Trade News

CANTON, Miss. — Nissan's plan to manufacture two new electric vehicles in the U.S. starting mid-decade could jolt the automaker's prospects in an emerging market.

It also promises to transform the company's production footprint in the country, starting with its underutilized 4.7 million-square-foot factory in Canton, Miss., where the Japanese automaker this week announced it would begin production of the sedan-style EVs in 2025.

The truck and sedan factory, which brought automotive production to the state when it opened nearly two decades ago, will be reincarnated as a "center for EV manufacturing and technology" as Nissan pivots toward a zero- emission future, the company said.

The planning for the $500 million project began in 2020, Nissan Motor Co. COO Ashwani Gupta told Automotive News on the sidelines of an event here.

"To prepare a plant, it takes time," Gupta said. "On one side, you're running the production, …

WASHINGTON -- General Motors and its self-driving technology unit Cruise, in a long expected move, formally petitioned U.S. regulators for permission to build and deploy a self-driving vehicle that does not need human controls.

Cruise said in a blog post on Friday it sought permission to deploy the Cruise Origin that does not need features like a steering wheel to operate safely. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has authority to grant petitions to allow a limited number of vehicles to temporarily operate on U.S. roads that do not have required human controls.

Cruise and GM first disclosed in October 2020 they planned to seek approval from NHTSA within months to deploy the Cruise Origin.

In 2018, GM petitioned NHTSA to allow a car built on a Chevrolet Bolt without steering wheels or brake pedals on U.S. roads. In late 2020, GM withdrew the petition.

NHTSA, which spent 15 months reviewing the first GM petition before seeking public…

DETROIT — Tyler Schanzmeyer's 2021 Bronco Badlands was built more than two months ago. But instead of sitting in his Boonville, Mo., driveway, it's languishing amid a sea of snow-caked SUVs in a holding lot near the Michigan Assembly Plant.

Communication from Ford Motor Co. has been "nonexistent," he said, though his dealer blamed the holdup on the global semiconductor shortage, which the automaker has confirmed. His delivery date has been pushed back five times and now is tentatively scheduled for April.

"I am concerned about my vehicle sitting out in the elements," Schanzmeyer told Automotive News. "Its value is depreciating even before I take delivery."

The lot holding Schanzmeyer's Bronco — mockingly referred to in online forums as Dirt Mountain (and lately, Ice Mountain) for a large pile of upturned earth on the site — has become a sort of measuring stick for Ford's production woes.

Dirt Mountain was packed with Broncos last summer when roof…

Audi's flagship sedan is getting a nip and tuck out front and in the back as part of a 2022 freshening.

The A8, redesigned for the 2019 model year, now has a wider grille while the rear features new taillamps. The S8 performance sedan also has a wider grille and four flow-optimized tailpipes.

The S Line exterior package now comes standard on the A8. An optional Black Optic Plus package is available for both the A8 and S8. It includes black mirrors, black badges and black 21-inch wheels.

The interiors of both models remain largely unchanged.

The A8 packs a 335-hp, 3.0-liter V-6 engine, while the S8 is powered by a 563-hp, 4.0-liter V-8.

The plug-in hybrid has been dropped for 2022.

Pricing starts at $87,595 for the A8 and $117,995 for the S8, including shipping. They go on sale in the spring.

U.S. sales of the A8 and S8 dropped 13 percent to a combined 2,069 in 2021.

Self-driving technology company Aurora Innovation Inc. affirmed it remains on pace to launch a commercial trucking business by late next year and a robotaxi service by late 2024.

Advances in lidar sensors, expansion of business partnerships and the maturation of its autonomous-driving technology have made it possible to project the start of a commercial trucking service in Texas, according to Aurora CEO Chris Urmson.

He laid out the company's strategy for reaching automated service this week during Aurora's first earnings report since it became a publicly traded company in November.

A key part of Aurora's strategy involves building an autonomous driver versatile enough to be equipped on vehicles that range from minivans to Class 8 trucks. Urmson said such underlying "transferability" should be achieved in the first quarter of this year.

Another evolving feature is Aurora's ability to bring a vehicle to a safe stop on the side of the road should …

A huge auto transport ship that regularly delivers Porsches, Audis, Bentleys, Volkswagens from Europe to the U.S. is on fire and adrift in the Atlantic.

According to an internal Volkswagen Group email obtained by Bloomberg, 3,965 U.S.-bound vehicles are aboard. About 1,100 Porches and 189 new Bentleys, several U.S.-based spokespeople for group brands confirmed to Automotive News.

The ship is more than a thousand miles off the coast of Portugal, and its crew of 22 has been safely evacuated by other vessels, including the Portuguese navy.

The boat departed the German port of Emden on Feb. 10, and was scheduled to arrive in Davisville, R.I., on Feb. 23, according to a posting on Marinetraffic.com. More than 100 of the vehicles on board were headed for Port of Houston in Texas.

The 650-foot-long, 106-foot-wide Felicity Ace was built in 2005 and sails under a Panamanian flag, according to the site.

