Trade News

As electric vehicle maker Electric Last Mile Solutions Inc. prepares to go public through a reverse merger, it will move its headquarters to Troy, Mich., from Auburn Hills., Mich.

Electric Last Mile will occupy 31,000 square feet of space in the building, which includes a 15,000-square-foot prototype lab, the company said in a press release. The company did not immediately respond to emails about the exact location of the building. It's unclear when the company will move out of its current headquarters at 2851 High Meadow Circle in Auburn Hills.

The company will build initial battery pack and electric motor prototypes as well as complete preproduction vehicles at the location, the company said in the release. Electric Last Mile also plans to open additional offices in California and other locations in proximity to engineering and electrical vehicle development hubs.

In December, Electric Last Mile announced plans to go public through a reverse merger wit…

Editor's note: Kia achieved its best U.S. sales year in 2016. An earlier version of this story misstated the year.

Bill Peffer, who spent just one week as COO and executive vice president at Kia Motors America, has been named CEO of Maserati North America.

The Italian exotic brand said his hiring was effective immediately. He will "lead all Maserati operations for the United States and Canada," the automaker said, and will report to Bernard Loire, Maserati's chief commercial officer. Loire joined the automaker in January 2020.

Peffer replaces Al Gardner as the head of Maserati's North American operations. Gardner left Maserati in August and later joined Atlantic Coast Automotive Group as vice president, according to his LinkedIn profile. Rosberto McGinnis, Maserati's global head of after sales, held the interim CEO role before Peffer's hiring, a Maserati spokesperson said.

Peffer had been promoted from vice president of sales operations at Kia in…

When the coronavirus pandemic swept the U.S. last March, shuttering auto factories and forcing most of the country into their homes, GM Financial's chief experience officer Bob Beatty had his hands full.

More than 25 years in customer service hadn't prepared him to convert 700 active customer service employees to home offices, training the majority on softphone technologies — web-based calling services — while addressing some of the highest call and message volumes the company had ever experienced.

"There was a problem around each corner," Beatty said.

On the second night working from home, an IBM representative called Beatty to discuss enhancing the lender's ongoing project: an artificial intelligence chatbot named Nanci.

Nanci — whose name is derived from "financial" in the lender's title — was developed in partnership with IBM Services through its Watson Assistant program and has been functional on the company's site for almost a year. It cou…

LONDON -- Honda said it would halt output at its British factory from Monday to Thursday next week due to COVID-19 related global supply chain issues, the latest production suspension in recent weeks.

"The situation is currently being monitored with a view to re-start production on Friday 22 January," the company said.

Honda also stopped car output for a few days in December at the Civic plant as some major container ports, such as Felixstowe, struggled to cope with disruption caused by COVID-19, pre-Brexit stockpiling and Christmas.

A further stoppage occurred at the start of January.

On Friday, Honda said its domestic output could be affected by a shortage of semiconductors as automakers face a lack of chips while consumer demand has been bouncing back from the pandemic.

In Britain, the automaker made just under 110,000 Civic cars in 2019 but is due to permanently close the site this year.

BEIJING/TAIPEI -- Taiwan's Foxconn and Chinese automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group said Wednesday they will cooperate to provide contract manufacturing for automakers.

It marks the latest move by Foxconn, a major Apple supplier, into auto production after a tie-up with Chinese electric car startup Byton to help build its M-Byte utility vehicle, and comes amid reports that Apple is likely to launch a self-driving electric car by 2024.

For Geely, the partnership will allow it to share its first EV-focused platform, launched in September, with other automakers, according to people familiar with Geely's plan.

The companies will each hold 50 percent of a venture that will also provide consulting services on electric vehicle technologies to automakers, the companies said in a statement.

Geely, which owns Volvo Cars and holds 9.7 percent of Daimler, is keen to improve the capacity utilization rate of its plants around China, said people familiar wit…

PARIS -- When CEO Luca de Meo introduces the new-look Renault on Thursday, he will be pivoting from a strategy focusing on volume and global scale to profitable sales in growing segments, with an emphasis on individual brands over regions. 

De Meo’s plan, which he calls Renaulution, will replace Drive the Future, the last midterm plan from longtime CEO Carlos Ghosn, who stepped down following his arrest in Japan in November 2018 on charges of financial wrongdoing at alliance partner Nissan.  

