Trade News

TOKYO — Just as critics were wondering about the viability of General Motors' fuel cell truck partnership with electric heavy-truck startup Nikola, two Asian competitors jumped headlong into the segment.

This month, Hyundai and Toyota each unveiled plans to ramp up development and commercialization of hydrogen-fueled commercial vehicles to be launched from North America to Europe to Asia.

The push into heavy trucking is an uncertain gambit on a nascent technology for all parties. But it could help Hyundai and Toyota achieve scale on the costly fuel cell components and infrastructure necessary for the technology. That, in turn, could speed their rollout of passenger vehicles.

That aggressive foray contrasts with the marketplace murmurings GM heard in September upon announcing a partnership with Nikola Corp. Shortly after word of the GM deal emerged, Nikola founder and CEO Trevor Milton voluntarily stepped down amid public controvers…

During homecoming festivities at Prairie View A&M University in Texas and North Carolina Central University in Durham last fall, Ford Motor Co. invited football fans to check out a tailgate — and the rest of its F-150, too.

Ford provided more than 500 F-150 test drives to fans at the two schools and at the annual Southern Heritage Classic, which attracted nearly 50,000 spectators in Memphis, Tenn., through its Historically Black Colleges and Universities Truck Tour.

"As we talk about reaching and growing, it makes sense to talk about growth audiences," Damoni Hurt, Ford's cross-brand strategy and growth audience manager, told Automotive News. "We do well with our core; we always strive to do better. But some of the bigger opportunities to grow our brand and grow our market share, grow our sales, are to some audiences that we should talk to in a different and more meaningful way."

That sort of authentic outreach, through experie…

SHANGHAI — Visiting dealerships in China these days, you can't help feeling a sense of euphoria.

Even as COVID cases in the United States rise again, China's automotive retail market is showing every indication that it is returning to a pre-pandemic reality.

Take the cluster of dealerships on Wuzhong Road in southwest Shanghai.

In February, immediately after the coronavirus spread from Wuhan to the rest of China, dealership employees donned face masks, even though there was virtually no showroom traffic.

Now, eight months later, several salesmen at the row's BMW dealership could be found last week out for an afternoon break, smoking and laughing — and most notably, not wearing face masks.

Salespeople at the nearby Toyota store could be seen chatting merrily. They had good reason. Because of robust sales, the dealership has run out of inventory, said Zhang Feng, a sales consultant.

"A customer h…

First, Hyundai made headlines about its electric cars catching fire. Five days later, it was General Motors and Ford Motor Co. The next day, it was BMW Group.

Vehicles going up in flames aren't new to the electric era. An estimated 171,500 took place annually in the U.S. alone over a recent three-year period, and cars powered by the combustion of gasoline are plenty prone to catching fire.

But the issues affecting some of the world's largest automakers over the past week are both a reflection of plug-in models taking off in the market and a threat to more widespread adoption. Automakers are preparing to debut nearly 100 EVs in the U.S. market through 2024, Automotive News reported this past week.

The vehicle blazes are making a big impact before automakers have even managed to pin down their precise causes.

Many of the initial reports of EV fires often focussed on Tesla Inc. because of its early entry into the segment. Several incidents have involv…

Billionaire Robert F. Smith has been hailed as a brilliant investor who built Vista Equity Partners into a private equity powerhouse and a generous philanthropist lauded for paying off the student debt of Morehouse College’s entire graduating class last year.

But federal prosecutors undercut that image on Thursday, saying Smith concealed income and evaded taxes for 15 years by using foreign trusts, corporations and bank accounts to cheat the Internal Revenue Service.

Smith, 57, avoided prosecution only by cooperating in a case against Robert Brockman, the CEO of DMS giant Reynolds and Reynolds Co. accused Thursday of using a web of Caribbean entities to hide $2 billion in income in what prosecutors called the largest U.S. tax case ever against an individual.

“Smith committed serious crimes, but he also agreed to cooperate,” said David Anderson, the U.S. attorney in San Francisco. “Smith’s agreement to cooperate has put him on a path away from indictment.…

The full-size Ford pickup, traditionally the top-selling U.S. pickup, also became the most stolen vehicle of 2019, according to a National Insurance Crime Bureau report.

NICB's "Hot Wheels: America's Top Ten Most Stolen Vehicle Makes" measures theft data submitted by law enforcement to the National Crime Information Center.

The Ford pickup moved to the top spot from third place in last year's report with 38,938 thefts,up from 36,355 the year before. The most stolen model year for the F-Series is 2006.

Tully Lehman, a spokesman for NICB, told Automotive News that Ford has been on the list before but never at the top.

