Trade News

DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. is delaying by three months return-to-work plans for most of its U.S. salaried employees amid a surge in virus cases in Michigan.

The automaker had previously planned to allow non-place dependent workers the opportunity to return to the office starting in July and confirmed the timing as recently as last month when it announced a new hybrid work model.

Those plans changed this week after the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration extended emergency rules set to expire this week that banned non-essential in-person office work. The ban now extends until October 14 but can be modified or withdrawn at any time.

"The health and safety of our team is our first priority," Ford said in a statement. "Local guidelines continue to inform our return to workplace protocols and given the announcement by the State of Michigan, we will delay the gradual return to campus we had planned with our hybrid work …

Collaboration between the public and private sectors will be key to advancing smart cities of the future, industry leaders said during a panel portion of SAE International's WCX Digital Summit this week.

Public-private partnerships are key for mutually beneficial technology deployments and can help expedite these deployments, said Blaine Leonard, transportation technology engineer at the Utah Department of Transportation.

"As an agency, we used to have the luxury of allowing new developments to mature over time," Leonard said Wednesday in a session on smart cities. "In this environment today, with these kinds of technologies, it's just moving too fast to afford us that kind of time.

"The government agency has to alter its own culture to some degree to accept risk. We're sort of prone to not doing that," he added. "It's tough sometimes to turn these large ships. We just have to do that."

Part of accepting risk means allocating portions of public b…

DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. on Wednesday announced more downtime at a number of key assembly plants, including two more weeks for the F-150 pickup -- the top-selling vehicle in the U.S. -- due to the ongoing semiconductor shortage.

In a memo to employees obtained by Automotive News and confirmed with the company, Ford said the Chicago and Flat Rock, Mich., plants as well as both the F-150 and Transit van sides of its Kansas City, Mo., plant will be down the weeks of April 19 and 26. Production at its plant in Avon Lake, Ohio, will be limited to Super Duty chassis cabs and medium-duty trucks those weeks.

The downtime is in addition to what the company announced last week.

Additionally, Ford said its Kentucky Truck plant in Louisville will be down the weeks of April 26 and May 3 and will remove overtime from May 8 to 31.

Industry research firm AutoForecast Solutions estimated lost production of almost 408,000 vehicles for Ford due to the shor…

Connected and autonomous vehicles bring a lot of benefits to the transportation and mobility spaces.

But broader deployment and adoption of these advanced vehicles could impact the overall energy consumption of these sectors, industry experts warned during a panel that was part of SAE International's WCX Digital Summit this week.

A vehicle's level of automation, type of connectivity, class, powertrain type and the type of connected or automated functions it has can all influence its energy consumption, David Anderson, program manager for energy efficient mobility systems at the U.S. Department of Energy, said Wednesday in a session on the energy implications of connected and autonomous vehicles.

Technology adoption, the operating environment and vehicle test procedures all have an impact as well, he said.

A lot of opportunities for reducing energy consumption can come specifically from the light-duty sector, said Chris McCarthy, autonomous vehicle…

General Motors and South Korean joint-venture partner LG Chem Ltd. will announce a second U.S. battery cell manufacturing plant on Friday, revealing plans for a $2.3 billion factory in Spring Hill, Tenn., three people familiar with the matter said.

The plant will use a different, more cost-effective battery chemistry than the one the companies will offer from the joint-venture plant they are building in Lordstown, Ohio, the sources said on Wednesday.

The battery will be for the Cadillac Lyriq electric crossover vehicle that GM will begin building at its nearby Spring Hill assembly plant next year, the sources said.

The timing of the Tennessee battery plant's opening is unclear, but there will be a period when the battery is supplied for the Lyriq by another LG facility until the Tennessee plant opens and it will not come from Lordstown, one of the sources said.

GM would not confirm the details and declined further comment, and a spokesman for LG d…

Audi is aiming at buyers in the upper end of the compact segment for full-electric vehicles with the Q4 e-tron unveiled Wednesday, while adding a key entry-level EV to the brand’s expanding lineup of battery-powered vehicles.

It’s the first Audi based on parent Volkswagen Group’s MEB electric-only platform that also underpins the VW ID3 compact hatchback and ID4 compact crossover.

The Q4 e-tron and the coupe-styled Q4 Sportback e-tron are built in VW’s plant in Zwickau, Germany, alongside the ID3 and ID4. Production started in March.

They have an 82-kilowatt-hour battery pack and two electric motors for a combined output of up to 295 hp and a range of up to 520 km (323 miles) under Europe's WLTP tests. The EVs will rival the Tesla Model Y as well as more mainstream electric crossovers such as Nissan’s forthcoming Ariya.

The Q4 e-tron and Q4 Sportback e-tron are expected to arrive in the U.S. toward the end of the year, Audi said in a statement. P…

Canadian startup Li-Cycle Corp. plans a third battery-recycling facility in North America, doubling its capacity in the region as the global electric-vehicle boom gathers momentum.

The center, to be located near Phoenix, will be capable of processing up to 10,000 metric tons of end-of-life batteries and battery-manufacturing scrap per year, the company said in a statement Wednesday. That’s equal to about 20,000 electric vehicles, according to Tim Johnston, Li-Cycle’s co-founder and executive chairman.

Li-Cycle is among a handful of companies looking to cash in on demand for the recovered materials, with companies including Tesla Inc. expressing concerns over nickel supplies and the lithium market showing signs of tightening. As the first generation of EVs nears retirement, a big quantity of electronic scrap is expected to be created.

The site will be able to directly process full EV packs without any dismantling. It’s specifically designed to handle larg…

Toyota Motor North America has recast its head of strategy to a new role in its information technology division and promoted another executive to take over a reorganized strategy function.

Doug Murtha, 55, who joined Toyota's executive ranks in 1992, once led the former Scion division, and most recently worked as the group vice president for corporate strategy and planning, is now the group vice president and chief business information officer for information technology, the automaker said Tuesday.

Toyota says Murtha in his new role will "support planning, prioritization and realization of new value opportunities," including "driving critical change management activity at the intersection of IT and business." He will report to Chief Information Officer Holly Walters.

Meanwhile, Tim Ingle, 52, who joined Toyota in 2002 and worked most recently as vice president for finance at Toyota Motor North America, has been promoted to a new role as group vice presid…