Trade News

The Toyota of Kirkland dealership, which closed late last week for deep cleaning and disinfecting after an employee tested positive for COVID-19, has reopened.

The suburban Seattle dealership closed Thursday following a sales-side employee notifying store management Tuesday evening that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.

An employee answering the phone early Monday just after 7 a.m. local time, confirmed the dealership was open.

Toyota of Kirkland and O'Brien Auto Group management could not immediately be reached for comment.

Kirkland, a city of about 90,000, is in King County, Wash., where the majority of U.S. coronavirus deaths have been reported. The King County Health Department on Sunday reported 17 COVID-19 deaths in the county and 12 new cases of the virus, bringing its total cases to 83. Sixteen of the 17 deaths are tied to a nursing home in Kirkland, according to the health department.

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Deliveries at General Motors' two joint ventures in China plummeted 90 percent to 19,412 last month as the Lunar New Year and coronavirus outbreak left plants idled and showrooms empty of buyers. 

February sales at SAIC-GM, GM’s passenger vehicle partnership with SAIC Motor Corp., nosedived 92 percent to 7,612, according to SAIC, a Shanghai-listed company. 

Deliveries at SAIC-GM-Wuling, a light-vehicle joint venture between GM and SAIC, plunged 88 percent to 11,800.

In the first two months, sales slumped 52 percent to 133,076 at SAIC-GM and 65 percent to 90,040 at SAIC-GM-Wuling.

As a result, total sales at the two partnerships slumped 58 percent to 223,116 in the two-month period. 

SAIC-GM builds and distributes cars and light trucks for GM’s Buick, Chevrolet and Cadillac brands, while SAIC-GM-Wuling produces and markets Baojun-badged cars and Wuling-brand microvans.

Because of the viral epidemic which spread from the…

Editor's note: An earlier version of this report incorrectly characterized Honda Canada's production facilities. It has two assembly lines.

Honda has turned to Dave Gardner, CEO of its Canadian unit, to run the automobile division of American Honda Motor Co. in the U.S. after last month's abrupt exit of Henio Arcangeli Jr. in a dispute over his future role at the automaker.

Gardner's appointment is effective May 1, and his formal title will be executive vice president and business unit head of automotive sales. He will also be executive vice president of the parts, service and technical business unit, Honda said in a press release Monday.

"Dave is a strong Honda leader who brings years of broad-based experience to this key position in our U.S. operations," said American Honda CEO Shinji Aoyama. "He has extensive knowledge of the auto industry and is highly respected by our Honda and Acura dealers in Canada and by the leadership of our North American oper…

The Volkswagen brand has snared stars from two of cable TV’s hottest dramas to star in a three-part ad series for its new Atlas Cross Sport crossover.

Paul Giamatti, who plays New York attorney general Chuck Rhoades in Showtime’s “Billions,” appears as a penny-pinching accountant in the campaign, which comes from ad agency Johannes Leonardo. His client is played by Kieran Culkin, known for his portrayal of Roman Roy, the spoiled, immature youngest son of media mogul Logan Roy in HBO’s “Succession.” 

Click here to view the ad

Shades of the cable TV characters are present in the ads, which portray Giamatti as a “celebrity accountant” counseling clients against outlandish purchases like “solid-gold jet ski." He looms over Culkin’s every move, trying to reign in his spending, but is relieved to find out that his client bought a VW, which is positioned as a sensible move.

The campaign’s tagline, “Excessive Where it Matters,” is meant to portray th…

The coronavirus has hurt many companies in China and around the world. Neolix, a driverless delivery business based in Beijing, isn’t among them -- in fact, it’s seen a jump in demand.

The startup, which has attracted customers including Alibaba Group Holding, Meituan Dianping and JD.Com Inc., has booked orders for more than 200 vehicles in the past two months; before then, it had only produced 125 units since manufacturing began last May, founder Yu Enyuan said in an interview.

Amid the virus anxiety that has disrupted businesses and supply chains, China’s push into autonomous transport and the future of delivery is getting an unexpected boost. Neolix’s small vans help customers reduce physical contact and address labor shortages caused by lingering quarantines and travel restrictions.

