Trade News

LOS ANGELES — Honda Motor Co. is dropping another car, this time the slow-selling Acura NSX supercar that has served as a sporty halo for the luxury performance brand.

Last year, Honda killed off the Fit hatchback, Civic Coupe and the manual-transmission version of the Accord sedan. Both the Honda and Acura brands are pivoting toward light trucks to boost volume.

For the final year of the second-generation NSX, Acura will offer a limited run of 350 units of the supercar globally in a sport-trim Type S spec, the company said Monday. In the U.S., Acura sold just 128 units of the NSX in 2020, about half the 2019 number. U.S. sales of the latest NSX peaked at 581 in 2017.

"Every 2022 Acura NSX produced at the Performance Manufacturing Center in Ohio will be a limited-edition Type S model powered by an enhanced version of the supercar's twin-turbo V6" and all-wheel-drive system, the company said.

"In celebration of the final year of NSX production, j…

Autonomous vehicle startup Argo AI has secured a permit to start giving free rides to consumers in California.

The company may now offer rides as long as it has human safety operators in control of its vehicles. The company announced the development last week on Twitter, calling it "a great step that enhances the testing we're doing in & around Palo Alto." Argo becomes the ninth company to get a green light from the California Public Utilities Commission to conduct "drivered pilot" programs with passengers aboard. So far, only Cruise, an AV company backed by General Motors, is allowed to conduct driverless tests with passengers. It secured the driverless permit in June.

Argo, which is backed by Ford Motor Co., nabbed the drivered permit days after it announced a partnership with Lyft Inc. to offer driverless ride-hailing services in Miami and Austin, Texas. The companies indicated they plan to deploy approximately 1,000 self-driving vehicles in cities where…

Toyota Motor North America has opted to ax the large Avalon sedan after the 2022 model year, the Japanese automaker told suppliers in a letter Monday.

The Avalon, the mass market brand's flagship sedan, was due to be refreshed in the second half of next year. However, the automaker's purchasing department informed suppliers that Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky will end output of the Avalon.

"Originally introduced as Toyota's flagship sedan in 1994, Avalon built the reputation for offering comfort, innovation, quality and safety that customers expect from a full-sized sedan," two Toyota vice presidents in purchasing and supplier development wrote in the Aug. 2 letter. "Toyota will continue to support service and parts needs of our existing Avalon customers."

A spokesman for Toyota Motor North America confirmed the decision.

"While Avalon will be discontinued after the 2022 model year, Toyota remains committed to the sedan segment and we encour…

WASHINGTON -- A $1 trillion infrastructure bill under debate by the U.S. Senate includes a provision that directs U.S. regulators to mandate a passive technology to prevent intoxicated drivers from starting vehicles and avert more than 10,000 deaths annually.

For more than 15 years, automakers and others have studied potential technological fixes to address the roughly one-third of annual U.S. traffic deaths that involved impaired drivers.

The legislative push has won the backing of the advocacy group Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the auto insurance industry and some alcohol trade associations.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) said last year in a study that alcohol-detection systems that prevent impaired driving could save upward of 9,000 lives annually.

Drunken driving deaths cost the United States $44 billion in economic costs and $210 billion in comprehensive societal costs, according to a 2010 study. U.S. police departme…

India said it has no plans to cut import duties on electric vehicles, weeks after Tesla Inc. appealed to the government to slash taxes, and its billionaire chief Elon Musk floated the possibility of a local factory once it starts selling wholly-built units from overseas in the world’s second-most-populous nation.

“No such proposal is under consideration in Ministry of Heavy Industries,” junior minister Krishan Pal Gurjar told parliament on Monday, referring to the ministry in charge of making policies for the auto industry. He added that the government is however taking steps to promote the use of electric cars by lowering domestic taxes and adding charging stations.

The reply to lawmakers may be perceived as part of the tug-of-war between Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration, which wants to boost local manufacturing, and Tesla, which is urging India to allow it to import cars more cheaply before it commits to setting up a factory in the country. Tesl…

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) has taken a 4.69 percent stake in QuantumScape Corp., which is developing solid-state lithium metal batteries, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing by the company showed.

QIA's stake in QuantumScape, whose batteries will be used in electric cars, is worth around $446 million at the company's current market value of $9.5 billion, according to Refinitiv Eikon data on Monday.

Gulf sovereign funds have stepped up investments in electric cars, new technologies and renewables, as they diversify their investments away from fossil fuel.

The Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of neighboring Saudi Arabia, recently made huge gains through the listing of Lucid Group after it initially invested in the company in 2018. PIF owns 62.7 percent of Lucid.

Five CEOs of publicly traded U.S. automotive companies realized more than $24 million in total compensation last year, according to the Automotive News/Equilar CEO Compensation Study.

Jensen Huang of Nvidia was the highest-earning CEO by far. His compensation totaled $255 million, including a base salary of $1 million and $214.9 million in stock option gains.

General Motors' Mary Barra, who received a $2 million salary, was No. 2 with $40.3 million in total compensation, followed by the CEOs of Illinois Tool Works, Eaton and Uber.

The study analyzed data for 48 companies, including automakers, suppliers and public retailers. Median compensation for the 48 CEOs was $6.4 million in 2020, compared with $7.1 million in 2019.

Among CEOs who have been in their positions for at least two years, median compensation increased 9 percent, said Charlie Pontrelli, senior project manager at Equilar.

The study calculates t…

Building out enough charging infrastructure to meet the expected increase in electric vehicles takes a village.

One key part of that village? Cities.

Cities and municipality-affiliated utilities across the U.S. play a role in complementing infrastructure progress made at the state and regional level, one project site at a time.

While federal, state and regional programs often have access to greater sources of funding, certain city-specific charging problems require city-centered solutions, said Jacob Orenberg, capital projects coordinator at Seattle City Light, a public utility company in Washington.

"There are some barriers to electrification that really only the city can address," Orenberg said.

Seattle presents one particularly unique example. "A lot of our neighborhoods and districts were built before, say, 1950," he said. "As a result, even a lot of the single-family homes here don't actually have…

The first special edition Land Rover Defender arrives this month, priced at $91,350, including shipping. The Defender Trophy Edition sports a wrapped exterior and black exterior pack, air suspension, V-8 engine, deployable roof ladder, front undershield, integrated air compressor and other off-road equipment. Only 220 will be built this year. Buyers get an opportunity to compete in a one-day off-road adventure in Asheville, N.C. The Defender, revived in 2020, has become the brand's second-highest volume vehicle globally behind the Range Rover Evoque.