Trade News

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of Renault's chairman.

TOKYO/PARIS -- Renault and Nissan denied media reports of a potential break-up that sent their shares skidding to multiyear lows.

The automakers said their alliance, which was shaken even further by the dramatic escape of former chairman Carlos Ghosn from trial in Japan, was in no danger of being dissolved.

"The alliance is the source of Nissan's competitiveness," Nissan said in a statement Tuesday, pushing back against reports that its executives have looked at the possibility of breaking with the global carmaking partnership.

"Through the alliance, to achieve sustainable and profitable growth, Nissan will look to continue delivering win-win results for all member companies," the statement said.

Renault Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard told Belgian newspaper L'Echo that the alliance is "solid, robust, everything but dead."

French Finance Min…

Zeigler Automotive Group, a large privately owned dealership group, said Monday it's buying three luxury dealerships in suburban Chicago from the Motor Werks Auto Group in its largest acquisition to date.

The deal, expected to close on Jan. 20, includes Mercedes-Benz and Sprinter of Hoffman Estates, Jaguar-Land Rover Schaumburg and Infiniti of Hoffman Estates, all in Illinois. The acquisition adds Mercedes-Benz, Sprinter, Jaguar and Land Rover to Zeigler's portfolio, its second Infiniti store and grows its presence of stores outside of Chicago.

The new stores are expected to add 5,000 unit sales a year and $350 million in annual sales. Including the three stores, Zeigler is expected to sell more than 40,000 new and used vehicles on sales of $1.7 billion a year.

"We are excited to be adding these new dealers to our lineup," Aaron Zeigler, president and owner of Zeigler Automotive, said in a statement. "These are high-performing stores that will undoubtedl…

DETROIT -- It turns out millennials don’t hate driving, after all.

As the generation born between 1981 and 1996 begin to reach their family formation years, they are getting licensed to drive at the highest rate in 40 years, an analyst at Benchmark Co. said in a report Monday.

Licensed drivers in the U.S. reached a record 227.5 million in 2018, and the portion of the population that’s driving has risen every year since 2014, the report said.

That’s good news for automakers that have fretted over young Americans spurning the rite of passage that is getting one’s driver’s license at age 16. Millennials have simply delayed that step, but are now beginning to get them in numbers equal to or higher than their car-loving baby boomer parents. At 84 million strong, they now outnumber boomers, with about 20 percent more births per year.

“The impact on the auto sector from the millennial generation could be as great as the impression the baby boomers h…

Self-driving vehicles that encounter tricky scenarios may soon have more options for determining how to proceed.

Visteon, a supplier of cockpit electronics, is working with startup Designated Driver to add remote-control capabilities to its autonomous-driving platform.

Via remote connections, remote human monitors could either send vehicles instructions on how to navigate, or in some cases, control cars themselves and steer them through complex scenarios the cars cannot handle on their own.

The companies said Monday that they have been working together in recent months to integrate remote-driving technology on Visteon's Drive Core platform, which is designed to enable advanced driver-assist functions today and be a scalable building block for higher levels of autonomy in the future.

Along with valet parking and autonomous highway pilots, remote driver, also called teleoperation, is one of several advanced features Visteon is building on top of th…

China’s new-vehicle market, a reliable source of growth and profits for automakers worldwide, contracted for the second consecutive year as a weakening economy and prolonged trade war with the United States continued to sap demand. 

New-vehicle deliveries slipped 8.2 percent to just below 25.8 million, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said Monday. 

The protracted downturn largely reflected weaker demand for new cars and light trucks, which fell 9.6 percent to below 21.5 million, the group said.

Sales of commercial vehicles such as buses and trucks dipped 1.1 percent to roughly 4.3 million for the year.

"We have moved away from the high-speed development stage. We have to accept the reality of low-speed development," Shi Jianhua, a senior official at CAAM, said at a news briefing.

"We had high-speed growth for a consecutive 28 years, which was really not bad, so I hope everyone can calmly look at the market."

Google's self-driving affiliate Waymo took a big step forward last fall when it began ferrying riders around the Phoenix area in robotaxis without human safety drivers. Humans have been behind the wheel for almost all of the 20 million miles of testing the company says it’s completed on public roads.

But the driverless rides in Arizona don’t mean the end for Waymo’s human operators. Last summer, the company quietly finalized a multiyear contract with Transdev North America, which provides bus drivers, streetcar conductors and other transportation workers to airports and cities. The partnership is an acknowledgement that Waymo will be relying on test drivers for many years to come.

“For the foreseeable future, as we expand and are driving in some of these new areas, it’s critical that we have vehicle operators,” said Rocky Garff, Waymo’s head of operations. “They’re part of the equation that gets us to fully self-driving.”

