Trade News

STOCKHOLM -- Auto technology supplier Veoneer posted a smaller-than-expected quarterly operating loss on Friday and stood by its forecast for reduced full-year losses despite the coronavirus crisis.

The maker of radar and vision systems reported a $64 million operating loss, improving from a $137 million loss a year ago and well above the $134 million loss forecast in a poll of analysts published on the company's website.

Net sales plunged 62 percent to $184 million. The company said the organic sales decline was 53 percent.

Veoneer has moved to cut staff and furloughed still more while also trimming spending on R&D, which is expected to drop by more than $100 million from last year.

The auto industry, which was already grappling with slowing demand and mounting costs for the shift to electric vehicles and advanced automation before the pandemic hit, was particularly hard hit early in the quarter as production was halted in many markets by wid…

BMW plans a version of the X5 crossover that runs on hydrogen fuel cells, part of the carmaker’s plan of producing as many drive variants as possible until one technology proves dominant.

The i Hydrogen NEXT will get a limited production run starting in 2022, the German manufacturer said in a statement Friday. Toyota Motor Corp. will supply the fuel cells for the vehicle.

The technology “could have the potential to become another pillar in the portfolio of BMW,” CEO Oliver Zipse said.

Hydrogen fuel cells were long seen as a viable alternative because the technology provides fast refueling and long ranges -- solving many of the problems electric cars still face. But automakers have in past years discontinued hydrogen models because of the high cost of the technology and, more recently, rising pressure to conserve cash to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

Daimler stopped development of a hydrogen version of its GLC in April, and said it would focu…

Volvo Cars will not reach its goal of selling 800,000 vehicles globally in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

"There will probably be a year delay," CEO Hakan Samuelsson said. "Before the pandemic we were on track to reach that or come very close to that."

Volvo would also fail to set a global sales record in 2020 because it won't be able to top the 705,452 vehicles is sold in 2019, its seventh consecutive year of record volumes.

"In the first half we lost 21 percent, which is almost 71,000 cars," Samuelsson told Automotive News Europe. "Therefore, even if we reach what we are forecasting for the second half, which is a return to the sales volume we saw last year, the year as a whole will be less than in 2019."

He referred to 2020 as the "corona year" and he's already looking forward to next year.

"In 2021 our absolute ambition is to resume growing," he said. "But it will be a new normal with a lot more electric cars, more online sales,…

Electric vehicle maker Via Motors Inc. is working with a financial adviser to raise about $250 million in funding that would value it at $1 billion following the investment, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Orem, Utah-based company develops plug-in trucks and vans under the Vtrux brand. It shipped 300 vehicles in 2016 and its customers, including FedEx Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc., have driven 5 million miles in the company’s trucks and vans so far, according to the company’s website.

Via Motors, which would use the proceeds for product development, is also in talks with logistics companies to invest in the funding round, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the funding talks are private. The company’s plans aren’t final and the terms could still change, the people said.

A representative for Via Motors didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company has also attracted the interes…

MEXICO CITY -- Volkswagen's Mexico unit on Thursday urged thousands of employees in the central state of Puebla to reconsider their demands for salary increases as the company anticipates a 24 percent drop in domestic sales due to the coronavirus.

After suspending operations in Mexico for more than three months to contain the pandemic, the automaker faces a contract negotiation in which its unionized workers in Puebla are seeking a 12 percent wage increase.

Workers could go on strike starting Aug. 18 if their demands are not met, the union told local media.

The union did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Volkswagen was one of the last automakers to resume operations in June after strict health measures put in place by Puebla's state government. Puebla's capital is a hotbed for the coronavirus, with almost 11,000 confirmed cases.

"Now that there are no (resources), we have to find more creative solutions," Volkswagen …

Light-vehicle exports from Chinese auto factories lost more ground in the first half of the year as key overseas markets remained depressed by the coronavirus pandemic. 

In the first six months, shipments of light vehicles including sedans, crossovers, SUVs and minibuses from China slipped 12 percent to some 289,000, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said this week.

In June alone, exports shrank 36 percent to around 44,000.

Two leading domestic light-vehicle makers posted steep declines last month, with exports at Geely Automobile Holdings falling 34 percent to 4,109 and shipments dropping 46 percent to 3,592 at Great Wall Motor Co. 

Other major producers haven’t released export data for June.

In 2019, some 725,000 light vehicles were shipped from China, a drop of 4.3 percent from a year earlier.

