Trade News

SEOUL -- Hyundai Motor said on Tuesday it expects sales in U.S. and China to surge this year, driven by the launch of new electric vehicles and crossovers, after reporting its best quarterly profit in more than three years.

Fourth-quarter profit jumped 57 percent to 1.3 trillion won ($1.2 billion) on demand for high-margin crossovers and its premium Genesis cars, but vehicle sales fell 4.7 percent amid a broader economic weakness due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

But profits were hurt by a strong won. The South Korean currency rose about 7 percent against the dollar in the three months to December. A stronger won erodes the value of overseas sales for South Korean companies, and North America is Hyundai's biggest market.

Fourth-quarter revenue rose 5.1 percent to 29.2 trillion won ($26.4 billion), Hyundai said.

For the full year, Hyundai reported a net profit of $1.9 billion, down from $2.9 billion in 2019.

Hyundai said it expects 2021 sales to…

WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden on Monday vowed to replace the U.S. government's fleet of roughly 650,000 vehicles with electric models as the new administration shifts its focus toward clean energy.

"The federal government also owns an enormous fleet of vehicles, which we're going to replace with clean electric vehicles made right here in America made by American workers," Biden said Monday

Biden criticized existing rules that allow vehicles to be considered U.S. made when purchased by the U.S. government even if they have significant non-American made components.

Biden said he would close "loopholes" that allow key parts like engines, steel and glass to be manufactured abroad for vehicles considered U.S. made.

The White House did not immediately answer questions about over what period Biden planned to replace current vehicles. It could cost the U.S. $20 billion or more to replace the fleet.

Biden's "Buy America" executive order signed M…

A former Tesla Inc. software engineer was ordered to appear before a federal judge to face allegations that three days into his job, he started stealing confidential files and transferring them to a personal storage account.

During his two-week employment ending Jan. 6, Alex Khatilov stole more than 6,000 scripts, or files of code, that automate a broad range of business functions, Tesla argues in its trade-secret theft complaint filed in U.S. District Court for Northern California.

Tesla convinced U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, Calif., that the threat posed is serious enough that she granted a restraining order Friday requiring Khatilov to immediately preserve and return all files, records and emails to the company and appear before her, remotely, on Feb. 4.

Elon Musk’s EV maker has aggressively pursued lawsuits against other former employees and rival companies that it has accused of poaching engineers and stealing proprietary d…

TAIPEI -- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. plans to prioritize production of auto chips if it is able to further increase capacity, Taiwan's Economics Ministry told Reuters, amid a global shortage that has hampered car production.

A ministry official said Minister Wang Mei-hua spoke to senior company executives on Sunday about the issue.

TSMC had told the ministry it will "optimize" the production process of chips to make it more efficient and prioritize auto chip production if it is able to further increase capacity, the ministry said.

TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, said current production capacity is full, but had assured the ministry that "if production can be increased by optimizing production capacity, it will cooperate with the government to regard automotive chips as a primary application."

TSMC, in a statement to Reuters, referred to comments from its CEO C.C. Wei on an earnings call this month.

"Other than con…

Panasonic Corp. has spent the past six months developing a battery cell with higher energy density and better fast-charging performance.

But taking an electric vehicle battery to a new level requires more than a tweak, said Celina Mikolajczak, vice president of battery technology at Panasonic Energy North America. The current innovation involves changes in design, materials and manufacturing processes.

"People like to envision a cell as kind of a commodity product," Mikolajczak said. But a lithium ion cell is not a commodity product, she told Automotive News.

"Every design has its own challenges. It has its own strengths. It has its own demerits. I make a cell that's optimized for one customer, a different customer wants a different optimization," she said.

The product in question, known as Panasonic's 2170 cell, supplies power to the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y batteries that are made at the Gigafactory in Reno, Nev.,…

People in the self-driving tech industry have long been fascinated with a psychological thought experiment known as the trolley problem, in which participants must make ethical choices among grim fictional scenarios.

Standing beside a lever that could alter the path of a runaway trolley, should you let it continue unabated and run over five people tied to the tracks ahead? Or save those five people by throwing the switch, and instead sacrifice two bystanders who otherwise wouldn't have been harmed?

