Trade News

Toyota Motor North America is recalling 279,040 older Venza crossovers because the supplemental restraint system wirings in some of them may become damaged with regular use of the driver-side door.

Damaged wires could cause the airbag sensor to become inoperable, preventing the deployment of the side and curtain airbags on the driver side and increasing the risk of injury during a crash, according to a defect information notice filed with NHTSA.

According to Toyota, only vehicles equipped with a wire harness assembly of a certain design, manufactured by supplier Yazaki North America Inc., are susceptible.

The recall will cover certain 2009-2015 model year vehicles.

The automaker said it does not have information on if any injuries, accidents or fatalities occurred in relation to the issue.

Other Toyota or Lexus vehicles sold in the U.S. don't have these specific wire harnesses, the automaker said.

The company also noted that it has r…

Toyota and Lexus will each have vehicles making global premieres at the Shanghai auto show set to begin on April 19, Toyota Motor Corp. said this week.

The Toyota-badged model will be a midsize electric crossover. The vehicle was developed on the Toyota New Global Architecture for electrified vehicles, known as the e-TNGA architecture for short.

"The highly recognizable and youthful design language, and the creation of an interior space that is closely integrated with technology and humanistic care will all interpret the Toyota brand's new thinking on all-round electric mobility," Toyota said of the EV, without disclosing additional details on the vehicle.

Lexus will introduce an updated ES midsize sedan. "The new design highlights will bring a warmer luxury travel experience for Chinese users," Lexus said of the ES changes. In addition, it will display the LF-Z concept first revealed online on March 30. 

In China, Toyota builds and markets v…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ Nvidia introduces next-gen AV processor at annual conference

Nvidia Corp. made several mobility-related announcements this week, reasserting the ambitious role that the tech company hopes to play in autonomous vehicle development.

CEO Jensen Huang unveiled Nvidia's next-generation autonomous vehicle platform, Drive Atlan, during a virtual version of the Santa Clara, Calif., company's annual GTC GPU Conference.

Nvidia said its next system-on-a-chip technology, which will be available in a couple of years, will achieve 1,000 trillion operations per second — known as TOPS — and will also have an additional layer of cybersecurity via Nvidia's BlueField data processing unit.

The chip "fuses AI and software with the latest in computing, networking and security" and expands upon Nvidia's original Drive Xavier processor — already in production cars and trucks – as well as its Drive Orin processor, which will be a part of vehicle…

Ford Motor Co. began taking pre-orders in China this week for the Mustang Mach-E it is assembling with Changan Automobile Co. 

The EV is priced from 265,000 yuan ($40,582) to 379,900 yuan, according to Ford’s China unit. 

Ford plans to distribute the vehicle via a direct sales network that will expand to cover 20 major Chinese cities by the end of the year. 

The U.S. automaker will collaborate with China’s largest government-owned power grid operator, State Grid, and leading Chinese EV startup Nio to enable Mustang Mach-E users to access State Grid’s 300,000-plus public charging poles across the country, as well as Nio’s fast charging facilities.

It will also add functionality on 45,000 fast-charging poles owned by third parties that will allow Mustang Mach-EV drivers to recharge the vehicle without the help of a mobile app, according to Ford China.

The Mustang Mach-E crossover is the second locally produced EV in Ford’s Chin…

Mercedes-Benz wants to shock and awe with its first battery-electric model in the U.S. — and attract new customers to the brand.

The EQS sedan is an emissions-free reincarnation of Mercedes' vaunted flagship S-Class, and it's at the vanguard of a fleet of EVs that the automaker will launch in the U.S. under the EQ subbrand.

"The biggest surprise with the EQS is maybe there is no surprise," Daimler CEO Ola Källenius said on a media call this week. "It rides and feels like a Mercedes through and through."

A lot is riding on the new model, which arrives stateside in the fall. Mercedes faces intense competition in the $100,000-plus EV market from incumbents such as Tesla and Porsche, as well as upstarts such as Lucid Motors, that have upended the landscape.

"Now, they've got to take what they've done with this and extend it to their more mainstream products, their higher-volume products," Abuelsamid added.

The EQS blends performance with lux…

DETROIT — Jon Huntsman, a Ford Motor Co. board member and former governor of Utah, has been named to a new position of vice chair, policy, effective May 3, the company said Wednesday.

Huntsman, 61, will advise CEO Jim Farley and Executive Chairman Bill Ford on "strategic policy matters" and will work closely with the Office of the General Counsel, Government Relations and Sustainability, Environment and Safety Engineering teams. A former U.S. ambassador to multiple countries, he will "represent Ford with certain government officials and influencers" both in the U.S. and abroad, Ford said.

"Global policy is hugely important to transforming Ford and unlocking great value for customers and all stakeholders," Farley said in a statement. "Jon's background, insights and achievements are unrivaled — as an ambassador and trade representative, a state governor and a public-company executive."

Huntsman was Utah's governor twice, from 2005 to…

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…