Trade News

Sonic Automotive Inc., which is rapidly expanding its EchoPark brand of used-vehicle-only stores in a tightening labor market, will implement a $15 minimum wage for all hourly employees on Sept. 1.

Sonic, a publicly traded dealership group, has 8,500 employees nationwide. It's unclear how many of them will be affected by the move, which was announced Thursday.

A Sonic spokeswoman did not share how many company employees are paid by the hour, what job categories come with hourly pay or what the retailer's previous minimum wage was.

She did note that the average increase in annual pay per affected employee will be $3,250.

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, though a little more than half of U.S. states already have a higher minimum wage, according to the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor.

While minimum hourly wages of at least $15 are becoming more commonplace across various industries, the Sonic spokesw…

The global shortage of microchips continues to bedevil the auto industry, with several companies announcing production cuts this week. Included in that group this time is Toyota Motor Corp., which previously had weathered the crisis without major setbacks.

Here are the latest developments:

The Japanese automaker said it will slash global output by about 40 percent in September. In North America, Toyota said its factories will lose up to 170,000 vehicles through September.

General Motors will idle its plant that builds the Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV and added downtime at crossover and sedan plants.

The Kansas City assembly plant will be down for a week and the automaker’s plant in Cologne, Germany, will temporarily suspend output.

Volkswagen will restart its plant in Wolfsburg, Germany, with just one shift next week as it resumes following the traditional summer break. In addition, Audi will extend its summer break by one week at its two…

Four dealership groups — two in the Midwest and two in the South — expanded in the third quarter with single-store or two-store acquisitions.

Here's a quick look at deals involving import- and domestic-brand stores. Two transactions involved an Automotive News' top 150 dealership group.

LaFontaine Automotive Group last month purchased its first Lincoln dealership — one it plans to relocate to a new facility about 25 miles away.

LaFontaine, of Highland, Mich., on July 30 bought Signature Lincoln in Owosso, Mich., from the Joe Falzon-owned Signature Auto Group. LaFontaine has temporarily moved the Lincoln franchise to its Ford store in nearby Flushing, Mich., while it builds a new store for the Lincoln outlet in nearby Genesee County's Mundy Township.

"Lincoln has long been a brand we have been looking to add to our portfolio and are eager to capture the significant potential that exists with this acclaimed luxury brand," LaFontaine CEO Ryan LaFont…

The nation’s new chief accident investigator wants to send a message: Growing public confusion over automated driving systems in the U.S. is threatening to undermine the potential safety benefits of the technology.

Jennifer Homendy took the reins as chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board one week ago, just as controversy erupted over Tesla Inc.’s so-called Autopilot. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Monday opened an investigation into car accidents involving the use of Autopilot. 

“Whether it’s Tesla or anyone else, it is incumbent on these manufacturers to be honest in what their technology does and does not do,” Homendy told Bloomberg News in her first interview since she was sworn in on Aug. 13. 

Homendy, 49, a former Capitol Hill staffer who has served as an NTSB board member since 2018, went on to praise Tesla’s cooperation during multiple previous NTSB investigations and said she didn’t want to single…

Stellantis is recalling 212,373 Ram vehicles from the 2015-20 model years because inflator end caps in the vehicles' airbags can detach or the inflator sidewall may rupture.

In either situation, compressed gas can escape, which might send the end cap or other parts flying into the vehicle interior and cause an injury or crash, according to documents filed with NHTSA.

The recall covers certain 2015-20 Ram 1500 Classic, 2015-16 Ram 3500 and Ram 2500 and 2016 Ram 3500 Cab Chassis vehicles.

The company opened an investigation in December 2020 after discovering that some of the vehicle models in question may have been built with side airbag inflatable curtains with inflators contaminated with moisture. The suspect inflators were built between March 2015 and September 2015.

FCA U.S., a North American arm of Stellantis, said moisture introduced during the manufacturing process could lead to corrosion and subsequent cracking inside the airbag over time. Read more

Ample, a San Francisco-based developer of swappable electric vehicle batteries, has raised $160 million in a new funding round, the company said on Thursday.

The company has developed a battery for EVs and an automated process for quickly swapping out depleted batteries for newly charged packs, according to founders Khaled Hassounah and John de Souza.

The Series C round brings to $230 million the total raised by the seven-year-old startup, which plans to expand testing and deployment to New York City, then Madrid and Singapore, Hassounah said in an interview.

"We've been saying for the past few months that this technology is ready for prime time, so now we intend to prove it" by expanding the fledgling service to more cities and drivers, he said.

Long charging times that are common at most public and commercial charging stations have dampened consumer and fleet demand for electric vehicles.

