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Visionary, disruptor, revolutionary — no automaker is equated with subversive terms as much as Tesla. The U.S. electric car pioneer has turned the industry upside down.

After more than 100 years of the all-powerful internal combustion engine, Tesla came along and helped the electric drive to achieve a breakthrough. This was indeed a revolution. And it’s still in full swing.

After many ups and downs in the early years, Tesla is now — at the age of 20 — a force. It is the global market leader in electromobility, a pioneer in battery technology, and an important protagonist in autonomous driving. Tesla wants to be first everywhere. The company is driven by CEO and main owner Elon Musk.

Tesla sold 1.31 million vehicles last year. In the first quarter of 2023, the company overtook the German premium brand Audi in unit sales for the first time. If growth continues at this rate, Tesla will also surpass Mercedes-Benz and BMW in 2024. Musk expect…

Texas authorities told Road & Track that a porter at Parkway Chevrolet in Tomball, Texas, took a police Tahoe for a joyride and did doughnuts in a parking lot before being arrested.

The porter was arrested June 16 and charged with unauthorized use of a vehicle, a felony, according to the report.

"We found out about it through another law enforcement agency that had received a call about this parking lot where all these people were out in vehicles doing doughnuts, and that supposedly one of our patrol vehicles was out there," Mark Herman, a Harris County constable, told Road & Track. "They caught a guy in the vehicle, and so we went out to the scene and there was a vehicle that we had dropped off at a dealership. This guy was a porter there and had taken it that evening from there."

The police vehicle was at the dealership for maintenance. General Manager Forbes Durdin told Road & Track the porter "no longer works for us."…

Scammers who previously defrauded COVID-19 stimulus programs switched to target the auto finance industry in 2022, Point Predictive concluded in a fraud report released in June.

These schemes contributed to a 35 percent increase in auto loan identity and synthetic identity fraud last year, according to Point Predictive's 2023 Auto Lending Fraud Trends Report. Meanwhile, the more traditional scams of income and employment fraud and using straw borrowers all saw declines, Point Predictive said.

"2022 marked a dramatic shift in auto lending fraud patterns," Point Predictive wrote in the report.

Overall, auto lenders and dealers faced more than $8.1 billion in fraud exposure in 2022, up more than 5 percent from a year earlier, Point Predictive said. Its fraud team flagged more than 18,000 suspicious auto loan applications last year, up more than 8 percent from 2021.

"Some dealerships that had never experienced a single case of identity theft in thei…

Auto plants in the Asia-Pacific region will cut nearly 36,000 vehicles this week because of microchip shortages, according to estimates from AutoForecast Solutions. The majority of the losses are in China, with 33,631 vehicles being taken out of production. Another 2,362 are expected to be cut in the rest of Asia.

Meanwhile, North American factories are ramping up short-term production in case  of a UAW strike this fall, said Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions. “This additional production has worked to obscure some of the potential losses from slow supplies of chips. If the strikes do occur, more chip-related losses and general supply chain shortages can be hidden by the reduced output,” he said in an emailed statement.

AFS’ production-loss estimates for full-year 2023 were lowered for North America, South America and Europe. 

Source: AutoForecast Solutions Inc. autoforecastsolutions.com

Automakers plan to launch dozens of electric vehicle models in the second half of this decade and beyond. But the problem is you can't make an EV until somebody manufactures a battery for it.

That's why the industry has come alive with new EV battery projects. To be sure, several EV battery plants already exist in the U.S. — assembly lines have been humming along fine for years with battery packs produced by the likes of Panasonic in Reno, Nev., and AESC in Smyrna, Tenn. But now the scramble for more capacity is bringing billions of dollars in new investments to locations around the U.S. and Canada, with more expected to follow soon.

The following are projects that are underway — or are about to be.

AESC, formerly known as Envision AESC, broke ground last August on a $2 billion battery plant in Bowling Green, Ky., with a capacity of 30 gigawatt-hours to supply 300,000 EVs a year by 2027. The project's first customer will be Merc…

Toyota Motor Corp. will split its manufacturing and components operations in North America by powertrain, and it will install one of its leading female executives to oversee production operations of battery-electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, Mike Sweers, who led Toyota's sweeping global redesign of its body-on-frame vehicles, has been promoted to head of the automaker's North American R&D efforts as well as its chief technology officer. The appointments were among executive changes announced Friday by Toyota Motor North America.

Susan Elkington, who has been president of the automaker's massive Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky plant in Georgetown since 2018, will start Monday in the newly created position of senior vice president for electric vehicle supply. Elkington will have responsibility over Toyota's component manufacturing for EVs, including the battery plant it is building in North Carolina. Remaining component operations will continue to be the resp…

Paul Daly and Kyle Mountsier of Automotive State of the Union talk about their docuseries “More Than Cars.” Momentum keeps growing for Tesla's charging technology. And Audi gets a new CEO.

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On Oct. 9, a special section of Automotive News will honor individuals from all sectors of the auto industry who are champions of diversity.

The third annual installment of the Notable Champions of Diversity will recognize those who have made significant efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace and their community during the last several years.

Do you know someone who drives substantial change and embodies what inclusivity stands for? Tell us about them. To nominate yourself or someone else, go to autonews.com/notablechampions. Nominations close July 14.

I first met Edward Hightower at an industry luncheon several years ago, after he had worked at Ford, BMW, General Motors — twice — and AlixPartners.

I'll admit that I struck up the conversation with him, not because I knew of his extensive track record, but because of his name, which is the same as a longtime Big Ten men's basketball referee. (They are not related.)

But I was glad I did. He was into a lot of interesting things in the auto industry. He worked with startups, such as HEVO Power, which went on to win an Automotive News PACE Award last year, and he was exploring the potential for automaking and auto parts manufacturing in Africa.

When he joined Lordstown Motors as president in 2021, he wasn't blind to the challenges of salvaging a startup with a troubled origin story that included a takedown by Hindenburg Research and the founder's resignation.

What intrigued him was the emerging partnership with Foxconn that he saw as potentially pai…

Volvo Cars has hired a "digital-first business leader" to help it transition into generating half of its global sales online by 2025.

Gretchen Saegh-Fleming will join the automaker on Monday, July 3, from Hydrow, which sells home rowing machines, where she served as chief commercial officer for two and a half years.

Prior to that she spent eight years at cosmetic giant L'Oreal, where she rose to the role of chief marketing officer.

"Gretchen is a results-driven and digital-first business leader with an impressive track record, and I feel confident that this will be a great match,” Volvo Deputy CEO and Chief Commercial Officer Björn Annwall said in a release.

At L'Oreal, Saegh-Fleming helped the company grow through new marketing models, accelerating digital innovation and building strategic partnerships across a portfolio of more than 30 brands, Volvo said in the release.

In 2022, online and direct sales represented 11 percent of Volvo's sa…