A spokesman for Volkswagen Group…

Visteon Corp. saw flat sales and stronger margins in the fourth quarter to cap an improved financial performance in 2021, but executives warned of a "peak headwind" on the horizon in the first quarter.

The automotive cockpit electronics supplier posted net sales of $786 million in the fourth quarter, roughly equal to the same point last year, while its net income increased 70 percent to $31 million, according to its earnings report filed Thursday.

For full-year 2021, the supplier's sales rose 7 percent to $2.77 billion, with net income of $116 million, compared with a $56 million loss in 2020, when COVID-19 choked the industry.

However, the pandemic's impact has dragged on with supply chain problems a global microchip shortage and commodity cost increases, all of which took a $40 million bite out of Visteon's business last year.

"Due to the ongoing negotiations with our customers and suppliers, we're not disclosing the rates of recoveries we are a…

ACV Auctions Inc. said Wednesday that its revenue surged 86 percent to a little more than $100 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 and that it gained dealer partners, but it posted a net loss.

The Buffalo, N.Y.-based digital wholesaling firm's CEO George Chamoun said the company achieved its goal of nationwide marketplace coverage. Despite the gains, ACV posted a fourth-quarter net loss of $26.3 million, compared with a loss of about $12.3 million in the year-earlier period. ACV's total operating expenses in the fourth quarter came to almost $125.9 million.

The company said it transacted 138,565 vehicles in the fourth quarter, up 35 percent from the year-earlier period, and 560,959 in the full year, up 43 percent from 2020.

Low new-vehicle inventory has stunted the number of trade-ins entering the wholesale market. That led to a "temporary contraction" in the market ACV serves, Chamoun said. But he expects the semiconductor shortage to improve in upcom…

Subaru climbed two spots to first place in Consumer Reports' annual ranking of the most well-performing, safe and reliable automotive brands.

Mazda, which was No. 1 in 2021, finished second this year.

Six of the top 10 brands this year were Japanese; the highest-ranking U.S. brand was Buick, which was 11th.Jeep dropped three spots to last, replacing Alfa Romeo, which rose four places to 28th.

The biggest drop this year was from Tesla, which fell seven spots to 23rd place. Consumer Reports, in a press release Thursday, cited the "difficult to use" steering wheel in the Model S and Model X. The EV maker's Model 3 is its only nameplate with a high enough score to be recommended by the consumer news organization.

"It dropped more than any other automaker, kind of due to their own decisions," Jake Fisher, senior director of automotive testing at Consumer Reports, told Automotive News.

For the second year in a row, Consumer Reports gave Green Cho…

A new Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study released Thursday shows that used-car buyers are significantly less likely than new-car buyers to be aware of the advanced driver-assistance features in their vehicles.

IIHS looked at owners of 2016 to 2019 model year vehicles and surveyed 402 people who bought their cars new and 362 who bought them used. The survey asked specifically about features such as blind spot warning, lane-departure warning and adaptive cruise control.

Buyers of new vehicles were more likely to know more about the specific features and presented a higher level of trust in them than the used-car buyers, IIHS said in a press release.

Some 84 percent of new-car drivers knew their vehicles were equipped with blind spot warnings, while only 72 percent of used-car drivers knew this. Similarly, only 66 percent of used-car buyers could accurately describe what the lane-departure warning does compared with the 77 percent of new-car buyer…

KAR Auction Services Inc. said Wednesday net income ticked up in the fourth quarter of 2021 thanks to lower expenses and higher profit per vehicle sold.

The company posted a net profit of $5.1 million in the quarter, up from a net loss of $17.1 million in the year-earlier period. Gross profit per vehicle sold grew to $297 in the quarter, up 30 percent from $229 in the year-earlier period.

Revenue for the Carmel, Ind.-based automotive auction company rose 4 percent to $549.4 million in the quarter.

Supply constraints limited volumes for KAR and all others in the wholesale remarketing industry, KAR CFO Eric Loughmiller told investors and analysts during a Thursday earnings call.

KAR originally predicted wholesale marketplace volume would recover in the second half of 2021, but "what actually happened is the conditions in the wholesale marketplace worsened," Loughmiller said.

Control over expenses did allow the company to generate improved gro…

Ford Motor Co. and Geely Automobile’s Volvo Cars will join battery recycling startup Redwood Materials in developing processes, starting in California, to collect end-of-life batteries from electric and hybrid vehicles and recover the materials for use in new batteries, the companies said Thursday.

Redwood Materials, founded by former Tesla executive JB Straubel, formed an earlier partnership last fall with Ford to develop a “closed loop” or circular supply chain for EV batteries, from raw materials to recycling.

On Thursday, Redwood Materials said it would work directly with dealers and dismantlers in California to identify and recover end-of-life battery packs. The materials in those packs will be recovered and recycled at Redwood Materials facilities in northern Nevada.

U.S. automakers Ford and General Motors have said the battery recycling effort is crucial in efforts to develop a domestic supply chain to meet increasing EV demand.

GM and ba…