Ample is part of a growing group of companies, i…

DETROIT — General Motors will add downtime at several crossover and sedan plants because of the global microchip shortage, the automaker said Thursday. GM also plans next week to idle Orion Assembly, which builds the Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV, for the first time since the chip crisis began.

Until now, the chip crisis had not impacted GM's electric vehicle production. The automaker has kept plans in place to launch the GMC Hummer pickup EV later this year and the Cadillac Lyriq electric crossover in early 2022.

Orion Assembly, in Michigan, will go down Aug. 23 and is expected to resume production Aug. 30. No pickup or full-size SUV plants are expected to shut down next week, GM said.

AutoForecast Solutions estimates that total production losses resulting from the microchip shortage could climb to more than 7.1 million vehicles globally.

GM added downtime at the following plants:

Lansing Delta Township Assembly…

Great Wall Motor Co., a major private Chinese light-vehicle manufacturer looking to expand globally, signed an agreement with Daimler AG to purchase the German automaker’s factory in Brazil. 

Under the deal inked Wednesday, Great Wall will acquire land, buildings, machinery and equipment at the manufacturing site in Iracemapolis in the southeast Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, but not employees, the company said. 

Great Wall expects to complete the deal and start retooling the plant toward the end of the year.

After the renovation, the factory will have annual capacity of 100,000 vehicles and employ nearly 2,000 people, the company added.

Great Wall didn’t reveal additional details or financial terms of the deal. 

Daimler said in December it would end car production in Brazil by shutting down the factory that had produced Mercedes-Benz luxury vehicles since 2016.

Mercedes opened the factory when Brazilian industrial poli…

SHANGHAI – After being blacklisted by the Trump administration in 2019 for alleged threats to U.S. national security, Huawei Technologies is looking beyond its traditional telecommunications and smart phone operations in China.

One of the domestic industries the Chinese technology giant has quickly targeted is auto manufacturing. 

Huawei first laid out ambitious plans to become a supplier for intelligent and connected vehicles at the Shanghai auto show in April 2019. 

The first product that has enabled the company to quickly build up an automotive customer base is an in-vehicle, smart interactive system launched in late 2019.  

The system, dubbed Huawei HiCar, allows drivers to connect their cars with smartphones and enables services such as intelligent voice assistance and navigation.

Huawei HiCar was first adopted in December 2019 by Baojun, the brand owned by SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co., a light-vehicle joint venture be…

HONG KONG -- Embattled Chinese property developer Evergrande Group is in talks with smartphone maker Xiaomi and Shenzhen state-backed investment firms as it looks to sell part of a 65 percent stake in its electric vehicle unit, three sources said.

The Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group had a market capitalization of $12.5 billion on Thursday and one of the sources said the consortium is looking to buy a significant minority stake.

Evergrande, Xiaomi and Shenzhen's state asset regulator did not respond to requests for comment.

The talks were said by the sources to be at an early stage and subject to changes.

The developer said last week that it was in discussions with several independent third-party investors on the proposed sale of certain assets, including stakes in Evergrande NEV, as part of efforts to reduce debt.

Smartphone maker Xiaomi has been ramping up investments in EV suppliers after it earmarked an investment of $10 billion in M…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ Mercedes to leave Formula E racing in '22

Formula E champion Mercedes will withdraw from the all-electric series a year from now, at the end of season 8, to concentrate on Formula One, the carmaker said Wednesday.

The announcement came three days after Dutch driver Nyck de Vries won the Formula E world championship title after finishing eighth in the season's final race in Berlin, with Mercedes also winning the teams' title after Stoffel Vandoorne's third place.

"The company will concentrate its works motorsport activities on Formula One, reinforcing the sport's status as the fastest laboratory for developing and proving sustainable and scalable future performance technologies," the automaker said in a statement.

In December, German manufacturers Audi and BMW confirmed they would exit Formula E at the end of this year.

Mercedes announced a new strategic direction for its brand in July, with the aim of going all-el…

BERLIN -- Ford has cut production again at its Cologne plant in Germany due to delivery problems with semiconductors, the automaker said.

A Ford spokesman told Automotive News Europe sister publication Automobilwoche that there had been coronavirus-related failures at a chipmaker in Malaysia, which had led to delivery problems at a door module supplier.

From the beginning of May to mid-July, Fiesta production in Cologne had already been halted due to semiconductor problems.

"Due to a production stoppage at a semiconductor manufacturer, Ford Fiesta production at our Cologne plant will be suspended from August 23 to 28," a Ford spokesperson confirmed to ANE via email. "We are working as quickly as possible to resume production."

On Monday the workforce returned to the production halls after their month-long plant vacation to resume assembly of the Fiesta.

According to the Automobilwoche report, management announced in a letter to employees th…