Rather than supply Waymo with co…

PARIS -- The Peugeot family aims to increase its holding as soon as possible in the new automaker resulting from the merger of PSA Group and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.

The Peugeot family will own a 6.2 percent stake in the merged company.

PSA and Fiat Chrysler reached a binding agreement last month on a $50 billion tie-up that will create the world's No. 4 automaker after the deal is completed in 12 to 15 months.

Under the terms of the deal, the Peugeot family can increase its shareholding by up to 2.5 percent only by acquiring shares from French state investment bank Bpifrance Participations and China's Dongfeng Motors, which are both also PSA shareholders.

Asked by regional French newspaper L’Est Republicain if raising the stake was a major objective, Jean-Philippe Peugeot, who heads the family’s Etablissements Peugeot Freres holding company, replied that it was.

"There was a complex negotiation in order to obtain this possibility. It was…

LAS VEGAS — Long known for its sizzle, CES contained plenty of substance this year.

From the tech-friendly city envisioned by Toyota to specific near-term products that support better driver-assist systems, there was no shortage of ambition at the annual gadget showcase-turned-auto show.

The wares included items that have flown below the radar of the headlines emerging from Las Vegas. Here's a look at some of the cool things and notable developments from CES that you may have missed but nonetheless may sway developments in the transportation realm in the decade ahead.

In October, a report from AAA detailed the dismal performance of modern-day automated emergency braking systems. In a nutshell, they do a lousy job of preventing collisions with pedestrians, particularly at night.

What might improve safety? At least potentially, adding thermal imaging cameras to the sensor suites. They have a knack for complementing the weaknesses of traditional c…

Toyota Motor North America's electrification strategy in the U.S. isn't sexy or even that complicated — but it does appear to be working.

The Japanese automaker's massive bet on hybrids — it plans to offer electrified versions of all the vehicles in its U.S. lineup by 2025, while other automakers have concentrated on battery-electric vehicles — has translated into a big boost in hybrid sales across much of its lineup, top Toyota Motor North America executives said. The boost comes even as Toyota marked its fourth consecutive year of declining sales in 2019, when Toyota brand sales were down 2 percent and Lexus sales slipped 0.1 percent.

Hybrid sales, including the Prius Prime plug-in hybrid, across the Toyota brand rose 26 percent in 2019 to 230,889, while Lexus' hybrid sales jumped 43 percent to 43,661 last year.

Toyota believes more consumers will be willing to choose more-expensive optional hybrid powertrains in coming years, …

BEIRUT — As he seethed over his arrest, his ouster from power and his portrayal as a greedy dictator, Carlos Ghosn admitted last week being seized by other emotions.

One of the most successful auto CEOs of the past generation is haunted by regret, blown opportunities and the road not taken. Indeed, more than one road not taken.

At a world media press conference last week in the Lebanese capital, the former chairman of Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi ticked off a short list of alternative endings that he let pass, he says, in his drive to advance the global auto alliance he created.

Ghosn bemoaned his decision in 2018 to extend his contract as head of Renault, explaining that he did so under a requirement to further integrate the French automaker with Nissan. Ghosn also now regrets rejecting what he says was an offer in 2009 to head General Motors and spearhead its reorganization during the Great Recession.

Had he take…

BEIJING -- China will not make significant cuts to subsidies for new energy vehicles this year, signaling that government policy will remain relatively stable, state media quoted the country's industry ministry as saying on Saturday.

Earlier, Miao Wei, China's minister for industry and information technology, told a forum that the country would not cut subsidies for new energy vehicles again in July, an approach which was cheered by automakers.

The government-backed Beijing News said an MIIT representative, in response to Miao's statement, said that "this year's NEV subsidy policy will remain relatively stable and there will not be significant cuts."

Beijing has been slowly rolling back a generous 5-year incentive program for NEVs, which began in 2016, saying it plans to phase out subsidies after 2020, amid criticism that some companies have become overly reliant on the funds.

Sales of electric vehicles, hybrids and other green vehicles dropped fo…

General Motors is shifting "significant" dollars to advertising on connected TV, said Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl.

"We think there is enormous potential," Wahl said during an interview last week at CES. "Just this year, our [connected TV] budgets have increased by 66 percent. It represents a significant portion of our overall media investments."

Connected TV — which refers to platforms such as Hulu and Roku — is expected to lure more than $10 billion in advertising by 2021, according to an eMarketer forecast. Of course, that is still just a fraction of the $70 billion TV ad marketplace.

But an uptick in investments from a giant spender such as GM could move the connected TV needle significantly, especially if other big automakers follow suit.

The automaker ranks as the nation's fifth-largest ad spender at $3.14 billion in 2018, according to the latest figures from the Ad Age Datacenter. Of that total ad spe…