Ford Blue President Kumar Galhotra talks about the company’s hopes for hybrids. UAW President Shawn Fain says ‘progress is slow’ in talks as the union’s strike enters its fourth day. And Lithia agrees to buy Pendragon's UK dealerships.
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Photographers have captured images of the redesigned Buick Enclave large crossover during road testing.
The Enclave, shown under heavy camouflage, appears to share some features with the brand's Wildcat electric vehicle design concept, including the outline of checkmark-style headlights found on other Buick vehicles.
The design of the side mirrors also appears to more closely resemble other recently debuted Buick vehicles, such as the Envista subcompact crossover.
Buick said it will reveal and launch the redesigned Enclave next year but declined to comment further on future product.
The General Motors brand has said it has two more launches remaining out of five total new, updated and redesigned models in an 18-month span.
Since February, Buick has revealed the all-new Envista nameplate, as well as updates to the Encore GX subcompact crossover and the Envision compact crossover. One of the launches next y…
Nikola Corp. has hired a new chief operating officer to lead the company's engineering, product and manufacturing teams, among others, the company said Monday.
Mary Chan will start her new role Oct. 9. She's a former president of the global connected consumer group at General Motors and a former senior vice president at Dell.
"My career has been dedicated to pioneering smart transportation and wireless communications across automotive, telecommunications and high-tech industries," Chan said in a written statement. "Joining Nikola represents the culmination of this journey, and I'm excited to be part of the team that will drive trucking to a zero-emissions future, encompassing trucking products, customer solutions and the corresponding energy infrastructure."
At GM, Chan led the automaker's launch of 4G LTE connectivity across brands in the U.S., China, Europe and Mexico. She has been named the "Top Woman in Wireless" by Fierce Wireless, an industry ne…
A contract manufacturing supplier is planning to lay off 293 employees in Shiawassee and Lapeer counties, about 60 miles north of Detroit, due to the United Auto Workers strike against the Detroit 3 automakers, signaling the first supplier to detail its layoff plans to the state since the union walkout began Friday.
CIE Newcor, a subsidiary of Spain-based CIE Automotive, said it tentatively anticipates a one-month layoff starting Oct. 2, according to a WARN notice filed with the state Thursday, just hours ahead of the UAW calling a strike at a trio of auto plants.
The impacted jobs include mostly machine operators at four company plants: CIE Newcorp and Machine Tool and Gear Inc. Plant 1 in Corunna, as well as Machine Tool and Gear Inc. Plant 2 in Owosso. Each is about 90 miles Northwest of Detroit. Rochester Gear in Clifford, about 80 miles North of Detroit, is also impacted.
The plants could close indefinitely depending on how long the strike lasts…
I've heard that there's a term for the anxiety and dread that some people feel before the work week resumes: the "Sunday scaries."
Heading into this next work week, the industry may be feeling a bit more stress and worry than usual as UAW President Shawn Fain threatens to broaden his historic "stand-up strike" against the Detroit 3.
Is it really historic? You bet it is. This is the first time Ford Motor Co. has faced a national strike since 1970. And it appears to be the first strike at Toledo Jeep over a national contract in more than a century of automaking and 90 years of UAW representation.
Auto dealers — especially loyal readers of Automotive News — knew that a work stoppage was a possibility, if not a likelihood. So as the UAW prepared to walk out, they mobilized their own strike plans, stockpiling inventory and replacement parts.
Suppliers were already weakened by the pandemic economy that benefited automakers and dealers, and some of the s…
I've heard that there's a term for the anxiety and dread that some people feel before the work week resumes: the "Sunday scaries."
Heading into this next work week, the industry may be feeling a bit more stress and worry than usual as UAW President Shawn Fain threatens to broaden his historic "stand-up strike" against the Detroit 3.
Is it really historic? You bet it is. This is the first time Ford Motor Co. has faced a national strike since 1970. And it appears to be the first strike at Toledo Jeep over a national contract in more than a century of automaking and 90 years of UAW representation.
Auto dealers — especially loyal readers of Automotive News — knew that a work stoppage was a possibility, if not a likelihood. So as the UAW prepared to walk out, they mobilized their own strike plans, stockpiling inventory and replacement parts.
