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The past several years have brought about a period of deep and rapid change within the automotive industry. Once focused on delivering a singular product via one-time purchase, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are now at the center of a complex, connected and constantly evolving ecosystem.

In this new network, OEMs serve as the orchestrators, carefully coordinating all members of the value chain and ensuring each party has the data and insights needed to enable efficient operations and create effective and engaging experiences.

Renault and Nissan Motor Co. plan to rejuvenate their two-decades-old cooperation with a range of industrial projects alongside an impending agreement to rebalance capital ties to improve a partnership that has become tense.

The partners are set to work on five projects initially, people familiar with the situation said. One of them involves India, where the companies operate a plant in Chennai making small cars, engines and gearboxes, and another joint work on commercial vehicles, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are not yet public.

The desire to agree on fresh common projects as part of the three-way pact, also including junior partner Mitsubishi Motors, signals the companies see a joint future for the alliance that had to be pieced together again after 2018’s arrest of former leader Carlos Ghosn.

While there is little indication about the potential significance of the planned projects, Renault-Nissan can ill-afford to …

DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. is giving dealers more money and support to expand remote service offerings such as mobile vans, pickup and delivery, the automaker said Thursday.

Rising customer demand for such services, driven largely by the coronavirus pandemic, prompted Ford to enhance its capabilities, according to Todd Rabourn, North America regional customer experience director. He said Ford will offset costs for up to six repair orders per mobile service unit each day and all pickups and deliveries a dealership makes. The payments will be based on a store's warranty labor rates, which vary by market.

Rabourn declined to provide a range of the support dealers will get, citing the different rates. He also said the company would provide training for technicians on how to operate the vans and integrate the services.

"We see this being the growing preference of consumers going forward," Rabourn told Automotive News. "We know customers want convenience, and we…

Hyundai Motor Co. said it will invest 10.5 trillion won ($8.5 billion) in 2023 as it moves to electrify more of its fleet to meet rising consumer demand for cleaner cars.

The money will be spent primarily on research and development and on building a new plant n the U.S., the automaker said.

The 2023 investment compares with a spend of around 8.5 trillion won in 2022.

The company on Thursday increased dividends in an unusual move for the automaker, after operating profit more than doubled in the October-December quarter.

“Favorable foreign-exchange rates and higher sales of value-added cars led the growth for 2022,” Hyundai Executive Vice President Seo Gang-Hyun said on an earnings call.

He added the global chip shortage that has hampered automakers since late 2020 should ease in 2023. The company’s marketing costs may rise as competition intensifies, he said.

Hyundai earlier this month said it aims to sell 4.3 million cars globally…

TOKYO – Toyota Motor Corp. has tapped Koji Sato, the head of Lexus and the Gazoo Racing unit, to be the Japanese automaker’s next president and CEO, as Akio Toyoda, grandson of the company’s founder, steps up to be the company’s new chairman.

The changes take effect April 1.

As part of the shuffle, current Chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada, known as the father of the Prius for his work in developing the popular hybrid vehicle, will step aside as chairman but retain a seat on the board.

The reorganization answers a long-standing question about succession for Toyoda, who took office in 2009 and presided over a tumultuous period of challenges and expansion, including the 2009 financial crisis, a global recall scandal and the 2011 Japan earthquake.

Under Toyod…

Detroit? Nope. Germany? Nein. Elon Musk sees the toughest competition for Tesla in China, home of the company he expects "most likely to be second" in electric vehicles.

China is Tesla Inc.'s second-largest market — accounted for about two-thirds of all electric-vehicle sales globally in 2022 — and the home of Tesla's biggest plant.

It's also a market that has embraced EVs and is replete with rivals competing on style and price, including Xpeng, Nio and BYD Co.

While releasing fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday, Tesla said the company's latest financial results showed recent deep price cuts were stimulating demand, and that the company is cutting costs with a view to growing through what Musk expects will be a recession this year. 

When asked about Tesla's competition, Musk responded that he respected car companies in China, calling it the most competitive market in the world. Musk did not identify any Chinese automakers by name…

Tesla's deep price cuts earlier this month have boosted demand beyond the automaker's ability to make its cars fast enough, but volume production of the highly anticipated Cybertruck pickup won't come until 2024, CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday's quarterly earnings call.

"The most common question we've been getting from investors is about demand," Musk said. "I want to put that to concern to rest: thus far in January, we've seen the strongest orders year-to-date ever in our history."

