Trade News

DETROIT — General Motors will temporarily stop offering heated seats, one of the most popular options among vehicle buyers, in many of its crossovers and all but the top-end trims of its full-size pickups starting next week because of the ongoing microchip shortage.

Affected vehicles also will not be built with ventilated seats or a heated steering wheel until chip supplies improve. But GM said it's able to reinstate three other features it previously eliminated to conserve chip supplies, including digital temperature displays in some pickups.

Starting as soon as Monday, heated and ventilated seats will no longer be installed on more than a dozen nameplates — including the Chevrolet Colorado, Blazer and Equinox and the GMC Canyon and Terrain — GM told dealers in a letter dated Friday. The features also will be eliminated on all Chevy Silverados and Traverses except High Country trims and all GMC Sierras and Acadias except Denalis.

Heated steering wheels …

BUFFALO, W.Va. — Opposition from West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin to a proposed $4,500 additional federal tax credit for electric vehicles built by union labor in the U.S. got a warm response from those who have spent months lobbying to kill the provision in the Democrats' nearly $2 trillion Build Back Better Act.

Manchin said this week that he opposes the additional taxpayer-funded incentive — which would give General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and potentially Stellantis an advantage over nonunionized automakers that will assemble EVs in the U.S. — at an event announcing a $240 million investment from Toyota Motor North America into a 25-year-old components plant here.

The coal-state Democrat, whose moderate political leanings have already shaped much of the massive bill that would address climate change, child care and health care coverage because of the evenly split Senate, had not previously spoken publicly about the $4,500 incentive championed by Michigan Sen. …

Elon Musk's string of Tesla Inc. share sales carried on for a fourth-straight day, bringing the total the CEO has offloaded in the wake of an unusual public poll to about $5.7 billion.

The billionaire disposed of 639,737 shares Thursday, worth about $687 million, according to regulatory filings. He unloaded $5 billion of stock earlier in the week after asking his Twitter followers whether he should sell 10 percent of his Tesla stake.

Tesla shares slipped 2.2 percent to $1,031.15 as of 4:16 p.m. in New York, extending losses this week to more than 15 percent.

The poll was controversial for a host of reasons. For one, some of Musk's transactions were carried out this week under a trading plan he pre-arranged in September, well before he consulted his vast social media following. Musk also cast his proposal as having to do with the debate raging in the U.S. over whether billionaires are paying enough in taxes, and whether levies should be placed on unrealiz…

WASHINGTON --  A government watchdog on Friday criticized NHTSA, saying the agency routinely fails to meet deadlines, its staff lack some key training, and it does not ensure all imported vehicles meet safety requirements.

The safety agency has faced significant delays in processing petitions to change or set new safety rules, among other issues, the Transportation Department's Inspector General said.

NHTSA also "lacks formal training and clear guidance for enforcing compliance" and is not meeting requirements for ensuring imported vehicles meet federal safety requirements, the audit added.

The report found "weaknesses in NHTSA's training and guidance limit its ability" to set and enforce motor vehicle safety rules.

NHTSA declined to comment beyond a letter included in the audit which said it would adopt the inspector general's six recommendations.

The agency has recently updated and improved processes to enhance oversight, boost compl…

South Korean engineer Kim Gwang-ho was almost certain he would receive ample compensation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's whistleblower program for a tip-off about safety lapses at Hyundai Motor Co., his employer of 26 years. Now, at the end of a five-year ordeal, the award from the safety regulator has made Kim more than $24 million richer, and he aims to set up a foundation to promote responsible corporate culture.

"The compensation I expected from the whistleblower program in the United States outweighed the sacrifice I had to make in South Korea," Kim, 59, who worked on the company's quality strategy team, told Reuters Friday.

Kim's action led to an agreement last year by Hyundai and its affiliate, Kia, to pay a record $210 million civil penalty over recalls involving nearly 1.7 million vehicles.

Kim, who plans to set up a YouTube channel to teach people how to expose their employers' bad behavior, learned about the U.S. law…

TOKYO -- Production is back on track at Toyota, with all plants and production lines in Japan scheduled to operate normally in December for the first time in seven months.

Global production will reach 800,000 units in December, up from 760,000 units the same time last year as the company was racing to recoup output from the pandemic slowdown.

Toyota said all 14 plants and 28 production lines in Japan will be "operating normally" for the first time since May.

The country's biggest automaker also kept its production forecast unchanged at 9 million units for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2022. The automaker plans to manufacture 500,000 vehicles overseas and 300,000 in Japan next month.

Toyota is coming off a production cut in November that followed similar cutbacks in September and October as the automaker felt the bite of the pandemic and global microchip shortage.

