Trade News

For many car enthusiasts, attending the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is a bucket-list occasion. Since 1950, the annual event in Carmel, Calif., has hosted the world’s most beautiful and expensive collectible cars for a week of lavish parties, blue-chip auctions, glamorous rallies, and exclusive high-roller meetings.

It was canceled last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, losing half of its routine $2 million-plus in sponsorships and ticket sales—not to mention the millions generated by the influx of tens of thousands of the world’s most avid car lovers to the Monterey Peninsula. But Sandra Button, the chairman of the Pebble, as long-timers call it, confirmed on May 12 that the show will indeed go on this year on its usual date, the fourth Sunday in August.

How many automakers come on board, however, remains to be seen. Mercedes-Benz, for years one of the brands with the biggest presence, will reportedly not inhabit the circus-size white tent it has …

A former Gentex Corp. project engineer who says she was advised to ask male co-workers to explain things to her to "make them feel better about working with her" has filed a lawsuit against the company.

Elizabeth Helminski is suing Gentex — a Zeeland, Mich., supplier of dimmable rearview mirrors and other electronic components — alleging gender discrimination and retaliation.

Helminski says she was regularly treated differently from her male co-workers. Brian Brackenbury, her supervisor at the time, is also named as a defendant.

Helminski was hired by Gentex in September 2018 and worked in a male-dominated environment, the lawsuit says.

"It was clear in the first couple months of employment that in addition to the males on the leadership team, there was generally a pro-male 'bro culture' in the working environment in many departments," the complaint said.

Helminski believes she was terminated in late September 2019 for raising concerns abo…

House lawmakers advanced language authorizing $8 billion for the U.S. Postal Service to buy more electric vehicles as the agency modernizes its aging fleet.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee added the measure before approving and sending to the full House legislation aimed at better tracking mailed ballots. Separately the panel approved a bill to shore up Postal Service finances after years of losses at the agency.

The Postal Service in February announced that Oshkosh Corp. had won a contract for tens of thousands of mail-delivery vans, and initially said only 10 percent of the fleet would be electric.

The award set off complaints from lawmakers dismayed at funding a fleet dependent on polluting technology. The amendment adopted Thursday would ensure that 75 percent of purchased vehicles would be electric or zero-emission vehicles.

Oshkosh has said its vehicle can be built to use either electric power or a gasoline engine.

The contra…

China Evergrande Group raised about HK$10.6 billion ($1.4 billion) selling shares in its electric vehicle unit, the latest effort by the nation’s most indebted developer to boost capital.

The sale amounts to about 2.7 percent of outstanding shares in China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group, the real estate firm said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Thursday.

Evergrande NEV shares tumbled as the shares were sold at a 20 percent discount.

Evergrande has been selling assets to repair its balance sheet in line with Chinese regulators’ efforts to deleverage the property sector. The company was in breach of all key metrics for reducing debt levels -- known as the “three red lines” -- at the end of last year, even as many of its peers improved.

After reporting its second straight year of declining profit in March, Evergrande unveiled plans to roughly halve the remainder of its borrowings over the next two years. To meet the goal, it need…

BEIJING -- WeRide, the Guangzhou-based autonomous driving startup backed by Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi Motors, said it raised "hundreds of millions" of dollars in a funding round that it said valued the firm at $3.3 billion.

WeRide, which is testing vehicles in California, as well as in China's southern city of Guangzhou - where it is headquartered - and the central city of Zhengzhou, did not disclose details on the size of the funding.

Investors taking part in the latest funding round include IDG Capital and Homeric Capital, WeRide said in a statement on Thursday. It raised $310 million in January.

WeRide is pursuing a Level 4 autonomous standard, in which the vehicle can handle all aspects of driving in most circumstances with no human intervention.

Last month it received a permit to test two passenger vehicles on California's public roads without a safety driver in the front section.

Automakers and technology firms are investing bill…

Vroom Inc. reported an almost doubling in retail unit sales along with a wider first-quarter net loss.

The online used-vehicle retailer's e-commerce unit sales grew 96 percent to a record 15,504 in the period. Wholesale unit sales rose 84 percent to 8,641, the company said Wednesday.

Vroom was able to capitalize on higher inventory levels in an environment of high demand but tight overall vehicle supplies.

The company highlighted its ability to buy vehicles from customers in the quarter. CEO Paul Hennessy told investors and analysts in a conference call that over the past three quarters the company has increased acquired inventory from customers -- as a percentage of sales -- from 31 percent in the third quarter of 2020 to 41 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020 and now 54 percent in the latest period.

