Trade News

MILAN -- Ferrari has trimmed its sales forecasts for this year after reporting decreasing core earnings, although in line with expectations, in the second quarter due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Ferrari said Monday that its adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) would come in between 1.075 billion euros and 1.125 billion euros ($1.26 billion and $1.32 billion) this year.

In May, the supercar maker cut its earnings guidance to an adjusted EBITDA of 1.05 billion euros to 1.2 billion euros. It also announced a bond issue worth 650 million euros to increase liquidity.

Net revenue in the second quarter was 571 million euros, a decrease of 42 percent. Industrial cash flow was negative 158 million euros.

For the first half of 2020, net revenue was 1.5 billion euros, a decrease of 22 percent. Adjusted first half earnings were 441 million euros, a 29 percent decline, for a 29 percent margin, a decline of 310 basis p…

Lordstown Motors has agreed to go public through a merger with blank-check company DiamondPeak Holdings in a deal that gives the electric pickup start-up a pro forma equity value of $1.6 billion, the companies said on Monday.

The combined company will be called Lordstown Motors Corp following the closure of the deal in the fourth quarter and will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol RIDE, the companies said.

"Lordstown ... has a transformational product and business plan in what are two of the most valuable areas of focus and tremendous opportunity in the auto sector -- electric vehicles and light-duty trucks," DiamondPeak CEO David Hamamoto said on a conference call. "Lordstown has attracted a clear lane of customers in the commercial fleet segment of the market."

A blank-check company is a shell company that raises money through an initial public offering to buy an operating entity, typically within two years.

Several EV developers such a…

Chinese electric-vehicle startup Xpeng Motors is raising more funds from Alibaba Group Holding and other investors ahead of its planned initial public offering in New York, according to people familiar with the matter.

Qatar Investment Authority also is one of the backers putting in another $300 million total in Xpeng, said the people, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. That expands Xpeng’s pre-IPO funding round announced last month to $800 million. The increased funding reflects investor demand, one of the people said.

The Guangzhou carmaker still may add to its haul before the IPO, the people said, as investor interest in EVs increases following gains in shares of Tesla Inc. and the U.S.-listed Nio Inc. this year. Xpeng competes against those two companies and a raft of other startups in China, the world’s largest EV market.

The company has filed confidentially to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public as soon …

DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. formally launched the FordPass Rewards Visa card, which offers customers money back on vehicle-related purchases, among other perks.

The credit card, which became available in July, allows cardholders to earn 5 percent back on certain Ford transactions, plus another 5 percent through the FordPass Rewards loyalty program. The card offers 3 percent back for gasoline, auto insurance, parking and other auto-related purchases.

Automotive News first reported details of the credit card in March.

Cardholders get a $100 statement credit if they spend $3,000 within the first three billing cycles and a $200 credit if they spend $6,000 in 12 consecutive billing cycles after opening an account. Users are also eligible to get 0 percent interest for six months on purchases of $499 or more at Ford, Lincoln or Quick Lane stores.

"Building trust and delivering the best ownership experience possible for our cust…

When global supplier Hyundai Mobis said last year it would shutter an overseas manufacturing facility and build a new electric-vehicle components plant in Ulsan, South Korea, it did not mention China.

But as it prepared to invest in Korea, the diversified Hyundai Motor Group-affiliated supplier also slashed production in Beijing.

It was a telling moment for China as a source of global auto parts and materials. It signaled that future industry growth may skip China in favor of other production locations.

While China continues to export billions of dollars worth of vehicle content annually to automaker customers in North America and elsewhere, a shift has occurred over the past two years. The China parts trade has been buffeted by multiple challenges at the same time, and volumes today are lower than in the past.

The trade battle with the Trump administration in Washington has resulted in U.S.-bound Chinese products bei…

In the middle of the Mojave Desert, between Southern California and Las Vegas, lies the future of electric vehicle charging.

An EVgo station in Baker, Calif., promises a refueling experience that's about as close to a gas station for EVs as currently possible. In fact, no EV on the market can handle all the power coming from the liquid-cooled cables of the 350-kilowatt direct-current charger.

DC chargers have become the next wave of technology in this second front in the battle for auto electrification.

While auto manufacturers and their suppliers figure out how to make EVs appealing to America's gasoline-addicted consumers, the industry is also pushing for newer, better and faster technology to speed the recharging process.

At the Linq Hotel in Las Vegas, Tesla is also showing a big push forward. Its new V3 Supercharger unit in the hotel parking lot puts out 250 kW — enough to give a Tesla vehicle up to 75 miles of fre…

TOKYO — Toyota Motor Corp. President Akio Toyoda will create a trio of companies tasked with developing software for the next generation of smart cars. In detailing the plans, Toyoda said old business strategies no longer guarantee success in an industry being rocked by technological upheaval. Toyoda spoke here last week. These are edited excerpts.

