Trade News

TOKYO -- Tokyo prosecutors have a new arrest warrant out for Carlos Ghosn, this time for jumping bail and leaving the country illegally, exacerbating the fallen auto titan's legal woes.

Prosecutors said on Thursday that they also obtained a warrant for three Americans they say helped the indicted former Nissan chairman escape Japan at the end of December and flee to Lebanon.

Prosecutors are alleging Ghosn and the Americans departed the country illegally, under Japan's Immigration Control Law, for failing to go through immigration control. They additionally charge the Americans with violating the law by conspiring to hide a suspect. 

Prosecutors identified Ghosn's alleged accomplices as former Michael Taylor, 59; Peter Maxwell Taylor, 26; and George Zeyek, 60. Michael Taylor is a former U.S. Green Beret special forces soldier and Zayek is a former Christian militia fighter from Lebanon, media reports have said.

Ghosn, 65, has been largely qui…

LONDON -- Jaguar Land Rover CEO Ralf Speth will retire from his position in September, JLR parent Tata Motors said.

Tata has formed a search committee to identify Speth's successor, the company said on Thursday in an announcement to the National Stock Exchange of India.

Tanker giant Maersk's former CEO, Hanne Sorensena, has been suggested as a possible replacement to Speth, the Financial Times reported.

Speth, who turns 65 in September, has led JLR since 2010. During his tenure the UK automaker pursued a major global expansion with new factories in China, Brazil and Slovakia putting it on course to build a 1 million cars a year.

JLR sales ended last year at just over 550,000 vehicles, down 6 percent, as the automaker was slower than some rivals in electrifying its line-up while large drops in diesel demand and a slump in China hit its performance.

The company has bounced back in China in recent months and its global vehicle sales rose by 1…

Used-vehicle retailer CarMax Inc. is investing $50 million to buy a minority stake in Edmunds, the automotive retail research and vehicle-listing company.

CarMax said Wednesday the move is mean to bolster its omnichannel retail strategy designed to meet and interact with shoppers wherever and however they're shopping, across multiple channels, online and in store.

"Edmunds' proprietary content, comprehensive automotive market insights and streamlined user experience across the car buying and selling journey will allow us to deepen our engagement with customers shopping online," Bill Nash, CarMax president and CEO, said in a statement.

CarMax is expected to complete its rollout of the omnichannel strategy, which it is calling a "personalized buying experience," by the end of February 2021, although most of its markets will be covered in some form by the end of February 2020.

The announcement follows Edmunds' plans to e…

Tesla Inc. reported its second-consecutive quarterly profit and said plans for the Model Y crossover launch are ahead of schedule.

The electric-vehicle maker said it earned a net profit of $105 million in the final three months of 2019, which followed a surprise third-quarter profit that kick-started a meteoric rise in the company's shares.

Net income during the latest period fell 25 percent from the fourth quarter of 2018, when Tesla reported a $139.5 million net profit. The latest profit was aided by $133 million in sales from regulatory credits, up 40 percent from the same period a year ago.

Total revenue in the quarter rose 2 percent to $7.4 billion, with automotive revenue rising 1 percent to $6.4 billion.

"2019 was a turning point for Tesla," the automaker said in a statement. "We demonstrated strong organic demand for Model 3, returned to GAAP profitability in [the second half] and generated $1.1 billion of free cash flow for the year. We …

Jeep’s Super Bowl ad is expected to star Bill Murray recreating scenes from “Groundhog Day.”

The actor last weekend was spotted shooting scenes for the ad in Woodstock, Illinois, the Chicago-area town where the 1993 movie was shot, according to a report in the Northwest Herald. A person familiar with the matter confirmed that the movie would indeed be the focus of the ad. Chicago-based ad agency High Dive is said to be handling the spot.

The Super Bowl just happens to fall on Groundhog Day, providing a timely backdrop for the ad. 

The actor’s golf brand, WIlliam Murray Golf, posted a scene of the ad shoot on its Instagram account.

Fiat Chrysler earlier this week confirmed it would be coming back to the Super Bowl with a 60-second ad for Jeep, after sitting out last year’s game. A Jeep spokeswoman in a statement Wednesday said: “No creative details will be released in advance of it airing during the broadcast on Sunday, and we won't comment …

There's no more iconic vehicle in the delivery realm than the boxy, brown trucks United Parcel Service uses to distribute packages throughout the world.

They're about to get some company in the fleet.

Waymo soon will carry packages for UPS using its self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans, the two companies said Wednesday. In a pilot project expected to begin this quarter, Waymo will use its minivans to ferry packages from multiple UPS stores in the metro Phoenix area to the logistics company’s operational hub in nearby Tempe, Ariz.

It's a small-scale start to identify operational efficiencies that can be gleaned using autonomous vehicles to carry those packages, similar to the pilot project Waymo conducts with AutoNation to deliver car parts. At least for now, human safety drivers remain in the vehicles.

