Trade News

Autonomous trucking company TuSimple is considering selling its U.S. business, according to documents filed Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The decision to explore strategic alternatives for the U.S. business, including a possible sale, "was guided by the company's review of multiple business factors and commercial opportunities," according to a TuSimple press release.

A company spokesperson said Thursday that the board was "regularly evaluating a range of business factors that includes macro environment, access to capital, commercial partnerships and timelines. Those factors led to the board to make the decision to explore a possible sale at this time. We are very early in the process, so we don't have any specific prospects that we are able to discuss at this time."

TuSimple, of San Diego, develops autonomous driving technology for long-haul, heavy-duty trucks. The company operates in the U.S. and Asia.

If the U.S. bu…

Electric-vehicle startup Nio Inc. has partnered with China National Offshore Oil Corp., a state-owned oil producer and distributor, to construct battery swap stations for EV customers in China.

To mark the deal signed on Tuesday, Nio said it commissioned a battery swap station as well as charging piles installed on the site of CNOOC’s gasoline station on the same day in the south China city of Huizhou. 

CNOOC is the third state-owned oil producer Nio has signed up to help expand a network of battery swap stations in China, following China National Petroleum Corp. and China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. 

Nio, established in Shanghai in 2014, has installed 1,500 battery swap stations across China as of June 25.

The EV startup aims to boost the number of its battery swap stations in China to 2,300 by the end of this year. 

Retail sales of new passenger vehicles in China will decrease 5.9 percent in June, ending a rebound that stretched three straight months, the China Automobile Dealers Association said.

The trade group predicts that 1.83 million sedans, crossovers, SUVs and multipurpose vehicles will be delivered industrywide this month.

In contrast to the decline in the overall market, retail sales of electrified vehicles including full electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids will jump 26 percent to roughly 670,000, the CADA said.

From March to May, China’s new-vehicle market staged a strong rebound due to favorable comparisons to the same pandemic-hit period in 2022. 

Toyota saw a ten percent jump in global sales for May from a year earlier. Stellantis puts some U.S. plants in “critical status” ahead of UAW talks. Plus, Mark Wakefield of Alix Partners talks about the firm’s new report, which predicts an inevitable decline on the horizon for cars powered by internal combustion engines.

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Paul Daly is the founder of the auto retail content creation company Automotive State of the Union and, along with partner Kyle Mountsier, co-leads the docuseries "More Than Cars."

First car: 1987 Honda Accord EX. Subs in the trunk of course

First concert you attended: Metal band Petra, circa 1989

Most thrilling/adventurous thing you've done: Started a family

First job: Took over my dad's paper route at 12 years old

Something on your bucket list: Have at least a dozen grandkids

One thing you learned on the job you never forgot: If you aren't smarter than the next person, you can still out-work them

First website you go to in the morning: autonews.com, really!

3 people you'd invite to dinner, living or dead: Jesus, Leonardo DaVinci, Elon Musk (but they would all have to be there at the same time)

What did you want to be when you were a kid? In a band

…

Eighteen-year-old Riley Schlick-Trask, who started her own carburetor repair business at age 13, has been named the grand prize winner of the TechForce Foundation's 2023 Techs Rock Awards. The annual awards are part of the foundation's work force development campaign to inspire and support future technicians.

Schlick-Trask, who is headed to college this fall, owns Riley's Rebuilds in Bradenton, Fla. She was previously named winner of the Barrier Buster category by a panel of judges, which made her eligible for the grand prize. That was determined by a public vote.

Schlick-Trask will receive more than $10,000 in prizes from TechForce and its industry partners. She also gets an all-expenses-paid trip to the automotive training event STX 2024 in Nashville and additional prizes valued at $6,000. At the category level, she and the other four winners each received more than $1,900 in prizes.

