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Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares on Wednesday said climate change policies should not be used to influence global investment decisions and to put countries in competition with each other.

"Policies on climate change should not be a weapon to rebuild competitiveness in a global trade approach," Tavares said during Stellantis' Freedom of Mobility Forum.

Congress last year announced $369 billion in subsidies to support clean technologies and electric vehicles under the Inflation Reduction Act, while China has been giving local automakers incentives for domestic production of battery electric vehicles. 

The European Union responded last month with its proposed Green Deal Industrial Plan, concerned that the U.S. law could put companies based in Europe at a disadvantage and drive investments out of the region.

Sticks with electrification

The final decision by EU countries on Tuesday to allow sales of new combustion engine cars t…

Starting this summer, Cadillac will allow buyers of the brand's upcoming Celestiq ultraluxury electric sedan to personalize their vehicles through a concierge service at its Global Technical Center campus.

General Motors will convert a building on the campus in Warren, Mich., into Cadillac House at Vanderbilt, named for designer Suzanne Vanderbilt, who worked on Cadillac vehicles after joining GM Design in 1955, including a 1958 Eldorado Seville coupe dubbed Baroness and the Saxony convertible.

Cadillac will select buyers for the Celestiq beginning this spring, and the first personalization concierge visits at Cadillac House will begin in late summer, the brand said.

"Every Celestiq is personally commissioned and working on-site with our Cadillac designers provides clients an elevated experience," Bryan Nesbitt, executive director of global Cadillac design, said in a statement. "It's a unique opportunity to collaborate with our design team, enabling cli…

Online used-vehicle retailer Shift Technologies Inc. said it reduced headcount by about 30 percent and reported a wider loss from operations and shrunken revenue in the fourth quarter.

On a Tuesday earnings call, Shift Technologies CEO Jeff Clementz said the majority of reductions stemmed from the company's move to a "decentralized sales organization" in February. Corporate roles also were reduced, he said, though the exact number was not immediately clear.

The retailer reported a $60.7 million fourth-quarter loss from operations, wider than a $53.2 million loss in the year-earlier period. Revenue during the quarter plunged 67 percent to $65.6 million.

The company posted net income of $13 million compared with a net loss of $75.8 million during the same quarter last year. But the most recent quarterly results included a one-time gain of $76.7 million from the acquisition of used-vehicle consignment company CarLotz Inc.

The retailer closed on that …

BYD Co. doesn't have any current plans to enter the U.S. passenger car market, founder Wang Chuanfu said, throwing cold water on the prospect of the Chinese electric-vehicle maker challenging Tesla Inc. in its home market — for now.

The auto titan, which reported that net income more than quintupled last year after it sold a record number of EVs, said at a post-earnings briefing on Wednesday that its home market of China has already entered a "full-expansion phase" for new-energy vehicles.The US is the next biggest EV market after China, where a price war has erupted between BYD, Tesla and other EV makers. Backed by Warren Buffett, BYD has been expanding its footprint overseas, including into Norway, Denmark, the UK, Thailand and Australia. Wang predicted that the development of clean-energy vehicles will lead to a reshuffling within the global auto industry.

Given that BYD isn't entering the U.S. passenger EV market for now, Wang doesn't foresee any impact fro…

SHANGHAI - Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio Inc. began trial operation on Tuesday of faster, more efficient battery swapping stations in China in its push to make battery swapping a viable alternative to rival EV makers' rapid-charging technology.

With capacity to store up to 21 battery packs each, Nio's Power Swap Station 3.0 can speed up battery swapping to less than five minutes and lower the service cost per swap, Shen Fei, Nio senior vice president for power management, told reporters at an event in Shanghai last Thursday. The comments were embargoed for release on Tuesday.

Tesla's rapid-charging Supercharger allows EV users to top up vehicles to a range of 200 miles in 15 minutes.

Battery swapping allows drivers to replace depleted packs quickly with fully charged packs, rather than plugging the vehicle in to a charging point. Swapping could help to ease the strain on power grids at peak times when drivers recharge, but industry analysts and exec…

A Texas Porsche dealership employee who said he was fired after warning co-workers of a case of COVID-19 at the store in 2020 has received his job back, more than $100,000 in back pay and $15,000 in compensatory damages.

A settlement agreement was filed March 20 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas that says the employee, Michael Pacho, is unconditionally reinstated at Porsche South Austin.

The U.S. Department of Labor filed the federal lawsuit in October 2021 against Hi Tech Imports after an Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigationdetermined the dealership violated the OSHA Act of 1970. OSHA law states employers can't punish workers for raising a health or safety concern with their employers, among other protections.