Neolix’s inventories have been depleted during the epidemic with its vehicles being used to deliver medical supplies in hospitals, including in Wuhan, at the outbreak’s e…

TOKYO/BEIJING -- Nissan Motor Co.'s vehicle sales in China, its biggest market, dropped 80 percent in February as coronavirus concerns sapped demand, in another blow to the carmaker which is struggling to recover from a profit free fall.

The Japanese automaker said on Monday it had sold just 15,111 vehicles last month in the world's biggest auto market as demand for its Sylphy sedans and X-Trail and Qashqai crossovers continued to tumble.

Nissan has been betting on growth in China to cushion the impact from its slumping business in the United States and Japan, where car sales fell 27 percent last month.

But commuting bans and road closures in many Chinese regions in February has led to a slowdown in production since last month, curbing output and raising risks to the automaker's global supply chain.

As uncertainty about the coronavirus outbreak shakes global markets, demand in the world's second-largest economy is expected to remain week…

BERLIN -- Elon Musk's plan to turn a remote wooded lot in Germany into the home of a state-of-the-art car factory in less than two years sent an unequivocal message to local authorities: make it happen or lose it.

Eager to host Tesla's first European plant near Berlin -- a potential 4 billion-euro ($4.5 billion) development -- German officials assured the company's CEO fast-track navigation through the country's notorious bureaucracy.  

In recent years, onerous regulations have held up projects from a large train station in Stuttgart to Berlin's first new airport since the end of the Cold War.

Administrative red tape can cause the process of sorting out building permission to take as long as four years. Even something as simple as a mobile-phone mast can drag out for two years.

That makes Tesla's ambitious deadline a critical test case of Germany's ability to adapt just as the powerhouse economy sputters. And even the U.S. automaker's German…

BEIJING -- Automakers across the world face the possibility of extended supply chain disruptions as factories in China stutter back to life after closures due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The car industry is especially exposed as Wuhan -- the epicenter of the outbreak -- is known as one of China's 'Detroits', accounting for nearly 10 percent of vehicles made in the country and home to hundreds of parts suppliers.

Non-essential factories in Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province remain on lockdown at least until Wednesday. When they reopen on March 11, or whenever authorities give the go-ahead, it is not clear if companies will have the raw materials or workers to get back to normal operations.

Automakers are concerned about their employees' health and the uneven and unpredictable application of rules in different cities and regions that is making it hard for an industry that is used to uniformity to plan ahead.

"In some cities, one worker g…

Jerry Lavine is quick to agree that the challenges of a fledgling Chinese electric vehicle maker don't merit much sympathy amid a global health crisis.

Still, as president of Bordrin North America, the 51-year-old former Ford engineer is responsible for the livelihoods of some 80 r&d employees in Oak Park, Mich., just north of Detroit. And they and their co-workers in China started this year with a landmark achievement within reach: production of Bordrin's first vehicle, a two-row crossover called the iV6.

For Lavine, the year had begun routinely enough, with trips to Las Vegas for CES and to Shanghai. He returned to Detroit on Jan. 21, as his Chinese colleagues were about to begin their 10-day New Year's holiday.

Before long, news of the spreading coronavirus made it clear that Bordrin's fifth year of existence would be marked early by a big detour.

Seven weeks later, things are still off-course. Some employees who traveled to their hometowns…

The growing number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany has raised questions about the vulnerability of long international supply chains to such an epidemic.

Daimler CEO Ola Kallenius warned against a return to economic nationalism as a response to the crisis.

"These events show how fragile global supply chains are," he told Der Spiegel magazine in remarks published on Saturday. "But a world without global work sharing would be less successful ... We should protect [that success] while checking for vulnerabilities where we can bring more security into the supply chain."

He said Daimler was "gradually ramping up" production again in China after the Chinese New Year stoppage, which had been lengthened because of the coronavirus. But the disease would have an impact on company results.

"We can't yet say what the impact will be, but it is clear that both production and sales will be affected," Kallenius said.

The number of confirmed coronaviru…