Trade News

FRANKFURT -- Continental plans to cut or transfer as much as 13 percent of its workforce to reduce costs by at least 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) a year, deepening restructuring as the coronavirus adds to pressure on the auto industry.

Some 90 percent of the restructuring measures, which could affect 30,000 jobs, will be implemented by 2025, Continental said. Its domestic German operations will be hit hard, with about 13,000 positions moved to other areas or eliminated.

The industry is facing the biggest crisis in 70 years and parts suppliers are “hit particularly hard,” CEO Elmar Degenhart said in the statement on Tuesday

The auto industry is suffering from the fallout from COVID-19 at the same time it faces pressure to invest in new technology as the combustion era gradually draws to a close and car-sharing services gnaw at demand.

The company, which was already targeting changes that could affect 20,000 employees before the pandemic hit, aims…

Lithia Motors Inc. has purchased another six dealerships — the remaining Houston area stores in the John Eagle Dealerships portfolio.

The move helps the nation's third-largest new-vehicle retailer grow its import brand presence in Texas.

Lithia said Tuesday that the stores — two Infiniti, three Honda and one Acura outlet — would generate $600 million in annual revenue.

Last month, Lithia bought four John Eagle Dealerships in the Dallas and Austin, Texas, markets and said the combined 10 Texas dealerships would add $1.1 billion in annual revenue to the company.

"The John Eagle acquisitions improve Lithia's density in the South-Central region and expands our network with a dominant presence in four of the top five largest metropolitan markets in the United States," Lithia CEO Bryan DeBoer said in a statement.

Lithia did not disclose the purchase price for the latest deal but said it paid for the stores using free cash flow and existing balanc…

Joe Medulla said he hopes that Sabine River Ford in Orange, Texas, can reopen in some capacity within 24 to 48 hours.

Nearly a week after Hurricane Laura made landfall Aug. 27 as a powerful Category 4 storm, Sabine River Ford has power, albeit from a generator, but no Internet service, said Medulla, general sales manager.

Customers have begun to call about nails in vehicle tires and needing an oil change so they can leave town, he said, and the dealership wants to help.

Across the state line in Louisiana, the road to reopening is longer for Volkswagen of Lake Charles, where Medulla also is general sales manager. The city was hit by strong winds during the hurricane. Nearly every vehicle on the dealership's lot was damaged, he said, from blown-out windows to scratched hoods where debris looks to have hit. Medulla said he has heard electricity could be out for at least a month, if not longer, and he hasn't heard when water service will be restored.

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.

Automotive News reporter Hannah Lutz on how GM and its dealers are coping with stains the automaker believes fishflies left on redesigned Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon SUVs while they were stored near a lake in Texas and how the bug situation has added to dealers' inventory woes.

How do I subscribe?

Can't wait to hear the next episode of "Daily Drive"? Subscribe through a podcast app to receive episodes days in advance. If you don't have a podcast app already, here are some options. 

iPhone / iPad

“Daily Drive” is available on the iTunes Store and through the ‘Podcast’ app pre-installed on all iOS devices. Click here to subscribe to "Daily Drive"

Android

“Daily D…

While 3D printing is likely never going to be able to produce fenders fast enough for high-volume production, at least one type of the technology — binder jet printing — is making big strides in the size of parts it can produce and the speed at which they are cranked out. It is becoming an important production tool as the industry shifts from the internal combustion engine to electrified powertrains.

The auto industry is a good fit for binder jet printing because the machines can make multiples of identical parts at one time, and they can make those parts from a growing variety of materials. A binder jet printer can use sand, plastic or several types of sintered metal to create parts.

The material is deposited in powder form one layer at a time and then a coating of glue is sprayed before the next layer of material is applied. After the part is created, there is usually some post-production work needed, such as cleaning, heating and machining.…

When Alicia Boler Davis was elevated to Jeff Bezos’s vaunted S-Team leadership council earlier this month she became the first Black executive to enter Amazon.com Inc.’s upper ranks -- and a candidate to run the company’s far-flung logistics empire.

Early next year, the current logistics chief, Dave Clark, will step aside to lead Amazon’s consumer business. Whether Boler Davis, 51, replaces him in this pivotal role will depend in part on how well she performs in her current job, running the company’s warehouses, which employ hundreds of thousands of workers and handle billions of packages a year.

