Trade News

Data privacy legislation continues to gain momentum across the U.S., with two more states passing laws that give consumers more control over how businesses use their personal information.

Virginia and Colorado both enacted laws this year that take effect in 2023, joining California, whose first-in-the-nation comprehensive statute is poised to become more stringent in 2023, experts say, when provisions from a ballot initiative approved last November go into effect.

The Virginia law may not apply to the state's franchised auto dealerships because of a provision that exempts entities that are subject to the federal Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, said Anne Gambardella, general counsel and executive vice president of the Virginia Automobile Dealers Association. Dealerships are regulated by the act, which requires financial institutions to protect consumers' private information, because they provide customer financing.

The Colorado Automobile Dealers Association is…

Robert Bielby, senior director of Automotive Systems Architecture and Segment Marketing at Micron, discusses the role memory and storage play in the vehicle experience, what the cloud and 5G mean for mobility as a service and how advanced technologies are reshaping mobility.

DETROIT — General Motors on Friday said it expects to reopen the remaining three North American assembly plants that have been idled because of the global microchip shortage by Nov. 1.

GM also said it plans to resume building Chevrolet Malibu sedans for the first time in nearly nine months at a plant that has partially reopened in Kansas.

The automaker said its plant in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico, which has been shut since mid-August, would start building Chevy Blazers on Oct. 18, followed by Chevy Equinoxes as soon as Nov. 1.

Two more Equinox plants — San Luis Potosi Assembly in Mexico and CAMI Assembly in Ontario — that have been down since mid-July will reopen Nov. 1, GM said. San Luis Potosi also builds the GMC Terrain.

"Although the situation remains complex and very fluid," GM said in a statement, "we remain confident in our team's ability to continue finding creative solutions to minimize the impact of the semiconductor shortages that have b…

GM this week outlined long-term financial targets at its investor day, along with some of its future technology direction. The automaker also made other announcements. Here’s a roundup of our coverage:

GM to leverage new businesses, tech to double revenue by 2030

GM to offer hands-free city driving in 2023 with Ultra Cruise

GM hires first-ever digital chief

GM to open battery cell lab in suburban Detroit

GM to work with silicon carbide supplier to increase EV range

Hedge fund Engine No. 1 backs GM's strategy around transition to EVs

GM, General Electric to develop supply chain of rare earth materials for EVs

DETROIT -- State environmental regulators say there's a "moderate to strong" paint or solvent odor emitting from automaker Stellantis' year-old Jeep assembly plant on Detroit's east side.

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy issued an air quality violation to the automaker last month after state regulators documented "persistent and objectionable paint/solvent odors of moderate intensity ... impacting residential areas downwind of the facility," according to a violation notice EGLE issued to Stellantis on Sept. 20.

EGLE's air quality investigators documented the odors on three separate occasions — Aug. 27, Aug. 31 and Sept. 3 — after fielding complaints about nuisance odors, according to the violation notice.

During the first visit, the regulators said the paint and solvent odors were "of moderate intensity." During the second and third inspections, they described the odors "moderate to strong intensity."

The state air q…

SAN FRANCISCO — Ford Motor Co. knows its customers' electric vehicle charging experience is less than perfect, and it's deploying an army of "angels" to fix it.

The automaker offers customers some 63,000 plugs across the country in what it calls a "network of networks," made up of stations from Electrify America, ChargePoint and others. That patchwork collection of third-party chargers has occasionally been problematic for Mustang Mach-E owners looking to power up on the road.

"There are a lot of plugs out there, but some of them are old and they don't have the quality or reliability we want," Darren Palmer, Ford's general manager of battery electric vehicles, told Automotive News during a media drive program in San Francisco. "Over 99.5 percent of customers go into a charger and get a charge. We're pleased about that. But a number less than that get a charge the first time they charge."

Enter the Charge Angels.

Employees in specially instru…

A double-whammy of a global shortage of chips and ships is the only thing standing in the way of Tesla Inc. maintaining sales growth in excess of 50 percent, according to CEO Elon Musk.

“We’ve had a fantastic year, we had record vehicle deliveries,” Musk told Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas, on Thursday. “It looks like we have a good chance of maintaining that. Basically, if we can get the chips we can do it. Hopefully this chip shortage will alleviate soon but I feel confident of being able to maintain something like at least above 50 percent for quite a while.”

