Trade News

WASHINGTON -- NHTSA said Thursday it identified the 18th U.S. death tied to a Takata airbag inflator rupture after the review of a recent BMW crash.

The safety agency said it had concluded a Takata airbag inflator rupture during a September crash in Arizona had led to fatal injuries of the driver.

This was the first reported Takata death in a BMW vehicles after 15 U.S. deaths in Honda Motor Co. vehicles and two in Ford Motor Co. vehicles since 2009.

BMW said its "engineers will work closely with federal investigators to inspect the vehicle and to understand the details of the incident."

The defect, which leads in rare instances to airbag inflators rupturing and sending metal fragments flying, prompted the largest automotive recall in U.S. history of about 100 million inflators by 19 major automakers worldwide.

More than 290 U.S. injuries are also tied to faulty Takata inflators and at least 27 deaths worldwide. The issues especially affects…

Millennials will lead the car ownership boom over the next six months, as the world continues to reel from the impacts of the pandemic on personal mobility.

There is a growing trend toward personal car ownership as a result of COVID-19, and people ages 24 to 39 will lead the push, according to consulting group EY's 2020 Mobility Consumer Index, released Thursday.

Millennials will represent 45 percent of the nearly one-third of people without a vehicle who intend to buy one in the next six months, the study predicts.

"The COVID-19 pandemic is reshaping the marketplace," John Simlett, EY global future of mobility leader, said in a statement. "Millennials leading the increase in global car ownership would have been unthinkable a year ago, particularly in terms of buying non-electric cars. The industry should recognize that there is a new market out there that didn't exist until very recently."

Of those non-owners seeking a new vehicle, 71 percent are…

Jaguar Land Rover is moving to streamline its management structure and oversight in a key market by allowing China CEO Pan Qing to take the helm of all local operations.

The change is designed to allow the luxury brand, owned by Tata Motors, to respond to market and consumer shifts, while leveraging company assets, in a more timely manner. 

China is the world’s top market for luxury vehicles, with sales dominated by Mercedes, Audi and BMW, with Lexus, Cadillac, Lincoln and Tesla also making major gains.

“Effective today, all business operations under Jaguar Land Rover in China will be decided by Mr. Pan Qing, president and CEO of Jaguar Land Rover China, including marketing, human resources, and partial procurement,” the company said Thursday on its social media platform in China.

The move will allow the company to “fast and proactively respond to market environment changes and optimize all existing operations” in China, Jaguar Land Rover CEO…

Demand for used vehicles gained more momentum in October, rising nearly 17 percent to approach 1.48 million. 

It was the highest increase over the past four months, according to figures released this week by the China Automobile Dealers Association.

Robust demand for secondhand commercial vehicles and sedans continued to drive market growth in October. 

Deliveries of used trucks advanced 32 percent to some 138,200, while deliveries of buses grew 15 percent to 126,900.

Used-sedan deliveries surged 22 percent to around 896,100, while secondhand multipurpose-vehicle demand gained 4.9 percent to approximately 82,300. 

But total sales of used SUVs and crossovers dipped 3.1 percent to some 138,300. Deliveries of minibuses also slid, by 0.7 percent to roughly 32,900. 

The association didn’t disclose sales of other types of used vehicles, such as pickups. 

Despite the strong recovery f…

FRANKFURT -- Daimler will be a smaller company five years from now, focused on capturing recurring revenues with software-based services as Mercedes-Benz seeks to redefine luxury in an era of electric and self-driving cars, CEO Ola Kaellenius said.

The Stuttgart-based company founded by Carl Benz, who patented the first gasoline-powered car in 1886, is accelerating plans to shift the automaker beyond combustion-engine vehicles, a step which will result in job losses.

"The next five years we will become a smaller company," Kaellenius told a Reuters Events broadcast on Thursday. "We will have a fundamental change in the industrial footprint on the powertrain side," he said.

Jobs will disappear because it takes less time to build an electric car than a conventional gasoline or diesel version.

That's because an electric car's battery and motor have only 200 components, compared with at least 1,400 parts found in a combustion engine and transmission, a…

If all goes according to plan, Rivian will launch its long-awaited R1T battery-electric pickup and its R1S electric SUV next summer. The pickup comes first, in June, with a price tag of $75,000. The R1S follows two months later, priced at $77,500.

