Trade News

The mobility-services industry is facing scrutiny left and right these days.

On Tuesday, NHTSA ordered a suspension of passenger operations for 16 autonomous shuttles operated by French manufacturer EasyMile in 10 U.S. states, pending an examination of "safety issues related to both vehicle technology and operations."

That same day, we learned, from a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, that ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft are increasing carbon emissions and creating more pollution than private car rides and are drawing passengers away from public transportation.

And now, trouble in the world of micromobility: Lyft is under fire because, starting Monday, March 2, it plans to start charging per-minute fees to rent electric bikes in the San Francisco Bay Area. Riders already pay $15 for a monthly membership or $149 annually. For that, they get unlimited 45-minute trips on classic pedal bikes, and until now, e-bikes. But startin…

Canadian startup electric vehicle maker ElectraMeccanica says it plans to build an assembly plant and technical center in the United States and has hired business advisory firm BDO to assist in selecting a site.

After a nationwide review of potential locations that matched ElectraMeccanica’s criteria, BDO identified seven states as finalists. The company sent initial requests for proposals to the economic development entities in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. The leading location and backup sites are expected to be announced in the third quarter of 2020, ElectraMeccanica said in a news release Thursday.

ElectraMeccanica, which is headquartered in British Columbia, builds the small single-seat, three-wheeled Solo electric vehicle. The automaker has a contract manufacturing partner and strategic investor in Zongshen Industrial Group in Chongqing, China, where it currently builds the vehicle.

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Automakers are cutting back on the number of staff attending the Geneva auto show next week as health concerns mount over the spread of coronavirus across Europe.

Toyota on Thursday said it is reducing its attendance to include "business critical" staff. Only senior executives and public relations staff with pan-European responsibilities will attend, while staff who represent only national markets will stay behind, it said.

Volkswagen Group will have a reduced presence at the show and only essential personnel will attend, a spokesman told Automobilwoche, a sister publication of Automotive News Europe.

Chinese automaker Aiways said it has been unable to ship the U6ion electric crossover coupe concept to Geneva in time for its planned press conference at the show on Tuesday.

Aiways said the production-ready European version of its U5 electric crossover will be at the show. European deliveries of the U5 are planned to start in August.

The CEOs…

SHANGHAI -- Auto sales in China fell 19% in January, more than expected and marking the industry's 19th consecutive monthly decline, data from the country's biggest auto industry association showed on Wednesday.

The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers posted on its official WeChat account that new energy vehicle sales during the month fell 52 percent year-on-year, adding that declines in automotive production and sales will be more significant in February due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The association said on Feb. 13 that it was expecting total auto sales in the world's biggest auto market to fall 18% in January from the same month a year earlier.

The industry is bracing for the impact of a coronavirus epidemic that has killed 2,715 people by Feb. 26.

Local governments began imposing travel curbs and warning residents to avoid public spaces in the last two weeks of January, and industry executives said the epidemic was likely to wreak …

SAN FRANCISCO -- Spin, the scooter-sharing service owned by Ford Motor Co., is expanding to new markets outside of the U.S.

The company will launch its first international fleet of electric scooters in Cologne, Germany, as soon as the spring, according to a statement. It will start with several hundred scooters and plans to increase the number quickly, though pricing hasn’t been decided. Spin also will apply in Paris for a scooter-sharing permit next month.

“Since we started Spin it’s been about deliberate growth, understanding the markets, understanding the path to profitability before we expand.” Spin Chief Executive Officer Derrick Ko said in an interview. “Germany has both the infrastructure and regulations to support that.”

Ford, which acquired Spin in 2018 for an undisclosed sum, has helped the scooter company engage with city governments and understand the environment in markets it wants to enter, Spin’s President Euwyn Poon said in a separate int…

BEIJING -- CATL, China's top electric-vehicle battery maker, is seeking to raise up to 20 billion yuan ($2.85 billion) in a private placement of shares to fund battery projects and boost working capital.

The funds will help CATL expand battery-production capacity in Fujian, Jiangsu and Sichuan, as well as an energy storage research project, the company said in a filing with the Shenzhen stock exchange late Wednesday.

The company has partnerships with Tesla, Volkswagen and BMW.

In a separate filing on Wednesday, the battery maker said it plans to invest 10 billion yuan in a battery manufacturing base in Ningde, where it is headquartered.

China has set an ambitious plan for new energy vehicles, which include battery-only, plug-in hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles. However, sales of such vehicles sank 52% in January, industry data showed, due to a cut in subsidies, an early Lunar New Year holiday as well as the impact of the outbreak in China of a new co…

Aston Martin said revenue will continue to slide as it braces for the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on Chinese demand for the DBX SUV.

