Trade News

DETROIT — General Motors on Tuesday named its first chief digital officer, Edward Kummer, a longtime marketing leader who has held posts at Nordstrom, Oakley and Walt Disney Co.

Kummer's appointment is effective Oct. 16. He will be responsible for building and delivering GM's digital business and will lead a new team to accelerate software investments to improve the customer experience. Kummer, 58, will report to GM President Mark Reuss.

"We are creating new digital experiences for our customers, both inside and outside of the vehicle, to enhance their lives and keep them connected to an increasingly digital world," Reuss said in a statement. "Edward's proven track record of digital and e-commerce expertise and leadership make him a huge asset for us. He's done great work for companies known for superior customer experience, and we're delighted to have him on our team."

Kummer was most recently president of Nordstrom Rack's online business and Nordstrom'…

One of Rivian Automotive Inc.’s big-name investors, Soros Fund Management LLC, hopes the EV startup will list at a valuation lower than the $80 billion target reported by Bloomberg in August.

“I think my compliance people might yell at me for talking about this, but we think that is a great company,” Dawn Fitzpatrick, Soros’s CEO and investment chief, told Erik Schatzker on Tuesday at the Bloomberg Invest Global Summit in New York. “Candidly, we hope they come public a little bit cheaper than that because we want there to be a long-term value play there.”

A representative for Rivian declined to comment. The size of Soros’s stake in the startup is not known.

Rivian, seen as a potential future rival to industry heavyweight Tesla Inc., disclosed an investment by Soros in July 2020 as part of a $2.5 billion round led by T. Rowe Price. The Irvine, Calif.-based company has raised more than $10.5 billion to date from a list of investors including Amazon.com Inc…

TOKYO – Japan’s Woven City, the digitally-driven town of tomorrow that Toyota Motor Corp. is building on the foothills of Mount Fuji, could be a future air hub for the country’s flying cars.

The vision for airborne offerings from the world’s biggest automaker was floated Tuesday in a presentation to local residents on the Toyota’s plans for the futuristic living laboratory.

James Kuffner, a director at Toyota Motor and the CEO of the Woven Planet subsidiary overseeing construction of Woven City, said taking flight was a passion of the founding family.

“It’s been a dream of the Toyoda family to build a flying car,” Kuffner said while outlining plans to develop the Woven City, with its mixed mobility system, green energy grid, sustainable agriculture practices and diverse population of artists, families, entrepreneurs and inventors.

“I used to watch many TV shows about flying cars, and maybe someday Woven City can become the area that introduces fl…

As recently as August, Ouster Inc. founder and CEO Angus Pacala predicted a wave of consolidation throughout the lidar business. Now, Ouster is leading that charge.

On Tuesday, the San Francisco-based company said it had signed an agreement to acquire Sense Photonics, a Silicon Valley upstart which has, like Ouster, focused on developing digital lidar.

Ouster will purchase Sense Photonics in exchange for 9.5 million shares of Ouster's common stock, which closed at $7.16 per share Monday.

The acquisition will bolster Ouster's automotive offerings. Once the deal closes, the company will establish Ouster Automotive as a new division that intends to develop and promote lidar for mass-market consumer and commercial vehicles. Current Sense Phonotics CEO and former Ford Motor Co. executive Shauna McIntyre will lead the automotive division.

Pacala called the acquisition "an ideal pairing" of Ouster's digital experience and product development in adjacent …

As Ford reversed its previous position on batteries by announcing a major investment, industry leaders should be prepared to pivot on strategy as EVs become more widely adopted.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Tesla Inc. lost a case against a Black former elevator operator and must pay an unprecedented $137 million in damages for having turned a blind eye to racial taunts and offensive graffiti the man endured at the EV maker's plant in Fremont, Calif.

Owen Diaz, a former contract worker who was hired in 2015 via a staffing agency, was subjected to a racially hostile work environment, a federal jury in San Francisco decided Monday. The award is among the most significant verdicts of its kind.

“I believe that’s the largest verdict in an individual race discrimination in employment case,” said David Oppenheimer, a clinical professor of law at Berkeley Law. “Class actions are of course in a different category.”

Tesla’s vice president of people, Valerie Capers Workman, sent an internal email late Monday that the company subsequently published in a blog post on its website titled “Regarding Today’s Jury Verdict.”

