Trade News

BEIJING/HONG KONG -- Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer Xpeng Motors, backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, said Monday it has raised around $500 million in its latest funding round.

As enthusiasm builds for more climate-friendly vehicles, shares of EV makers, including Tesla Inc. and Nio Inc., have surged in recent months and auto makers are looking to the markets for funds.

Li Auto, Xpeng's rival, filed for a U.S. initial public offering earlier this month.

Investors in Xpeng's latest funding round include Aspex, Coatue, Hillhouse and Sequoia Capital China, six-year-old Xpeng said in a statement, without disclosing the company's valuation.

Last November, the EV maker raised $400 million from investors including Xiaomi Corp. Sources told Reuters at the time that investors valued the company at nearly $4 billion.

Xpeng, led by CEO He Xiaopeng, is making electric G3 utility vehicles and P7 sedans with autonomous driving capabilities in two…

PARIS -- Former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn took a swipe at his old employers in a newspaper interview on Sunday, calling the Renault and Nissan results "pathetic," and driven as much by a lack of joint leadership as by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ghosn, who was also the chairman of Mitsubishi Motors, was arrested in Japan in late 2018 on charges of underreporting his salary and using company funds for personal purpose -- charges he denies. He fled to Lebanon from Japan.

"There is a market confidence problem in the alliance. Personally, I find the results of Nissan and Renault pathetic. The two companies are looking inwards. There is no longer any real mix of management between Renault and Nissan, but a distrustful distance, " he told Le Parisien newspaper.

Ghosn compared the share price fall from November 2018 to June 2020 of competitors General Motors and Toyota of 12 percent and 15 percent respectively to Nissan dropping 55 percent and Rena…

Ford Motor Co. is laying the underpinnings for a future that involves a trove of new and enhanced driver-assist features.

The automaker said Monday it has expanded a preexisting relationship with computer-vision supplier Mobileye, which is owned by Intel Corp., to offer capabilities that enable improved collision warnings, pedestrian and cyclist detection and lane-keeping functionality.

Mobileye will provide its EyeQ computer chips and vision-processing software to enhance features within Ford's Co-Pilot360 technology package. The two companies have worked together before, but this marks the first time Ford will use the supplier's technology for the entire life cycle of its next-generation vehicles across the globe.

Michael Ramsey, senior research director at global technology consulting firm Gartner, says the deal signals Ford's commitment to spreading advanced safety features throughout its lineup and advancing efforts to deploy a system that can be u…

Mercedes-Benz will finally offer an electric range that is competitive with Tesla when it launches the EQS next year.

The Daimler subsidiary says its full-electric rival to the Model S will travel more than 700 km (435 miles) on a single charge, based on the WLTP testing cycle.

“The EQS will set the benchmark,” Daimler CEO Ola Kallenius told the company’s shareholders earlier this month. “When it comes to luxury, comfort and safety, the EQS is in the same league as the S-Class.”

The long-range version of Tesla’s flagship sedan can travel 609 km (378 miles) on a single charge, based on the WLTP cycle.

Currently, the best range Mercedes offers is 471 km (293 miles) in the EQC midsize crossover, but that figures is based on the less stringent NEDC testing standard. On the WLTP cycle the EQC's range would be significantly less.

The EQS, slated to be built in Daimler’s state-of-the-art Factory 56 in Sindelfingen, near Stutgart, will be underpinned by…

On the heels of the relative market success of its peers that sell used cars online, Shift announced it would go public this quarter. But the link with Vroom and Carvana is correlative, not causal, said company co-CEO Toby Russell. And there is plenty of room for more disruption.

"We had been planning for years to build a public company," he said. "I think Vroom's IPO is a strong indication of the incredible interest that public market investors have in online commerce for used auto."

Indeed, past news coverage shows Shift had anticipated becoming a public company at least as far back as 2018.

Vroom went public in June at $22 a share. Its stock closed Friday, July 17, at $46.70. Carvana's initial public offering in April 2017 was priced at $15 per share; its stock closed Friday at $141.23.

Shift announced last month it would be going public through a reverse merger with Insurance Acquisition, known as a special purpose acquisition company, which…

Scott Tarwacki helped sell thousands of Jeep Wranglers in his five years with LaFontaine Automotive Group's Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram store in Fenton, Mich.

Tarwacki, as the store's general manager, had a front-row seat while Jeep posted record sales and dominated the off-road market with a diverse customer base.

