Trade News

DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. will return to pre-coronavirus levels of U.S. vehicle production two weeks ahead of schedule, the company said Friday.

The automaker is expected to run normal shift patterns at all of its U.S. assembly plants starting Monday, June 22, ahead of the original target of July 6.

"We are pleased to be able to return to our normal operating pattern in the U.S. on Monday — which is sooner than expected — because our workforce and suppliers are able to support," Ford spokeswoman Kelli Felker said in a statement. "The safety of our workforce continues to be our top priority."

Ford resumed production in North America on May 18 after a two-month shutdown due to the coronavirus. There were some initial hiccups as the automaker briefly halted lines at multiple plants when workers tested positive for COVID-19, but in recent weeks Ford has added shifts and overtime to most facilities. In the first three weeks after the restart, Ford said it hit…

FRANKFURT -- Daimler said Friday it had put on hold a development alliance in the area of automated driving between its Mercedes-Benz brand and rival BMW.

"Following extensive review, the two companies have arrived at a mutual and amicable agreement to concentrate on their existing development paths, which may also include working with new partners," Daimler said in a statement.

Daimler said the cooperation, which was announced in 2019, may resume at a later date.

BMW and Daimler said last year that they had entered into a long-term development partnership to develop highly automated driving functions to enable "hands off" autonomous driving on highways as well as automated parking.

BMW said at the time the non-exclusive cooperation was open to other automakers and technology partners.

In 2018, BMW and Daimler merged their short-term rental services Car2Go and DriveNow in a bid to create more of a presence in the developing mobility market.

Temporary store closures and stay-at-home orders sent CarMax Inc.'s sales and profits down by double digits in its fiscal first quarter, which ended May 31.

But business has been recovering and company shares are rising.

The country's largest used-vehicle retailer had its fiscal quarter coincide with the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic, which prompted many local and state governments to implement measures that kept stores from operating and customers from shopping.

More than 80 percent of the days in the quarter were negatively impacted by the pandemic, including a mix of store closures and limited operations, CarMax said in an earnings release Friday.

Net earnings dropped 98 percent to $5 million in the quarter while net sales and operating revenues fell 40 percent to $3.23 billion. The used-vehicle retailer's gross profit decreased 52 percent to $354.2 million.

Used-vehicle gross profit was down 47 percent, impacted by a decline of $278…

Editor's note: Reuters has corrected an earlier version of this story to clarify that VW plans to make use of an open-source approach to development, rather than working with a rival automaker.

FRANKFURT -- Volkswagen Group wants to use an open-source approach to refine elements of a software-based car operating system being developed by the carmaker, Christian Senger, its board member responsible for digital services and software, said.

With the advent of autonomous driving, carmakers have been forced to link up radar, camera and ultrasonic sensors and connect them to braking and steering components, something which requires thousands of lines of software code.

"There is a race to create automotive operating systems. We are seeing that many non-automotive players are building up competence in this area," Senger told Reuters.

Volkswagen board member Thomas Ulbrich said in March that U.S. electric car manufacturer Tesla has a 10-year star…

MUNICH -- BMW will not extend the contracts of 10,000 contract workers, a company source told Reuters Friday, as the automaker seeks to reduce its capacity due to the coronavirus crisis.

BMW said earlier Friday it had reached an agreement with the works council on a package of "personnel measures for a sustainable future" that would mainly affect its German operations.

Cox Automotive, facing a sharp decline in 2020 revenue, eliminated roughly 275 jobs on Thursday as the dealership technology company accelerates the realignment of operations in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

The cuts are the first permanent job reductions stemming from the pandemic, Cox confirmed. More than 60 percent of affected employees had been furloughed in May, the privately held company added.

"Cox Automotive is evolving our strategy, business model and organizational structure that we started last year and accelerated as part of our response to COVID-19," the Atlanta company said in a statement.

"As part of that work, we're taking a thoughtful approach to determining which roles are needed and made the difficult decision to eliminate about 275 positions today. ... While we regret the impact this has on our employees and their families, we're working to create a Cox Automotive that's prepared to lead the industry well into the future."

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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.”

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