Trade News

The electric delivery van segment will get another new entry in about 18 months.

The Shyft Group, formerly Spartan Motors, on Tuesday said it will build a turnkey electric delivery van for fleet customers that should be ready to roll by mid-2023.

Spartan — which got its start in Michigan in the mid-'70s building fire trucks, then blossomed into a large manufacturer of truck bodies, RV chassis, delivery vehicles and other work trucks — changed its name to Shyft Group in 2020, the year it sold its fire truck business.

In 2020, the company booked $676 million in sales. It has plants and other operations in 10 states and Mexico. The new van, which will be unveiled next month at an industry trade show in Indianapolis, will be the company's first turnkey vehicle since its fire truck days.

CEO Daryl Adams told Automotive News that the company is using its own in-house designed electric chassis that will be driven by an electric axle purchased from a supp…

Kia America and Hyundai Motor America are recalling more than 500,000 vehicles combined for possible defects that could cause engine compartment fires, according to separate notices filed with NHTSA.

The affected Kia vehicles are certain 2016-18 K900 and 2014-16 Sportage models. The recall affects 126,747 Kia vehicles in the U.S. and 13,571 in Canada, the automaker said.

The affected Hyundai vehicles are certain 2016-18 Santa Fe, 2017-18 Santa Fe Sport, 2019 Santa Fe XL and 2014-15 Tucson models. About 357,830 vehicles in the U.S. and 67,355 in Canada are affected, Hyundai said in a statement.

While the exact cause remains unknown, the defects likely involve the antilock brake system in the Hyundai vehicles and the hydraulic electronic control unit in the Kia vehicles, causing internal short circuits that may lead to engine compartment fires, according to the recall reports.

Both automakers urged owners of the affected vehicles to park outside and…

General Motors plans to increase production of electric trucks and Cadillac SUVs this year by more than six times the previously planned output, according to information shared with suppliers.

CEO Mary Barra told investors last week the automaker intended to accelerate EV production, aiming to deliver 400,000 EVs in North America during 2022 and 2023. She did not give specifics for how quickly production rates would grow.

New details shared with suppliers indicate GM intends to increase production of its electric trucks and a new battery-powered Cadillac SUV to a total of 46,000 vehicles this year, up from a previous plan to build just 7,000 this year, according to information shared with suppliers.

GM is also expected to re-start Chevrolet Bolt production. The Bolt EV line has been idled as GM replaces batteries in existing Bolts under a recall.

"As we have said, we have announced battery cell and assembly capacity investments that will give us m…

DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. has reconvened the Mustang Mach-E launch team more than a year after the EV went on sale.

The goal? Reduce costs and improve profit margins as Ford vies for a spot among the industry's EV leaders. Ford CEO Jim Farley last week said the task force already has reduced the crossover's bill of materials by $1,000.

"What we're finding in Mach-E is that actually most of the exciting work starts after Job 1," he said on the company's fourth-quarter and full-year earnings call.

Darren Palmer, Ford's general manager of battery-electric vehicles, said in an interview that Farley's directive was to no longer wait to find efficiencies and implement changes only during midcycle updates or model-year changeovers.

"He said, 'Gone. Stop that. Take that away,' " Palmer told Automotive News. "We now do continuous improvement. You don't wait for a model year; you just continually drop them in."

The task force, comprising purchasing,…

WASHINGTON -- Two U.S. Senate Democrats wrote to Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday, raising "significant concerns" about the electric-car maker's Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Beta) systems which have prompted scrutiny from government safety regulators.

"We are deeply troubled by Tesla’s design choices that seemingly encourage unsafe driving habits," senators Richard Blumenthal and Ed Markey wrote, finding fault with Tesla's decision to allow vehicles using its Full-Self Driving (Beta) system to roll through stop signs at low speeds.

Under pressure from regulators, Tesla last week agreed to recall about 54,000 U.S. vehicles to revise software to prevent vehicles from disregarding stop signs. Musk said on Twitter last week "there were no safety issues" with the function.

Tesla did not immediately comment on Tuesday.

Tesla has been testing the improved version of its automated driving software on public roads, but the carmaker and the National …

In many ways, Lincoln's pivot to electric vehicles will be the most important — and riskiest — move the brand has attempted in its century under Ford ownership.

How is Lincoln going to distinguish itself from Audi, Lexus, Cadillac, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and all the other luxury brands making the same transition?

Maybe the bigger worry is how Lincoln EVs are going to be different enough from Ford EVs to make consumers want to pay the premium.

Because the electric motor is nearly noiseless and vibration-less, Lincoln vehicles likely won't be much quieter or more refined than Ford EVs or those from the competition.

Noise, vibration and harshness is one area where Lincoln vehicles were always different from and better than the Fords on which they were based.

There's not much room for Lincoln to grab some white space between Ford vehicles and the competition in performance, either. The Mustang Mach-E GT ca…

Kia is forging into one of the hearts of the burgeoning electric vehicle market with the EV6 compact crossover.

Kia's first EV on a dedicated platform comes in a base standard range version starting at $42,115 and moves up the pricing ladder to a GT-Line dual-motor priced at $57,115. Both prices include shipping.

The base Light trim comes with a 58-kilowatt-hour battery pack rated at 232 miles of range on the EPA testing cycle. The midrange Wind and top GT-Line trims come with a 77.4-kWh battery pack with up to 310 miles of range.

The EV6 is available in all 50 states at launch.

It is similar to the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and shares Hyundai Motor Group's E-GMP electric platform. Competitors include the Ford Mustang Mach-E and Volkswagen ID4.

We've gathered some early reviews from the automotive media.

"Having already sampled the standard-battery, rear-drive EV6 overseas, we focused our drive time on t…

Wholesale used-vehicle prices in January were largely unchanged from December though far higher than year-earlier numbers in another signal that the surge in U.S. used-vehicle prices has begun to level out.

Cox Automotive said Monday that its Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, which tracks vehicles sold at Manheim's U.S. auctions, rose just 0.04 percent in January compared with December. The January number, however, was 45 percent higher than a year earlier. Those numbers were adjusted for mix, mileage and seasonality.

On a nonadjusted basis, the Manheim index fell 0.9 percent from its December level but rose nearly 41 percent year over year, according to Manheim.

Total used-vehicle sales fell 0.8 percent in January compared with the year-earlier period, Cox Automotive estimated.

January price patterns varied by vehicle age and segment, with older vehicles likely to see stabilizing prices and younger vehicles likely to see larger declines, accordin…

Add some more 1990s characters to the Super Bowl 2022 ad lineup. Mike Myers and Rob Lowe will reprise their roles from the “Austin Powers” movie franchise in a General Motors ad that is set to plug the automaker’s electric vehicle ambitions.

Myers shows up playing Dr. Evil in a video GM posted to its Instagram account today that uses the phrase “Evil is back for good,” and also the automaker’s “Everybody In” tagline that it has been using to plug its EVs. 

Rob Lowe, who played the characters “Young Number Two” and “Middle Number Two” in the movies, is also set to appear. The actor teased the ad on his personal Instagram account.

Get the latest Automotive News Super Bowl 2022 news here.

McCann is handling the ad.

The use of the Austin Powers movies — which were released in 1997, 1999 and 2002 — continues a trend of nostalgic plays for the 2022 game. Earlier on Monday Verizon teased its Super Bowl ad with a video featuring Jim Carrey …