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Shawn Kerrigan, chief operating officer and co-founder at trucking-tech company Plus, says his company will commercialize an advanced driver-assist system for trucks this year, and that’s a starting point on an evolution toward fully autonomous big rigs. He further discusses rising demand for freight movement amid the pandemic.

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Fisker's new full-electric car developed with Apple partner Foxconn Technology Group will be an affordable five-seater that will have the same broad appeal as the original Mini and Volkswagen Beetle, CEO Henrik Fisker said.

Fisker and Taiwan's Foxconn on Wednesday announced a partnership for Foxconn to build a car targeted at markets including North America, Europe, China and India, and sold under the Fisker brand. Production is set to start in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Fisker said he has moved to the 3D modeling phase of the design of the car.

The former Aston Martin designer said it would appeal to a wide base of buyers just like the original Mini launched in 1959 and the first-generation Beetle that became an icon in the 1950s and 1960s.

"Billionaires had them, ordinary people had them. That's the sort of iconic vehicle that we are looking to make, a feel-good vehicle," Fisker said. "I want to create a vehicle that can go across social borde…

Toyota's decision to add at least a third plug-in hybrid nameplate to its U.S. lineup next year bucks an industry trend that has seen other automakers pull back their PHEV offerings as full battery-electric vehicles proliferate.

The industry fall-off in plug-ins might be because of the vehicles' added cost and complexity or the fact that regulators don't seem to value them as much as full BEVs. But Toyota, sticking to its pioneering hybrid technology, sees plug-ins as part of a broader overall strategy that seeks to cut carbon emissions sooner before full EV charging infrastructure is in place.

A presentation from its chief scientist indicates that Toyota sees a case for expanding plug-ins to several different types of vehicles — which means the U.S. could see more plug-in hybrids on roads in coming years.

The automaker promised last month to add a third plug-in hybrid to its lineup next year, though details of what model will j…

Just as Hyundai pulled back the curtains on its ambitious new electric vehicle initiative last week, it got a stinging reminder of the perils ahead in electrification. The South Korean automaker said it will have to recall 82,000 EVs because of a potential for battery fires — a recall that will cost $900 million.

News of the recall came one day after Hyundai's global reveal of its new Ioniq 5 EV, a potentially high-volume model that will kick off the company's all-electric Ioniq subbrand this year.

The recall does not pertain to the Ioniq 5 but focuses largely on Kona EVs built between 2018 and 2020 that were sold mostly in Hyundai's Korean home market. It will be necessary to replace the battery systems.

There have been 15 cases of fires involving the Kona EV — 11 in South Korea, two in Canada and one each in Finland and Austria.

But the recall also shines a light on a changing auto industry reality: When it comes to …

DETROIT — Fiat Chrysler Automobiles contacted the Cherokee Nation last summer about setting up an educational program for its employees.

It was supposed to be a cultural enrichment endeavor to shine a light on the people whose name has been attached to one of Jeep's most popular vehicles for nearly 50 years.

The event didn't pan out, but the dialogue wasn't over.

Months later, after FCA merged into Stellantis, the automaker approached the nation again. The Cherokee were the ones making a request this time: Stop using our name.

The meeting occurred after Car and Driver learned of the Cherokee's stance on the use of the name and raised it with Jeep. The Cherokee Nation didn't go out of its way to make it a public issue, said Chuck Hoskin Jr., its principal chief.

Hoskin just answered a question honestly.

"We don't go out across America's cultural landscape [looking] for things that offend us and …

TURIN – Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares has told Italian unions that he will work with them to improve competitiveness and cut production costs at factories in Italy, where they currently are up to four times more than in France or Spain for a similar model.

Tavares, who met with union representatives at two former Fiat Chrysler factories in the Turin area this week, said the problem was primarily not labor costs but production costs on models that did not sell in anticipated numbers.

Unions have been worried that the merger of PSA Group and FCA to form Stellantis, which was finalized last month, could result in job losses, especially in Italy. Tavares has pledged not to close any assembly plants in Europe as a result of the merger.