Aston Martin warned Thursday sales will slump in the first six months of 2020, with almost all earnings coming in the second half once the English company starts deliveries of the DBX, a model on which its relying to double output.

Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer said the DBX is selling well, with orders already ahead of the planned retail target for 2020. At the same time there are concerns about the impact of the China epidemic, since the country is regarded as prime sales territory for the automaker’s first SUV.

“China is an important region for us,” Palmer said in a phone interview. “The release into China is quite late in the year, so we’ll hope and pray that the virus is done by then.”

Aston shares have spiraled downward since lthey debuted in 2018, with the company hurt by Brexit and sluggish sales of the …

Will a provincial government be able to save China’s Tesla wannabe? Investors seem to think so. The reality may be different.

New York-listed Nio Inc., a self-described pioneer in China’s premium electric vehicle market and rival to Elon Musk’s company, said Tuesday that it has made a tentative agreement with the municipal government of Hefei in Anhui province for funding support. The company will move its China headquarters there from Shanghai and says it plans to raise more than 10 billion yuan ($1.43 billion) in light of the partnership. Other details were sparse. The stock surged as much as 34 percent.

Those are lofty ambitions considering the company was sitting on $1.5 billion of debt and is expected to post negative free cash flow of $1.4 billion for 2019, according to Bloomberg estimates. Earlier this month, Nio said it had raised $100 million in one-year convertible notes, bringing the aggregate to $200 million of private placements this year. It said …

TOKYO/LOS ANGELES -- Panasonic Corp. said it would exit solar cell production at Tesla Inc.'s New York plant, the latest sign of strain in a partnership where Panasonic's status as the U.S. electric vehicle maker's exclusive battery supplier is ending.

The move increases uncertainty over Tesla's solar business which is already under scrutiny, having been drastically scaled back since the U.S. firm bought it for $2.6 billion in 2016.

Tesla has informed New York that Panasonic's withdrawal "has no bearing on Tesla's current operations," the state said in a press release. The company employs over 1,500 jobs in the city of Buffalo, clearing its 1,460 commitment before April -- and thereby avoiding a $41 million penalty -- the state said.

Panasonic said in a statement on Wednesday that it would cease production by the end of May and exit the factory by the end of September.

The withdrawal comes as Panasonic scrambles to divest of unprofitable busi…

Toyota Motor Corp. invested $400 million in Pony.ai to strengthen its ties with the Chinese provider of driverless-car systems.

The investment extends the companies’ partnership formed last year and pushes Pony.ai’s valuation to more than $3 billion, the startup said in a statement. The pact enables a “deeper integration” of Pony.ai’s technology with Toyota’s vehicles.

“It will enable us to make the commercialization of autonomous-driving vehicles faster,” Pony.ai CEO James Peng said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “We will put more money into building up the fleet.”

Automakers are striking pacts with driverless-system providers to gain expertise and fend off competition from technology companies seeking to enter the transport business. For Pony.ai, a relationship with Toyota is a vote of confidence as it seeks to take on U.S. rivals such as Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo.

Pony.ai has two testing sites in California and it runs a pilot service with…

Credit ratings agency Moody's Investor Service on Wednesday cut its 2020 outlook for global auto sales, with China taking the biggest hit as the coronavirus outbreak worsens.

The agency, in a Wednesday statement, said it expects global auto sales to fall 2.5 percent in 2020, lower than its previous estimate of about 0.9 percent drop.

Moody's retained a "negative" outlook on the sector and said it expects global sales to rebound only modestly in 2021 with growth of 1.5 percent.

The agency now expects auto sales in China, the world’s largest market, to fall 2.9 percent in 2020 from previous estimates of 1 percent growth.

A report last week from the China Passenger Car Association said car sales plunged 92 percent during the first two weeks of February.

The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers on Wednesday warned it expects significant declines in China’s automotive production and sales levels in February due …

Volkswagen is still struggling with "massive" software problems with its ID3 compact electric car, according to a German business magazine.

The software glitches may force it to abandon the EV's planned sales launch in Europe this summer, Manager Magazin reported. 

The problems stem from the basic architecture of the ID3's software, which was developed "too hastily," the magazine said, citing VW's own experts. Many of the system's elements do not understand each other, leading to dropouts and other difficulties, the report said.

Hundreds of test drivers of the car are reporting up to 300 errors a day, the magazine said.

More than 10,000 technicians are trying to solve the problems, which could delay the ID3's launch by up to a year, the report said.

The ID3 will be a rival to the Tesla Model 3 and base models will cost less than 30,000 euros in Germany. It is the first electric car based on the automaker's MEB electric architecture dev…