"Supply will continue to be a focus and area of investment for Vroom, particularly given the uncertainty over the duration of the current supply a…

WASHINGTON -- The National Highway Traffic Safety Agency said on Wednesday it is opening a safety probe into a fatal May 5 Tesla crash in California amid growing concerns about the automaker's driver assistance systems.

A Tesla crashed into an overturned truck on a highway near Fontana, Calif., killing the Tesla's driver and injuring the truck driver and a motorist who had stopped to help him, the California Highway Patrol said.

The highway patrol report did not say whether the Tesla was operating on Autopilot, its semi-autonomous driving system, when the crash occurred. The Mack truck had crashed and overturned five minutes earlier, blocking two lanes of the highway, the report said.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

NHTSA said it previously had opened 28 special investigations into Tesla crashes, with 24 pending.

Police in Texas last month said they believed an April 17 fatal crash near Houston occurred with no o…

Volvo Cars is considering an initial public stock offering on the Nasdaq Stockholm stock exchange later this year.

The Swedish automaker -- controlled by China's Zhejiang Geely Holding -- abandoned merger plans with its Hong Kong-listed sister brand, Geely Automobile, in February. During that announcement Volvo hinted that it may seek a listing of its own.

Volvo said in a statement Wednesday that the potential listing could be a "logical next step" on the company's "capital market journey."

“[It] could create an opportunity for global investors to participate in our journey to become a leader in the fast-growing premium and intelligent electric vehicle segment while continuing to deliver on what customers expect from the Volvo brand,” Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson said in the statement.

Previous estimates of Volvo's value have ranged from $8.1 billion to $11.6 billion.

When asked by Automotive News Europe in February about those figures, Samue…

An unprecedented surge in prices for used cars was the biggest contributor to the surprise jump in U.S. inflation last month.

The cost of previously owned sedans, pickups and SUVs soared 10 percent in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the fastest climb ever in data that go back to 1953. It accounted for more than a third of the 0.8 percent increase in the consumer price index, which was four times the level economists estimated.

With fewer new cars being made amid a shortage in critical semiconductors, both retail consumers and rental car companies have gone to the used-vehicle market to get the wheels they need. Wholesale prices have soared as a result, up 54 percent in April from a year earlier at Manheim, the nation’s largest vehicle auction house.

Most analysts say the increase in car prices, like the spike in inflation as a whole, will likely be transitory as production ramps up and demand subsides. Auto sales had soared amid a pan…

The new-vehicle inventory shortage resulting from the microchip crisis is challenging the finance and insurance process at U.S. dealerships, changing which products are selling and how best to navigate customers' financial situations.

F&I product companies say dealership sales of service contracts and guaranteed asset protection products are rising, though products such as key fob protection and tire-and-wheel are falling by the wayside. Here's what experts are seeing.

David Adcock, executive vice president of Binary Automotive Solutions:

"Now is a good time to make sure we're paying attention to processes in the store. Things as simple as reordering the menu. There are some products doing better than others. With pre-owned-heavy inventory, maintenance becomes more important, even a paint protectant. We're hearing that people are buying these cars with the intention of being a stopgap between now and the time the inventory comes back. Customers are…

GM Financial reported first-quarter net income of $878 million, a surge from the pandemic-impacted first quarter of 2020, driven in part by used-vehicle prices that continue to climb during the global semiconductor shortage.

"GM Financial has provided a significant offset to some of the semiconductor headwinds. Strong used-vehicle prices combined with consumer credit strength helped to drive" first-quarter profit, General Motors CFO Paul Jacobson told analysts last week. "The used-vehicle prices that GM Financial is clearly benefiting from [are] likely to stay in place as long as new-car inventories remain low. That's an example of ... a variable that's sort of hedged directly against the challenges of the semiconductor."

Since Jan. 1, GM Financial's used-vehicle prices have climbed about 30 percent, Dan Berce, CEO at GM Financial, told Automotive News. Used-vehicle values rose 11 percent from the first quarter of 2020.

The share of…

DETROIT — U.S. District Judge David Lawson appointed lawyer Neil Barofsky on Wednesday as an independent monitor to oversee the UAW as part of its six-year corruption case settlement with the federal government.

In a motion approving the government's request to appoint Barofsky, which was supported by the UAW, Lawson wrote that the court "finds that Neil Barofsky is qualified to serve in the role of Monitor, has sufficient knowledge and experience to do so effectively, and is free from any apparent conflict of interest."

Barofsky, a partner at law firm Jenner & Block, previously was appointed to oversee Credit Suisse Securities and Credit Suisse AG following billion-dollar settlements, prosecutors said. He also was an attorney in the Southern District of New York and was appointed inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program instituted by the U.S. Treasury after the Great Recession.

“I am honored by this historic assignment and look forw…