Trade News

Lyft Inc. will sell its self-driving technology unit to Toyota Motor Corp. in a $550 million deal, the companies said on Monday, allowing the ride-hail company to hit its profitability target one quarter earlier.

The sale of Level 5 to Toyota's Woven Planet division will allow Lyft to focus on partnerships with self-driving companies that want to deploy their technology on its platform, rather than develop costly technology that has yet to be put to wide-scale use.

Lyft will receive $200 million cash upfront, with the remaining $350 million paid over five years, the companies said. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.

Lyft did not immediately say how it plans to invest the funds. But the sale will allow Lyft to report third-quarter profit on an adjusted basis of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization as long as the company continues to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, it noted.

Woven Planet, which Toyot…

Global ad agency Publicis Groupe has won the global media account for Stellantis, the automaker formed by the merger earlier this year of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Peugeot maker PSA Group, according to people familiar with the matter.

The holding company was the incumbent on the FCA portion of the business, which includes Jeep, Ram, Dodge, Fiat, Chrysler and Alfa Romeo. WPP was the incumbent for PSA, whose brands include Peugeot, Citroën, DS, Opel and Vauxhall. 

A Stellantis representative did not immediately provide comment. Publicis declined to comment and referred calls to the client. WPP declined to comment, although an internal memo circulated at the holding company's Mediacom unit today confirmed that the business has been consolidated at Publicis.

The win is significant for Publicis, which will grow its automotive roster with the addition of the PSA brands, which are not in the U.S. but have a European presence. Stellantis has 14 aut…

Self-driving technology company Waymo is the leader out of 15 companies developing automated driving systems, while Tesla comes in last, according to the latest leaderboard report from Guidehouse Insights.

The report, released Monday, evaluated the companies and categorized them into leaders, contenders, challengers and followers.

Leaders scored 75 or above in strategy and execution, while contenders earned between 50 and 75. Challengers scored higher than 25 but were deemed not yet contenders, and followers scored below 25.

Waymo scored 85.6 in Guidehouse's leaderboard, while Tesla had the lowest score, 34.7. Waymo, a Google affiliate, was also ranked the top vendor of automated driving vehicles in Guidehouse's leaderboard last year.

Messages left by Automotive News seeking comment from Waymo and Tesla were not immediately returned.

Nvidia Corp., Ford-backed self-driving startup Argo AI and Chinese Internet giant and autonomous driving dev…

DCD Automotive Holdings Inc., formed in 2015 after acquiring a group of dealerships from Ernie Boch Jr., has added two Boston-area Chevrolet stores.

The Norwood, Mass., group on March 2 bought Lannan Chevrolet of Lowell and Lannan Chevrolet of Woburn from the Lannan family. Terms were not disclosed, but the stores have been renamed Nucar Lannan Chevrolet of Lowell and Nucar Lannan Chevrolet of Woburn.

DCD CEO Chris Dagesse said the group had been talking for a couple of years with the Lannans regarding an acquisition.

"It was in our backyard in good markets, with Lowell and Woburn being good markets out in the Boston area," Dagesse told Automotive News. "And we just thought it was a great fit. They had a great team of people, which we haven't made any changes [to] whatsoever. We're just looking forward to running them as they are. They're very successful. I think there's some used-car growth opportunity there, but otherwise, very well-run stores, very s…

The Biden administration on Monday took a key step toward restoring California’s power to limit greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles and overturn a Trump-era policy that pitted the federal government against a state seeking to eventually ban conventional gasoline-powered cars.

The Environmental Protection Agency released a formal notice asking for public comment as it considers restoring a waiver that enables California to mandate zero-emission vehicles and enforce its own stringent limits on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle tailpipes. The Trump administration yanked that waiver in 2019.

Under the Clean Air Act, California has special treatment to set air pollution policies that are tougher than the federal government’s -- and other states may elect to adopt them. So far, 14 other states have, representing more than a third of the U.S. vehicle market.

“The 2019 decision to revoke the state’s waiver to enforce its greenhouse gas pollution s…

The Snethkamp Automotive Family has expanded in Michigan with another Stellantis dealership, this month adding Feeny Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram of Gaylord.

The store, sold by Bob Feeny on April 16, has been renamed Snethkamp Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram of Gaylord. Terms of the deal weren't released.

