Trade News

Audi is extending production stops due to a lack of semiconductor supplies, with most of the assembly lines at its factories in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm in Germany at a standstill this week.

The short-time work plan, which was originally scheduled to end last Friday, has been extended, an Audi spokeswoman told Automotive News Europe sister publication Automobilwoche.

In Ingolstadt the assembly line for the Q2 crossover and A3 compact car will be at a complete standstill next week. There was no production on the line last week.

The other two lines, on which the A3, A4 and A5 are built, are running on at least some days, but only in one shift each: one Monday to Thursday on the early shift, the other Tuesday to Thursday on the night shift.

Production of the A4 and A5 will also stop in Neckarsulm this week. The A6, A7 and A8 models will be produced from Monday to Thursday, but the A6 and A7 will only be produced in one shift each.

According …

SEOUL -- Stellantis and South Korean battery maker Samsung SDI have agreed to jointly produce EV batteries for the North American market, a person familiar with the matter said.

"The two companies (Samsung SDI and Stellantis) have struck a MOU (memorandum of understanding) to produce EV batteries for North America," the person with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

The source spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The person said the location of the battery JV is under review and will be announced later.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency earlier reported that the two companies plan to build a factory in the U.S., citing industry sources.

Samsung SDI and Stellantis did not have immediate comment when reached by Reuters.

Samsung SDI, an affiliate of South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics, already has EV battery plants in South Korea, China and Hungary, which supply customers such as…

Stellantis entered a preliminary agreement with battery maker LG Energy Solution to produce battery cells and modules for North America, as the automaker rolls out its 30-billion-euro ($35 billion) electrification plan.

Stellantis and LG will form a JV to produce battery cells and modules at a new facility that will have an annual production capacity of 40 gigawatt-hours, the automaker said in a statement Monday.

The batteries produced will be supplied to Stellantis' assembly plants in the U.S., Canada and Mexico for installation in hybrid and full-EVs, to support its goal of having more than 40 percent of its U.S. sales as electric by 2030.

The announcement comes weeks after Stellantis and its partner TotalEnergies agreed to open up their battery cell JV ACC to Daimler, to expand their European sourcing of battery cells.

The new north American plant is targeted to start by the first quarter of 2024.

The location of the plant is under revie…

LONDON/ COLOGNE -- Ford has picked the UK over Germany for its first electric vehicle components factory in Europe.

The automaker said it is investing 230 million pounds ($316 million) to convert its transmission plant in Halewood, northwest England, to produce electric drive units for future Ford full-electric passenger and commercial vehicles sold in Europe.

Production will begin in 2024, Ford said in a statement on Monday. Capacity is planned to be around 250,000 units a year. The investment will safeguard about 500 jobs at the factory.

An electric drive unit combines the electric motor, invertor and transmission and replaces the engine and gearbox in a combustion engine car.

Ford did not comment on whether it would build each element at the plant or source from suppliers and assemble them into a single unit on site.

Labor bosses at Ford's German operations criticized Ford's choice of the UK factory for the investment instead of converti…

Toyota Motor North America said it will invest $3.4 billion in the U.S. over the next nine years to develop and localize automotive battery production, including those for electric vehicles which would be made locally instead of in Japan.

The U.S. investment — part of a previously announced $13.5 billion program globally by the automaker for battery development and production — will include a $1.29 billion lithium ion battery plant, built in partnership with Toyota Tsusho, that will begin producing batteries by 2025. They will go in upcoming localized EVs as well as hybrids.

Toyota did not provide a location for the proposed plant nor details of its business model, but said it would result in the creation of 1,750 new American jobs. The plant's production would focus first on batteries for hybrids, but would then begin to produce battery packs for U.S.-built EVs, a spokesman confirmed.

Toyota also did not say where it plans to build its EVs for North Am…

About a year from now, Mercedes-Benz is expected to launch the battery-electric EQE crossover, to be built at its Alabama plant. It will be slightly smaller than the EQS SUV, also coming next year.

The EQE crossover and sedan, which is due in 2022 as well, are similar in size and market segment as Mercedes' E-Class cars and crossovers, while the EQS SUV and sedan, launching this fall, slot above and are intended to be the electric equivalent of the company's flagship S-Class vehicles.

The EQE vehicles are built on a Mercedes-Benz scalable and flexible EVA platform and are expected to spawn several models, including rear-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive dual-motor variants that will offer at least two battery pack options.

The heavily camouflaged EQE crossover was snapped recently undergoing testing in Germany. Though specific design details are hidden, the vehicle's steeply raked windshield, flush-mounted headlights, smooth and round…

In a typical year, upward of 30 million vehicles in the U.S. are affected by recalls. We expect this number to grow as vehicles increase in complexity and are built with more parts that could break or malfunction. Swiftly driving these recalls to completion is critical. After all, consumer brand perception and loyalty, manufacturer financial penalties and, most important, consumer safety are on the line. Yet today, fewer than half of vehicles 5 years old and older get recall-related repair services. As a result, recall campaigns last not weeks, but years — consider the ongoing Takata airbag recall.

It has become increasingly clear that traditional recall campaign management needs a revamp to be more proactive, engaging, optimized, agile and data-driven.

This can be done by focusing on four core areas of improvement:

1. Going beyond VIN: With time of the essence, effective vehicle owner notification is nonnegotiable. For older vehicles that may have chan…

CDK Global Inc. is in conversations with multiple automakers about how CDK could enable a "Tesla-like" buying experience that incorporates franchised dealerships, an executive said this month.

Joe Tautges, COO of the Hoffman Estates, Ill., dealership management system giant, declined to share specific details about the talks in an interview with Automotive News but said CDK is "in several discussions with various OEMs around how we enable that improved digital experience."

CDK has spent more than $1 billion over the past few years to bolster its own digital capabilities and build a portfolio of products aimed at delivering an end-to-end digital sales experience that extends from lead generation through vehicle ownership.

Tesla sells its electric vehicles directly to consumers in the U.S. without franchised dealerships. But with the ongoing industry shifts toward electrification and digitization, Tautges said, dealerships will be a k…

The policy counsel for the Future of Privacy Forum discusses the potential risks of sharing information from dockless scooter rides, the emerging debate over AI and driver monitoring cameras, and the words that "make privacy nerds bristle."

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The most interesting part of the Rivian saga — for me — is the engineering and manufacturing of the R1T pickup, R1S SUV and Amazon delivery van.

Launching three new-from-the-wheels-up vehicles in close succession is a major challenge for an established automaker. It's far beyond difficult for a startup whose vehicles use proprietary technology and in-house-developed electronics, and when the tens of millions of lines of code for all the computers were written in-house, too.

This is the automotive equivalent of a moonshot. Yet Rivian, born in Florida within earshot of where Apollo rockets launched for the moon, just may pull it off.

I recently got a close look at Rivian's futuristic Amazon van at work in a suburban Detroit neighborhood. And last week, I spent around 45 minutes test driving an early-production R1T around the Detroit area.

Here's what I can tell you: Rivian has set the bar high for all competitors. The R…