Workman wrote she was “at t…

Volvo Cars aims to raise 25 billion crowns ($2.9 billion dollars) in the first of two planned issuances of shares before year-end as part of its initial public offering on the Nasdaq Stockholm stock exchange.

Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson says the automaker could have covered the cost of its transition into an electric-only brand by 2030 without an IPO, but he believes the timing of the move is ideal given investors' interest in EV-focused brands. Volvo CFO Bjorn Annwall says the pressure to satisfy global investors will make the company "stronger, better and quicker." Both men spoke with Automotive News Europe Managing Editor Douglas A. Bolduc.

What percentage of the company will be available on the open market?

Bjorn Annwall: I guess the short answer is that we don't know at this point. What we have said is this is a primary issuance of 25 billion crowns, or $2.9 billion dollars. Then there will likely be a secondary top up. In the end, the shares that w…

Automotive News announced a retirement, a hiring and a promotion Monday as Publisher KC Crain continues to reshape his management team.

The moves:

• Dave Versical, 66, has decided to retire. Versical joined the paper as a reporter in 1986 and has held several leadership roles over the years. Most recently, he has been chief of editorial operations, overseeing the flagship weekly paper and affiliates including Fixed Ops Journal, Automotive News Canada and Automotive News TV. He will leave at the end of the year.

• Chrissy Taylor is joining in a new position: vice president of editorial operations. She will oversee all aspects of the newsroom with the specific mandate of making Automotive News a truly digital media organization.

Taylor, 43, has spent the past three and a half years as managing editor of the Chicago Tribune. In that role, she has evolved the Tribune's news operation to focus on content practices that drive digital subscriptions and d…

CarMax has completed its exit from the franchised new-vehicle dealer business with the sale of CarMax Kenosha Toyota in Wisconsin to Rydell Co. of Sioux Falls, S.D.

The sale was completed at the end of last month for an undisclosed amount. Haig Partners was the sell-side adviser to CarMax in the transaction.

CarMax confirmed earlier in the year to Automotive News that it was divesting its few remaining new-vehicle franchises to focus on the huge, highly fragmented used-vehicle market.

Now the largest used-vehicle retailer in the U.S., CarMax in the mid-1990s was still a division of Circuit City Stores Inc. Then Chrysler Corp. announced it would give the fledgling retail operation a new-vehicle franchise.

CarMax began shifting away from new-vehicle franchises around 2003, and by 2006 it had just six such locations.

It still had two new-vehicle franchises heading into this calendar year. In January, Sheehy Auto Stores of Virginia announced …

Sonic Automotive Inc. has hired two executives, including a former Mazda marketing boss, for newly created positions at its rapidly expanding EchoPark brand of used-vehicle stores.

Sonic named Dino Bernacchi as chief marketing officer and Thien Truong as chief revenue officer of EchoPark Automotive, reporting to Sonic President Jeff Dyke. The moves are effective Monday.

Bernacchi, 51, had been senior vice president of marketing for the NFL's Cleveland Browns, Sonic noted. Prior to that position, Bernacchi had been Mazda North American Operations' chief marketing officer for nearly three years before he resigned in March 2020.

He had worked as marketing director of Harley-Davidson Motor Co. prior to Mazda. Bernacchi has also worked at General Motors, Visteon Corp. and Detroit-based advertising firm Campbell Ewald.

"His vast expertise in brand development and marketing is a natural fit with our goal of making EchoPark a nationwide household name syn…

Fresh from college in the early 1990s, Jim Adler landed his first engineering job: working on avionics systems for spacecraft at General Dynamics in Southern California.

"You play with these amazingly huge toys that are worth billions of dollars," Adler recalled. "Best job you could ask for."

But an entrepreneurial spirit simmered and soon pulled him on a trajectory that included founding companies and guiding startups. Now in charge of Toyota Ventures, the automaker's venture capital arm, Adler finds his thoughts are once again turning toward space.

Toyota Ventures' latest activities, announced late last month, include investments in two space companies, Xona Space Systems and Near Space Labs.

Toyota isn't interested in a mammoth endeavor comparable to Elon Musk's SpaceX, manufacturing and launching its own missions. These are more niche space explorations. Xona Space Systems aims to launch a constellation of satellites that provides an alternat…