In announcing the December production plan on Friday, Toyota cautioned th…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ Startup Spartan Radar closes new round of financing

Automakers have used radar in vehicles for more than two decades. But there are more startups than ever wringing innovation out of that legacy technology.

The latest is Spartan Radar, which closed a $15 million series A round this week. The round was led by Prime Movers Lab, and it quickly follows a $10 million seed round secured in August.

Spartan Radar executives say their radar systems — emerging from the aerospace and defense industries — make substantial advances in resolution, allowing for lidarlike levels of obstacle detection for driver-assist systems and self-driving vehicles.

The company's chief product, Biomimetic Radar, parallels the manner in which humans perceive and process information. It can lead to a lower rate of false-positive detections, company executives say.

"Spartan Radar's innovative systems engineering and edge-processing expertise inhe…

Acura's revived Integra compact hatchback will mix nostalgic exterior styling cues with the first factory application of turbo power when it launches next year, the automaker said late Wednesday.

"I've been waiting to say this for a very long time. The Integra is back," Jon Ikeda, Acura brand officer, said during a livestream presentation from Los Angeles.

Ikeda was standing next to a yellow prototype of the 2023 Integra that will be very close to the production version.

The Integra will have a turbocharged, 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine, but power was not revealed. The Honda version of the corporate motor generates 200 hp in the 2022 Civic Si, but Acura could dial in more.

A performance-oriented Type S version of the Integra could likely be equipped with the 2.0-liter turbo from the track-ready Civic Type R, which makes over 300 hp.

Acura also said that the next Integra will have a limited-slip differential for putting more power to the…

An independent court-appointed monitor named to oversee the UAW after a federal corruption probe said Thursday the union has "fallen short" to date in its reform efforts and disclosed he has 15 open investigations.

Neil Barofsky, a former federal prosecutor, said in his first report the UAW must "take more affirmative measures to fully eradicate the strong remnants of the 'toxic' culture that characterized its recent past and still remain present today."

The union agreed to the oversight as part of a settlement with federal prosecutors in December. 

Barofsky also disclosed that he closed an investigation into allegations UAW President Ray Curry in 2017 accepted use of football tickets the UAW had obtained in a vendor contract. Barofsky determined not to bring charges and instead referred the matter to the union’s ethics officer.

Curry said in an email to members he had voluntarily repaid the value of the tickets. "Despite this ruling, I am …

DETROIT -- Lordstown Motors Corp. on Thursday delayed next year's launch of its Endurance electric pickup truck by a quarter, citing parts and materials shortages and other supply-chain issues.

The Ohio-based electric vehicle startup, while reporting its third-quarter results, said it would now begin production and deliveries in the third quarter of 2022, rather than in the second quarter that it forecast in August.

"We're focused on the Endurance. We know we have to get that truck out. It's been a challenging quarter with raw material shortages, parts shortages, supply-chain disruptions, particularly from international sourcing, but we're doing everything we can to mitigate it," CEO Daniel Ninivaggi said on a conference call.

He also cited delayed semiconductor shipments that have dogged the entire auto industry.

"We're going to do everything possible to get the truck out on our revised schedule," Ninivaggi added.

Lordstown has struggled w…

Wholesale used-vehicle prices in October continued to unseasonably rise, market analysis shows, as demand remains strong and automakers struggle to build new vehicles.

Cox Automotive's Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, which tracks vehicles sold at Manheim's U.S. auctions, was up 38 percent in October compared with the same month in 2020. Manheim said some of that rise was due to seasonal adjustment, as there is typically above-average vehicle depreciation in October.

But on a nonadjusted basis, the year-over-year price increase for last month was 5.4 percent, and it marked the first time since Manheim began tracking the index in 1997 that there was a nonseasonally adjusted annual price increase for October.

The sales conversion rate was 67 percent, which was high for the month. That rate was at 49 percent in October 2019.

Meanwhile, Cox Automotive estimated that total used-vehicle sales were down 10 percent year over …

WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden will visit a Michigan General Motors EV plant next week as the White House pushes Congress to approve big tax incentives for zero-emission vehicles.

GM said its "Factory Zero" will mark its grand opening during Biden's visit Wednesday. The plant, spanning parts of Detroit and Hamtramck, actually opened in 1985 but GM said in 2020 it would repurpose it to build electric trucks and SUVs.

Biden will discuss $7.5 billion in funding for EV charging stations in a recently approved infrastructure bill, as well as how EVs will reduce emissions, improve air quality and create "good-paying, union jobs across the country," the White House said.

GM CEO Mary Barra will attend Wednesday's event.

"General Motors is excited to welcome President Biden to Factory ZERO on Wednesday, November 17, as we open the doors to our all-electric assembly plant in the heart of Detroit-Hamtramck," the automaker said in a statement.

In Au…