Q: Why do automakers need to shift to making software?

A: In the old world, we are the hardware manufacturer, and all we need to do is buy software from someone else. But we must make continuous improvement and upgrading. But once you leave that to somebody else, you are allowing other people to achieve that upgrading. If we decide to develop and produce our own engines and our own software, we can use that for product improvement and create value. For that purpose, we need to pursue software first.

Why did you invest your own money to create Woven Planet?

Whenever new businesses or industries were born…

Editor’s note: This story is part of the annual Automotive News “Future Product Pipeline” series.

Acura's return to its performance roots accelerated this year with the debut of a redesigned TLX midsize sports sedan on a new platform with an optional turbocharged six-cylinder engine.

But there is much more to come, and it will happen fast.

The brand's MDX three-row crossover is up next for a full redesign, although the planned reveal this summer has been pushed back to the fall most likely. And next year, Acura will show a new compact sedan that's likely to drop the ILX name.

The quick succession of completely redesigned vehicles, starting with the revival of the NSX supercar in 2015 and the reengineered RDX crossover in 2018, will greatly help Acura further separate its identity from its mass-market sibling brand Honda.

The NSX, which starts at just over $160,000, has already been freshened and is on a longer lifecycle than the mainstream…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the company conducted "zero" consumer research when designing its upcoming Cybertruck.

He says he doesn't pay attention to competitors or know anything about other electric vehicles on the market.

And criticism that the Autopilot name is misleading for Tesla's driver-assist system, which has been linked to a number of accidents? "Idiotic."

In a wide-ranging interview with Automotive News Publisher Jason Stein last week, the 49-year-old Musk appeared unbothered by the product-related headaches that often vex his competitors or the billions of dollars that can hinge on his declarations. At one point he made a "stream-of-consciousness guess" that Tesla will start construction on a third U.S. assembly plant in four or five years, and later he suggested the company might build a minivan before largely dismissing the idea in the next sentence.

To Musk's credit, Tesla continues to pace the industry in EV sales; it pioneered a di…

It's no secret that lenders are facing enormous losses thanks to the pandemic stopping the economy dead in its tracks. What's interesting is the lengths they'll go to make the dire problem seemingly disappear.

Exhibit A: Credit Acceptance Corp., which makes car loans to borrowers with poor credit histories. Because a lot of customers can no longer afford to repay their loan, the suburban Detroit company has come up with a creative way to avoid a profit-crash: Keep one set of books that follows accounting rules and another that doesn't.

The year is not nearly over, but we might already have a winner for 2020's Magical Accounting Thinking award.

On Thursday, Credit Acceptance reported that earnings sank in the first half of the year by 96 percent to $12 million under generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. But after waving its magical-accounting wand, Credit Acceptance showed that "adjusted" earnings actually grew to $330 million.

That ad…

Editor’s note: This story is part of the annual Automotive News “Future Product Pipeline” series.

Nissan is in the midst of a product overhaul as the brand attempts a larger business reboot in the U.S., its second-largest market.

The product offensive, which will reduce the average age of Nissan vehicles from more than 5 years currently to nearly 3, will result in updates to about 70 percent of the portfolio by mid-2021.

"We are in the process of massive renewal of our U.S. product lineup," Nissan Motor Co. COO Ashwani Gupta told Automotive News this year.

Nissan has already redesigned or updated most of its sedans. The brand will now retool the critical crossover lineup, starting with its top seller — the Rogue.

Next year also will mark Nissan's entrance into the emerging electric crossover market, as the automaker will introduce the 300-mile battery-powered Ariya.

But Nissan's product renaissance, planned years ago, was thrown a …

Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk last spoke to Automotive News in January 2015, when he joined Publisher Jason Stein on the World Congress stage. Since then, Musk has slogged through "production hell," run afoul of stock regulators by tweeting he had secured funding to take Tesla private and seen the value of his electric car maker take off like a SpaceX rocket.

It's safe to say there was plenty to talk about when he reconnected with Stein last week for an hourlong interview. Here are edited excerpts.

Q: The last two years, you said you were mired in "production hell." And now you're saying, just even this past week, that you think that the long-term sustainable advantage of Tesla is going to be manufacturing. So what changed?

A: The reason I say the long-term sustainable advantage at Tesla will be manufacturing is that I think it's actually the hardest thing to do — manufacturing at scale effectively.

It really depends on what time frame. If you go 10 …