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A look at the latest August sales results. VW either heads back to the bargaining table or faces a strike in Mexico. New research says “resistance is futile” when it comes to right-to-repair. Plus, a conversation about how EVs are changing the F&I business.

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Aurora Innovation Inc.'s chief executive officer recently laid out a range of options for the self-driving company to respond to worsening market conditions and partners pushing out timelines, including a possible sale to Apple Inc. or Microsoft Corp., according to a document seen by Bloomberg.

Chris Urmson, who co-founded Aurora after running Google's self-driving car project, also outlined cost cuts and floated measures including taking the company private, spinning off or selling assets and pursuing a small capital raise in a memo labeled "board discussion pre-read" dated Aug. 3. Urmson inadvertently sent this to staff and asked them on Aug. 9 not to open it, the document shows.

A representative for Aurora confirmed the authenticity of the memo and said the company is considering ways to stay competitive in a challenging marketplace.

"Given the current macro conditions, every company should be going through the exercise of evaluat…

If semiconductor shortages, recession risks and the once-a-century shift in propulsion weren't enough to keep auto executives up at night, here's one more sleep disruptor: Consumers are keen to buy an Apple car before one even exists.

Strategic Vision just released the results of an annual study that this year reached 200,000 new-vehicle owners. For the first time, the consulting firm included Apple among the more than 45 brands it surveyed consumers about. The findings: 26 percent said they would "definitely consider" buying a set of wheels from the iPhone maker, behind only Toyota and Honda. And 24 percent ticked the top box ("I love it") when asked their impression of the brand's quality, beating all others by a wide margin.

That's serious brand power and suggests there would be significant appetite for autos alongside all those phones, computers, watches and television boxes.

Whether Tim Cook will actually green-light a product f…

DETROIT — Buick will offer to buy out any of its U.S. dealers who do not want to make the investments necessary as the brand transitions to an all-electric lineup by the end of this decade.

A spokeswoman for the brand confirmed the plan to offer buyouts, which Duncan Aldred, vice president of global Buick and GMC, is outlining to dealers during a virtual meeting Friday. The Wall Street Journal first reported the buyout plan Friday, citing an interview with Aldred.

Buick had 1,963 U.S. dealerships at the start of 2022, according to Automotive News' Dealer Census. Only 13 of those were standalone stores — the majority have dual showrooms with GMC — so virtually all dealers who take a buyout likely would continue with other General Motors brands.

"Not everyone necessarily wants to make that journey, depending on where they're located or the level of expenditure that the transition will demand," Aldred told the Journal. "So if they want to exit the Buick fra…

Automakers, dealers and repair shops are increasingly deploying 3D scanning technology for a diversity of uses — everything from re-creating rare parts for discontinued vehicles to mapping entire assembly plants to restoring iconic structures.

Toyota is one of several automakers using 3D scanning and printing technology for projects large and small as it looks to introduce advanced manufacturing techniques to its plants.

"We believe that both 3D printing and 3D scanning will evolve beyond our imagination," said Stephen Brennan, Toyota Motor North America group vice president of vehicle production engineering.

3D scanning supports a wide variety of manufacturing and engineering processes at Toyota, Brennan said. Scanners are used to supplement measurements made by machines and to check the quality of parts vendors supply.

Toyota engineers rely on scanners to create digital twins of equipment — even entire manufacturing f…

CDK Global recently released a study about what an all-electric future will look like in the automotive industry. Part of the study examined what dealership service departments need to be doing to get ready for an influx of EVs in the shop.

Peter Kahn, senior director, market research and insights at CDK Global, spoke with News Editor Dan Shine about how service departments can prepare for EVs. Here are edited excerpts.

Q: What advantages does a dealership have when it comes to servicing EVs?

A: What brings them to dealerships is dealership knowledge — especially when it comes to complex repairs. If the customer believes this is going to be something that's a little more complex, they're going to go back to the dealership. Now, you add to that EVs, which there's a lot of technology on it, it's new — and so shoppers, I believe, are thinking, "I need to get this back to somebody who really understands it, who's been trained and wh…

Volkswagen Group and Foxconn Technology Group are keeping workers on-site at factories in Chengdu after the Chinese metropolis locked down 21 million residents to contain a COVID-19 outbreak.

The German automaker’s factory, jointly operated with local partner China FAW Group Co., entered a so-called “closed loop system” Thursday evening to maintain production, a company representative said on the phone on Friday, without elaborating. Foxconn, the largest assembler of Apple Inc. devices, is also adopting the method at a facility that makes iPads there, according to a person familiar with the decision.

Robert Bosch, one of the world’s biggest auto parts makers, has shifted to a closed-loop operation at two manufacturing sites for power tools and automotive components in Chengdu, with office staff working from home, a spokeswoman for its China business said.

First used during the Beijing Winter Olympics as a way of keeping athletes and support staff separat…

Instead of spending millions of dollars trying to defeat right-to-repair laws, automakers should save their money, says global research and consulting firm Ducker Carlisle.

State laws, and eventually a national one, inevitably will be approved by voters, a Ducker Carlisle survey shows. But the firm's research also found dealerships may not lose customers, as most have assumed. And any defections would not be because of right-to-repair laws.

"Our goal was to figure out what is going to happen if right to repair passes," said Nate Chenenko, a director at Ducker Carlisle. "Everybody thinks it's going to be really bad, but what's actually going to happen?"

To find out, Ducker Carlisle conducted a consumer sentiment survey of 2,147 vehicle owners. The firm did message testing, giving a third of those surveyed the "pro-right-to-repair" definition used by those championing various state bills. Another third was supplied the "anti-right-t…

Mercedes-Benz full-size electric SUV will carry a hefty sticker price when it arrives in stores this fall.

The EQS SUV starts at $105,550, including shipping, and is available in three variants.

The top-of-the-line EQS 580 4MATIC version starts at $127,100, including the $1,150 shipping charge.

While the Alabama-made SUV qualifies for a $7,500 federal tax credit for new electric vehicles through Dec. 31, its six-figure MSRP will disqualify it next year under the Inflation Reduction Act's vehicle price cap.

The EQS SUV is the third model based on Mercedes' EVA2 architecture for upper-market segment EVs. The SUV delivers up to 536 hp and is powered by a 107.8-kilowatt-hour battery.

The single-motor rwd EQS 450+ delivers an EPA-estimated 305 miles, and the EQS 450 4MATIC and EQS 580 4MATIC will run for 285 miles on a single charge.

The EQS SUV will be joined in the lineup this year by the EQB compact crossover and the EQE midsize sedan.…

WASHINGTON — Electric vehicles, although subject to unique crashworthiness challenges, can generally lean on crash tests designed for vehicles with internal combustion engines.

Whether a vehicle is powered by a combustion engine, a battery or a combination of the two, the stored energy poses a potential safety hazard in a crash and, therefore, certain precautions must be taken by automakers and crash test engineers, vehicle safety experts told Automotive News in August.

"It's building on the evolution of crashworthiness," said Brian Latouf, global chief safety officer at Hyundai Motor Co. "It's the same crash dummies. It's the same injury protocols."

NHTSA, for instance, conducts the same crash tests for electric and internal combustion engine vehicles to evaluate occupant protection as part of its consumer-facing New Car Assessment Program.

But EVs, Latouf noted, must also comply with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 305, which evolved …

The monthly sales news is good for Hyundai and Kia, but not so great for Honda. Porsche plans a big hire ahead of its planned IPO. There's more fallout for Cruise after its June crash in San Francisco. Plus, a deeper look at Toyota's big infusion of cash into its battery plant in North Carolina and what it says about the future of EV manufacturing in North America. 

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