Trade News

BMW said fourteen employees have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus at a plant in Spartanburg, S.C., its biggest source of light-vehicle output worldwide.

Production at the 7 million-square-foot factory has not been affected, a BMW spokesman said Thursday.

The BMW plant was shut down on March 29, after much of the nation went into lockdown to stem the coronavirus outbreak, and reopened on May 4.

The Spartanburg factory employs about 11,000 people and builds crossovers. About 70 percent of the plant's production volume is exported to around 125 markets worldwide, with China being the biggest.

BMW said the 14 infected employees are in quarantine and that affected areas in the plant have been sanitized and deep-cleaned.

“Each case is unrelated to the other and all affected associates have been placed in quarantine,” the company spokesman said.  

It’s unclear when the employees became infected and where in the plant they wo…

DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. next week will show the next generation of its brawny F-150 pickup truck that offers a new sleeper-seat feature and over-the-air software updates.

The new F-150, part of the best-selling vehicle line in the U.S., accounts for $50 billion in annual revenue, and a significant share of Ford's annual profit. While Tesla Inc and General Motors Co have moved faster on over-the-air software upgrades and high-speed in-vehicle data networks, the new F-150 will bring such technology squarely into the mainstream.

The new truck, expected to launch later this year, is a critical plank in Chief Operating Officer Jim Farley's plan to slash $5 billion in warranty costs, speed Ford's push into vehicle connectivity and add to the No. 2 U.S. automaker's already-strong position in the North American commercial vehicle market.

Automotive News in February reported on some of the new F-150's design ques.

Ford has borrowed more than $20 billion…

Tesla Inc. is zeroing in on an area in southeast Austin, Texas, for the electric-car maker’s second U.S. auto factory as Elon Musk prepares to choose a site for production base of a new pickup truck.

The company has filed an application with an Austin-area school district in Travis County seeking a tax abatement, according to publicly filed documents. Musk, Tesla’s CEO, announced in March the Silicon Valley-based automaker has begun scouting for sites to produce its Cybertruck, which is still in development, and Model Y crossover for customers on the East Coast.

“Tesla is evaluating the possible development, design, and construction of an electric vehicle manufacturing plant in Travis County,” the company said in the filing. The 2,100-acre site under consideration is currently a ready-mix concrete facility owned by Martin Marietta Materials Inc. Construction is proposed to start in the third quarter of this year pending all required approvals.

The 4…

Canada's Unifor union says between 600 and 750 of its members at the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles minivan plant in Windsor, Canada, have requested early-retirement incentive packages as the automaker prepares to cut a shift of production there.

Unifor Local 444, which represents about 6,000 hourly workers at the plant, said in a Facebook post Thursday that the number includes production workers, skilled trades employees and those in the Fiat-Chrysler Auto Transport unit.

Eligible members had until 8 a.m. on June 15 to request an incentive package.

FCA might still have to eliminate about another 1,000 jobs, according to the union.

“When the company informed us of the third shift's loss, they said it would affect approximately 1,700 jobs,” Unifor Local 444 President Dave Cassidy said in the post. “There are tons of variables that go into even that. Number one, your stewards, your committees and your local will continue to fight every single j…

'Ghost' AV research may put the brakes on stop-and-go traffic

The best way to maximize the energy efficiency of autonomous vehicles may be to put them in traffic with other AVs.

Researchers at Clemson University have developed algorithms to help autonomous, connected cars better anticipate what other vehicles will do, thus preventing the cars from braking too frequently and wasting energy through heat.

"There are a lot of groups focusing on autonomous vehicles, but the focus on how they can be energy efficient is not as mainstream. That's our niche," Ardalan Vahidi, the Clemson mechanical engineering professor whose team created the algorithms, said in a statement.

The team tested its algorithms on a closed track, using vehicles rigged to operate autonomously.

The cars were connected wirelessly to allow them to send and receive messages, such as speed and heading. The researchers then used computer simulations to add "ghost" vehicle…

Tesla Inc. directors, including Elon Musk, awarded themselves massive compensation packages over a three-year period that improperly siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars out of the electric-car maker’s coffers, a Detroit pension fund invested in the company alleges.

The directors -- including Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison; James Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch; and Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk -– wasted corporate assets in granting themselves some of the highest director pay awards among U.S. corporate boards, a pension fund representing Detroit police and firefighters said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Delaware.

Tesla’s board members used their positions to “enrich themselves at the company’s expense,” lawyers for the Police and Fire Retirement System of Detroit said in the 78-page complaint. “They have granted themselves millions in excessive compensation and are poised to continue this unrelenting avarice into the indefinite future.”

