled a lawsuit with a former employee — was renamed Unity Chevrolet-Cadillac of Newburgh.

"This location and the addition of Chevrolet and Cadillac to our group is a perfect combination," Brian Dennis, president of Dennis & Co. and chairman of the New York State Auto Dealers Association, said in a statement.

The Chevrolet-Cadillac dealership transaction follows several acquisitions in 2021 for the group Dennis owns.

On Dec. 17, Dennis & Co. bought Alfa Romeo of Manhattan-Maserati of Manhattan and Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram-Fiat of Manhattan in New York from Jonathan Sobel. Those dealership names remain the same, Denni…

BERLIN -- The environmental ministry in the German state of Brandenburg is in the final phase of the approval process for Tesla Inc.'s planned factory, a spokesperson said on Monday.

Tesla is awaiting approval for a licence to begin production at its EV factory and adjacent battery plant in Gruenheide, outside of Berlin.

Numerous public consultations focusing primarily on the environmental impact of project delayed the process, with Musk expressing irritation on multiple occasions at the complexity of German bureaucracy.

Stellantis paid the estate of former Fiat Chrysler boss Sergio Marchionne more last year than Carlos Tavares, the automaker's current CEO.

The Jeep, Ram and Peugeot maker paid Marchionne's estate 26 million euros ($29.1 million), compared with the 19.2 million-euro compensation for Tavares, Stellantis said in its annual report.

The sum set aside for the estate of Marchionne, who died suddenly in 2018, included obligations from his employment contract and "legacy board payments" from when he was head of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, according to the document released Feb. 25.

The annual report is the company’s first since it was formed from a merger between FCA and PSA Group more than a year ago.

Tavares spearheaded the combination and is under pressure to make good on pledges for 5 billion euros in synergies and an accelerated shift to electric vehicles.

Stellantis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tavares is schedul…

A snapshot of the industry's direction, in numbers

We tell you some interesting numbers in this week's issue of Automotive News. Their common denominator: the electrification of the auto industry.

The calculator is a bit too hazy to compute exactly what they add up to, but mull these over as you read the issue.

50,000: The number of new Toyota bZ4X electric crossovers that Toyota expects to sell worldwide in the model's second year on the market, we report this week. That will be 10,000 fewer than in its first year.

0: The number of dollars it will cost U.S. buyers of the Toyota bZ4X to charge the car on the EVgo fast-charging network for their first year of ownership.

$15.2 billion: The gasp-causing net income just reported for Stellantis' first full year as a company. But rather than reflecting on how it might spend those riches, CEO Carlos Tavares warned suppliers that Stellantis will not shoulder the full cost of making EVs more affo…

The director of the National Transportation Safety Board’s Highway Safety Office explains how V2X communications could have prevented a multi-vehicle crash in Pennsylvania, and how connected-car tech could someday save lives on U.S. roads.

How do I subscribe?

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Buzz Aldrin is one of only 12 humans to have walked on the moon.

These days, getting a vehicle built and delivered in a timely fashion is nearly as impressive a feat.

Aldrin, the last surviving member of the Apollo 11 crew, ordered a 2022 Lincoln Nautilus crossover in October from Galpin Lincoln in California. He wanted it delivered in time for his 92nd birthday on Jan. 30, but his order sat unproduced for months amid the semiconductor shortage.

Ford Motor Co.'s Oakville Assembly, home to the Nautilus and Ford Edge, has lost more than 120 days of production since the chip crisis began last year, according to AutoForecast Solutions.

That's more downtime than any other Ford facility, AFS says.

But when you're one of the world's most famous astronauts, you tend to have connections.

Lincoln President Joy Falotico was alerted to Aldrin's plight through a text from former Ford CEO Jim Hackett, who had been contacted by Aldrin's team.

…

An Israeli nanotechnology startup wants to supersize — and smarten — the conventional head-up display.

Spectralics, which has drawn interest and investment from Volvo Cars, has developed a hardware development kit for imaging systems, with a novel thin optical film technology as one of its core components. When integrated into a vehicles' windshield, the film serves as a mixed-reality display on which images and virtual objects can be overlaid.

Current head-up displays project a "fairly small" field of view, said Michael Schön, technology lead at Volvo Cars R&D Open Innovations Arena.

"Expanding the field of view can improve the user experience," Schön told Automotive News. "It opens up new possibilities to create a more immersive experience."

Spectralics' solution combines optical materials with hardware and software to create a mixed-reality environment that delivers safety information, navigation directions, alerts and notifications to th…

Kiwibot's semiautonomous sidewalk- delivery robots are set to roll around a lot more college campuses delivering food to students this year.

The Miami-based company this month announced new business from Sodexo North America that, combined with existing Sodexo business, will total $20 million this year. Today, Kiwibot has 200 robots delivering Sodexo food on 10 U.S. college campuses. The new contract will increase that to a total of 1,200 Kiwibots delivering across 50 U.S. college campuses by year end.

"In the contracts we're closing, each robot generates, on average, $1,000 per month," Kiwibot founder and CEO Felipe Chavez Cortes told Automotive News.

Kiwibot recently raised about $7.5 million in pre-series A funding from a group of investors, one of which is Sodexo. Among the other investors are venture capital firms Headline, House of Lithium and Gaingels.

Alejandro Otalora, Kiwibot's director of design, says the money will help build more rob…

Hoping to attract more drivers, Uber Technologies Inc. is testing a new earnings algorithm in 24 U.S. cities, allowing drivers to see pay and destinations before accepting a trip. The algorithm also raises the incentives for drivers to take short rides.

The changes, now in pilot programs, mark the most wide-ranging updates to Uber's driver pay algorithm in years and come at a time when the company is still trying to win back drivers who left when the pandemic began. Passenger fares won't change.

Drivers have long demanded the ability to see the fare and destination before accepting a trip, but Uber has resisted, saying it could open the door to drivers cherry-picking trips or discriminating against riders in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Uber already has a similar program in California, launched in the wake of a 2020 state battle over gig worker rights to prove its drivers are independent contractors.

Uber says the U.S. …

DETROIT -- The recent multibillion-dollar takeovers of Meritor Inc. and Tenneco Inc. came about at the same time for different reasons, but both are likely to have a big impact in metro Detroit where the automotive suppliers have a major presence and long history.

Meritor's pending sale to Cummins Inc. is a $3.7 billion bet on the electrification of heavy-duty trucks and the role of the Troy-based company's e-axle in that theoretical future.

New York City-based Apollo Global Management Inc.'s purchase of Tenneco Inc., based in Lake Forest, Ill., with thousands of employees in Michigan, is the result of the struggling supplier's need for a capital infusion and the private equity firm's bid to cash in on a turnaround.

In both cases, some trimming and consolidation is the likely aftermath, followed by the chance for growth and investment depending on the priorities of new leadership and how successfully operations are integrated, according to company execu…

A fatal Pennsylvania bus crash has brought renewed calls for salvaging a safety technology that once held the promise of saving thousands of lives on U.S. roads.

On the night of Jan. 5, 2020, five people were killed when a speeding bus overturned on a wet highway near Mount Pleasant, Pa. Three trucks and a passenger vehicle subsequently collided with the bus or each other in the immediate aftermath.

Had the vehicles been equipped with connected technology that enabled them to exchange messages about deteriorating road conditions or the imminent hazard presented by the overturned bus, the crashes may have been avoided or their severity diminished.

That's one conclusion from a National Transportation Safety Board report issued this month. In recommendations stemming from the crash, the board pushed federal regulators to develop performance standards for connected-vehicle technology and mandate its inclusion in new vehicles.

That, of course, is noth…