Trade News

Nissan Motor Co. is moving to promote all contract workers in Japan to full-time positions as the automaker’s push to cut fixed costs gives it more room to invest in its talent pool.

About 800 contract employees will become full-time employees from April, Azusa Momose, a spokeswoman for the company said, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report that said it would impact people at Nissan’s plants, R&D centers and head office in Yokohama. Nissan will also abolish its system of hiring contract workers.

The promotions, which will increase expenses, are a sign of Nissan’s confidence in its outlook as the automaker makes progress in its push to cut 300 billion yen ($2.8 billion) in annual fixed costs. The cuts have afforded the company a greater ability to push to retain skilled personnel by bringing them on full time, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

“This will help enhance workplace unity, increase operational efficiency, improve employee m…

China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, which owns Volvo Cars and holds 9.7 percent of Daimler, said Tuesday it has signed an agreement with Tencent Holdings to develop smart vehicle cockpit and autonomous driving.

In the latest such partnership in the fast-evolving sector, the companies will jointly develop smart car cockpits to have more mobile and mobility service applications, and explore testing of autonomous driving, Geely said in a statement.

The deal with Tencent, which has investments in EV makers including Tesla and Nio, is the third recent partnership by Hangzhou-based Geely with companies involved in the tech sector.

Geely said this month it would launch a smart electric-vehicle maker with Baidu Inc. and later that it would form a separate venture with Foxconn to provide contract manufacturing for automakers.

Unifor members ratified a three-year contract with General Motors that includes a $787 million (C$1 billion) investment commitment at CAMI Assembly in Ingersoll, Ontario, to begin building all-electric delivery vans later this year.

According to a post on Unifor Local 88’s website, 91 percent of CAMI workers who voted cast a ballot in favor of the new contract. Among production workers, 94 percent voted in favor of the deal, while 65 percent of skilled trades workers did so.

“The stakes going into these negotiations were high with the Equinox program ending, and there wasn’t a time during these difficult negotiations that we were not thinking about our members and their families, and we are grateful to all the members for their solidarity as we worked to ensure our plant is viable,” Mike Van Boekel, chair of Unifor’s master bargaining committee, said in a statement.

The ratification caps off a surprise round of bargaining, which occurred months before t…

WILMINGTON, Del. -- President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Federal Trade Commission member Rohit Chopra to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Chopra, whose consumer advocacy views align with Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, had been considered a top candidate for the job running the agency created after the 2008-09 financial crisis.

Separately, former Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler will be nominated to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Both appointments could be bad news for the banking industry and other lenders, as well as dealers, which braced for the prospect of stiffer rules since Biden was elected in November.

As an FTC commissioner, Chopra has been an outspoken critic of some dealership business practices, notably with regards to discrimination.

“Our administration will hit the ground running to deliver immediate, urgent relief to Americans; confront the overlapping crises of CO…

With production of Rivian's first saleable units less than six months away and the startup EV maker pivoting to becoming a revenue-generating enterprise, CEO RJ Scaringe has recruited an industry outsider as CFO, Claire McDonough, from J.P. Morgan.

Ryan Green, Rivian's CFO since 2018, will stay with the company "in a leadership role," Rivian said in a statement, without elaborating on what his duties will entail.

McDonough has more than a decade of experience in finance; Rivian's CFO position will be her first in the auto industry.

She began at J.P. Morgan in 2014 as vice president of retail and consumer investment banking. In April 2019, she became managing director, co-head of the firm's Disruptive Commerce Group, a joint venture between consumer retail and technology investment banking, Rivian said in a news release. Prior to J.P. Morgan, she held finance positions at the Fairway Market grocery chain and Credit Suisse, according to her LinkedIn profil…

Shares in Stellantis rose as much as 7.5 percent on their first trading day on Monday after the company was created on Saturday with the completion of the merger between Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Peugeot maker PSA Group.

"We have the scale, the resources, the diversity and the knowhow to successfully capture the opportunities of this new era in transportation," Stellantis Chairman John Elkann said in a video on the Borsa Italiana website on Monday.