De Meo is expected to share the podium with deputy CEO Clotilde Delbos, who is also Renault CFO. Delbos was instrumental in devising a plan with group Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard that will cut 2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) in costs in the next two years. That plan was revealed before de Meo took over as CEO on July 1.

In a repudiation of Ghosn’s volume strategy, a key lever of that plan is a reduction in global production by 20 percent…

LOS ANGELES — Hyundai is previewing with several teaser images the new Ioniq 5 crossover that will debut early this year and establish the Ioniq EV subbrand, with three vehicles planned by 2024.

The Ioniq 5, which Hyundai is calling a midsize CUV, is the first vehicle on the automaker's electric global modular platform. Similar crossovers from corporate siblings Kia and Genesis are expected to be shown late this year or early next year. Sales launches for the U.S. have not been announced.

The design for the Ioniq 5 comes from the "45" concept car shown in fall 2019. The angular shape is inspired by looking back at the brand's designs from the 1970s, the company said.

The teaser images suggest Hyundai has stuck with the basics of the concept's shape and features, such as a unique exterior light display.

"Ioniq 5's front end is adorned with arrays of pixel-inspired lights suggestive of the digital technology within," Hyu…

Vroom, an online auto retailer, will make its Super Bowl debut.

The big game ad, which the company revealed Tuesday, dramatizes the painful process of car shopping. In the 30-second commercial, created by agency of record Anomaly, a man is being shown in a torture chamber of sorts and is being interrogated by a car salesman. The scene then switches to the man sitting on his lawn with a car being delivered straight to his door. Vroom promises you’ll never have to go to a dealership again and that, amid COVID-19 safety concerns, a car will be delivered contact-free.

The commercial is a floater, which means the time it airs will be depend on pauses in game play. Ocean Media handled the media buying.

Vroom is the first Super Bowl advertiser to reveal its in-game spot, and it marks the first national Super Bowl ad for a used car company since 2014, when CarMax ran a spot.

When President-elect Joe Biden takes office next week, he'll work to get the U.S. economic compass pointing to a healthy economy in which growth is being "broadly shared," according to Brian Deese, incoming director of the White House's National Economic Council.

"That's going to be our North Star," he said during a Tuesday morning session at CES, held virtually this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Deese — a "crisis-tested" adviser who helped lead President Barack Obama's auto rescue and assisted with the former president's climate and energy policy — said a big part of achieving the Biden administration's economic objectives is investing in the U.S. to build its competitiveness.

"We have — in a lot of different areas — underinvested and underresourced our own domestic capabilities," he said. "And that's a place where we're going to focus on targeting investments — whether that's in R&D, manufacturing or otherwise — to try to build up that …

WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration agreed on Tuesday to an auto industry request to delay the start of dramatically higher penalties for companies that fail to meet fuel efficiency requirements, a move that could save the industry hundreds of millions of dollars or more. 

The decision -- announced eight days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office -- follows a U.S. appeals court in August that overturned the Trump administration’s 2019 decision to suspend a regulation that more than doubled penalties for automakers failing to meet fuel efficiency requirements. 

Congress in 2015 ordered federal agencies to adjust civil penalties to account for inflation. In response, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued rules to raise fines to $14 from $5.50 for every 0.1 mile per gallon new cars and trucks consume in excess of required standards.

Automakers protested that 2016 hike, saying it could increase industry compliance cos…

Cadillac's future electric flagship sedan, the Celestiq, will feature customizable experiences for each occupant, including a full glass roof that can be adjusted to different levels of transparency in each of its four quadrants.

The Celestiq, expected to go on sale in 2023, will have all-wheel drive and four-wheel steering, Cadillac said Tuesday during CES. The "smart glass" roof also can be illuminated with lighting to match the mood of the cabin, Cadillac said.

The driver and front passenger will have access to a free-form display spanning the width of the vehicle, and rear-seat passengers will have personalized entertainment screens, Cadillac said.

Details on the six-figure, low-profile sedan, which General Motors teased in March, were included in a wide-ranging keynote address by CEO Mary Barra. Barra and other executives outlined GM's Ultium battery development plan, explained changes to customer experience and announced a new commercial EV brand…