Trade News

Two men are facing criminal charges over the sale of firearms off a car dealership lot in Hutto, Texas, about 30 miles northeast of Austin.

Craig Tondre, 42, formerly a sales manager at Covert Ford Hutto, part of the Texas-based Covert Auto Group, was arrested in April on suspicion of illegally selling weapons and ammunition. Tondre worked with another dealership employee, 44-year-old Joshua Ellard, to sell them, according to criminal complaints filed April 6 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. Ellard was also arrested that month.

Tondre is charged with dealing firearms without a license, while Ellard — who was previously convicted in Florida of second-degree murder — is charged as a felon in possession of a firearm and a machine gun.

Tondre and Ellard were fired "immediately after management was informed of their arrests on allegations of selling illegal firearms," Covert Auto Group said in a statement last week to KXAN-TV. Th…

Footage from a home security camera shows the owner of a Tesla Model S entered the driver's seat of his vehicle shortly before a fatal crash that occurred last month in Spring, Texas.

The National Transportation Safety Board issued a preliminary report Monday on the deadly incident.

Crash investigators said the 59-year-old car owner entered the driver's seat and his 69-year-old passenger entered the front passenger seat at the owner's house. The car then left the driveway and crashed 550 feet down the street, according to the preliminary report. It did not indicate how fast the car was going but said the speed limit along Hammock Dunes Place was 30 mph.

The report does not address where the occupants were found in the cabin following the crash.

Initial reports had indicated the driver was not behind the wheel at the time of impact, leading to questions about the potential role of the Autopilot driver-assist system in the crash. "There was n…

The largest U.S. labor union is leading a complaint over working conditions at an auto parts factory in Mexico, the first case to test whether enforcement provisions in a new trade agreement can help to improve working conditions.

The AFL-CIO, together with other organizations filed a complaint against Tridonex, a factory in Matamoros in the northern state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, they said in a statement Monday. It’s the first complaint filed under the rapid-response mechanism of the U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement, which went into force in July and replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The AFL-CIO and Democrats made strong labor rules and enforcement mechanisms for Mexico a key demand to win their support for the USMCA in 2019, concerned that the pact it was replacing lacked both. U.S. labor unions have long complained that Mexican factories under NAFTA denied workers’ rights to keep down salaries and unfairly undercut the U.S. on cost.

In …

China is shaping up to be the first real test of Big Tech’s ambitions in the world of carmaking, with giants from Huawei Technologies Co. to Baidu Inc. plowing almost $19 billion into electric and self-driving vehicle ventures widely seen as the future of transport.

While Apple Inc. has long had plans for its own car and Alphabet Inc. has Waymo, its autonomous driving unit, the size -- and speed -- of the move by China’s tech titans puts them at the vanguard of that broader push. The lure is an industry that’s becoming increasingly high tech as it pivots away from the combustion engine, with sensors and operating systems making cars more like computers, and the prospect of autonomy re-envisioning how people use will them.

As the world’s biggest market for new-energy cars, China is a key battlefield. Established automakers like Volkswagen Group and General Motors Co. are already slogging it out with local upstarts such as market darling Nio Inc. and Xpeng Inc. …

DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. on Monday confirmed its upcoming battery-electric pickup will be called the F-150 Lightning, and it will be unveiled at its world headquarters in Dearborn, Mich., on May 19.

The automaker said the reveal will be broadcast live across Ford's social media channels and will be shown in New York's Times Square and on the Las Vegas Boulevard. In all, the company says there will be more than 30 ways to watch either physically or digitally.

"Every so often, a new vehicle comes along that disrupts the status quo and changes the game ... Model T, Mustang, Prius, Model 3. Now comes the F-150 Lightning," Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a statement. "America's favorite vehicle for nearly half a century is going digital and fully electric. F-150 Lightning can power your home during an outage; it's even quicker than the original F-150 Lightning performance truck; and it will constantly improve through over-the-air updates."

Ford previously used th…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ They're baaaaack! Reports of the demise of auto shows were ... well ... way wrong

We're so vain.

We in the media probably thought auto shows were about us.

And who would blame us? For decades, automaker execs crashed through convention center windows, rappelled from hall ceilings and herded cattle on nearby streets, all in a bid to capture more "media buzz" than their rivals.

And when they decided that spending a million dollars or more for a 20-minute time slot wasn't worth it anymore, we started in with our "wither auto show" headlines.

And sure, that may actually have applied to the biggest venues, mainly Detroit's North American International Auto Show. Pullouts by high-profile German automakers prompted Detroit into some soul searching that resulted in its move away from its traditional snowy January format.

But in the rest of the U.S., it's been a different matter. According to Foresight Research, …

WASHINGTON -- Ford Motor Co. is recalling nearly 617,00 Explorers in the United States at the request of regulators because retention pins could loosen and allow roof rail covers to detach from the vehicle.

The recall covers 2016 through 2019 model year vehicles. Dealers will install push-pins and replace any damaged rail clips and roof rail covers, as necessary.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in April had requested Ford conduct a safety recall after first inquiring about the issue in early 2020 following 11 reports of roof rail cover detachment.

Ford in November approved a onetime repair and extended coverage action for 10 years or 150,000 miles to address the issue.

Billionaire Elon Musk dropped a surprise early in his hotly anticipated turn as host of "Saturday Night Live," saying in his monologue that he "is the first person with Asperger's" to host the show, before clowning through skits for the first global livestream of the NBCUniversal comedy show.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc. and one of the world's richest individuals, opened his monologue by telling an audience in more than 100 countries he is "the first person with Asperger's to host SNL. At least the first to admit it." The billionaire made light of his tendency to speak in a monotone, adding "I'm pretty good at running human in emulation mode."

Asperger's syndrome is a condition on the autism spectrum that is associated with difficulty in social interaction, and sometimes is referred to as high functioning autism.

Comedian and Saturday Night Live alumni Dan Aykroyd has spoken in interviews about being diagnosed with a mild form of Asperger's. He hosted Sa…

Anthony Foxx, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, discusses President Biden’s infrastructure proposal, the appeal of removing certain highways and ways to ensure all communities benefit from transportation’s future.

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