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Hyundai Motor Group was slow to jump on the hybrid-powertrain bandwagon, as rivals surged ahead with the fuel-sipping technology.

But the Korean lines are making up for lost time.

Hyundai Motor Co. is on an aggressive path to electrification that seeks 7 percent of the global battery-electric market by 2030.

In the U.S., Hyundai hopes half of its new-vehicle sales will come from EVs in that time frame.

But part of transforming itself into an electric automaker is offering a conventional hybrid-electric or plug-in hybrid variant for every model in its gasoline-powered lineup.

That approach represents a pivot for the automaker.

"What prompted the change was a significant shift in strategy" to go all electric, Jose Muñoz, Hyundai Motor Co.'s global COO, told Automotive News in an exclusive interview.

"We see hybrid buying habits as the next step toward electrification," he said.

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Comedian Jay Leno loves cars but says driving the Ford F-150 Lightning converted him into "a truck guy."

Leno tested one of Ford's new electric pickups — with CEO Jim Farley riding along — for an episode of his CNBC show, "Jay Leno's Garage," that will air this fall.

"As much as I love my internal combustion engines, this has sold me," Leno said on CNBC this month. "It's very impressive."

Leno said he was particularly impressed by the truck's quick acceleration, quiet cabin and ability to function as a generator during a power outage. To demonstrate the Pro Power Onboard feature, Leno said he had the lights for his interview with Farley plugged into the pickup instead of the electrical grid.

In a teaser video, Farley is shown telling Leno that the automaker had a number of internal disagreements about the Lightning.

"We were arguing about this truck more than almost any vehicle I've seen in my career," he said.

Ford originally appr…

CJ Moore, a former Autopilot software engineer for Tesla Inc., has left Apple's secretive autonomous-vehicle project after just seven months.

Moore's latest employer is Luminar, a company that makes lidar. Lidar is a technology used by most companies working on autonomous-driving systems — except Tesla, which uses only cameras for its Full Self-Driving feature and has labeled lidar a "crutch."

Moore's departure from Apple signals another shake-up for Project Titan, the tech company's meandering effort to develop an autonomous vehicle.

Meanwhile, Luminar has managed to hire top talent from around the tech and auto industries; it also added Taner Ozcelik, the founder of Nvidia's automotive business, last week.

"We're attracting the best leaders in the world in their fields to execute our vision and deliver on the future of transportation," Luminar CEO Austin Russell said in a statement.

Russell has dubbed himself the "…

TOKYO — Nissan Motor Co. has stopped taking U.S. preorders for its new Japanese-built Ariya electric crossover, as the critical EV launches into an industry beset by supply chain mayhem.

Nissan COO Ashwani Gupta said it is better to limit orders to what can realistically be delivered in a timely manner rather than potentially aggravate eager customers by making them wait too long.

"Every customer wants to have it, and we don't want customers to wait," Gupta said, adding that Nissan is simultaneously juggling high demand for the model from the U.S., Japan and Europe. The model will go on sale this fall in the United States.

"Ariya has been successfully accepted around the world," Gupta said. "Even in the United States, we had to request our customers to stop the orders."

The crossover is Nissan's second EV after the Leaf, which has grown long in the tooth. The automaker also faced delays in getting the vehicle's new p…

While Acura speeds toward an all-electric future, it's first putting some emphasis on what will be the brand's last gasoline-powered new vehicle: the return of the Integra as a 2023 model.

That's because premium Acura needs to fill the void left by its more conservative entry-level ILX compact sedan and grab the last remaining millennial buyers who still care about driving performance.

"Positioning the Integra is really an important thing, as a true gateway to the brand, and a worthy successor of the original Integra," Emile Korkor, assistant vice president of Acura national sales, told Automotive News.

"We are excited about what this latest generation is going to do for building a loyal customer base as we build toward electrification," Korkor said.

The Integra — a nameplate last offered in 2006 — gets a different personality from the ILX it replaces. The ILX was a much more conservative entry into the Acura brand, according to Stephanie Brinle…

Does anything around here ever really happen at lightning speed?

