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The auto industry is churning out new technology ideas

The news has been relentless lately telling us about wondrous new plans and technologies that will take the auto industry into a remarkable new future. This week, we zoom a little closer into that picture to show you some specific examples of technological change in the making.

Our Emerging Technologies special section gives you a glimpse of more than 20 new devices, trends, factory practices and bold ideas to lift vehicles to the next evolutionary stage. Turns out, automotive is currently leading the economy in the growth of patent applications.

Will all those new technologies succeed as envisioned? Who knows. That's the sort of question investors and entrepreneurs wager their fortunes on.

But "success" is a funny word in the car business. Mostly because the industry is constantly evolving, changing strategies and changing hands, and a brilliant solution that succeeds one year could be rend…

Upstream Security’s marketing vice president evaluates automaker commitment to fighting cybersecurity threats and the double-edged sword of connectivity. White-hat hackers, she says, are playing an important role in rooting out threats.

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One promising new technology posited by Sony Honda Mobility's Afeela electric vehicle is an exterior Media Bar. The digital screen, positioned in a band between the headlights, changes color and beams text messages to the world outside, similar to a digital phone. The light band can display a weather report, or even transmit images. The idea might sound gimmicky, but in the coming age of self-driving cars, such visual cues will be crucial in communicating with other cars and pedestrians. Automakers from Nissan to Mercedes-Benz are working with the idea in concepts as Level 3 automated driving becomes a reality.

With the clock ticking on the Chevrolet Camaro — production ends in January — a special run of 50 cars might end up being one of the most valuable of the sixth-generation pony car.

Chevrolet is providing 50 "Festival Event" Camaros for use during May at the Indianapolis 500 and in the Indianapolis area. The cars are all convertibles, all powered by 455-hp, 6.2-liter engines and all the same cosmetically: Sharkskin Metallic paint with ash gray leather interior. And, of course, Indy 500 graphics.

Chevrolet spokesman Kevin Kelly said the cars will be offered for public sale sometime after the Indy 500, most likely through Indianapolis-area Chevy dealerships.

There's no word on pricing, but these cars have a unique Chevrolet option code and likely won't come cheap.

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 …