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said the merger would add 25 billion euros ($30 billion) in value for shareholders over the years, thanks to projected cost cuts. "I can tell you that the focus from day one will be on the value creation that is the result of the implementation of those synergies," Tavares said in the same video.

Milan-listed shares of Stellantis started trading at 12.758 euros and at 1000 GMT were up 7.5 percent at 13.51 euros. The Paris-listed shares traded around the same level. That c…

Stellantis, the company created by the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Peugeot-owner PSA Group, had a positive start on its European stock market debut.

The company's shares rose 8 percent on their first trading day on Monday, valuing the business at around 42 billion euros ($51 billion).

"We have the scale, the resources, the diversity and the knowhow to successfully capture the opportunities of this new era in transportation," Stellantis Chairman John Elkann said in a video on the Borsa Italiana website.

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said the merger would add 25 billion euros ($30 billion) in value for shareholders over the years, thanks to projected cost cuts.

"I can tell you that the focus from day one will be on the value creation that is…

After work on Dec. 17, a used-car salesperson at Bird-Kultgen Ford in Waco, Texas, tested positive for the coronavirus. The next day, the dealership closed the used-car building, which housed one manager and three other salespeople.

Then about a week later, a salesman came into F&I Manager Amanda Lesikar's office with a question. Three days later, the salesman tested positive for the virus.

"When my owner came into my office and told me she was sending me home, I said, 'I really don't want to do that,' " Lesikar told Automotive News. "She said, 'We don't have a choice.' "

Amid the mounting COVID-19 death count, the automotive retail industry has been forced to send some employees home to work. But finance and insurance is particularly difficult to translate to a home environment, retail experts say, because many facets of the work — from customer identity verification to legal disclosures — are best conducted face-to-face. An…

Aspirations to place self-driving technology in the hands of ordinary vehicle owners had largely been relegated to the back burner.

As automakers and technology companies better understood the enormity of that challenge in recent years, they've chosen to focus on simpler tasks in the shorter term, concentrating on building virtual drivers for niches such as geography-constrained taxis, last-mile delivery and high-way travel.

With the exception of a certain billionaire who pitches "full self-driving capability" different from the rest of the industry, most companies have considered the real deal something far off in the fuzzy future.

That's changing. Global supplier Mobileye unwrapped plans last week to make self-driving technology available in personally owned vehicles in 2025. The Intel subsidiary made the announcement during CES.

"Robotaxi will be somewhat of a game- changer when it's ubiquitous, because you are elim…

Inventory levels in the U.S. climbed back to 3 million vehicles to begin the month but still remain far below where they were a year ago, according to data compiled by the Automotive News Data Center.

The total supply hasn't been at or above 3 million vehicles since May, when production in the United States was just beginning to reopen after COVID-related shutdowns, according to Cox Automotive. The aggregate figure represents a 70-day supply at the most recent selling rate. Cox derives its analysis from vAuto Available Inventory data.

Increasing production levels have allowed inventory to rise about 130,000 vehicles from where it was at the beginning of December, when dealers had a 75-day supply, but stocks still remain about 590,000 vehicles below where they were at the same point a year ago, Cox says, when dealers had an 85-day supply.

While many automakers no longer report inventory data, among those that do, Subaru had the tightest supply at 29 day…

Chuck Cook knew exactly what he wanted for his 90th birthday. When he picked it up at Cecil Clark Chevrolet last week, the Florida dealership threw him a party.

Cook bought the store's first 2021 Corvette, a Torch Red midengine C8. It's the Air Force veteran's fourth Corvette over 40 years.

"This is my birthday present to myself," Cook told the Daily Commercial in Leesburg, Fla. "I've owned Corvettes since 1981, when I bought my first one. This makes my fourth one in my lifetime. I can't wait until the pandemic is over so I can get this to all the car shows."

Cook's first Corvette was one of the last ones made in St. Louis. He eventually traded it in for a 2001 Corvette, then traded that for a 2014, which he traded in last week.

Cook and his wife, Barbara, were joined at the dealership celebration by friends from the Touch of Glass Corvette Club, of which he is a founding member.