Trade News

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.

Laura Major, chief technology officer of the Hyundai-Aptiv joint venture, talks about the company’s recent driverless permit approval in Nevada, its newly released voluntary safety self-assessment and its plans to deploy a robotaxi with Lyft in 2023.

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TOKYO — Carlos Ghosn was afraid of being fired as CEO of Renault if the world knew how much salary he was really making, according to testimony in the Japanese trial against one of his former deputies, American human resources executive Greg Kelly.

A key witness this month turned up the heat on Kelly, who stands accused of attempting to conceal Ghosn's compensation package from financial documents.

A small army of top executives were preoccupied with finding ways to pay Ghosn more money in secret, according to Hari Nada, a current Nissan legal executive who agreed to testify in the case in exchange for immunity from being prosecuted.

According to Nada, some executives referred to the problem of Ghosn's deferred, unreported income as his "haircut."

Prosecutors allege that Ghosn and Kelly conspired to hide more than $80 million in deferred payment — money that would somehow need to be paid to Ghosn after his retirement. <…

The Biden administration is revisiting regulations on vehicle fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions after the Trump administration last year loosened standards put in place under predecessor Barack Obama.

President Joe Biden's executive order, issued last week, directs the Department of Transportation and the EPA to reconsider the Trump administration's 2019 decision to revoke California's authority to restrict tailpipe emissions by April and review fuel-efficiency standards for light vehicles by July.

Biden is likely to drop the previous administration's effort to block California from setting its own emissions standards, and establish tougher fuel-efficiency rules that promote zero-emission vehicles — two actions that could aid his $2 trillion "Build Back Better" agenda, which includes the installation of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations nationwide.

The president is expected to lay out his economic recovery plan bef…

Executives from PSA Group make up a slight majority of the Stellantis leadership team announced last week, though Fiat Chrysler Automobiles executives are in charge of the company’s finances, marketing and North American business.

Mark Stewart remains North American COO under Mike Manley, the former FCA CEO who is now head of the Americas. There are two design chiefs: FCA’s Ralph Gilles and PSA’s Jean-Pierre Ploue, with their duties divided by brand.

See the entire roster of top 43 executives, with photos, titles and their roots to either PSA or FCS by clicking here.