Various permutations of the trolley problem exist, and the latest comes from an unexpected place: the outgoing White House administration.

In his final hours as president, Donald Trump issued a pardon to Anthony Levandowski, the self-driving engineer who pleaded guilty to a single count of stealing a trade secret from Google and bringing it to his new job at Uber.

A White House announcement of the pardon noted "his sentencing…

Ideally, cartooning is supposed to be a funny business. There aren't many people who feed their family and pay their bills by taking pen to paper to draw something that hopefully makes people laugh, or at least think.

But funny also has to be easily recognizable. And for cartoonists, each new administration comes with a mandate: to create a character that readers can instantly identify as the president.

Donald Trump was a cartoonist's dream with his flamboyant shock of blond coiffed hair and his signature long red tie. Like Trump, President Joe Biden has a few dominant physical characteristics that can guide my mind's eye in helping craft the character.

For example, Biden's eyes are frequently squinted or even hidden behind aviator sunglasses; both are comedic gold for any cartoonist. Similarly, Biden's broad, toothy smile — he could easily have been a pitchman for any teeth-whitening product — dominates his elongated countenance, topped by his combed-ba…

Mercedes-Benz is looking to its least expensive electric vehicle, the EQA, to help slow the Tesla juggernaut. The baby crossover, which goes on sale in Europe this spring, will start at €47,541($57,562) in Germany, before incentives.

The EQA is being considered for the U.S., Mercedes-Benz USA sales chief Adam Chamberlain told Automotive News last week. "There's an opportunity for the [crossover] in the U.S.," he said. "If a brand is serious about taking a hold in the market ... then you need both top-end cars and something on the more affordable end."

The EV, based on the gasoline-powered GLA, will have a driving range of 265 miles under the WLTP test standard. The EQA 250 is rated at 140 kilowatts, or 190 hp, and accelerates from 0 to 62 mph in 8.9 seconds. Variants with all-wheel drive, higher output and longer ranges will follow.

As an entry-level electric crossover, the EQA would have limited appeal in the U.S., Mercedes-Benz Dealer Board member Jeff…

The Georgia Lottery lists the chances of winning the top prize in its "Corvette and Cash" scratch-off game as 1 in about 1.6 million.

But that turned out to be the easy part for Dennis Kahler.

The hard part: finding a dealership that actually has a Chevrolet Corvette available for him to take home.

Lottery officials certified Kahler as the winner of a C8 plus a $250,000 cash prize. But when they began working with local dealerships to obtain the car, they found that one hadn't been upfront about the $10,000 markup it was demanding, and others couldn't promise delivery until the third quarter.

Corvette production was slowed by the UAW strike in late 2019 and then the coronavirus plant shutdowns last spring, leaving many dealers with long waiting lists for the midengine sports car.

Kahler told Corvette Forum that he wants a 2LT Z51 in Rapid Blue with a sticker price of $80,465. He's allowed to spend up to $107,000 on the car, with any differe…

As vehicles become more complex, chock-full of technologies from multimedia functions to driver assistance to body electronics, they require more software-intensive electronic systems.

Bosch's new Cross-Domain Computing Solutions division was created to bridge its software and electronics expertise to address the expanding functions.

The unit draws together "user design experience with a market focus," said Tim Frasier, North American president of the division. Frasier, 57, also is head of the Advanced Network Solutions business, which primarily encompasses the infrastructure and architecture aspects of the unit.

He takes the helm alongside Stefan Buerkle, 40, who leads the Connected Information Solutions business and is senior vice president of customer accounts, and Kay Stepper, 51, senior vice president of system engineering and head of Automated Driving and Driver Assistance.

"What you see very clearly are the megatrends that are occurring,"…

General Motors lit up the top of its headquarters in amber last week on the eve of Joe Biden’s inauguration as part of a national memorial planned by the Presidential Inaugural Committee to honor lives lost to the COVID-19 pandemic.

GM’s new logo can be seen at the top of the tallest tower.

Ford Motor Co. also illuminated its headquarters and the train station it’s restoring in Detroit as part of the memorial.