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STANTON, Tenn. — At 3,600 acres, Ford Motor Co.'s BlueOval City manufacturing campus here will dwarf even the sprawling Rouge Complex in Michigan.

The centerpiece of the site, a 4-million-square-foot assembly plant that will produce a next-generation electric pickup, will be the largest Ford has ever built. But it could have been even bigger.

Ford said the $5.6 billion project, expected to come online in 2025 with an annual capacity of 500,000 electric vehicles, will have a 30 percent smaller footprint than other plants with similar capacity. That's because the company, for the first time in recent memory, is designing both a plant and its product simultaneously, and is building in efficiencies that don't exist at other sites.

"When you walk in, it will not feel like a plant that you've been in before," Lisa Drake, Ford's vice president of EV industrialization, told Automotive News. "Our target was to actually build this truck m…

As a business reporter, I enjoy following acquisition stories involving young technology companies. The combination of old industry stalwart and upstart newcomer is often more compelling than the individual parts.

For the retail automobile industry, these buy-sell transactions are becoming increasingly important.

Sometimes, a larger technology company grabs a small upstart that produces a technology it desires, an innovation focused on a product or service that would help expand a current platform. Maybe that smaller player is about to run out of money or is limited in its market reach. A buyer with deep pockets can help its technology achieve its full potential and reach a wider market.

This brings me to Reynolds and Reynolds' announcement last week that it had acquired DealerCorp Solutions, a Canadian software company.

Reynolds, a 157-year-old dealer management software company, has an international reach. DealerCorp …

SONOMA, Calif. — There was a time in the early 1990s when Mazda toyed with creating a luxury arm, in the footsteps of its larger Japanese rivals: Toyota's Lexus brand, Honda's Acura division and Nissan's Infiniti.

But what was supposed to be the Amati brand became the Mazda Millenia, a luxury sedan that came and went with little notice.

Mazda is once again moving upmarket, but without a tony new brand under the corporate umbrella.

Instead, the CX-90 crossover, the biggest Mazda and the first to seat as many as eight passengers, will test the ambitions of one of Japan's smaller automakers. It features a leather interior with ventilated seats, suede dashboards and advanced camera monitors.

It replaces the CX-9, first introduced in 2007 and redesigned in 2016, as Mazda's flagship.

The new CX-90 is the most expensive Mazda, with the 3.3 Turbo S Premium Plus priced at $61,275, including destination.

Overall, it is availa…

hat started as a curious new metal-casting technology inside a Tesla plant is on the verge of being a hot industry trend. Megacasting, which uses larger-than-normal factory presses to create enormous individual auto pieces, is now spreading to Volvo and may soon show up at Mercedes-Benz and the Chinese EV-maker Nio. The new approach allows a vehicle assembler to produce a single large aluminum piece, for example a vehicle's entire rear structure. In the past, dozens or even more than 100 castings would have been required — all needing to be welded together. Volvo has estimated the new technology promises a 75 percent time savings compared with how large aluminum body parts are traditionally put together.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A California Tesla owner on Friday sued the electric carmaker in a prospective class-action lawsuit accusing it of violating the privacy of customers.

The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California came after Reuters reported on Thursday that groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras between 2019 and 2022.

The lawsuit, filed by Henry Yeh, a San Francisco resident who owns Tesla's Model Y, alleges that Tesla employees were able to access the images and videos for their "tasteless and tortious entertainment" and "the humiliation of those surreptitiously recorded."

"Like anyone would be, Mr Yeh was outraged at the idea that Tesla's cameras can be used to violate his family's privacy, which the California Constitution scrupulously protects," Jack Fitzgerald, an attorney representing Yeh, said in a …

WASHINGTON -- U.S. safety authorities said on Friday they are investigating whether an advanced driver assistance system was in use when a Tesla struck a 17-year-old student that exited a school bus in North Carolina.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Friday it would open the special crash investigation into a incident in which 51-year-old driver of a 2022 Tesla Model Y in Halifax County on March 15 reportedly failed to stop for a school bus displaying warning lights and struck the student. The driver was charged in the incident, according to local media quoting North Carolina State Police.

