Trade News

Auto companies plug into global EV party

Amid challenges, uncertainties and hardships sparked by COVID-19, it's been difficult to find reasons to celebrate this year.

Perhaps that's why some companies latched onto a newly designated day to commemorate vehicle electrification. Wednesday marked the inaugural World EV Day, and there were celebrations in Europe, Southeast Asia and across the globe.

Leading the initiative were Swiss technology company ABB, which is a major Formula E racing sponsor, and Green.tv, an online media company based in Oxford, England, that focuses on sustainability. Among the automakers and brands that signed on as partners for World EV Day were Hyundai, Jaguar, Land Rover, Nissan, Mahindra, Polestar and electric vehicle startups Nio and BYD.

Nissan marked the production of its 500,000th Leaf EV on Wednesday at its plant in Sunderland, England.

Also in the United Kingdom, Highways England – the government-owned compa…

Sales at two large light-vehicle makers, Geely Automobile Holdings and Great Wall Motor Co., continue to rise at a double-digit pace after resuming growth in April. 

In August, Geely sales rose 12 percent to 113,443, the private and largest domestic Chinese passenger vehicle manufacturer said. 

As in the past several months, volume was driven by Lynk & CO, the premium upstart brand jointly owned by Geely and Volvo Car Corp. 

August deliveries at Lynk & CO, whose products – one compact sedan and four compact crossovers – share a platform with the Volvo XC40, surged 56 percent to 17,098. 

Great Wall, the largest pickup maker in China, said August sales jumped 27 percent to 89,442 on demand for trucks. 

With the Chinese government prodding more provinces to remove restrictions on pickup use in urban areas, the company’s pickup sales soared 80 percent to 20,951 last month. 

Because of sharp declines…

BYD Co., a leading Chinese electrified vehicle maker, started producing batteries in Brazil this month to supply locally assembled electric vehicles. 

The $2.7 million plant -- in Manaus, a city in the northern Brazilian state of Amazonas -- is building BYD’s proprietary lithium iron phosphate batteries mainly for electric buses. 

The factory, which can produce 18,000 battery modules a year at full capacity, is expected to deliver 1,000 battery modules by the end of September, the Chinese company said.

The battery models will be supplied to electric buses assembled at BYD’s plant opened in 2015 in Campinas, a city in the southeast Brazilian state of Sao Paulo.

BYD mainly assembles electric buses outside China. 

The Manaus factory is its second battery production site outside China. 

In 2013, BYD opened its first overseas electric bus plant, along with a battery factory, in Lancaster, Calif. 

In the pa…

Sales of new light vehicles in China grew in August, for the fourth consecutive month, as the market continued to rebound from the coronavirus outbreak. 

Total deliveries of new light vehicles, including sedans, crossovers, SUVs, multipurpose vehicles and minibuses, rose 6 percent from a year earlier to approach 1.76 million, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said Thursday.

With truck demand boosted by massive government investment in infrastructure projects, such as construction of roads and railways, sales of new commercial vehicles, including trucks and buses, have remained robust since April, with August volume surging 42 percent to around 431,000.

Geely Automobile Holdings and Toyota Motor Corp. were among major automakers that posted increases last month, while the primary joint ventures of Nissan Motor Co. and General Motors saw volume slide. 

Because of the severe market contraction in the first quarter…

ATLANTA — Porsche's U.S. boss is said to be getting a major promotion.

Klaus Zellmer, 53, CEO of Porsche Cars North America, will be elevated to chief sales officer at Volkswagen, according to the website of Germany's Manager Magazin.

A Porsche Cars North America spokesman declined to comment Thursday morning.

Zellmer will replace Jürgen Stackmann in Wolfsburg, the German business magazine said, citing unnamed sources.

Stackmann joined VW as head of sales in 2015 after holding board-level positions at VW Group subsidiaries Skoda and Seat.

Stackmann, 58, who overhauled dealer contracts and designed the VW brand campaign, is under fire internally and expected to leave, according to media reports. Stackmann was also among the top-level VW brand executives who had to apologize in June for a racist video.

Since taking the top job in the U.S. in late 2015, Zellmer steered Porsche toward a nearly 20 percent increase in sales. The sports car …

Volkswagen Group's heavy-truck business boosted its bid for Navistar International Corp., offering to buy the rest of the U.S. manufacturer for $3.6 billion.

