Trade News

The Swedish electrified performance startup Polestar began U.S. deliveries of its first mainstream model, the China-made Polestar 2, late last year.

This year, the Volvo-affiliated manufacturer will introduce a single-motor version of the Polestar 2 fastback, lowering the price of entry into the brand by $14,000.

Polestar also is bringing manufacturing stateside to avoid import tariffs and to be closer to U.S. customers. Production of the Porsche Cayenne-sized Polestar 3 will begin in South Carolina — and China — late next year.

Polestar intends to be a global brand, CEO Thomas Ingenlath told Automotive News in June. "So the plan has been to expand our footprint in terms of where we produce our cars," Ingenlath said.

The automaker also plans to introduce a large performance sedan and potentially a compact crossover. To sell the expanding portfolio of models, Polestar expects to have 35 retail stores across the continen…

As auto suppliers convalesce from 18 months of COVID-19 shutdowns and microchip shortages, more private equity firms are looking to snatch them up. And private equity firms are increasingly willing to pay higher prices if it means getting a crack at participating in the industry's historic shift to electric vehicles and autonomous driving.

"This is a big year for financial investors in the automotive space," said Dietmar Ostermann, U.S. automotive advisory leader for the international financial advisory firm PwC. "More PE firms are entering the automotive space because they see this interesting technology revolution taking place in electric vehicles and connected cars. And there is a feeling among some of them that they're smarter than the auto industry because automotive isn't used to dealing with big change.

"They want in."

PwC estimates that 2021 will see 174 supplier M&A deals by year-end, up from 101 last year and 159 in pre-pandemic 2019. In …

FRANKFURT -- French supplier Faurecia on Saturday agreed to acquire a majority stake in German automotive lighting group Hella and will make a public tender offer for the remaining shares for 60 euros ($70.75) apiece.

Faurecia struck the deal with a pool of family-related shareholders over their 60 percent stake, Hella said in a statement on Saturday.

Hella ranks No. 41 on the Automotive News list of the top 100 global suppliers with worldwide sales to automakers of $5.5 billion during its 2020 fiscal year.

Tesla Inc. wants Robyn Denholm to remain as chair of the electric-vehicle manufacturer’s board, even as CEO Elon Musk will soon become eligible to retake the top job following a three-year suspension.

Musk, who has led the EV maker since 2008, lost his position as chair as part of a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over his ill-fated attempt to take Tesla private in 2018.

The SEC agreement, announced in September of that year, required Musk to step down from the role and be replaced by an independent chair for three years, a period which ends later this year. Denholm, 57, has served on Tesla’s board since August 2014 and been its chair since November 2018.

“We believe that Ms. Denholm possesses specific attributes that qualify her to serve as a member of the board and as its chair,” Tesla said Friday in its proxy filing. The company cited her “leadership experience and her financial and accounting expertise.”

The EV mar…

Well into her career, Emily Eldridge decided to go back to school and get her MBA. Her son was 5 years old, and her daughter only 2. Although the executive MBA program at the University of Michigan was tough, requiring a family “juggling act” of evening and weekend classes, she says “the outcome was so worth it.”

The best part, Eldridge says — the confidence boost — was having the opportunity to work on a project in an industry she was not familiar with. She was able to offer “strategic direction, because the learnings I had in the auto industry were transferrable,” she says. “It was such a great feeling to know that I wasn’t siloed — that the skills and knowledge I had learned, while they might look disjointed, have all come together in the person I am today.”

Eldridge’s skills and knowledge have been accumulated during a career that started in retail and moved into the auto industry. She is currently senior director, messaging for FordDirect, the joint ventur…

Doctors appointed to evaluate whether Texas software mogul Robert Brockman is competent to stand trial for tax fraud improperly helped U.S. prosecutors gather evidence against him, his lawyers claim in a court filing.

Brockman, 80, has said that his dementia prevents him from helping to defend against charges that he evaded taxes on $2 billion in income. Three doctors appointed by a federal judge to examine Brockman have found he’s competent.

But in a court filing Wednesday, his defense lawyers said the doctors aren’t “genuine neutral experts.” Rather, they asked Brockman about “his view of the potential evidence, facts underlying the charges in the indictment, and the defense strategy,” according to the filing.

Lawyers for Brockman said they consented to the appointment of the three doctors, assuming they would act neutrally as agents of the court. The defense team said it didn’t agree “that these doctors, under the guise of medical examinations, could…

About a decade ago, Royal Automotive Group in Tucson, Ariz., reworked the sales model at its Kia store so that a customer no longer needed to work with multiple people to buy a vehicle.

Dealership group managers noticed that a number of subprime deals were taking a long time to complete, lengthening the wait for all customers to get into the finance and insurance office to finish transactions, said Kevin Cravo, Royal Automotive's executive variable director. Group leaders, Cravo said, knew from survey data that the handoff to "the box" was a major pain point for customers.

"If you have one finance manager stuck on one subprime deal for two hours trying to hang that paper, it just clogged up the whole front of the house," he said.

What emerged from that single-store shift includes a groupwide buying center that works with all six of Royal's dealerships in Tucson, using hubs of employees housed at its Kia and Buick-GMC stores. Royal employs F&I manage…

When industry R&D executives say that autonomous vehicles are going to require a lot more work, they aren't kidding.

Exactly how much research must go into testing various technologies to ensure that they can be trusted with human lives? How about 8.8 billion miles of test driving.

To surmount that research challenge, some European companies have banded together to address the research as a group, rather than relying on individual corporations and balance sheets to figure it out separately.

Their mission: proposing a guide to vehicle architecture that can handle the industry's autonomous technology goal.

"We want to reach a global safety reference, that is key," said Ricky Hudi, chairman of The Autonomous, an initiative that has brought together multiple players in the autonomous vehicle ecosystem. The group includes automakers, Tier 1 suppliers, chipmakers and software developers.

"It's not that other …

TOKYO — Subaru, a slow starter in the global electrification race, is overhauling its product development strategy and building a new R&D center to better compete in an era of electrified vehicles.

The comparatively small Japanese automaker will plow $272.2 million into a new seven-story technical center at its domestic production hub in Gunma prefecture just north of Tokyo.

The facility will open in spring 2024 and bring under one roof about 2,800 workers from engineering, product planning and design. The goal is to speed the automaker's product development process and improve flexibility as the industry shifts to electrified vehicles.

Under a new product development strategy announced in May, Subaru will adopt a matrix-style development approach focused on features — such as powertrains, driver-assist systems and connectivity — and on values, such as safety and the environment.

Subaru said the change will improve…

DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. on Friday said it's asking the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to rescind General Motors' "Cruise" and "Super Cruise" trademarks, the latest in a spat between the two automakers over the phrasing of Ford's new driver-assist system.

GM last month sued Ford over its use of the term Ford BlueCruise, arguing it's "a brazen attempt" by Ford to take advantage of positive press about GM's hands-free Super Cruise technology and Cruise, the San Francisco company GM bought in 2016. GM claims BlueCruise is "far less advanced than Cruise's technology and thus likely to yield an inferior consumer experience, with the potential for comfort and safety issues."

Ford announced it would use the name BlueCruise for its hands-free driving technology in April this year. It has called the complaint meritless and frivolous.

"To defend itself, Ford has no choice but to ask the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to rescind both of GM's 'Cruise' and 'Supe…