One of the reasons for a high number of thefts is the number of vehicles out there. "There are a lot of Ford pickups on the road," Lehman said.

Ford's F-Series has been the top-selling pickup in the U.S. for 43 years, and the automaker sold 896,526 of them in 2019, a 1.4 percent drop from 2018.

The most stolen vehicle of…

DETROIT — Ally Financial Inc.'s net income surged in the third quarter as the lender generated its highest level of auto loan and lease originations in five years.

The Detroit company reported net income of $476 million in the third quarter, a 25 percent increase from last year's third quarter and nearly double the $241 million in net income reported in the second quarter. Revenue rose 5 percent year over year to $1.68 billion.

The latest quarter's results were markedly better for Ally, one of the largest U.S. auto lenders, than in the second quarter, which suffered a greater impact from the coronavirus pandemic.

Still, Ally executives warned investors Friday that while current credit metrics are benefiting the lender, uncertainty remains as the nation moves through the pandemic without a firm plan for further government intervention.

"The U.S. consumer entered 2020 on solid footing and demonstrated a higher degree of resiliency despite significa…

Volkswagen Group heavy-truck unit Traton said Friday it had agreed to raise its takeover bid for Navistar International Corp. to $44.50 per share from $43, closing in on a deal that would extend its reach into North America.

A successful merger would combine the MAN, Scania and Volkswagen trucks brands with Navistar to create a global manufacturer, at a time when the industry is seeking ways to share the costs of developing low emissions technology. Traton currently has no direct access to the North American market, the industry’s largest source of profits, and instead relies on sales in Europe and Latin America.

At $44.50 per share, Traton would pay about $3.7 billion for the shares in Navistar it doesn't already own, valuing the U.S. business as a whole at around $4.4 billion.

"Traton SE and the U.S.-American truck manufacturer Navistar International Corporation, in which Traton already holds a stake of 16.8 percent, have today reached agreement in pri…

DETROIT-- General Motors' Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant in Michigan is getting a new name -- Factory Zero -- marking a commitment to an all-electric, zero-emissions lineup.

The plant will become the automaker's electric-vehicle hub, building the GMC Hummer pickup and Cruise Origin, a self-driving, electric shuttle developed by Cruise, GM's self-driving subsidiary in San Francisco.

The new name is reminiscent of Factory One in Flint, Mich., Gerald Johnson, GM executive vice president of global manufacturing, told reporters and plant workers Friday.

“Roughly 100 years ago, we started [Factory One’s] transformation from horse and buggies to automobiles, powertrains and engines,” he said. “Factory Zero represents that for us today, hopefully for another hundred years of where we’re going.”

GM said last year it would invest $2.2 billion to ready the factory for EV production. The investment is the largest in GM's history, the automaker said. When t…

Hertz Global Holdings Inc. has arranged a new $1.65 billion debt package to help it reorganize while in bankruptcy, sending its shares soaring.

Should the financing package win court approval, a group of the company’s first-lien lenders will provide the money at an initial interest rate of 7.25 percentage points above the London interbank offered rate, the car rental giant said Friday. The group will also collect an undisclosed amount of fees.

Lenders who signed a letter committing to fund the loan include Apollo Global Management, Diameter Capital Partners and Silver Point Capital, according to court documents.

As much as $1 billion of the debt can be used for vehicle acquisition in the U.S. and Canada, while up to $800 million can be used for working capital and general corporate purposes, Hertz said in a statement.

Shares of Hertz closed Friday's trading up 143 percent to $2.50.

The proposed loan is a sign that senior lenders are confid…

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.

McKinsey's Andreas Behrendt discusses the Fourth Industrial Revolution and explains how automakers and suppliers can harness the power of big data to boost efficiency, productivity and profits.

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SEOUL -- LG Chem is in talks with a "couple" of automakers to create joint ventures to produce automotive batteries, CEO Hak Cheol Shin told Reuters on Friday.

LG Chem is already moving ahead with battery joint ventures with GM and Geely and hopes to expand to other automakers, Shin said, without elaborating.

"Our joint ventures with Geely and GM have been already announced, and we have ongoing discussions with a couple of other automakers," he said.

The company currently supplies batteries from its Nanjing, China, factory for Model 3 vehicles built at Tesla's Shanghai plant.

"We have started supplying to Tesla in earnest, and this is the beginning of a good partnership and we hope to expand the partnership," he said.

"We are in talks to expand cooperation with almost all automakers, and Tesla is one of them," he said.

However, Shin added that Tesla is not one of the companies LG Chem is discussing joint ventures with at this point…