A union source who attended the meeting told Automotive News Europe that Tavares gave workers several examples of the cost discrepancy between the Turin-area plants and those at PSA plants in Europe.

Tavares said the Ma…

In committing billions of dollars to their Ontario assembly plants, the Detroit 3 have signaled that they see Canada as central to their electrification plans — thanks in part to enhanced government incentives.

In January, General Motors committed to a $781 million investment in CAMI Assembly in Ingersoll, Ontario, to build its new BrightDrop EV600 all-electric cargo vans starting in November. That announcement came just a few months after Ford Motor Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, now Stellantis, vowed to spend up to a combined $2.58 billion on two of their plants to build electric vehicles this decade.

"It's part of the whole package of Canada becoming an electric vehicle center," said Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting for AutoForecast Solutions. "There's a wave of investment going into Canada now to become a center of excellence for electric vehicles."

But that wave was not inevitable. Indeed, until recently, ma…

It's been a year of storms for Greg Luther.

The first one hit his immune system in January, when the body shop director at Helfman Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep-Ram-Fiat in Houston missed three weeks of work after contracting COVID-19.

Luther had to stave off severe headaches and congestion while losing his abilities to taste and smell.

He was still bouncing back from that episode when another storm hit, this one carrying a load of snow, ice and astoundingly frigid temperatures to Texas that devastated the region's power and water systems in mid-February.

It also left Luther with burst pipes that caused flooding at his ranch-style home an hour's drive north of Houston — a place that became unreachable for a few days after the winter blast.

"I'm 47 years old and lived here my entire life and don't recall anything like this," Luther told Automotive News. "Our government just wasn't set up, or whoever's responsible to m…

Range anxiety remains a potential roadblock to the widespread adoption of electric vehicles. It's a situation brought into sharp relief during disasters such as the recent power outages in Texas, which may keep drivers from accessing charging stations, thus limiting their ability to travel long distances to evacuate stricken areas.

A J.D. Power survey issued in January found that EV drivers cite range as the major factor in their purchase decisions.

"It's still about peace of mind," said Brent Gruber, the company's senior director of global automotive. "Even though most owners drive less than the stated range of their vehicle's battery, they still want to know that the actual battery range is close to the stated battery range."

J.D. Power's U.S. Electric Vehicle Experience Ownership Study said that range accuracy accounts for 20 percent of customers' overall satisfaction in their EVs, rising above other metrics such as charging options, driving enjoyme…

Self-driving tech company Aurora is firming up plans for manufacturing lidar sensors at scale.

The company on Friday said it agreed to acquire lidar-on-chip startup OURS Technology, a move intended to pave the way for producing large quantities of the sensors, which allow vehicles to perceive their environment and detect obstacles in their path.

Aurora, in a statement, said the planned acquisition will help it move past basic development of its lidar technology and toward an automotive-grade commercial product. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Aurora said it expects to close on the acquisition in a matter of weeks.

This won't be Aurora's first purchase of a lidar startup. In May 2019, the company purchased Blackmore, a Montana lidar company that helped pioneer a particular lidar technology called frequency modulated continuous wave.

The FMCW lidar enabled Aurora's vehicles to perceive objects at distances of more than 300 meters, a critical e…

Jaguar Land Rover will slash its manufacturing capacity by 25 percent over five years and write off investment in products it’s decided to scrap under new CEO Thierry Bollore.

The British carmaker will take a non-cash charge of about 1 billion pounds ($1.4 billion) in the quarter ending in March related to higher previous spending and projects it won’t complete, according to an investor presentation. The company said last week it was calling off plans to build a battery-powered replacement of the Jaguar XJ sedan.

The Tata Motors Ltd.-owned manufacturer’s new business plan under Bollore, 57, includes making the Jaguar marque all-electric within four years while giving the Land Rover SUV brand more time to make the jump. On Friday, the carmaker said it has lowered its breakeven point to about 400,000 vehicles a year, from 600,000.

JLR’s pivot away from the internal combustion engine is the latest seismic shift in the auto industry driven by stricter emissi…