Mark Snethkamp Sr., president of the Highland Park, Mich., automotive group, said he learned of the opportunity through his lawyers at the Colombo & Colombo law firm. The firm also does work with Feeny, Snethkamp said.

Highland Park is where Snethkamp has one of its two other Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram stores in Southeast Michigan,

"It was a nice dealership that was well run, and we've retained all the employees and hope to continue its success and improve upon it," Snethkamp told Automotive News.

The Snethkamp group, now in its fourth generation and which has had only Chrysler and affiliated brand stores in its histo…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ Chip shortage fallout: Sparse lots

The toll keeps growing.

It took 11 weeks of microchip shortages before the number of vehicles taken out of North American production schedules reached 400,000, in late March. A little over a month later, the total is now approaching 800,000.

Those figures, from AutoForecast Solutions, show North America has been hit harder than any other region. The worldwide tally has now topped 2 million. AFS projects that at current rates, more than 3 million will be affected across the globe.

That's the annual output of a dozen busy assembly plants. And the longer things drag on, the higher the chances that a significant amount of lost production won't be made up.

"As scary and difficult and challenging as the early days were in COVID, the current supply shock is just as frustrating, if not more frustrating, for our team," Ford CEO Jim Farley said in our Congress Conversations interview th…

Billionaire Elon Musk will host “Saturday Night Live” for the first time on May 8, NBC said Saturday.

Musical guest Miley Cyrus will mark her sixth appearance as the musical guest. Cyrus retweeted the scheduling announcement of Saturday Night Live, which also streams on Peacock.

The news comes as Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, celebrates the arrival of the Dragon spacecraft at the International Space Station on Saturday.

Musk, who has a cult-like following on social media, has made appearances in entertainment shows over the years. In 2018, he smoked weed during a podcast with California comedian Joe Rogan that touched upon everything from flame throwers and artificial intelligence to the end of the universe.

Liza Dixon, a Ph.D. candidate studying human-machine interaction, discusses the dangers of automakers overstating the capabilities of their driver-assist systems and the delicate trust they must forge between motorists and technology.

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BERLIN -- Porsche is speeding up its e-mobility drive with plans for a German factory to manufacture battery cells for electric vehicles, CEO Oliver Blume told a German newspaper.

"Battery cells are a key technology for Germany's automobile industry which we must also have in our own country," Blume told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

Porsche wants to play a pioneering role in this," he said, adding that the battery cell factory would be built in the Swabian town of Tuebingen.

European automakers are looking to reduce their dependence on Asian manufacturers as they ramp up production of EVs to meet tougher environmental rules in the European Union.

Porsche will purchase EV batteries from its parent company Volkswagen Group which plans to build half a dozen battery cell plants across Europe.

"But there will also be a segment for high-performance battery cells," Blume said. "It's a Porsche domain. Just as we developed high-perfor…

Volkswagen Group has warned managers to prepare for a bigger production hit in the second quarter than in the first quarter due to a global chip shortage, the Financial Times reported.

"We are being told from the suppliers and within the Volkswagen Group that we need to face considerable challenges in the second quarter, probably more challenging than the first quarter," Wayne Griffiths, head of VW's Spanish brand Seat, told the paper.

Griffiths called the shortage the "biggest challenge" the company faces at the moment.

Production at Seat's Martorell plant outside Barcelona was currently "hand to mouth," Griffiths told the paper, with the brand deciding what cars to build only after it receives chips from suppliers.

VW has said it expects chip supply to remain tight in the coming months, adding it could not provide visibility for the full year.

The company has been unable to build 100,000 cars due to the shortage, CEO Herbert Diess said la…

DETROIT — After the bungled launch of the 2020 Explorer, Ford Motor Co. executives made clear that the automaker couldn't afford to stumble with its next round of high-profile vehicles, including the Mustang Mach-E electric crossover. Now, officials are going the extra mile to make the Detroit 3's first serious challenger to Tesla's electric vehicles a success.

Ford has proactively compensated buyers for delivery delays as production ramps up. It is even giving some buyers in New Jersey an extra $5,000 discount to make up for a state incentive that expired before their Mach-E was ready.

Meanwhile, Ford's public relations staff has been scouring the Internet to respond to owner complaints early on, with one official personally talking down dealerships that were demanding thousands of dollars over sticker price to leverage early demand.

Some of the tactics are new territory for a company with more than a century of experience in customer service. At stake…