…

Huang Ximing, a former senior engineer at Ford Motor Co. who returned to China from the United States to create electric vehicle startup Bordrin, warned the 4-year-old company has run out of capital to maintain operations. 

“Bordrin has encountered severe operational difficulties” behind his failure to make swift adjustments to “changes in the business environment,” Huang said in an open letter Monday. 

As a result, Bordrin has “missed out on many fundraising opportunities,” leading to “unredeemable losses” and severe cash shortages, he noted. 

The company is restructuring and seeking to generate cash by cooperating with external parties on existing technology products, he added, without revealing details of any new ties. 

Bordrin and other EV makers have been undermined by China’s weaker new-vehicle market, exacerbated by the coronavirus outbreak, as well as lower demand for EVs after Beijing dialed back incentives. 

…

PSA Group is extending a joint venture contract with Chinese partner Dongfeng Motor Group by 10 years to 2037.

The move is intended to ease concerns about the future of the partnership, Dongfeng said last week. 

Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen Automobile Co. was established in the central China city of Wuhan in 1992 as a 50-50 partnership between Dongfeng and PSA to build vehicles for Peugeot and Citroen brands. 

After peaking at some 700,000 vehicles in 2015, the partnership’s annual sales have steadily declined, dropping to below 113,600 in 2019. 

In the first five months of this year, deliveries shrank 67 percent to 17,876, according to data released by Dongfeng, a Hong Kong-listed company. 

PSA, aiming to revive the alliance, is steering the rollout 14 new and refreshed products over the next three years, Dongfeng said.  Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen has launched sales of the redesigned Peugeot 2008 crossover and the …

SHANGHAI -- In April, when China auto sales rebounded in the wake of the nationwide coronavirus outbreak, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers cautioned that industrywide deliveries this year may slip by more than 15 percent if the pandemic couldn’t be contained. 

What the trade group fretted about is materializing as the virus raging outside China now poses genuine threats to the market’s recovery in two ways. 

One is in China, as evidenced by what has unfolded in the capital, Beijing. 

On June 11, three months after the Chinese government declared victory in containing the epidemic, a new outbreak emerged in the largest wholesale market for farm produce and meat in the city. 

Initial genome sequencing data show the virus belongs to a European strain, though how the virus made its way to the market remains unknown, according to Beijing health authorities. 

As of Wednesday, 158 cases of new infection w…

DETROIT -- Fiat Chrysler Automobiles said several of its North America plants will not have summer shutdowns this year "in order to meet strong consumer demand."

The plants that will remain open through the summer build vehicles such as the Ram 1500, Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator, and Dodge's muscle cars.

Those plants are Jefferson North Assembly in Detroit; Toledo Assembly Complex in Ohio; Sterling Heights Assembly in suburban Detroit; Brampton Assembly in Ontario; Saltillo Truck Assembly in Mexico; and Saltillo Van Assembly.

FCA said the following plants will still observe a shutdown this summer of either one or two weeks:

Warren Truck Assembly in suburban Detroit, which will close the weeks of June 29 and July 6. FCA said Warren Truck's shutdown "will extend through the end of September as retooling continues for the launch of the Jeep Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer." Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois, which builds the Jeep Cherokee, will be down t…

A federal court has decided not to consider some of the claims made in General Motors' lawsuit accusing Fiat Chrysler Automobiles of bribing union officials, opting to assess only the allegations directly related to racketeering.

The court declined to hear two of the five counts in GM's suit, setting aside claims of unfair competition and civil conspiracy under state laws, according to an order issued by U.S. District Judge Paul Borman this week.

Proceeding to trial on the three claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act while including GM's two state law claims would "create insurmountable, confusing and prejudicial spillover-evidence issues, and also create jury confusion that instructions could not cure," Borman said in the June 15 filing.

GM alleges in the suit, which it filed in November, that FCA received an unfair labor-cost advantage by bribing UAW officials during years of contract negotiations over workers' wages and b…

Ride-hailing company Lyft Inc. said Wednesday every vehicle on its ride-hailing and rental car platform will be electric by 2030, but it would not provide direct financial support to drivers for switching from gas-powered cars.

Instead, the company plans to push competitors, lawmakers and automakers to make it easier for drivers to switch to electric vehicles by creating financial incentives, Lyft executives said during a call.

John Zimmer, Lyft's co-founder and president, said the company has reached a scale to impact policy change.

Lyft, whose vehicle fleet is currently made up of less than 1 percent electric cars, in a statement said it would aggressively promote and help drivers access incentive funds.

"If policymakers do their part in the next few years, EVs should reach cost parity with gasoline vehicles by mid-decade," the company said.

Environmental activists have called on Lyft and larger rival Uber Technologies Inc. to e…