"It was a little bit of everything — the loyal buyer who had multiple Wranglers but also younger people and families who just wanted a cool ride," he said. "Jeep's done a fantastic job building what they have."

Now he's trying to take a piece of it.

Tarwacki last year became LaFontaine's Ford brand general manager, in charge of two Blue Oval dealerships. After years of getting to know Jeep buyers, he thinks the 2021 Bronco, unveiled last week, appeals directly to that clientele.

"There's a loyal, lifetime Wrangler enthusiast that we might not be able to pull away," he told Automotive News. "However, I think there are a lot of peopl…

General Motors, which already had the most minority-owned dealerships in the U.S., increased its count by more than any other automaker in 2019, according to data from the National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers.

GM finished the year with 287 minority-owned dealerships, a gain of nine, while Fiat Chrysler Automobiles was No. 2, with 181, a gain of four. Toyota added seven to jump past Hyundai into the No. 4 spot, with 81.

Overall, minority dealership numbers continued an upward trajectory after taking a dive during the Great Recession. There were 1,243 at the end of 2019, 29 more than a year earlier but 31 percent less than the peak of 1,805 in 2005.

Ford Motor Co. had three fewer minority dealerships than a year earlier, remaining in third, with 165 stores. Hyundai had a net loss of seven minority-owned stores last year, dropping to fifth place, with 76. 

“GM continues to push forth our decades-long commitment to create a dealer…

Two years ago, Daimler kicked off production of its newest U.S. model — the millennial-targeted Mercedes-Benz A-Class — at its $1 billion joint-venture factory with Nissan in Aguascalientes, Mexico.

Now Mercedes has reversed course and is shipping production of the compact sedan back to its plant in Rastatt, Germany, supply chain and dealer sources told Automotive News.

Mercedes' focus at the Mexico assembly plant, known as COMPAS, is now the GLB, a compact crossover that launched in the U.S. last year.

In a communication with A-Class suppliers this month, obtained by Automotive News, Daimler said: "The current dynamic development of the automotive market under the influence of the pandemic requires constant monitoring and adjustment of production strategies.

"Therefore, we have decided to focus on the X247 [GLB] project at COMPAS and discontinue the V177 [A-Class] production in Mexico."

A Daimler spokesma…

When actor Dax Shepard tells the audience of his popular podcast that they should buy a Chrysler Pacifica, they tend to listen more than people who just see an ad for the minivan on TV or in a newspaper.

That's why Chrysler has sponsored more than 30 episodes of "Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard," which averages 1.4 million downloads per show, since 2018. It's one of an increasing number of automotive sponsorships in the podcasting genre, which is proving to have the kinds of listeners whom most brands covet: young, environmentally conscious, educated and affluent.

A Nielsen study this year found that half of vehicle shoppers who heard about products during a podcast visited a website for more information. More than 55 percent of podcast listeners have a household income of more than $75,000 a year, compared with 41 percent of U.S. households overall, according to Nielsen, which concluded that comedy programming appeals most to online auto shop…

The coronavirus has forever changed automotive retail, and creating efficiency will be critical for dealerships going forward.

That theme will be a central part of the biggest decisions auto retailers make as they reorganize their businesses around COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus, dealership technology executives said last week during the inaugural Automotive News Retail Forum: Dealer Discussion panel.

That includes how to be more efficient with staffing. With technology and processes. With the customer experience. Many of these ideas aren't new, the CEOs of vehicle listings company TrueCar and dealership technology company CDK Global Inc. told Automotive News Publisher Jason Stein in a conversation about pandemic-induced forces changing retail.

Dealership adoption of tools to help consumers complete more of the vehicle purchase online has been an emerging trend for years. But the virus outbreak quickly catapulted the industry int…

Nemak posted a net loss of $125 million in the second quarter compared with a gain of $42 million a year earlier as the supplier halted production for about eight weeks amid the coronavirus pandemic.

But Nemak said that its earnings before interest, taxes and other adjustments would have remained stable at $1 million if adjusted for nonrecurring severance expenses, crediting "additional operational efficiencies."

The powertrain and body structure components supplier said it still managed to win about $150 million in new business to produce e-mobility, structural and powertrain applications.

Nemak is one of several auto suppliers that are releasing second-quarter earnings in the coming weeks. Industry insiders will be watching to assess the full impact of the crisis on the automotive supply chain, which has largely remained financially viable so far.

Nemak said revenue for the quarter plunged 60 percent to $403 million due to light-vehicle producti…