What differs is the extent to which Waymo will modify the Pacificas. While they remain in standard passenger configurations for AutoNation,…

U.S. consumers aren't as enthusiastic as the rest of the world about giving up vehicle ownership in favor of robotaxi services, according to a report by AlixPartners, a global consulting company.

The Global Autonomous Vehicle survey of more than 6,500 consumers in six countries found 44 percent of U.S. respondents said they would consider giving up personal vehicles if ride-hailing robotaxis become widespread and cost about the same as ownership. Eighty-four percent of respondents in China said they would consider giving up ownership.

Italy followed with 67 percent of respondents saying they would consider giving up personal vehicle ownership.

Consumers overall are less interested in paying more for advanced driver-assistance systems (Level 2 autonomy), the report showed, than they are for hands-off-the-wheel technology (Level 4 autonomy).

U.S. respondents said they would pay just 9 percent more for hands-off-the-wheel autonomy. Chinese consumer…

STUTTGART -- Global automotive production may have peaked, Robert Bosch said on Wednesday, announcing job cuts and a review of its business to cope with a 44 percent drop in full-year operating profit and a downturn in demand for cars. Global automotive production is expected to fall for the third consecutive year, by 2.6 percent to 89 million vehicles in 2020, following a drop in demand in China, Europe and the U.S., the supplier said. "It could well be that we have passed the peak of automotive production," Bosch CEO Volkmar Denner said. He also said he assumed the low level would remain constant and did not expected an increase in global automotive production before 2025, while the market would shrink by 10 million units in 2020 compared with 2017. Bosch said its full-year earnings before interest and taxes fell to 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion) in 2019, a 44 percent drop from 5.4 billion euros in the year-earlier period and its EBIT margin c…

STUTTGART -- Robert Bosch CEO Volkmar Denner warned that the coronavirus could impact the supplier's global supply chain, which is heavily dependent on China.

"We need to wait to see how things develop. If this situation continues, supply chains will be disrupted. There are forecasts that predict the peak for infections will drag on until February or March," Denner told journalists on Tuesday.

"In Wuhan, Bosch has two plants making steering systems and thermotechnologies, with around 800 employees. There have been no reports of infections," Denner said.

The CEO said the supplier was concerned but had not yet seen disruption to its business or supply chain.

Bosch is relying on China as a global manufacturing base for exporting electric motors, transmissions and power electronics for electric cars.

Bosch's China plants have been shut for Chinese New Year and the holiday has been extended to Feb. 3, an extension which will not disrupt Bosch's …

Ford and Renault said they will resume production at their China factories after extended breaks for the Chinese New Year holiday.

Renault will resume production at the factory it runs with Dongfeng Group in Wuhan, a spokeswoman for the automaker said.

Wuhan is the epicenter of the outbreak of coronavirus.

Ford also said plans to resume production on Feb. 10 at its manufacturing facilities in China with joint venture partner Chongqing Changan Automobile.

Ford's production plan for its factories in Chongqing and Hangzhou comes as local governments have extended Lunar New year holidays to rein in a coronavirus that has killed more than 130 people in China.

The reopening of the Ford and Renault plants will be eight days after the end of the extended Lunar New Year holiday in China.

On Monday, Beijing added three days to the week-long holiday, which will now last until Feb. 2 as it seeks to limit the spread of the coronavirus, which has …

BERLIN -- Four people who work at supplier Webasto in southern Germany have been infected with the coronavirus, and one of them contracted it from a colleague visiting their workplace in China, officials said.

In one of the first cases of person-to-person transmission outside China, a 33-year-old man apparently contracted the virus on Jan. 21 during a training session with a Chinese colleague, Bavaria's health ministry said.

"A total of around 40 employees at the company have been identified as potential close contacts. As a precaution, the people concerned are to be tested on Wednesday," Bavaria's Health Minister Melanie Huml said in a statement.

Webasto said in a statement that it is closing its headquarters in Stockdorf, Bavaria, until Sunday due to the virus outbreak. Employees have been offered the choice of working from home and the company has suspended employee travel from its headquarters to national and international locations until Sunday. For…

Jeep is returning to the Super Bowl this year after sitting out the 2019 game.

The brand will showcase one 60-second spot, but Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is being mum on when the ad will air. The automaker said "viewers will have to watch closely," and added that the timing of the spot will not be announced beforehand.

After running five ads in 2018, FCA skipped the 2019 game in favor of an all-digital strategy that saw it unveil seven online spots in the week leading up to the game for Dodge, Jeep and Ram.

FCA marketing chief Olivier Francois said in September that the digital strategy worked. Nevertheless, the automaker will be back for 2020.

"We tried to explore the possibility of not doing TV at all on Super Bowl, but doing this super, crazy, powerful national anthem made by [rock band One Republic]," Francois told Automotive News in September. "We wanted to see if there was a way to have a Super Bowl audience without paying for TV."

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