Tesla cut prices mid-January across its entire lineup by up to 20 percent in the U.S. Its most popular vehicle, the Model Y, received a price reduction of $13,000. This week, however, Tesla raised the Model Y price by $500 because demand was so high.

"We're currently seeing orders at almost twice the rate of production," Musk said. "We've actually raised the Model Y price a little bit in response to that."

The Tesla price reductions have also had a secondary effect. …

Self-driving technology company Waymo laid off a "limited" number of employees this week across multiple departments, according to a company spokesperson.

The company did not disclose the number of employees affected. The moves come amid economic headwinds stymying the autonomous vehicle industry in particular and tech sector overall.

Waymo is an independent subsidiary of Alphabet. The layoffs come in addition to 12,000 jobs cut by Google in recent days.

At least two dozen dismissed Waymo employees announced their layoffs on LinkedIn. Their job titles reflected the across-the-board nature of the cuts: perception, systems and software engineers, fleet maintenance professionals, systems integrators and more.

In perhaps signs of the uneven AV business landscape, recruiters and friends pointed the freshly unemployed Waymo veterans to active openings at self-driving tech companies such as Cruise, Gatik, Kodiak Robotics, Motional and Outrider.

Mo…

Tesla Inc. said it expects to grow deliveries at 37 percent this year, sharply lower than previous estimates of growth near 50 percent annually for the foreseeable future.

The automaker, which saw sales increase globally by 40 percent for 2022, slashed prices earlier this month amid expectations of an economic slowdown in the U.S. and greater competition in global markets.

Net profit for the quarter was $3.69 billion, or $1.07 per share, compared with $2.32 billion, or 68 cents per share, a year earlier.

Tesla said in its fourth-quarter shareholder letter that a 50 percent growth rate continues to be its long-term target, but a variety of factors would impact the number year by year.

“In some years we may grow faster and some we may grow slower, depending on a number of factors,” Tesla said, putting global sales at around 1.8 million this year vs. 1.31 million last year.

Tesla shares rose 1 percent to $145.80 in after-hours trading.

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Tesla Inc.'s former chief financial officer told a jury that Elon Musk's 2018 tweet about taking the company private was at odds with a regulatory preference not to release "material information" in the middle of a trading day.

Wednesday's testimony from Deepak Ahuja, in the second week of a securities fraud trial, revealed that the company's No. 2 executive wasn't apprised before Musk made his bombshell proposal on Aug. 7, 2018.

Shareholders claim Musk misled them in the tweets about a take-private plan that turned out to be empty, but which spurred wild gyrations in the EV maker's stock price and millions of dollars in losses for traders who made bets on the CEO's surprise announcement.

Under questioning by a lawyer for investors, Ahuja said that before Musk fired off his tweet, the CFO hadn't seen a draft of his boss's post, nor had he seen an advance version of an earlier email in which Musk proposed setting the take-private share price at $420.

…

WASHINGTON - Tesla's advanced driver assistance system Autopilot fell in a ranking of 12 major systems, Consumer Reports said Wednesday.

Of 12 systems tested by Consumer Reports, a nonprofit organization that evaluates products and services, Ford Motor's BlueCruise was first, followed by General Motors' Super Cruise and Mercedes-Benz Driver Assistance.

Tesla, which was second in Consumer Reports ratings in 2020 behind Super Cruise, fell to seventh, the group said. The electric vehicle maker did not respond to a request for comment.

Tesla hasn't changed Autopilot's basic functionality, instead adding more features to it, the group said.

"After all this time, Autopilot still doesn't allow collaborative steering and doesn't have an effective driver monitoring system," said Consumer Reports Auto Testing director Jake Fisher in a statement.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating 830,000 Autopilot-equipped Tes…

Magna International and contract manufacturer VDL Nedcar are interested in taking over Ford Motor Co.'s car plant in Saarlouis, Germany, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

The two companies join China's BYD in showing interest in the factory, which will have no new model when Ford ends production of its Focus compact car there in 2025.

The plant's future has been unclear since last June when Ford picked its factory in Valencia, Spain, to build its next-generation electric vehicles for Europe instead of Saarlouis.

Canada's Magna and VDL Nedcar, based in the Netherlands, are considering bidding for the Saarlouis plant, sources familiar with the talks told Automotive News sister publication Automobilwoche.

Magna builds BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Toyota and Fisker cars at its Magna Steyr factory in Graz, Austria.

VDL Nedcar builds the X1 and Mini brand cars for BMW Group.

The acquisition of Saarlouis by a contract man…