While the chip shortage has dominated auto-industry headlines this year, Musk said the electric-car pioneer was grappling with “lots” of supply chain challenges.  

“One of the biggest challenges we had in Q3 was can we get enough ships,” he said. “There was a huge ship shortage.”

The chip shortage doesn’t appear to be slowing Tesla down just yet. The company earl…

KAMINOKAWA, Japan – Nissan’s most advanced factory yet takes green production of green vehicles to a whole higher level, delivering efficient, flexible manufacturing firepower to make next-generation electric vehicles for the new era, including the highly-anticipated Ariya crossover.

The so-called Nissan Intelligent Factory, shown to reporters for the first time Friday, deploys a host of new production methods, including several world-first techniques, to enable a 10 percent production cost improvement over older methods, despite building far more complex vehicles.

A key innovation is a new powertrain assembly technique called SUMO, short for simultaneous underfloor mounting operation. It foreshadows Nissan’s approach to next-gen EV production.

The Intelligent Factory has already begun pre-production of the Ariya at Nissan Motor Co.’s Tochigi assembly plant north of Tokyo, replacing a Line 1 that used to make some of Nissan and Infiniti’s top-tier produ…

SAN FRANCISCO -- Tesla Inc. will move its corporate headquarters to Austin, Texas, where a new factory for the Model Y and forthcoming Cybertruck is nearing completion.

CEO Elon Musk announced the move Thursday during the EV maker’s shareholder annual meeting from the Austin plant.

Tesla has been based in Palo Alto, Calif., the leafy Silicon Valley suburb that is home to Stanford University and several venture capital firms, since its founding in 2003. But the company has grown from scrappy startup to the world’s most valuable automaker and Texas -- centrally located between the two coasts -- has become its center of gravity in the U.S.

Musk said Tesla isn’t abandoning California, noting the company will continue to expand manufacturing in the state and aims to boost production at its vehicle factory in Fremont -- and at its Nevada battery plant -- by 50 percent.  

“We will continue to expand our activities in California. This is not a matte…

Honda is heading to the Nürburgring to test the Civic Type R that will join the company's U.S. lineup next year.

The automaker teased two photos of a Type R prototype in red and black camouflage. It’s clear the coming version is far cleaner than the outgoing model with its boy-racer styling elements, particularly at the rear.

While still in development, it's being billed by Honda as the best-performing Civic Type R ever.

The redesigned 11th-generation Civic sedan and hatchback received relatively few mechanical changes, and the Civic Type R is likely to be no exception.

The outgoing model of the top Civic trim is equipped with 306 hp from a turbocharged 2.0-liter motor mated to a six-speed manual transmission. Honda did add a little power to the regular Civics for the 2022 model, so it’s possible the track-ready trim will get a boost.

The hatch-only Type R will also get the Civic family's latest interior marked by a metal honeycomb strip th…

The prices dealers pay for cars and trucks at Manheim auctions climbed to all-time highs in September, another sign of the disruption triggered by the cutbacks in new-vehicle production caused by the global shortage of semiconductors.

Wholesale values rose 27 percent last month from September 2020, according to Cox Automotive's Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, which tracks prices of cars and trucks sold at auctions. Values in September were up 5.3 percent from August.

With new-vehicle production still hampered by the chip shortage and consumer demand relatively strong, wholesale values are expected to stay elevated well into next year.

In a conference call Thursday, Cox Chief Economist Jonathan Smoke said average wholesale prices have increased for eight straight weeks through last week. And they do not appear to be at a peak for 2021.

"Basically, the odds favor more increases between now and spring because we're still in a very supp…

Stellantis is investing $229 million to retool three Indiana plants to build its new flexible eight-speed transmission that can be used in both electrified vehicles and those with conventional setups.

The Kokomo Transmission, Kokomo Casting and Indiana Transmission plants, all in the city of Kokomo, will be key cogs in the automaker's electrification strategy. Stellantis said in July that it is investing more than $35 billion through 2025 in electrification and software and plans to have four electric vehicle platforms that support driving ranges of 300 to 500 miles.

Stellantis has set a goal of having electrified vehicles account for more than 40 percent of U.S. sales by 2030.

The next-generation transmission will deliver improved fuel economy, the automaker said, and help the company meet "future emission regulations." The company said the transmissions, which can be paired with mild-hybrid and plug-in hybrid propulsion systems along with tr…