Trade News

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…

The push to widen the adoption of electric vehicles in the U.S. is driving the conversion of utility poles and streetlights into EV charging destinations.

Installing streetlight and pole- mounted stations is part of a growing movement to create more curbside EV charging options in urban areas. The idea is to enhance the feasibility of owning and operating electric vehicles in areas where drivers are less likely to have access to off-street garages, driveways or parking lots.

Kansas City, Mo., plans to install EV chargers on 30 to 60 streetlights or utility poles before the end of this year as it prepares for the shift from combustion-powered vehicles to EVs. The initiative, part of a federally funded pilot project with Metropolitan Energy Center, an environmental nonprofit group, is aimed at testing curbside charging of EVs at existing on-street parking locations, to expand EV access for renters, multifamily building residents and taxis.

…

Later, federal investigators will determine the details of the latest fatal Tesla crash with autopsy-like precision.

They'll answer the specific questions. Such as whether Autopilot was engaged. Or whether it had been in the seconds before the Model S veered off the road, slammed into a tree and killed two people. Or whether the driver-assist system had been engaged but inadvertently deactivated when the driver climbed into the front passenger seat.

Yet the biggest mystery related to the crash, which occurred April 17, in Spring, Texas — what on Earth would compel the driver to abdicate responsibility for driving and physically move from behind the wheel — may already be solved.

"We have witness statements from people that said they left to test drive the vehicle without a driver, and to show the friend how it can drive itself," Mark Herman, constable of Harris County Precinct 4, told Reuters last week.

Of course, Tesl…

BERLIN -- German prosecutors have charged 15 executives from Volkswagen Group and a supplier in connection with the diesel emissions scandal that emerged in 2015, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office said Saturday.

The suspects are accused of aiding and abetting fraud in combination with tax evasion, indirect false certification and criminal advertising, said Klaus Ziehe from the prosecutor's office in the northern city of Braunschweig.

The scandal saw more than nine million vehicles of the VW, Audi, Seat and Skoda brands sold to consumers with a so-called defeat device which helped to circumvent environmental tests of diesel engines.

The prosecutor's office did not name any of the charged executives, who are accused of bringing cars onto the market in a condition that was not officially approved, meaning they were illegal and advertised misleadingly, Ziehe said.

He added the indictment had now reached 1,554 pages.

The prosecutions were …

MILAN -- Alfa Romeo's new CEO, Jean-Philippe Imparato, said his passion for the Italian sports-car brand led him to accept what could be the toughest role of his career.

Imparato, a veteran of PSA Group, was chosen to lead Alfa's Romeo's latest turnaround by Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares in January after Alfa owner Fiat Chrysler Automobiles merged with PSA.

The French executive said he had no problem in switching from the much larger Peugeot brand, which he had led successfully, to the same role in Alfa Romeo, a company that has gone through numerous failed turnarounds. The brand currently faces steeply slumping sales and a delay in launching its crucial compact crossover.

At Peugeot, Imparato was in charge of a few thousand employees. At Alfa he said he has "a very agile team of 49 people."

"It's like a start-up, we can take decisions in five minutes," Imparato told journalists during in a media roundtable on April 19.

His move from Fran…