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STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Volvo Cars said on Thursday that 2023 is likely to be another challenging year despite strong demand for its vehicles as the Swedish automaker reported a fall in quarterly profit.

Volvo, which is majority-owned by Chinese automotive company Geely Holding, said its fourth-quarter operating profit dropped to 3.4 billion crowns ($322.2 million) from 3.7 billion crowns a year ago.

Profits were hit by high lithium prices, high logistics costs and having to buy semiconductors in the spot market, which can be more expensive than under long term contracts.

Volvo and its rivals have faced lingering chip shortages over the past year that have periodically hit manufacturing, with the Sweden-based company forced at times to halt production at some factories temporarily.

Other supply chain issues, the energy crisis and red-hot inflation have also made life tougher for the company.

"While 2023 looks to be another challenging year, we…

CHICAGO — The 2024 Toyota Grand Highlander, which debuted Wednesday on the eve of the Chicago Auto Show, takes the body and bones of one of the Japanese brand's top-selling crossovers and super-sizes it to deliver a more comfortable and competitive family vehicle — at least without sliding rear doors.

The biggest feature of the Grand Highlander is its bigness, especially in the third row. Overall, the Grand Highlander is larger in every dimension compared with the Highlander, yet not quite as big as either the Toyota Sienna minivan or Toyota Sequoia body-on-frame SUV.

The Grand Highlander's third row features an additional 5.8 inches of legroom compared with the Highlander, 2.5 extra inches of shoulder room and more than an inch of extra headroom. With all the seats in use, there's an added 4.6 cubic feet of cargo space behind the third row, which the brand says is now able to hold seven carry-on suitcases. With all second- and third-row seats down, the Grand …

Wells Fargo & Co. has agreed to pay $300 million to settle a lawsuit claiming it improperly charged customers for unneeded auto-collision protection insurance -- and hid the practice from investors.

The deal was announced Tuesday by the law firm that sued the bank after a New York Times investigation revealed that about 274,000 customers were put into delinquency and almost 25,000 vehicles were wrongfully repossessed.

“While we disagree with the allegations in this case, we are pleased to have resolved this legacy issue,” a bank spokesperson said in a statement.

Wells Fargo stopped charging customers for the insurance but didn’t tell investors, according to a statement issued by Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP. The law firm filed a securities-fraud class action alleging that the bank’s stock traded at artificially inflated prices.

Wells Fargo disclosed in a regulatory filing that it had been aware of the problem since 2016, the year befor…

A white hat hacker breached Toyota's global supplier management web portal, gaining read-and-write access to 14,000 corporate email accounts, associated confidential documents, projects, supplier rankings, comments, and other information.

Eaton Zveare, a 29-year-old hacker-hobbyist in Sarasota, Fla., notified the automaker of the breach in November and it was quickly closed.

"Toyota takes cyber threats very seriously. We regularly test our systems and also run a coordinated disclosure program to allow security researchers to report vulnerabilities," Corey Proffitt, Toyota Connected North America's senior communication manager, said in an email to Automotive News.

"We appreciate the research performed by Eaton. We promptly remediated the reported vulnerability and confirmed that there was no evidence of malicious access to Toyota systems."

Toyota Motor Corp.'s employees and suppliers access the company's Global Supplier Preparation Information Man…

Penske Automotive Group Inc.'s fourth-quarter net income dipped as the auto retailer faced lower average gross profits for each new and used vehicle sold and hits by foreign currency exchange, though higher new vehicle sales helped it reach record fourth-quarter revenue.

Penske reported Wednesday that net income declined 4.3 percent to $299.3 million, while revenue for the quarter climbed 11 percent to $7 billion.

The company noted foreign currency exchange reduced net income by $6 million and revenue by $380.9 million in the quarter.

Penske CEO Roger Penske said in a statement that the fourth quarter was "driven by demand for new vehicles in both our automotive and commercial truck dealerships coupled with continued service and parts revenue growth and expense control."

Revenue for Penske's stand-alone used-vehicle CarShop division fell 15 percent to $336 million on sales of 14,028 vehicles in the fourth quarter, down 5 percent. For the full-year…

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The U.S. is not investing enough money in its electric vehicle charging infrastructure and it's contributing to American drivers' "range anxiety," a major hindrance to consumers adopting EVs en masse, according to a report issued by UP.Labs, the transportation and mobility division of venture capital firm UP.Partners.

Historically, the cost of EVs has been the main reason many Americans have avoided them. However, internal combustion engine and full battery electric vehicles are reaching price parity but that could change because battery costs rose significantly in 2022, said UP. Partners, which has invested in companies that have partnerships with Toyota and Porsche.

The Santa Monica, Calif. venture capital firm's 123-page The Moving World Report: 2023 Macro and Micro Trends in Mobility covers the automotive, aviation, logistics, and e-bike sectors.

When it comes to EVs, a shortage of raw materials, ongoing global supply chain turmoil and an overloaded…

As General Motors puts its electric vehicles in Netflix shows, the automaker and streamer will pay close attention to context. So, for instance, jamming one into “Stranger Things” — set in the 1980s when mainstream EVs were unheard of — makes no sense. And squeezing another into the 1800s world of “Bridgerton” would be even more preposterous.

Will Ferrell makes these points in the automaker’s Super Bowl ad, which was released today and plugs the deal GM and Netflix announced last week. “Should they add EVs everywhere? They shallan’t,” he says in one scene, as he clumsily tries to fit into the Regency-era England set of “Bridgerton.” Similarly, “Stranger Things” character Erica Sinclair tells him in her sassy style that he is “ruining the show” when he shows up dressed as Dustin Henderson in a Chevy Silverado EV.

The ad goes for plenty of laughs, including one scene that shows Ferrell being attacked by zombies from “Army of the Dead.” But GM is using it f…