Trade News

DETROIT — General Motors plans to launch a digital retail tool to help facilitate EV sales as the 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EV and Bolt EUV hit showrooms this summer.

The proprietary tool is powered by Tekion, a fast-growing automotive retail platform provider led by a former Tesla executive.

"The people that are going to buy EVs from Chevrolet, this is their everyday driver. We have to make EV easy," Steve Hill, vice president of Chevrolet, told Automotive News.

Of Chevy's roughly 3,000 U.S. dealers, about 1,700 have signed up to sell the freshened Bolt EV and the new Bolt EUV crossover. Chevy will implement the tool, at no cost to dealers, in June, Hill said. Enrollment begins in April, and pilots are scheduled to start in May. Chevy told dealers about the tool during a Wednesday meeting.

The platform can facilitate a vehicle sale end-to-end, as permitted by state law. Tekion's platform is "more intuitive than the best third parties on the market," sa…

FedEx Corp. is planning to make its entire fleet of delivery vans fully electric by 2040, the company said Wednesday.

The move is part of an effort to become carbon neutral that same year, with the company planning to plow $2 billion into the global effort.

The Memphis, Tenn.-based company will take a phased approach to electrifying its fleet. By 2025, 50 percent of its purchases of new delivery vehicles will be electric, rising to 100 percent of all purchases by 2030.

FedEx has more than 200,000 vehicles in its fleet.

In January, the company announced plans to buy 500 electric vans from General Motors' new commercial venture, BrightDrop.

Jeremy Carroll of Automotive News contributed to this report.

General Motors said Thursday it is considering building a second battery factory in the U.S. with South Korean joint venture partner LG Chem Ltd.

The largest U.S. automaker confirmed it is "exploring the feasibility of constructing a second, state of the art battery cell manufacturing plant in the United States" with LG Chem's battery unit LG Energy Solution, via the Ultium Cells LLC joint venture.

GM said it hopes to have a decision by June.

GM and LG Chem are likely to build the plant in Tennessee and if finalized it’s expected to be near GM's Spring Hill assembly plant, two people briefed on the matter said. It would be similar in scope to the $2.3 billion joint venture battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, currently under construction, the sources said.

The announcement came a day after the disclosure that the U.S. Transportation Department will analyze the impact of an electric vehicle battery trade ruling against SK Innovation Co. on President J…

SEOUL -- A large global recall of mostly Kona electric crossovers has led Hyundai Motor Group to sharply revise down fourth-quarter operating profit, although reports said battery maker LG Chem would bear the bulk of the costs.

LG will assume 70 percent of the estimated $900 million in costs to replace battery systems in about 82,000 Kona vehicles globally, according to the Yonhap news agency and other South Korean media.

But Cho Hyun-ryul, an analyst at Samsung Securities, said he estimated LG's burden was slightly lower at 62 percent of the costs.

Hyundai and LG Chem, whose wholly owned LG Energy Solution makes the batteries, declined to comment on how costs were divided.

The recall, which mostly concerns the Kona, Hyundai's biggest-selling electric car, is one of the first mass battery pack replacements conducted by a major automaker. It has been closely watched as it has set a precedent in how car and battery makers split the bill when problem…

Consumer Reports said it is launching a program to add a "CR Recommended" label to vehicles and other consumer products that meet its safety, performance and reliability criteria.

The consumer research nonprofit organization — often considered a key influencer in many auto purchasing decisions — said one of the main goals is to break through a flood of fake product reviews that circulate online and confuse customers.

"Misinformation permeates the marketplace," CEO Marta Tellado said in a statement. "Far too often, science is misrepresented as science fiction, data is distorted, and reviews are rigged."

A car, appliance, food item or other product achieves "recommended" status when it passes tests and meets other criteria. The rating goes on Consumer Reports' website. Manufacturers can then display the "CR Recommended" label on their websites, on product packaging or in stores.

The organization says it tests more than 2,000 products annually.

KAR Global on Tuesday said its president Peter Kelly, who has been with the company for 10 years, will take over as CEO on April 1.

He succeeds Jim Hallett, 67, who has been CEO of KAR since 2009.

Kelly joined KAR in 2011 when the company's auto-auction subsidiary, ADESA Inc., purchased Openlane, the Internet-based automotive remarketing company where he was CEO at the time. He also was a co-founder of Openlane.

