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For the 10th year, Automotive News is selecting a class of 40 Under 40 in auto retailing. We'll profile the honorees in the July 12 issue.

If you know someone under age 40 who is making a big impact at a new-car dealership in the U.S., we want to know. Self-nominations are welcome.

Go to autonews.com/40Under40 and complete the nomination form. We'll contact the nominees and ask them to tell us more about their automotive careers.

The deadline for nominations is March 31. Nominees must be younger than 40 as of July 12, 2021.

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Japan’s Renesas Electronics Corp. said it halted operations at its Ibaraki factory to inspect the building’s clean rooms after a magnitude-7.3 earthquake late Saturday.

The chipmaker has power and all utility equipment is functioning, but it decided to cancel Sunday’s production for detailed inspections of the clean rooms as a precaution, the company’s spokeswoman said. It remains unclear when operations would resume.

The Ibaraki factory was forced to shut down for three months after the 2011 earthquake, which destroyed the building. The Renesas spokeswoman said the building looked fine, but she declined to comment on the resumption as employees have only just started inspecting the clean rooms.

There is a worldwide shortage of semiconductors amid booming demand for electronics, and some auto manufacturing lines have been brought to a standstill as a result. Virus-related supply bottlenecks have compounded the problem, leaving chipmakers pouring billions…

BANGALORE -- Billionaire Elon Musk's Tesla Inc. will set up an electric-car manufacturing unit in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, according to a government document seen by Reuters on Saturday.

"The U.S. firm Tesla will be opening an electric car manufacturing unit in Karnataka," the state government said in a brief statement.

The statement was part of a broader document outlining the highlights of India's budget to its people in the local language of Kannada.

The Press Trust of India also reported that the southern state’s chief minister B S Yediyurappa announced the plan.

Last month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, tweeted “as promised” in response to a report on a Tesla-focused blog that the automaker was in talks with several Indian states to open an office, showrooms, an R&D center and possibly a factory in India.

Last month, the EV maker incorporated Tesla Motors India and Energy Private Limited with its regi…

Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig, the CEO and CTO, respectively, at Applied Intuition, discuss their efforts to create the next-generation tools needed to develop and test driver-assist systems and AVs. Plus, the two discuss their Detroit roots and how best to bridge the Motor City and Silicon Valley.

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The semiconductor shortage cost the auto industry at least 450,000 units of lost production just in January and February, analyst firm LMC said.

Pete Kelly, LMC managing director, said the issue would linger through the first half, but ultimately probably would not affect annual output.

He said, however, that the chip shortfall was different than other supply chain disruptions because the industry was competing with other bidders for semiconductor makers' product.

"What's different this time is that the lead times for additional capacity seem to be longer, and also there remains competition for that capacity from other industries," such as consumer electronics, Kelly said in an online seminar on Thursday.

"This is likely to take longer to resolve than other previous supply chain disruptions" such as explosions, strikes or natural disasters, which normally play out in a quarter or two, he said. Still, he said, "most of the effects" should play out…

Before Jeep fans buy a Wrangler 4xe to take off road, they can see how it fits in their garage next to their kayaks and camping gear while doing research.

The only thing they need is a smartphone.

Jeep is one of several automakers experimenting with a budding augmented reality tool for mobile Google searches that allows users to conduct virtual walkarounds of new models, check out color options, view the interiors in some cases and place the vehicles in a consumer's everyday environment. This augmented experience is available to Android and iOS users.

The highly searched Wrangler's popularity made it a good fit for this experience, said Tom Laymac, director of global digital marketing for Jeep parent Stellantis.

Laymac said Google approached the automaker about trying the technology. A cloud-based augmented-reality experience for the Wrangler plug-in hybrid initially was tested during the virtual CES in January.

Read more

Nearly 8 out of 10 electric vehicles registered in the U.S. last year were from one particular California automaker.

You guessed it: According to new data from Experian, Tesla accounted for 79 percent of U.S. EV registrations in 2020, with 200,561 of its battery-electric vehicles registered, a 16 percent jump from 2019, when owners registered 172,438 Teslas.

All four Tesla models ranked among the top five EVs last year. The Chevrolet Bolt small hatchback had the third most U.S. registrations among electric vehicles in 2020, at 19,664. That was up 20 percent from the year before.