The student was hospitalized but was listed in good condition the day after the accident, according to The Associated Press.

NHTSA said Tesla's advanced driver assistance systems were suspected of being in use in the North Carolina crash. State Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Since 2016, NHTSA has opened 40 Te…

Some auto dealerships are installing solar panels to offset expensive and energy-intensive automaker requirements to build EV chargers on their lots.

Dealerships in sunny locations with large roofs and parking lots may be well-equipped to install solar panels and reduce their energy costs, said auto and energy experts at the New York International Auto Show this week.

"Franchised dealers — and I probably work with about a third of them so far now — are really realizing the electrification of the facility is where the king's gold resides," said Ryan Ferrero, the national director of auto industry electrification at Freedom Solar Inc., a company that works with dealers to install solar panels.

Auto brands including Ford, Cadillac, GMC and Chevrolet require dealers to have various numbers of different levels of EV chargers. Ford Model e Certified Elite dealers, for example, must have six Level 2 chargers and three Level 3 chargers by 2026.

Dealers …

Credit unions snapped up auto loan market share in 2022, but Credit Union Leasing of America, or CULA, encountered record levels of interest in leasing from the segment last year as well.

The company connects credit unions and dealers interested in leasing inventory using the residual values it calculates. It facilitated $2.7 billion in leases in 2022, a record that broke the previous high of $2 billion in 2021. Credit unions used it for 64,000 leases in 2022, up from 50,000 in 2021. The company said it grew its dealership count by 42 percent, added seven more credit unions and expanded to nine more states last year.

"Leasing has proved to be a powerful short-term, low-risk, strong-yield option that not only gives credit union members more payment flexibility but also, as vehicle prices skyrocket, provides dealers new opportunities to be more competitive by offering their customers a more affordable way to buy cars while increasing loyalty and …

Credit unions beat out rivals for auto financing market share during the fourth quarter of 2022, and dealership finance and insurance offices should expect them to remain strong competitors this year.

Dawit Kebede, senior economist at the Credit Union National Association, said credit unions achieved 21 percent growth in auto loans last year.

"Best. Year. Ever" is how Josh Amaton, vice president of CUDL dealer client experience, summed up 2022 for credit unions in auto lending.

The association expected more growth in 2023, though not to that degree, Kebede told Automotive News last week.

The organization has predicted credit union auto lending will grow 8 percent this year, Kebede said. However, that projection predates the recent U.S. banking industry upheaval, which could cut into credit union loan growth, he said.

"We still expect consistency from our credit union lenders," Amaton said in January. "We …

Work Truck Solutions targets an auto retailing niche: helping dealers better manage their commercial inventory and connect with buyers. That focus fills a market void, leaving industry insiders such as Dan Bryan eternally grateful.

Bryan, a customer and general manager of specialty auto retailer Ricart to Business, explained that dealer-centric software companies typically overlook the space in which his company operates.

"I sat through an AI demo earlier that was so focused on the retail side, the commercial side wasn't even brought up," Bryan said. "The commercial side is behind the retail [technology] business in some aspects."

Kathryn Schifferle is the founder of Work Truck Solutions, a software company launched in 2011 in Chico, Calif. It employs roughly 80 people and has raised a little over $12 million in venture capital funding to date from investors including Autotech Ventures, WomensVC Fund and Golden Seeds, among others…

A used Mini store in Scotland is battling BMW with emojis and a sense of humor.

The fight began after Bridgend Motor Group opened Mini World, a showroom specializing in the tiny British cars, in December. Someone tipped off BMW, Mini's German parent company, which forbade Bridgend from using the word "Mini" on its signage. The store first tried crossing off the brand's name and logo while airing the dispute in the court of social media.

"Apparently, we're not allowed to use the word MINI when we're trying to sell used Minis," Bridgend wrote on Facebook. "Not on our signs, our flags or our website. We're not even sure if we're allowed to think the word now! They were so stern about it.

"Anyway, we are sincerely sorry for our genuine mistake and for the avoidance of doubt, we sell used Minis, and are definitely not a MINI dealer. We're much cheaper!"

When that didn't appease BMW, the store covered the "M" with a variety of …