Trade News

BEIJING -- Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing said on Thursday it has raised $300 million for its autonomous driving unit, tapping investors to expand its technological know-how in the field for a second time since last year.

Investment firm IDG Capital led the funding while CPE, the Russia-China Investment Fund, Guotai Junan International and CCB International were among the investors participating, a representative for Didi said.

Some of the investors also recently invested in Didi's freight unit.

One of the many auto and tech firms investing heavily in self-driving technology, SoftBank-backed Didi has gained open-road testing licenses in California, Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou. It first began to develop and test autonomous driving vehicles in 2016.

Didi's autonomous driving unit raised over $500 million in May last year.

Toyota overtook Volkswagen Group to become the world's top-selling automaker in 2020 as the slump in demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic hit VW harder.

It was the first time Toyota clinched the position in five years.

Toyota's 2020 group sales, which include those of its subsidiaries Lexus, Daihatsu and Hino, fell 11 percent to 9.53 million units, the company said Thursday.

VW Group's global deliveries declined by 15 percent to 9.31 million, the automaker said on Jan. 13. VW's figure includes sales of the VW, Audi, Porsche, Skoda and Seat brands, as well as its Scania and MAN heavy truck units.

The extent of the automakers' sales losses was largely determined by their level of exposure to the regions most disrupted by the virus.

VW has a strong footprint in the European Union, where passenger car sales fell an "unprecedented" 24 percent to fewer than 10 million in 2020, according to industry association ACEA.

Toyota, on the oth…

TAIPEI -- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is "expediting" auto-related products and reallocating capacity, the company said on Thursday, amid a global shortage of auto chips.

Automakers around the world are shutting and slowing assembly lines due to the shortages, which in some cases have been exacerbated by the former U.S. administration's actions against Chinese chip factories.

The shortage has affected automakers including Volkswagen Group, Ford, Subaru, Toyota, Nissan and Stellantis.

Taiwan's economy minister said on Wednesday major Taiwanese chipmakers were willing to prioritize supplies for automakers, after she met senior company executives including from TSMC.

In a statement, TSMC said it was addressing the chip supply "challenges" as their top priority.

"The automotive supply chain is long and complex, and we have worked with our automotive customers and identified their critical needs," the world's largest contract chipmake…

Tesla Inc. is gearing up to launch the first redesign of the Model S sport hatchback since the vehicle went on sale in 2012.

The changes include a major interior update that features a horizontally oriented touch screen, an updated center console and a U-shaped steering wheel, as well as a new screen for the back seat. The exterior also receives minor tweaks.

As part of the update, the automaker added a new Plaid+ trim that starts at $141,190 with a 520-mile range, and a 0 to 60 mph time of less than 1.99 seconds. The base "long range" trim now starts at $81,190 and gets 412 miles to a charge. Prices include $1,200 for shipping.

The Model S long range trim is now roughly $10,000 more expensive than it was in October, when CEO Elon Musk slashed the price to $69,420.

“It’s really a tremendous improvement over the prior version,” Musk said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call.

The company also updated the Model X crossover with…

Ford Motor Co.'s multimobility subsidiary, Spin, and software company Tortoise announced a partnership Wednesday to launch e-scooters with remote operation, improved safety and repositioning technologies.

The e-scooter is called the Spin S-200. After a rider takes a trip, a remote operations team can reposition the scooter to move it out of the way of pedestrians and traffic. The team can also move a scooter that's been left in a place where it's unlikely to be used for another trip.

A video of the technology can be viewed here.

A pilot in Boise, Idaho, is set to begin in the spring. As many as 300 S-200s will be delivered to the city. The partners plan to bring the scooters to more North American and European cities throughout 2021.

"There has been a lot of fanfare around the potential of remote-controlled e-scooters, but this partnership marks a turning point in tangible operational plans to bring them to city street…

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Baidu Inc. received a permit from the state of California to test self-driving vehicles without a driver behind the wheel, the state's Department of Motor Vehicles said on Wednesday.

Although self-driving vehicles are designed to eliminate the need for a driver, most testing thus far has been with a safety driver behind the wheel who can take over in case of emergency.

Currently, 58 companies have permits in California to test autonomous vehicles with such a backup driver, including most major automakers and Apple Inc.

Baidu is the sixth company to have a permit to test without a driver behind the wheel. The permit allows it to test three autonomous vehicles on specified streets within Sunnyvale, Santa Clara County.

According to Baidu, it will be using two different models of cars for testing its self-driving system, the Lincoln MKZ sedan and the Chrysler Pacifica van.

The Chinese search engine leader has 500 self-driving…

Tesla Inc. generated fourth-quarter net income of $270 million, securing a full-year profit for the first time since its founding in 2003.