Traton increased its offer to purchase the portion of stock it doesn’t already own to $43 a share, up from $35 a share offered in January, according to a statement. Bloomberg News reported last week that the VW division was seeking to restart negotiations this month to win over Navistar’s management and main shareholders, which include billionaire investor Carl Icahn.

Navistar shares closed Thursday's trading up 13.8 percent to $40.78.

By acquiring Lisle, Ill.-based Navistar, VW would secure a strong position in the U.S. heavy-truck market and step up its challenge to Daimler and Volvo AB. VW said in a separate statement that it will provide funds for the financing of Traton’s increased offer.

“A strategic buyout of Navistar remains an eventual outcome with a competing bid unlikely,” Christop…

Nissan North America — which for years has relied on college football — is shifting a significant portion of its media to the National Football League in the latest sign of how the coronavirus is upending brand marketing calendars.

The automaker will continue putting money into college football, where it will air its “Heisman House” campaign for the 10th straight season. But with the Big 10 and Pac-12 suspending their seasons, at least for now, there is less inventory available. So for the first time, Nissan will air the campaign during NFL games.

The move shows how the NFL -- already a ratings behemoth and the most expensive ad buying marketplace -- will grow even more powerful this year, assuming the league can complete its season without coronavirus shutdowns.

For Nissan, the challenge was to find NFL inventory that was not already littered with auto ads; it’s hard to watch games without seeing a pickup spot in nearly every commercial pod. The automot…

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.

The CEO of Diehl Automotive says grosses on new-and used-vehicle sales are ''through the roof'' amid the pandemic. But she fears consumer spending will slow and says her Pittsburgh-area dealership group will strive to avoid ''crazy habits'' once inventory levels return to normal.

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MODENA, Italy -- Maserati is challenging Ferrari and Lamborghini in the supercar class with the the 621-hp MC20, which it says offers a better power-to-weight ratio than its Italian rivals.

The MC20’s 3.0-liter V-6 turbocharged gasoline engine, built by Maserati, also produces 538 pound-feet of torque.

Production of the coupe version of the MC20, Maserati’s most powerful series model to date, is scheduled to start at the end of this year, with orders being taken starting Wednesday. Deliveries will start in 2021. A convertible version and a battery-electric version will reach the market in 2022.

Maserati has not announced prices. The MC20 is expected to compete against the Ferrari F8 Tributo, which starts at 236,000 euros ($279,000) in Italy, and the Lamborghini Huracan, which starts at 197,000 euros.

The coupe version of the MC20 with a conventional internal-combustion powertrain was shown Wednesday during an event at Maserati headquarters h…

Finance-and-insurance software provider Dealertrack is now capable of supporting a fully digital process after adding an electronic signature feature to its tool and integrating another so customers can remotely sign and submit any deal document digitally, the company said last month.

Pandemic conditions accelerated progress of the technology, which was previously expected to launch within six months, according to Emil Banga, associate vice president of F&I dealer operations at Cox Automotive.

"We put this at the head of the pack," Banga said about the advancements. "We were able to get that done in a very, very short time frame."

The new feature, Dealertrack Ready Sign, allows dealership employees to upload forms to the company's uniFI F&I software and assign blocks from customer signatures, initials and dates — much like a PDF. Once uploaded, documents can be sent to customers through a secure link accessed through a smar…

Schaeffler will cut 4,400 jobs and close or sell several German plants as the automotive supplier joins peers in reeling from the coronavirus pandemic.

Most of the reductions will take place at a dozen facilities in Germany and two sites elsewhere in Europe, the maker of engine, transmission and chassis components said in a statement Wednesday. Factories in Wuppertal, Eltmann and Clasthal-Zellerfeld will be shut or shopped to other companies, with the cuts expected to save Schaeffler as much as 300 million euros ($354 million) a year. The company will take a one-time charge of 700 million euros ($826 million) for the restructuring.

“We’re in a situation where the really bad effects of the pandemic are easing, but the levels we saw in 2019, we’re not going to reach anytime soon,” CEO Klaus Rosenfeld said in an interview, adding that a recovery might take until 2024. “It’s not going to be v-shaped.”

Suppliers including Schaeffler and Continental, which are…