It won’t be easy. The former General Motors executive must keep the facilities operating smoothly during the busy holiday season amid a global pandemic that has fueled a surge in online shopping even as it laid low scores of the Amazon workers who pick and pack orders for delivery.

Mike Ramsey, a longtime auto journalist and now a Gartner vice president who trac…

BMW will make workforce cuts in the U.S. to adjust for a business slowdown in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

A spokesman declined to disclose the number of jobs being axed, but noted it does not affect the automaker's large assembly plant in Spartanburg, S.C.

"The effects of COVID-19 are far-reaching," BMW of North America CEO Bernhard Kuhnt said in a letter to dealers, obtained by Automotive News. "Given the reduced size of the business, we now need to … re-scale our business across the company accordingly."'

BMW sales in the first half of the year tumbled 28 percent, with second quarter sales down nearly 40 percent from a year earlier, as many dealerships were forced into a COVID-19 lockdown in the spring.

In addition to workforce cuts, Kuhnt said, BMW said it will take "additional steps to adapt to the current situation."

"This is an incredibly tough decision — that many of you have also had to make — and this will require change …

DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. is ceasing production of ventilators and returning the Michigan factory where they were built to full-time parts output after completing delivery of 50,000 breathing machines to the U.S. government.

The automaker, which had been producing the devices in conjunction with General Electric Co., shipped its final unit Aug. 28 to help fight the coronavirus pandemic, according to Rachel McCleery, a company spokeswoman.

Ford’s Rawsonville Road plant already resumed auto-parts production in May as part of an industry-wide restart following a shutdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The ventilators were made in a separate part of the plant that didn’t affect output of auto components, including transmission oil pumps, electric battery packs and fuel pumps.

The company has said its factories returned to 95 percent of pre-virus production by the end of the second quarter after shutting down its U.S. plants in the spring in a bid …

Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda R&D Co. said they have joined forces in Japan to create a mobile power generation system that will supply power during natural disasters.

The system is called Moving e. The hydrogen-powered bus will carry hydrogen, portable external power output devices and portable batteries, Toyota and Honda said in a statement Monday that coincided with Japan's Disaster Prevention Day.

The automakers said they plan demonstration testing of the system, so it can be delivered "anytime and anywhere."

It was not clear if or when the system would become available in North America.

Moving e is a combination of Toyota's charging station fuel cell bus and Honda's Power Exporter 9000. It has two types of Honda's portable batteries and Honda's Mobile Power Pack Charge and Supply Concept.

"The Charging Station loaded with all equipment will be driven to the place and the Moving e will supply electricity in actual locations," a state…

High-flying shares of Tesla Inc. surged again on Monday after its stock split took effect and attracted more buying from investors.

Tesla shares rallied another 10 percent, elevating the EV market capitalization to over $440 billion, making it more valuable than blue-chip companies such as Walmart and Johnson & Johnson.

Tesla split its stock 5-for-1, joining Apple's 4-for-1 split on Monday, with both companies saying they aimed to make their shares more affordable to individual investors. Apple and Tesla's share splits applied to shareholders of record on Aug. 24.

Robinhood and other brokerages increasingly let customers buy fractions of individual shares, making the benefit of stock splits less obvious than in the past. Splits have become less common. Just three S&P 500 members announced splits in 2020, down from 12 in 2011, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

The success of the splits for Apple and Tesla could lead CEOs of other comp…

CLEVELAND -- Carvana Co., an online platform for buying and selling used cars, expects to create 400 full-time positions near Cleveland at a new inspection, reconditioning and distribution facility that has been approved for a state tax credit.

The Ohio Tax Credit Authority on Monday approved an eight-year, 1.4 percent tax credit to Tempe, Ariz.-based Carvana for a project that the state said would create $13.3 million in new annual payroll. As part of the tax credit agreement, the authority requires the company to maintain operations at the project location for at least 11 years. The authority said in a project overview that Carvana's fixed asset investment would go toward "building and land costs, along with new machinery and equipment."

An authority spokeswoman wrote in an email that the estimated value of the tax credit for Carvana is $1.345 million. The actual value of the tax credit is based on jobs created and new payroll tax generated, as verified by th…