The electric vehicle maker said Wednesday it expects to remain consistently profitable moving forward, even as executives suggested the main driver of its recent success -- sales of regulatory credits to competitors -- could become less of a factor.

On a conference call with analysts, Tesla CFO Zach Kirkhorn noted the $401 million the EV maker made in the fourth quarter from credit sales was higher than anticipated and came from “discreet deals struck over the course of the quarter.”

He reiterated that Tesla is not planning the business around credit sales and does not expect them to be a factor long-term.

The company's fourth-quarter revenue jumped 46 percent to $10.7 billion, with automotive margins during the period hitting 24 percent.

Tesla delivered 499,647 vehicles in 2020, up 61 percent year over…

BMW said it generated more cash than expected last year, joining German peer Volkswagen in posting upbeat preliminary earnings after sustaining their recovery from coronavirus disruptions.

Automotive free cash flow rose to 2.8 billion euros ($3.4 billion) in the final three months of 2020, almost double the year-earlier period, BMW said in a statement Wednesday. The company reiterated that margins will be at the higher end of a range of as much as 3 percent.

BMW and VW's sales both rebounded after the first half of last year, with demand coming back particularly strong in China. Still, coronavirus lockdowns weighed on full-year shipments, and Daimler's Mercedes-Benz maintained its leadership of the global luxury-car segment for a fifth consecutive year.

While BMW is doing well in China -- its largest market -- the automaker is under growing pressure there as upstarts including Tesla, Nio and Li Auto gain share.

BMW is responding to the threat by e…

HAMBURG -- Microchip supply bottlenecks will impact production at some of Volkswagen's German plants in February.

VW said on Wednesday that it had applied for short-time work at its Wolfsburg car factory on some days of the month.

The automaker also said it had also planned reduced working hours at its components factories in Kassel and Brunswick in February as a precautionary measure. Production at Emden however will not be affected, VW said.

"That means that, depending on the supply situation, there can be adjustments in vehicle and components production over the coming weeks," VW said in an e-mailed statement.

Global automakers are adjusting assembly lines due to semiconductor shortages, which have become a political issue since German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier wrote to his Taiwanese counterpart to ask for help in addressing it.

Automakers early last year canceled orders to chip manufacturers in anticipation of a sharp drop in sale…

WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden's nominee for energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, is expected to face questions on the administration's push to compete with China on electric vehicles at her Senate confirmation hearing later on Wednesday.

While governor of auto-manufacturing Michigan from 2003-11, Granholm led a charge to secure $1.35 billion in federal funding for companies to produce electric vehicles and batteries in the state.

Granholm, 61, who is expected to be confirmed by the Senate in days after the hearing, wants to steer the department to help the United States compete with China on EVs and green technologies like advanced batteries and solar and wind power.

"We need to be the leader, rather than passive bystanders, or otherwise we're going to allow other countries like China and others we're fighting to be able to corner this market," Granholm told ABC News last month.

She would be the second female U.S. energy secretary after Hazel…

Tesla Inc.’s business selling regulatory credits to automakers that need help complying with emissions rules will keep on booming this year, according to Credit Suisse.

Regulatory credit revenue probably will rise to $2 billion from about $1.4 billion in 2020, analyst Dan Levy predicted in a note previewing Tesla’s quarterly earnings Wednesday. He wrote that his estimate for 2021 is higher than consensus of $1.3 billion.

A surge in regulatory-credit revenue had been a major factor in Tesla’s streak of quarterly profits that’s sent shares soaring and made the stock eligible for the S&P 500. Levy suggested in his note that Europe’s stricter limits on automotive carbon-dioxide emissions will present an opportunity for the company this year.

Tesla doesn’t say which carmakers it sells credits to, though General Motors and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles disclosed in 2019 that they had reached agreements to buy U.S. greenhouse-gas credits from the company. FCA a…

SEOUL -- South Korea's LG Chem Ltd. swung to an operating profit in the fourth quarter of 2020 and the supplier expects surging revenue from its battery unit that supplies Tesla Inc. to set the stage for a strong 2021.

The maker of chemicals and batteries, whose battery unit LG Energy Solution supplies Tesla, posted an operating profit of 674 billion won ($610.20 million) -- compared with a loss of 33 billion won in the same period a year earlier.

With the launches of new EVs and increased orders for its energy storage system batteries, LG Energy Solution expects revenue to grow more than 50 percent in 2021 from a year earlier, aiming to ramp up annual capacity to 155 gigawatt-hours of batteries by the of the year, up about 30 percent from a year earlier, the unit's Senior Vice President Chang Seung-se said in a call with analysts.

LG Chem's overall fourth-quarter revenue rose 20 percent to 8.9 trillion won, the company said in a regulatory filing. LGg E…