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DETROIT — Magna International Inc. said Wednesday it is testing a last-mile autonomous delivery robot for use on public roads as the supplier giant looks to develop new businesses in the mobility space.

"The plan is to prove the technology — prove it has significantly lower costs than other use cases and other applications being offered — then scale it up into production," said Matteo Del Sorbo, global lead for Magna's new mobility unit, in an interview with Automotive News at the Detroit auto show.

The all-electric delivery robot was developed and built in Michigan and launched on a pilot basis in March 2022, according to Magna, the largest North American auto supplier. Since then, the robot has delivered hundreds of pizzas from a Detroit-area restaurant to residents and businesses.

It drives on public roads at speeds of up to 20 mph, according to the supplier. The robot utilizes an autonomous driving system developed by Magna that employs sensors, incl…

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Wednesday said it has approved more than two-thirds of electric vehicle charging infrastructure plans submitted by states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico ahead of schedule.

Thirty-five of the 52 EV infrastructure deployment plans submitted by states are now approved as part of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program. NEVI was created and funded by the $1 trillion infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden in November.

The program makes $5 billion available over the next five years to help states achieve Biden's goal of 500,000 EV charging stations across the U.S. by 2030.

States with plans now approved can gain access to more than $900 million in funding in 2022-23 to build EV chargers across roughly 53,000 miles of U.S. highway, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

"With the first set of approvals we are announcing today, 35 states across the country — wit…

Floor space at the Detroit auto show used to be at a premium. Declining participation by automakers in this show and others around the globe, exacerbated by the lingering pandemic that canceled the Detroit event in 2020 and 2021, has left organizers searching for creative ways to fill vast swaths of space. The new reality is evident in changes that the show floor has undergone since 2014.

» Move the slider to see the auto show change over time.

DETROIT — Chrysler is bringing a power rush to the 300 before the aging sedan says farewell.

The brand is closing out the 300's run by throwing in a 6.4-liter Hemi engine with 485 hp. Chrysler said the 300C variant it showed Tuesday ahead of the Detroit auto show will have a limited production run of only 2,000 units offered in the U.S. and another 200 in Canada. Consumers can reserve the car now.

The 300C will be offered in Gloss Black, Velvet Red and Bright White. It features a new 300C logo.

The 300 goes out of production after the 2023 model year along with the current generation of the Dodge Challenger and Charger, its line mates at the Brampton Assembly Plant in Ontario.

The current generation of the 300, introduced in 2005, marked a return to rear-wheel drive for the nameplate that debuted in 1955. The 300C at that time offered a 5.7-liter Hemi engine with 345 hp.

The sedan was named the 2005 North American Car of the Year. Chrysle…

MARANELLO, Italy -- Ferrari is refusing to call its first four-door vehicle, the Purosangue, an SUV or a crossover, despite its higher stance and all-wheel drive.

Instead, CEO Benedetto Vigna says, "The Purosangue is a sports car, something unique and distinctive, which is uncompromised on design and engineering."

At starting price of 390,000 euros ($391,000) in Italy, the V-12 Purosangue will be the second-most expensive normal production Ferrari, below the SF90 range, which starts at 440,000 euros. (Limited production models cost more than 1 million euros, with the latest Daytona SP3 at 2 million euros.)

Ferrari plans to begin Purosangue deliveries in the second quarter of 2023 in Europe, in the third quarter in the U.S. and by year’s end in other markets.

To protect the exclusivity of the brand as well as sales of its core range of coupes, roadsters and convertibles, Ferrari will cap Purosangue output at no more than 20 percent of annual…

MARANELLO, Italy -- Ferrari could soon close the order book for its first four-door production model, the Purosangue, because of overwhelming demand, executives said.

"We risk not being able to satisfy demand, and maybe we will need to close the order intake very soon," Ferrari’s chief commercial and marketing officer, Enrico Galliera, said at a media preview of the Purosangue at company headquarters in here on Sept. 8.

Galliera declined to say how many pre-orders Ferrari had received ahead of the Purosangue’s public debut on Tuesday, when orders officially open. 

He said that demand for the 390,000 euro ($397,000) Purosangue went beyond Ferrari’s expectations. Limited-edition models are normally sold out before they are publicly unveiled, but those models have total runs of a few hundred units rather than the thousands a year planned for the Purosangue.