Only one variant of the R1T and R1S will be available at the start, both called Launch Edition. Each has a 300-mile range.

In January 2022, Rivian will start rolling out additional variants at the lower and upper ends. The entry-level R1T and R1S will have a 250-mile range, while the most expensive versions will have 400-mile battery packs.

Both vehicles will be offered with Explore and Adventure packages starting in January 2022. All Rivian vehicles come standard with Driver+, an assist feature that enables hands-free driving in certain situations. The system uses 11 cameras, five radars and 12 ultrasonic sensors.

When ordered with the four-motor option, the R1T can reach 60 m…

Virgin Hyperloop conducts first human test of high-speed tube travel system

Remember hyperloops? The idea is to place passengers in pods and, using electromagnetic levitation, whisk the pods through giant tubes in a near vacuum at more than 600 mph.

While it may still sound like science fiction, the concept, popularized by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has been moving closer to reality. The U.S. government is even working out how to regulate it.

One of the leading companies striving to commercialize high-speed tube travel, billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Hyperloop, passed a major milestone Sunday. It completed its first human test run, albeit in a scaled-back version.

The test was on Virgin Hyperloop's 0.3-mile DevLoop test site in Las Vegas. The two passengers were Chief Technology Officer Josh Giegel and Director of Passenger Experience Sara Luchian. A launch video shows the pair grinning broadly during the short ride, which hit a top speed of 107…

FRANKFURT -- German auto supplier and tire maker Continental AG on Thursday named the head of its core automotive division, Nikolai Setzer, as its new CEO.

Setzer, 49, will replace Elmar Degenhart, 61, who is stepping down on Nov. 30 for health reasons, the company said in a statement.

Setzer had been seen as the crown prince to succeed Degenhart, having worked for Continental his entire professional life. From 2009 he led the passenger car division, joining the board of management. He previously led the company's high-margin tire division. He joined the tire-development operations in 1997 after studying mechanical engineering and economies in Germany and France.

In 2019, Setzer became spokesman for the newly created Automotive Board, which is tasked with profiting from the transformation of the automotive industry as it transitions from combustion engined toward electric and autonomous vehicles.

On Wednesday, Continental warned of further restruc…

Join Automotive News Publisher Jason Stein for a daily podcast series about the coronavirus crisis. He’ll speak with industry experts, insiders and Automotive News reporters about how the virus is impacting and reshaping the automotive industry.

Doug Timmerman, Ally Financial's president of auto finance, says the U.S. auto lender posted its best third quarter in five years while payment deferrals are nearing pre-pandemic levels.

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DETROIT — The 2022 E-Transit represents Ford Motor Co.'s first battery-electric vehicle designed for commercial buyers as the automaker looks to increase its dominance of the van market and fend off new rivals angling for fleet customers.

The E-Transit, revealed Thursday and scheduled to go into production late next year, will start around $46,000 in the U.S., including shipping. The low-roof cargo van variant will get up to 126 miles on a charge, company officials said, although they declined to discuss other range estimates or elaborate on how range could be affected when the van is loaded with cargo.

The E-Transit, built at Ford's Kansas City Assembly Plant in Missouri, will be offered in three configurations, with three roof heights and three body lengths, in an effort to give business owners a variety of options to match specific needs. It also will come with an optional Pro Power Onboard mobile generator debuting on the 2021 F-150 pickup.

Ford sai…

Former Reynolds and Reynolds Co. CEO Bob Brockman will remain free on a $1 million unsecured bond while he fights federal charges of tax evasion and wire fraud, a judge ordered Wednesday.

Attorneys for Brockman, who last week stepped down as Reynolds' chairman and CEO, and federal prosecutors said in a court filing Wednesday that a review of Brockman's bail conditions ordered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California did not recommend any changes from temporary conditions a judge set last month.

A bail review hearing that had been set for Thursday will be removed from the judge's calendar, according to the court filing.

Brockman, 79, was indicted last month on 39 counts that include tax evasion, wire fraud, money laundering and evidence tampering. Prosecutors say Brockman created an elaborate offshore scheme over two decades to avoid taxes on $2 billion in income. His attorneys entered a not guilty plea on all counts at an initia…