Trade News

DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. will reinstate mask mandates at facilities in Missouri and Florida, effective Wednesday, as the delta variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 continues to spread.

The automaker informed employees of the decision Tuesday. Additionally, Ford said it will require U.S. employees to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 before any international business travel, based on recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Missouri is home to Ford's Kansas City Assembly Plant, where the company builds the profitable F-150 pickup and Transit van.

The UAW and Detroit 3 automakers dropped mask mandates at facilities around the country July 12, but cases have again started to rise in some parts of the U.S. Ford said it could make additional changes in the future.

"We will continue to evaluate COVID-19 case data to make further protocol changes," the automaker said in a statement.

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One of the most surprising things I learned in my time working for Ford Motor Co. is how far in advance automakers are working. This may be 2021 to us, but if you work in product development or engineering at an automaker, it's more like 2026 to you.

Jaguar Land Rover CEO Thierry Bollore, who took over about a year ago, this year announced a new strategy for the Jaguar brand. It entails ending production of all the vehicles in Jag's current lineup in 2025 and replacing them with two, possibly three, electric vehicles that share a platform separate from those underpinning Land Rover vehicles.

Bollore says JLR is looking to partner with another automaker for the chassis planned for the next-generation electric Jags.

This may be one instance where an automaker isn't working years into the future. If JLR has identified a potential partner, officials are being coy about it. Bollore's "Reimagine" plan was unwrapped in February, and it seems likely that nothin…

Add Detroit to the cities where Amazon is testing its new battery-powered electric delivery van designed and built by Rivian.

Last week in Royal Oak, a suburb north of the Detroit city limits, an Amazon driver in a hand-built Rivian van, accompanied by a Rivian engineer, was delivering packages. It's one of three vans currently being tested in the Detroit area.

Amazon plans to test the vans in 16 cities ahead of the official rollout, which starts next year with a production run of 10,000 vehicles. The vans have been spotted in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver and Tulsa, Okla.

The Rivian engineer accompanying the Amazon driver said the vans undergoing testing in the Detroit area were assembled at Rivian's Plymouth, Mich., engineering and design center. The van looked production ready, with no obvious prototype or unfinished parts.

Amazon has invested more than $700 million in Rivian and plans to purchase 100,000 elect…

Tesla Inc. on Monday posted its largest-ever quarterly profit — $1.14 billion — as it delivered a record number of vehicles in the second quarter despite a global semiconductor shortage that has hampered much of the auto industry.

Revenue during the quarter nearly doubled to $11.9 billion, with automotive gross margins hitting 28 percent, the electric vehicle maker said. The company also was aided by $354 million in sales of regulatory credits to competitors, 17 percent less than a year earlier.

Tesla delivered 201,304 vehicles in the quarter, up 121 percent from the same period a year earlier. All but 1,895 were Model 3 sedans or Model Y crossovers. 

The company's second-quarter net income was roughly equal to its total profit in the previous 12 months and more than 10 times the $104 million it earned in the second quarter of 2020.

Tesla suffered a $23 million hit from its investment in Bitcoin during the second quarter. It had made $101 m…

LMP Automotive Holdings Inc. said it agreed to purchase four dealerships in three states.

The group plans to buy Cadillac and Nissan dealerships in Houston for $141 million, acquire a Kia dealership in Connecticut for more than $9 million and spend $19.2 million for a Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram dealership in New York.

The three transactions include dealership real estate.

The deals, announced since July 19 and each expected to close in the fourth quarter, are the latest planned acquisitions for the small public auto retailer that bought its first half-dozen franchised dealerships in the first quarter for $143.6 million. In May, it bought an 85 percent stake in a Subaru store in Mount Hope, W.Va., for $3.2 million.

LMP said the two Texas dealerships are expected to generate $250 million in annual revenue.

LMP and sellers David Peacock and partner Aldo Paret entered into an asset purchase agreement July 16, according to a regulatory filing, to…

DETROIT — General Motors has hired Omar Vargas, who has worked for 3M Company, PepsiCo and the U.S. Department of Justice, as its vice president of global public policy.

Vargas' role is effective Aug. 1, GM said in a statement Monday.

"Omar Vargas brings over 20 years of experience leading public policy teams and working collaboratively to find policy solutions to complex issues," Craig Glidden, GM executive vice president, global public policy, and general counsel, said in the statement. "His broad experience managing issues across multiple industries and working with governments, both within the U.S. and globally, make him the right person to advocate for policy solutions in support of GM's vision, including our commitment for an all-electric future."