To protect the exclusivity of the brand as well as sales of its core range of coup…

This is not going to be your father's Detroit auto show, nor is it going to be your grandfather's auto show.

Apologies for any misapplied generational assumptions, but you get the gist. The long-awaited return of the Detroit auto show — with a painfully convoluted new name — is sadly nothing like the sometimes awe-inspiring North American International Auto Show events from 1989 to (generously) 2019.

Nor is 2022 a return to the semicomic/semitragic, fully sexist past, when pretty women in skimpy attire lured attendees to display stands hoping their distracted brains would associate the brand or vehicle with the good feelings they had about the talent on stage.

This year's North American International Detroit Auto Show, like its peers around the world, is now a regional event — designed for consumers to come see lots of cars and make them want to buy these cars and feel good about it all.

Once again and for the record, I am sad about this. The au…

Autonomous vehicle software supplier Aptiv plc has agreed to acquire Intercable Automotive Solutions for around $600 million.

The bolt on of the Bruneck, Italy-based manufacturer of busbar and battery cell technology would bolster Aptiv's high voltage power portfolio and strengthen its standing in Europe.

The deal, expected to close before the end of the year, is for an 85 percent equity stake in the company, according to a Tuesday statement. The Mutschlechner family will retain 15 percent ownership in the company they founded in 1972.

"The combination strengthens our position as a full system supplier for electric vehicle manufacturers," Aptiv CEO Kevin Clark said in the release. "In addition, Intercable's differentiated technology design and manufacturing capabilities enable a more efficient and cost-effective vehicle assembly operation for our customers."

Intercable Automotive Solutions will operate as a standalone unit of Aptiv. The company's …

AutoNation Inc., the nation's largest new-vehicle retailer, on Aug. 30 sold its BMW dealership in Mount Kisco, N.Y., north of New York City, to DARCARS Automotive Group, DARCARS confirmed.

BMW Mount Kisco is the second luxury vehicle dealership sold by AutoNation in August. On Aug. 15 AutoNation sold Audi Owings Mills in Maryland to publicly traded auto retailer Sonic Automotive Inc. AutoNation purchased that dealership in November 2021 as part of a nine-store acquisition from Priority 1 Automotive Group.

This marks the first BMW store for the DARCARS group. The store was renamed DARCARS BMW of Mt. Kisco. DARCARS also has a Lexus dealership in Mount Kisco, astore it acquired in 2020.

"Since we opened our Lexus dealership in Mount Kisco in 2020, we've looked for an opportunity to become a bigger part of this incredible community," DARCARS CEO John Darvish said in a statement. "We want to better serve our employees, customers and supporters in the New Yor…

Trevor Milton lied to investors again and again to make the electric truck company he founded, Nikola Corp., look better than it was, a prosecutor told the jury in his criminal trial.

“This is Trevor Milton,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos told the jurors in his opening statement Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan. “He repeatedly lied to investors about his company, and he made a billion dollars by doing so. He started a company that was supposed to make zero-emission trucks, and he lied about all the important parts of the business.”

Milton did it “to lure innocent investors into buying more of his company’s stock,” Roos said.

It didn’t take long for Roos to get to the details of a 2016 event at which Milton unveiled the debut version of what he said was a hydrogen-powered truck. Roos said the truck was missing key parts and had never been functional. The symbol for hydrogen was stenciled on the side even though there was no fuel cell in the ve…

Reporters love data. Numbers offer evidence to back up anecdotal stories and put emerging trends in context, which makes them incredibly useful as we try to make sense of what's happening around us.

Yet data is just a snapshot. The numbers tell a story of what's happening at a particular moment in time. Often, they provide us with potential explanations, rather than conclusions, about the significance of new trends and behaviors.

At the start of this year, I wrote about a new Cox Automotive survey that found that U.S. consumers who purchased or leased vehicles in 2020 and 2021 were happier with their overall shopping experience than buyers in 2019, before the pandemic. Consumers were happier with the process last year — even with high prices and a shortage of inventory — than they were pre-pandemic.

A data point from that survey pulls back a layer of the onion: In general, consumers who completed more than half of a vehicle purchase online were more sati…

The UAW and Stellantis reach a tentative agreement in Indiana. Large dealership groups are pulling ahead in online customer service. Elon Musk promises big product launches for Tesla next year. Plus, University of Michigan researcher Jeff Sakamoto talks about how close the industry is to scaling up the manufacturing of solid-state batteries.

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