But the Bolt still lagged far behind the first-place Tesla Model 3 sedan, which, despite a 32 percent drop in registrations, still topped 95,000, and the second-place Tesla Model Y crossover, which logged more than 71,000 registrations in less than a full year on the market. Tesla's Model X and Model S rounded out the top five.

Notably, Tesla and General Motors registrat…

TOKYO — Outside Nissan Motor Co., Hari Nada was a little-known executive with a big role prior to the arrest of former Chairman Carlos Ghosn. He was a head-office heavyweight in the automaker's legal department and ran the CEO and chairman's office. Yet Nada's name rarely appears in company announcements, and photos of him are few and far between.

In recent weeks, however, the Malaysian-born, British-trained barrister has been center stage in the Tokyo trial of his other former boss, ex-Nissan director Greg Kelly, the American human resources executive whom prosecutors accuse of conspiring to hide Ghosn's big compensation packages from public view in violation of Japanese law.

On the witness stand, Nada has been a portrait of conflict. On one hand, he delivered details of how Ghosn, Kelly and other executives allegedly skirted disclosure rules. On the other, Nada acknowledged under government immunity that he helped support the scheming.

On the surface…

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday cleared the way for the extradition to Japan of an American father and son accused of helping former Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn flee that country while awaiting trial on financial misconduct charges.

In a brief order, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer denied an emergency request by lawyers for U.S. Army Special Forces veteran Michael Taylor and his son, Peter Taylor, to put on hold a lower court order that cleared the way for them to be extradited.

The Taylors' lawyers in a late Thursday filing reiterated arguments that their clients could not be prosecuted in Japan for helping someone "bail jump" and that, if extradited, they faced the prospect of relentless interrogations and torture.

Lawyers for the Taylors and the Justice Department did not immediately comment on Saturday. The Japanese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A federal appeals co…

Mercedes-Benz USA has recalled more than 1 million vehicles for a failure in the eCall system, which has resulted in emergency responders being dispatched to wrong locations, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The software design of the communication module may result in a failure to send the correct vehicle location for the emergency call system in the event of a crash and increase the risk of injury following a crash, the NHTSA said.

Mercedes-Benz USA is recalling certain 2016-2021 CLA-Class, GLA-Class, GLE-Class, GLS-Class, SLC-Class, A-Class, GT-Class, C-Class, E-Class, S-Class, CLS-Class, SL-Class, B-Class, GLB-Class, GLC-Class, and G-Class vehicles.

The automaker plans to issue a software update that will be installed by dealers or through an over-the-air update.

Mercedes-Benz in Europe in October 2019 launched an investigation based on a report from the Mercedes-Benz eCall center of a single instance …

Ford Motor Co. is suspending production of the F-150 pickup and Transit van at its Kansas City Assembly Plant in Missouri for one week starting Saturday to help conserve natural gas amid a cold spell in the Midwest.

Ford confirmed the news late Friday after UAW Local 249, which represents workers at the plant, informed employees earlier Friday.

"Due to unseasonably cold temperatures in the midsection of the United States, Ford was warned that the availability of natural gas could be restricted in the Kansas City area in the coming days," spokeswoman Kelli Felker said in a statement. "To ensure we minimize our use of natural gas that is critical to heat people's homes, we have decided to cancel operations for the next week. We expect to return to normal operations on Monday, Feb. 22."

The shutdown comes at an inopportune time as Ford launches a redesigned F-150, the nation's top-selling vehicle, and continues to feel the negative effects of a global semic…

Once a gas station, the Chevrolet dealership in upstate New York was in terrible shape. Grass stuck out from the gravel parking lot, and body shop employees worked in an aluminum Quonset hut with dirt floors.

Jane Fox, who at 29 had just become one of the youngest female General Motors dealer principals in the Northeast, surveyed the scene with excitement. "It wasn't pretty," she recalled.

In 1976, when Fox purchased it for a pittance, the store sold just 100 Chevys a year. By 1981, when she and brother Bill Fox moved the dealership to Auburn, it was selling 2,000 new and used vehicles a year.

That Chevy store was the first of 13 dealerships owned by Jane and Bill, her longtime business partner who was chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association in 2015. On Feb. 1, the siblings' 45-year business partnership drew closer to an end when they sold three of their four remaining dealerships to dealer and investor Jonathan Sobel.

They plan …