We've been telling you a lot lately about the lightning speed of change that's roiling the auto industry. And it's true, of course.

But in this week's issue, it's interesting to observe that rapid change in the car business isn't always a slam dunk. Auto companies, decision makers, investors, dealers, suppliers and — most of all — customers are a diverse bunch with a lot of different perspectives.

On Page 1, reporter Larry Vellequette captures the moment at Volkswagen, where Group CEO Herbert Diess is moving rapidly to establish a new SUV and truck brand in the U.S. called Scout. No details yet, but Diess hopes to have a site selected by year-end for a new multi-billion dollar manufacturing plant.

But — hold on. VW's American dealers are saying to the mighty automaker: Can you just pause for a minute to tell us where we fit into these big plans?

Their questions aren't going…

The automotive policy advisor with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago discusses the ways in which electric vehicles must reach parity with their conventional counterparts to ensure a widespread growth trajectory.

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Stellantis last week said it will spend $2.8 billion to retool a pair of assembly plants in Canada in preparation for making electric vehicles.

The automaker said it will turn its Windsor and Brampton plants into "flexible, multi-energy vehicle assembly facilities" and build two new R&D centers in Windsor focusing on EVs and battery technology.

The governments of Canada and the province of Ontario each will give Stellantis up to $398 million toward the projects. Stellantis, during contract negotiations with Unifor, committed to spend up to $1.1 billion to retool Windsor Assembly Plant, which builds Chrysler minivans.

Stellantis said the Windsor retooling will "diversify the company's capacity by introducing battery-electric or hybrid models to the production line to meet growing consumer demand for low-emissions vehicles."

It didn't say which new products will eventually be assembled in Windsor.

"We are i…

As automakers rush to roll out electric vehicles faster than their rivals, they're also scrambling to build enough plants to make all the batteries needed to power them.

They might not be able to keep up, said Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares, who last week revealed plans to open a battery plant in Kokomo, Ind., in 2025. It's one of more than a dozen North American battery plants that automakers are in the midst of planning or building.

Yet Tavares said he expects the industry to face a shortage of batteries and raw materials needed for EVs this decade.

At the same time, he's on alert for more disruption on the economic front, saying "the macroeconomic fundamentals that could trigger" a recession are "quite common" to all of the Western economies.

If a recession does emerge, Tavares said automakers simply will have to roll with it.

"We are in the Darwinian world," he told reporters last week. "The guys who survive are the guys that adapt, an…

Tesla Inc.'s Chinese operations are struggling to pump out cars because of coronavirus shutdowns, and its new plants in Austin, Texas, and Berlin face long production ramp-ups. The automaker is also under fresh regulatory scrutiny over its driver-assistance software, and its stock price has fallen far further than equities markets overall.

CEO Elon Musk, meanwhile, has been posting his thoughts about a variety of topics on Twitter while pushing to take control of the social media platform.

Among his tweets last week, he observed that "politics is a sadness generator," that "assault rifles should at minimum require a special permit" and that "Italy will have no people" if falling birthrates continue there.

While Musk has long used Twitter to talk about his multiple companies, the prospect of him becoming Twitter's interim CEO and injecting himself into thorny political and social issues has analysts worried about his auto company's f…

Electric Last Mile Solutions Inc. warned Friday it may run out of cash in June, at least one month sooner than previously projected, unless it can raise additional capital.

The latest projections reflect higher costs in a number of areas, including employee retention and payments to suppliers, the suburban Detroit EV startup said in a filing.

"The company expects that, without obtaining additional financing, it has sufficient cash to continue operations into June 2022," it said in the filing, adding that it was "actively pursuing potential sources of liquidity" to bolster its finances.

Electric Last Mile had said in March that it had enough cash on hand to fund operations through sometime between July and September. The company is under SEC investigation and has been without an auditor since February.

The stock has fallen 90 percent so far this year as the company faces several financial reporting challenges, including a long-past deadline to file…