"I am very excited, very honored and very grate…

"Not being afraid to charge what you're worth; that was a huge thing for me. A lot of that is diagnostics. I had a really, really tough time with that for a long time, and I would devalue myself, my technicians, my shop. As far as charging for diagnostics, I tried to put it into a package where it's, 'Hey, if you do this repair I will discount the diagnostic fee.' That was a big thing they taught me — don't do that. 'Your time and your technicians' time is worth something and your technicians' abilities, the time they have spent going to school, their tools and whatnot. People come to you for a reason. And the reason is they can't figure it out themselves. And you need to be charging for that.' It took me a while to get over that. But once I understood that concept, that was wonderful." — Kevin Oswald, owner of Oswald Service & Repair in Idaho Falls, Idaho, on one lesson his coach taught him on the Ratchet+Wrench Radio podcast.

A group opposed to a Ford Motor Co. electric vehicle battery plant in Marshall, Mich., is suing the city in hopes of stopping construction of the $3.5 billion project, according to court documents.

The plant — dubbed BlueOval Battery Park Michigan — is set to open in 2026. It is expected to create about 2,500 jobs and have the capacity to build 35 gigawatt-hours of lithium iron phosphate cells a year. That's enough power for about 400,000 EVs.

As reported Wednesday by MLive, the Committee to Save Marshall filed a petition in May for a referendum vote on a rezoning decision that approved 741 acres of the Ford site for industrial use. The petition was rejected by the city because it lacked sufficient valid signatures and because the city had already appropriated money to the project.

In a lawsuit against the city and the city clerk filed with the Calhoun County Circuit Court on Tuesday, the Committee argues the city's rejection of the petition was unconst…

Toyota is modernizing its famed production system to take on Tesla in the EV era. Volvo is the latest automaker to jump on the Tesla Supercharger bandwagon. And Ford and Chevy top the latest customer loyalty rankings while Toyota falls.

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Stellantis will require union employees to work mandatory overtime at its Warren Truck assembly and Jefferson North factory in Michigan, to boost Jeep SUV production ahead of a potential strike deadline in September, according to a document shared with Reuters.

Stellantis told workers the plants will be in "critical status" from July 5 through October 2. Under the current UAW contract, a plant in critical status can run up to 7 days a week for a period of 90 days and require union employees to work more than 9 hours of overtime, according to a notice sent to employees and reviewed by Reuters.

"The company executives are doing this to build up inventory ahead of a potential strike. They are trying to intimidate us because we will not accept another sellout contract from the United Auto Workers," the union committee for the Warren Truck facility said in a blog post.

Stellantis did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the notice sent to th…

WASHINGTON — The U.S. will need 28 million charging ports to support a scenario where 33 million electric vehicles are on the road by 2030, according to a federal study released this week.

The new analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory — a federally funded R&D center sponsored by the U.S. Energy Department and managed by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy — sought to quantify the estimated number, type and location of EV chargers needed nationwide to support a rapid adoption of light-duty EVs by the end of the decade.

There are about 2.4 million battery-electric vehicles in operation in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, according to Experian data as if the first quarter of 2023.

The energy laboratory's study was created in collaboration with the Energy Department's Vehicle Technologies Office and the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which is assisting with the planning and implementation of a national EV charging network funded th…

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — It's likely more difficult for a dealership to place a subprime auto loan with a financial institution than it was less than a year ago, a chief risk officer for a subprime lender explained at a conference last month.

But the type of vehicle being financed, the speed at which it delivers equity and the existence of a service contract can make a borrower a better credit risk, according to an executive for a large regional buy-here-pay-here dealership group.

These experts took part in a subprime lending forum at the Auto Finance Summit East conference on May 12, following a first-quarter decline in the percentage of credit-challenged subprime customers obtaining auto loans and leases.

"It is as hard as it's ever been to help somebody with special finance lenders," Jesse Powers, finance director for Oakes Kia in North Kansas City, Mo., told Automotive News on May 26.

According to Experian, subprime borrowers were involved in 14 p…