Vargas will report to Glidden. He replaces Everett Eissenstat, who plans to leave the company on Aug. 1 to pursue other opportunities. Eissenstat had been vice president of global public policy since 2018…

Chinese electric vehicle maker Li Auto Inc. has received the green light from the Hong Kong stock exchange for a listing in the city, following in the steps of its rival XPeng Inc., which completed such a share sale last month.

U.S.-traded Li Auto could raise $1 billion to $2 billion in the listing, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Its updated listing documents were published on the HKEX website on Monday, indicating it has received approval from the bourse.

A spokeswoman said the company wouldn’t comment further beyond the prospectus.

Li Auto is pushing ahead with a share sale in the Asian financial hub at a time when Beijing is cracking down on overseas listings by Chinese companies. Shares of some of the biggest U.S.-listed Chinese firms have dropped recently as concerns about the regulatory onslaught deepen. Li Auto’s Nasdaq shares fell 8 percent on Friday, giving the company a market capitalization of $27.4 billion.

Earlier t…

Ford Motor Co. tapped Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao to tell the story of how its “electrified” classic cars are shaping the brand’s future in a new Olympics ad from Wieden+Kennedy New York.

Zhao, repped out of Caviar for commercials, captures scenes of how the electric versions of its most popular and famous vehicles -- the F150 Lightning, the Mustang Mach E and the ETransit -- are helping to improve the lives of everyday Americans in new ways.

As a farmer looks upon a dark house that brightens when connected to his truck, the voiceover announces, “Here’s an idea—take the familiar and make it revolutionary. Take the truck our parents used to build this country and make it so it can power our homes.”

Alongside nostalgic scenes of engineers hard at work designing the Mustang back in the day, the voice over reads, “Take the original zero-to-sixty head-turner—give it zero vehicle emissions … Take who we are and make it into where we’re going.”

See m…

A Lucid Air with its limited-edition metallic paint-job called “eureka gold” glints, parked outside of the Nasdaq.

The luxury car, a part of EV maker’s Dream lineup, is evocative of the path it took to public markets via blank-check.

Lucid Group Inc.’s debut listing on Monday comes after it completed a reverse-merger with financier Michael Klein’s special purpose acquisition company Churchill Capital Corp. IV. The stock, now trading under the symbol LCID, received a warm reception. Shares rose 5.9 percent to close at $24.25 on Monday.

When the deal was first announced in February, it was the largest proposed SPAC transaction at that time, referred by many in Wall Street as “peak SPAC” and Lucid was even compared with Tesla. Yet, for all of the institutional support the deal appears to have, the company’s fate will depend on the loyalty of shareholders, many of whom are new to investing and trading on apps.

“Retail investors are connected and act i…

Lordstown Motors Corp., the troubled Ohio automaker, said on Monday hedge fund YA II PN Ltd has committed to purchase up to $400 million of the company's shares, over a three-year period, coming at a crucial time when the electric-truck maker faces heightened regulatory scrutiny related to its SPAC merger and vehicle pre-orders.

Under the deal, YA can receive nearly 35 million Lordstown shares upon execution of the agreement, subject to the approval of Lordstown shareholders, as well as a small discount on the shares whenever purchased, according to a regulatory filing.

Lordstown's shares rose earlier in the day, but ultimately fell 2.5 percent to close at $7.29 on Monday.

Some industry observers called it a good deal for Lordstown.

"Existing shareholders are not taking $400 million worth of dilution. It's like a standby commitment on the part of YA to buy stock when Lordstown says it needs more money," said Erik Gordon, professor at the Universit…

Batteries are adding weight to vehicles in the emerging electric vehicle era. Henkel Corp. is developing weight-saving concepts to offset the addition, by introducing adhesive products to battery structures.

The German chemical, electronics assembly and consumer goods supplier says its Loctite- branded adhesives for constructing battery packs offer a reduction in weight, in addition to dispensing faster, curing in less time and costing less than earlier iterations of industry adhesive-bonding applications.

It's a critical opportunity as automakers switch from using old-fashioned nuts and bolts and welds to other bonding materials.

"Fasteners and rivets are painful to work with," said Pradyumna Goli, Henkel's business development manager for eMobility. "With adhesives and sealants — anything material-based — you get more homogeneous and consistent performance, and you know exactly what to expect."

But that puts new pressure on the supplier.

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