In December 2020, Pacho learned a co-worker tested positive for COVID-19 and asked Hi Tech Motorcars management to warn other employees. When they didn't, he emailed all employees himself, according to…

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden is pressing automakers including Tesla Inc. and General Motors for more information about their supply chains amid concerns about forced labor in China. 

The Democrat from Oregon sent letters to the automakers and top suppliers Tuesday. Wyden is requesting details about their efforts to ensure that none of the materials in their cars come from regions like Xinjiang, where the U.S. and others have alleged that China has pushed ethnic minorities into jobs programs. 

The scrutiny comes amid a U.S. crackdown on goods from Xinjiang. Under a law passed in late 2021, materials even partially made in the region can’t be imported to the U.S. The Senate Finance Committee, which Wyden chairs, launched an investigation last year into whether major automakers are using parts made with forced labor from Xinjiang. 

In the letters sent Tuesday, Wyden asks whether the car companies maintain a list of “foreign-language names” of suppli…

New UAW President Shawn Fain has to ready itself for “war” with big companies. U.S. auto sales look like they’re losing momentum in part because of rising prices, which Toyota said could top $50,000 on average before long. Plus, the tension between convenience and safety in the world of micro-mobility.

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Researchers from French cybersecurity firm Synacktiv won $350,000 and a new Tesla Model 3 at a security conference by hacking into the gateway and infotainment subsystems of the vehicle in less than two minutes.

During the Pwn2Own 2023 hacking conference held in Vancouver, British Columbia, last week, Synacktiv's so-called ethical hackers were able to "fully compromise" the electric vehicle, gaining control of its safety systems and breaking into its infotainment system.

They hacked into the Tesla's head unit instead of the entire vehicle for safety reasons. The head unit controls the car's infotainment and navigation systems.

"Of course, we'd like to do this on a car itself but there's just too many variables that would make it potentially dangerous for those around the vehicle, including the building vehicles parked by, so we don't want to take that chance. We prefer a nice controlled environment," Dustin Childs said in a video of the event available …

U.S. light-vehicle sales got off to a strong start in the first quarter, but the new-vehicle market showed signs of losing momentum by March as rising interest rates and transaction prices are putting pressure on what consumers can afford.

Supply constraints that have suppressed car and light truck availability for the last two years remain but are easing. Analysts say March sales should reflect an improvement from a year ago, but the pace has slowed since the start of this year, suggesting that economic headwinds and affordability concerns are forcing some buyers to the sidelines.

Most automakers are scheduled to report March or first-quarter U.S. sales results on Monday.

The seasonally adjusted annualized selling rate for March is forecast to come in between 13.8 million and 14.4 million vehicles. That would be an improvement from the 13.7 million rate in March 2022, according to Motor Intelligence, but well below the 15.2 million pace in February and…

In this week's edition of Automotive News, you'll find a data-centric story I wrote laying out how U.S. sales of certified pre-owned vehicles fell last year.

And fell they did — to 2.49 million vehicles, down 9.4 percent from 2.75 million in 2021, according to figures compiled by the Automotive News Research & Data Center. It was the lowest annual volume since 2014, when sales of 2.34 million certified vehicles were recorded.

Not surprisingly then, the majority of automakers saw their certified used-vehicle sales fall year over year. Dealers and brand executives overseeing automakers' certified sales operations detailed how changing industry conditions between 2021 and 2022 led to such a downturn.

They grappled last year with tighter supply of certification-eligible inventory, a direct result of stunted new-vehicle production in 2020 and 2021. The supply challenge worsened as more consumers took to buying out their vehicle lease when they realized th…

Honda Motor Co. is recalling more than 330,300 vehicles for side-view mirrors that may detach.

The recall includes:

• 2020-22 Honda Odyssey

• 2020-22 Honda Passport

• 2020-21 Honda Pilot

• 2020-21 Honda Ridgeline

Heating pads behind the side-view mirrors can lose adhesion, causing the glass to potentially detach, according to a Honda recall document.

Detached mirror glass can reduce driver visibility and increase the risk of a crash, according to NHTSA.

Affected models were produced at Honda's plant in Lincoln, Ala., Honda spokesman Chris Martin told Automotive News. Martin said he is not aware of vehicles affected outside of the U.S. and Canada.

Honda first received a market quality report that showed a potential trend of mirror vibration in December 2018 and began investigating. The trend increased in October 2020. The side-view mirror supplier changed the heater pad and mirror back-plate adhesive tape in July …