Trade News

Renault Group opened an R&D center at its light commercial-vehicle joint venture with Brilliance China Automotive to help the partnership improve products. 

With design, development and validation capabilities, the center will introduce advanced technologies for Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi vehicles engineered and built under the joint venture, Brilliance China said. 

The center employs 350 people, including more than 10 experts from the United Kingdom, France, South Korea and India. 

The joint venture, Renault Brilliance Jinbei, was incorporated in the northeast China city of Shenyang in 2017 as a 51-49 partnership between Brilliance China and Renault. 

Renault Brilliance Jinbei produces light buses for Brilliance China’s Jinbei and Huasong brands. 

In April, Renault announced it would exit a passenger vehicle JV established with Dongfeng Motor Group in 2013 to focus on developing and producing light com…

Toyota Motor Corp. is recalling about 752,000 vehicles globally — 267,000 in the U.S. — because of a faulty hybrid system that may not enter a fail-safe driving mode.

The recall involves 2013-15 Prius vehicles and 2014-17 Prius v vehicles.

According to a Wednesday press release from Toyota, if a vehicle does not enter fail-safe driving mode, it could "lose power and stall," which could increase the risk of a crash at high speeds.

Toyota declined to disclose whether any accidents or injuries occurred because of the faulty system.

Owners of affected vehicles will be able to get the hybrid system software updated at Toyota dealerships. If the inverter fails because of "hybrid system faults related to this condition," owners will be able to get the inverter fixed or replaced as well.

Toyota said it will notify owners by late August.

Jaguar Land Rover is teaming up with Oslo, Norway, Momentum Dynamics, an America company in Malvern, Pa., and others to test a wireless electric vehicle charging system that could eventually cut the cord out of the plug-in battery chargers in wide use today.

The system uses inductive charging, which relies on magnetic forces to transmit electricity from pads in or on pavement. An EV parks over a transmitter pad that sends electricity to receiver pads mounted on the undercarriage. Electricity flows from the receiver pad to the vehicle's battery pack. It works much like wireless charging for mobile phones and other small electric devices.

Twenty-five Jaguar I-Pace electric crossovers are being modified by Jaguar and Momentum Dynamics engineers to accept wireless charging. The vehicles will then be shipped to Norway, where they will be placed in a taxi fleet operated by Cabonline, one of the largest taxi companies in the Nordic region. The test i…

WASHINGTON -- House Democrats criticized the Justice Department Wednesday after one of its career attorneys testified an antitrust investigation was launched into automakers that agreed to meet California’s strict tailpipe emissions rules the day after President Donald Trump fumed about the arrangement on Twitter.

John Elias, a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, told the House Judiciary Committee that he reported the circumstances around the investigation to DOJ’s inspector general as an example of how competition laws have been misused under Attorney General William Barr.

“It is unacceptable that he would order the Antitrust Division to initiate pre-textual investigations into industries he and the president do not like simply because they do not like them,” House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler said of Barr in his opening remarks.

The department has said it had a legitimate legal basis to review whether the automakers had …

Thirty percent of drivers turn off adaptive cruise control, according to a survey released Wednesday by Erie Insurance, making it the top safety feature that drivers disable.

The survey identifies 11 safety features that are disabled the most. Lane-keeping assist and driver-attention monitoring round out the top three.

"Drivers said their most common reasons for turning off or disabling features is that they find them annoying or distracting," Jon Bloom, vice president of personal auto at Erie Insurance, said in a press release.

The survey listed several other reasons drivers disable these features, including lack of control, limited helpfulness, false alarms, lack of trust and bad experiences.

Drivers are paying a significant amount of money for these safety features. According to Car and Driver, adaptive cruise control systems can cost $1,000 to $4,500, depending on the vehicle.

"Today's cars are safer …

General Motors has eliminated the third shift at its Spring Hill, Tenn., assembly plant due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the company and UAW local said Wednesday.

"We believe the best way to react to this unforeseen change in our market is to reduce output and operate on two shifts effective immediately," said GM spokesman David Barnas.

"This adjustment allows the plant to maintain stable production, protect the value of our brands in any sales environment, and to provide the smallest impact to plant employment going forward."

About 680 full-time and temporary employees will be permanently laid off, Barnas said.

The layoffs won't all come from the third shift, Mike Herron, shop chair for UAW Local 1853, which represents workers at Spring Hill, told Automotive News.

Employees with the highest seniority can move to either the first or second shift, while lower-level workers on those shifts may…

California plans to ask a state court judge to force Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. to classify their ride-hail drivers as employees rather than contractors, ratcheting up the tension over a new gig worker law.

A hearing for the matter was set for Aug. 6.

In a filing in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco on Wednesday, lawyers for California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said their office will file a request for a preliminary injunction.

Uber in a statement said most drivers preferred the independence afforded by working as contractors and that it calculated more than 158,000 Uber drivers in California would lose work if the reclassification happened.

Lyft and the office for the state's attorney general did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

BEIJING - Ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing aims to operate more than 1 million self-driving vehicles through its platform by 2030, an executive said on Tuesday.

Didi is developing autonomous driving technologies and plans to deploy so-called robotaxis in areas where there is a shortage of ride-hailing vehicle supply, said Meng Xing, COO of the company's autonomous driving unit, at an online conference hosted by South China Morning Post.

The company last month completed a more than $500 million fundraising round for the autonomous driving unit, led by SoftBank Group's Vision Fund 2.

Didi said last year it would start using autonomous vehicles to pick up passengers in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen this year before expanding the program outside of China in 2021.

Automakers and tech companies in China are investing billions in autonomous driving to compete with the likes of Tesla Inc., Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo and Uber Technologies.

While some ind…

Unifor is urging Canada's government to implement a national auto strategy built around the adoption and manufacturing of zero-emissions electric vehicles.

“The government must accelerate the conversion of passenger and commercial vehicles to ZEVs by providing financial support and tax credits to firms engaged in the manufacture of EVs, for instance, including final assembly and the production of EV component parts in Canada,” the union wrote in a report released Wednesday.

Its proposals, Unifor says, would lead to a “fair, inclusive and resilient” economic recovery.

Unifor, Canada's largest private-sector union, representing about 315,000 workers in every major area of the economy, also urged Ottawa to boost skills training and raise the federal minimum wage to at least C$15 per hour ($11 USD). It said any corporate rescue packages should come with “strong, enforceable conditions,” including job protection guarantees, executive compensation limits and t…

During the coronavirus pandemic, federal, state and local governments have introduced measures designed to prevent the spread of the deadly virus, preserve economic stability and provide for Americans hardest hit by the crisis. Measures at every level have been criticized as being too harsh, too lax, overreaching and incomplete, depending on regional variances.

A failed consumer protection law in California exemplifies contentious legislation in the time of the coronavirus. The American Financial Services Association believed the rule, AB 2501, which the California Assembly declined to approve before it adjourned last week, would have caused more harm to auto lenders and borrowers in the long run.

The COVID-19 Homeowner, Tenant and Consumer Relief Law of 2020 — first introduced in February — would have required creditors to provide up to nine months of vehicle payment relief, suspend repossessions for two years with some exceptions and offer o…