Suppliers were already weakened by the pandemic economy tha…
TOLEDO — The UAW's first simultaneous strike against all of the Detroit 3 is certainly historic, but here in the town where Jeep was born and helped win a World War — where 5,800 workers walked off their jobs at midnight Friday — it is doubly so.
Why? Because Friday's walkout appears to have marked the first time that the men and women building Jeeps and their predecessor vehicles in union-friendly Toledo over more than a century have ever gone on strike as part of a national contract.
It's not that UAW members in Toledo have never struck; they have, frequently, including members of nearby Local 14 who went on strike against General Motors in 2019 during the UAW's last round of national bargaining.
And members of UAW Local 12 — an amalgamated local now with more than 10,000 members, including the 5,800 at Toledo Jeep Assembly, that is among the largest UAW locals in the country — have frequently called job actions.
Former Jeep unit Chairman Ron…
UAW President Shawn Fain on Sunday said the union and the Detroit 3 remain far apart on contract agreements to end a historic strike, although the two sides were continuing to negotiate.
“Progress is slow,” Fain said on MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart.” “I don’t really want to say we’re closer.”
Fain declined to say when he might announce a second wave of plants to join the strike that is now in its third day.
In a Friday press conference, he said “it could be in a day, it could be in a week.”
Later Sunday morning, on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” Fain said the automakers’ most recent offers were insufficient. On Saturday, Stellantis released details of its most recent offer, which matched the 20 percent raises offered by GM and Ford.
“It’s definitely a no-go; we’ve made that very clear to the companies,” Fain said.
On both shows, Fain blasted recent comments by General Motors CEO Mary Barra that a majority of her…
Automakers are introducing more sophisticated driving systems that complicate determining who or what may be held liable in the event of incidents. ZF board member Martin Fischer, attorney Jennifer Dukarski and Carnegie Mellon professor Phil Koopman scrutinize the details in a discussion pulled from last week’s Automotive News Congress in Detroit.
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There were two large auto industry shows that opened last week in metro Detroit: one that mattered to the future of the entire industry and was well attended, and one that didn't have the same energy.
The Battery Show may not have the glamour or historical gravitas of the former North American International Auto Show. And it was held in Novi, a suburb of Detroit, rather than in the heart of the Motor City. But inside, it featured hundreds of tech companies vying for a share of the emerging electric vehicle and battery industry.
While the Detroit show was almost a ghost town for much of last week, the Battery Show was swarming with gear heads, scientists and tech companies offering ways to support — and capitalize on — the industry's EV future.
Detroit 3 automakers used the hometown show to unveil updates to a handful of gasoline-powered vehicles while remaining committed to a future that's all — or almost all — electric.
The American automotive industry has a big problem. A bigger than big problem. One that is significantly impacting dealership operations, customer retention and profitability. And if not resolved, the heartburn will only grow. Though dealers are aware of it, most struggle to address it.
It's the shortage of automotive technicians and the dilemma dealers face in fixing it.
Long a major pain point, it's escalating into an outright obstacle to future success. Like never before, dealers are straining to find and retain technicians to properly care for their customers and simultaneously generate profit. It seems most dealers are continuing to look into their rearview mirror to past solutions that have become mostly ineffective.
There's a national shortage of nearly 800,000 technicians, and it's expected to grow to 900,000 by 2026. In some markets, more than 30 percent of dealership service bays go unused because of the worker shortage.…
TO THE EDITOR:
Regarding “NHTSA proposes rule requiring seat belt warnings for front and rear passengers,” autonews.com, Aug. 21: The fact that this obvious safety improvement, which was passed in 2012 by Congress to go into effect in 2015 for 2016 model-year vehicles, is just now being processed is just one example of overdue safety requirements that have been overlooked by previous administrative leaders who were in favor of the automotive industry over our public road safety. Michael Brooks of the Center for Auto Safety is quoted as saying the timeline “raises more questions about whether the agency is equipped to respond to emerging safety issues in a timely manner.” This statement is not fair to the division-leading administrators. This is one of the frustrations that they had to deal with for decades — an inability to do their jobs not by choice but by manners of decree.
This is why Ann Carlson, NHTSA chief counsel, was asked to temporarily ste…