"The prospect of leading KAR further into our digital future is humbling and exciting," Kelly said in a statement. "The used-vehicle industry is continuously evolving ... I remain committed to investing in people, data and technology to deliver great outcomes for our customers and achieve our business goals."

Kelly, 52, has a long history at KAR. The company credits him for ramping up startup technology to boost KAR's status as a private-label online auction platform.

He was promoted to KAR president in 2019, after stints as the com…

Sonic Automotive Inc. CEO David Smith was indicted by a Mecklenburg County, N.C., grand jury this week on four charges including felony assault by strangulation, according to the court and prosecutor's office.

The procedural action moves his criminal case forward in the Mecklenburg County Superior Court after Smith waived a probable-cause hearing Dec.1.

In addition to the felony assault charge, the grand jury on Monday indicted Smith, 46, on misdemeanor charges of false imprisonment, assault on a female, and interfering with emergency communication, said Meghan McDonald, community liaison coordinator in the Mecklenburg County District Attorney's Office.

Smith's next court date, a scheduling conference for lawyers, is set for May 18, Jessica Davis, public information officer in the county trial court administrator's office, wrote in an email to Automotive News.

Smith was arrested Oct. 5. A 22-year-old woman not related to Smith told the …

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Volvo Cars North America CEO Anders Gustafsson discusses the brand's plans to phase out internal combustion engine vehicles by 2030 and its strategy for selling BEVs exclusively online.

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Rohit Chopra, President Joe Biden’s choice to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told a Senate panel Tuesday he plans to prioritize the enforcement of fair lending laws and scrutinize the emergence of large technology companies into financial services.

Democrats on Tuesday pushed Chopra to revive the CFPB after the Trump administration weakened enforcement and several rules, while Republicans warned the bureau overstepped its authority previously under Democratic control.

Chopra, a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, where he campaigned for tougher consumer privacy and enforcement penalties, helped establish the CFPB, which was formally launched in 2011.

Auto dealers have been among the most significant critics of the agency.

As an FTC commissioner, Chopra has been an outspoken watchdog over how some dealerships are compensated for arranging customer financing.

Data collection

Chopra said that, if confirmed, he w…

DETROIT -- General Motors said on Wednesday it was further extending production cuts at three North American plants and adding a fourth to the list of factories hit by the global semiconductor chip shortage.

The extended cuts do not change GM's forecast last month that the shortage could shave up to $2 billion from this year's earnings. GM CFO Paul Jacobson subsequently said chip supplies should return to normal rates by the second half of the year and he was confident the profit hit would not worsen.

The U.S. automaker did not disclose the impact on volumes or say which supplier or parts were affected by the chip shortage, but said it intends to recover as much of the lost output as possible.

"GM continues to leverage every available semiconductor to build and ship our most popular and in-demand products, including full-size trucks and SUVs," GM spokesman David Barnas said. "We contemplated this downtime when we discussed our outlook for 2021."

T…

A teardown of Volkswagen AG’s first dedicated electric vehicle found it measures up favorably to Tesla Inc. models in several key aspects.

The deep dive into the ID.3 by UBS Group AG analysts found the platform underpinning VW’s EV models will be fully cost competitive with Tesla and boast best-in-class energy density and efficiency. Analysts led by Patrick Hummel called the car “the most credible EV effort by any legacy auto company so far.”

UBS’s assessment is the latest positive development for an EV that got off to a bumpy start last year. Production hiccups, software glitches and disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic plagued the ID.3’s launch and cast doubt over the ability of traditional automakers to field products that can compete with the likes of Tesla’s Model 3. While other incumbents have converted existing combustion-engine cars into EVs, VW opted to take a more radical approach in the wake of its emissions wrongdoing.

VW is primarily…

SHENZHEN, China -- Telecom equipment maker ZTE Corp. is joining a number of Chinese technology companies entering the electric vehicle market as it looks to build a team for a new product line, a company spokeswoman told Reuters.

The Shenzhen-based company did not say whether the product line will supply parts for partner companies, or whether the company would be producing its own branded vehicles.

Chinese technology firms have been stepping up their focus on electric vehicles in the world's biggest car market, as Beijing promotes greener vehicles as a means of reducing air pollution.

Earlier this month Reuters reported that ZTE rival Huawei Technologies Co. is planning to make EVs under its own brand and could launch some models this year.

A Huawei spokesman denied it had EV ambitions of its own, beyond supplying technology to partners.

Asian technology companies, including Baidu, have announced plans to make their own cars, while Shenzhe…