The main overseas destinations for China-made light vehicles are developing countries, including Russia, as well …

Carlos Ghosn’s son made about $500,000 in cryptocurrency payments to one of the two American men accused of helping the former Nissan Motor Co. chairman escape criminal charges in Japan, U.S. prosecutors said.

Anthony Ghosn made the payments to Peter Taylor via the cryptocurrency platform Coinbase after the auto executive escaped in a box smuggled aboard a private plane in December, prosecutors said in a court filing Wednesday. Together with an earlier wire transfer, Taylor and his father, ex-Green Beret Michael Taylor, received at least a combined $1.36 million from the Ghosn family, government records show.

Carlos Ghosn, who fled to Lebanon, has claimed his family played no part in his escape from Japan, where he faced charges of financial misconduct. But prosecutors in the U.S. and Japan have gathered evidence indicating his son and one daughter, Maya, played some role in the operation.

The Taylors were arrested by U.S. authorities in May at the reque…

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.

Local Motors' David Woessner discusses the mobility company's deployment of its purpose-built Olli autonomous electric shuttle, the regulatory hurdles of getting AVs on public roads and how it's using 3D printing to produce low-volume vehicles.

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SEOUL -- Hyundai Motor Co. reported a smaller-than-expected drop in profit on high-margin domestic sales and said, while demand should pick up soon, the pace of recovery will be slow due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

South Korea's Hyundai, which together with sister company Kia Motors is the world's fifth-largest automaker, said weakness in both mature and developing economies means auto sales may recover to 2019 levels by around 2023.

"Auto demand is expected to pick up from the third quarter, but economic recession impact from COVID-19 and uncertainties around re-proliferation remain," CFO Kim Sang-hyun said. Hyundai said it will not pay interim dividends this year due to the uncertainty and need to secure capital as it unveiled its results for the second quarter on Thursday.

Net profit for the April-June period fell to 227 billion won ($189 million) from 919 billion won in the same period a year earlier. The drop was likely due in part to…

AutoNation Inc. plans to spend $200 million to $220 million to build 20 or more used-vehicle-only AutoNation USA stores over the next three years, following the launch of five stores in 2018.

The auto retail giant, which made the announcement with its second-quarter financial results Thursday that set a record for adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations, will provide more information on the AutoNation USA rollout during a third-quarter earnings call, CEO Mike Jackson said in an interview.

"When we launched the USA stores we said we'd build five as pilot stores and then pause until we had a clear path to profitability, had paid our tuition and figured out what works and what does not work," he said. "And we're now through that and the stores are solidly profitable."

Lower expenses, digital tools, higher new-vehicle gross profit per unit and a turnaround in new- and used-vehicle sales late in the second quarter from a dismal April at the beg…

SAN FRANCISCO -- Tesla Inc. accused Rivian Automotive Inc. in a lawsuit of an “alarming pattern” of poaching its employees and stealing trade secrets.

The world’s leading electric-vehicle maker alleged that four of its former workers took highly sensitive proprietary information as they left to work for the rival startup, and Tesla said it suspects there are at least two more culprits.

“Misappropriating Tesla’s competitively useful confidential information when leaving Tesla for a new employer is obviously wrong and risky,” according to the complaint filed in state court in San Jose, Calif. “One would engage in that behavior only for an important benefit -- to use it to serve the competitive interests of a new employer.”

Rivian -- which counts Amazon.com Inc., T. Rowe Price, BlackRock Inc. and Ford Motor Co. among its top-tier investors -- denied the allegations. The company said it requires all new employees to confirm “that they have not, and will not,…

Volkswagen is expanding its cloud-based software and data portal, aiming to develop it into an industry-wide marketplace where business customers can buy and sell industrial applications.

VW’s “industrial cloud” was designed in partnership with Amazon Web Services AWS and eventually will link more than 120 VW factories around the world to the automaker's 1,500 suppliers and their 30,000 plants.

The portal is intended as a place to exchange data and software to help accelerate the digitalization of factory processes from stamping to painting to machinery maintenance, according to Nihar Patel, VW’s executive vice president for strategic core projects.

VW has opened the portal to the first group of supplier partners, led by Siemens. Those partners are expected to contribute software applications to be shared with VW and among themselves, in what the automaker described as “an App Store approach.”

Among the initial wave of supplier partners are ABB, t…