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It's not that there aren't many electric vehicles at the $25,000 price point that Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares asserts is the sweet spot.

There are none at all, from Stellantis or any other manufacturer, with sticker prices below that mark today.

Whether Stellantis and other manufacturers can hit such an ambitious target on a wide scale in the coming years remains to be seen, but Tavares said producing EVs that are attainable for the middle class should be a topic of discussion during this year's UAW contract negotiations.

Reaching that price range, Tavares said last month, will be crucial to protecting jobs in the long run. Tavares has said in the past that Stellantis would need to absorb the additional costs that come with building EVs and not pass them onto consumers.

The company's imperative to reduce its fixed-cost structure in pursuit of more affordable EVs is clashing with the UAW's demands for higher wages and b…

Top executives at Shift Technologies Inc. said Thursday the used-vehicle retailer sought to urgently improve operations efficiencies in the second quarter and is evaluating "all avenues" to raise capital.

Shift CEO Ayman Moussa, who spoke during the company's quarterly earnings call Thursday, said he determined it was critical to change the course of the business after he joined it in June.

Shift Technologies, of San Francisco, reduced its employee head count by one-third last month as part of a restructuring plan aimed at cutting expenses. It also eliminated investment in its dealer marketplace business. That restructuring followed Shift's disclosure in May that its board of directors was reviewing "strategic alternatives" for the company.

"The company has gone through several changes in strategy over the last 18 months to adjust to industry and capital market factors, creating distraction and making it hard to achieve results among shifting prioritie…

Changan Ford Motor plans to set up a new-energy passenger car joint venture with state-owned Chongqing Changan Automobile, a document published by China's market regulator on Friday showed.

Changan Ford Motor will own a 60 perce t stake and Chongqing Changan Automobile the remaining 40 percent stake. Changan Ford is a 50-50 joint venture between Ford Motor Co. and Changan Automobile, meaning Chongqing Changan will own more than 50 percent of the new venture.

In the future, the joint venture plans to engage in the "supply business of mainstream brand new energy passenger vehicles and the distribution business of Ford brand models that Changan Ford has invested in," the statement said. Ford said in a later statement the new venture also will sell existing Ford-brand gas-powered vehicles.

Ford said the venture was being formed "to better grasp the development trend of electrification and intelligence in the auto industry."

Asked whether this new ve…

A vehicle struck and killed a dealership customer while the collision injured two employees in the service area at Hamer Toyota in Mission Hills, Calif., on Wednesday morning, according to police and fire officials.

Bystanders freed the woman, who was trapped under a 2017 Toyota RAV4, and attempted to revive her, but she later died of her injuries, according to a dealership employee.

An elderly motorist, who was a dealership customer, lost control of the vehicle, which "crashed through a glass enclosed reception area and came to rest against a distant cinder block wall well within the business," according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The initial investigation suggests the driver may have accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake, according to a Los Angeles Police Department spokesperson.

The collision dragged the 56-year-old woman over 20 feet, the fire department said. An off-duty nurse tended to the "pulseless and non-breath…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ Vehicle-to-infrastructure connectivity is finally changing America’s streets

Santa Clara County in California is giving buses more green lights. Real-time data on viaduct flooding is being collected in Louisville, Ky., to prevent car drowning deaths. Officials in College Station, Texas, are outfitting five intersections with warnings for pedestrians when buses and emergency vehicles approach.

A long stalemate over the details of deploying vehicle-to-infrastructure technology has ended, and the investments keep coming. The federal government requested proposals for more solutions this year, with vehicle connectivity groups calling 2023 "pivotal." Federal Communications Commission waivers granted in April have given automakers clarity on the way forward after decades of ambiguity.

"We're in the red zone, and I can finally see where we can get this ball over the goal line," said John Kwant, executive director of the Americas at 5G…

The California Public Utilities Commission voted in favor of expanding the operations of two robotaxi companies in the city, dealing a victory to companies seeking to expand their presence in San Francisco and beyond.

After repeated delays and a marathon seven-hour public meeting, the commission finally decided in consecutive 3-to-1 votes on Thursday to accept the applications, a decision that has implications for the self-driving space and for unions, safety advocates and others tussling over its growth.

"This technology has the ability to help California meet its clean energy and transportation goals, as these carriers offer service in electric vehicles" said Commissioner John Reynolds shortly before the vote. "AVs also provide people with more transportation options, and have the potential to offer transformative options for those with disabilities."

The decision comes as companies raise and spend billions on their self-driving technology and bank on …

General Motors and Ford Motor Co. were among the biggest decliners in the U.S. stock market Thursday on growing concern that demands from union leaders could send the automakers’ labor costs soaring.

The UAW is calling for wage increases and other changes that the Detroit 3 estimate would add more than $80 billion in expenses for each of them, Bloomberg reported this week.

GM shares fell 5.8 percent Thursday in New York, their biggest daily plunge in nearly eight months. Ford fell 4.5 percent and Stellantis declined 1.8 percent. GM and Ford were the second- and fourth-biggest percentage decliners on the benchmark S&P 500.

“GM and Ford may be in the penalty box for a while. Wall Street hates uncertainty,” said Morningstar analyst David Whiston. “This is not a normal negotiation both in style and the demands they are asking.”

The union wants a 46 percent wage increase, restoration of traditional pensions, cost-of-living increases, a short…

Hyundai's fifth-generation Santa Fe will offer a more spacious interior, new convenience and safety technology and wildly different styling when it goes on sale in the first half of 2024. While it seems to have more of everything, glaringly absent for U.S. customers is a plug-in variant to complement gasoline and hybrid counterparts.

The automaker revealed the midsize crossover in Santa Fe, N.M., late last month ahead of its North American debut at the 2023 Los Angeles Auto Show in November.

Last year, the Santa Fe was Hyundai's No. 2 seller behind the Tucson, and has dropped to No. 3 this year behind the Tucson and Elantra, though sales are up 6.4 percent to 71,754 through July.

The latest North American-bound Santa Fe will offer two powertrains: a turbocharged 2.5-liter engine with an estimated 277 hp and a turbocharged 1.6-liter hybrid that could deliver 177 hp.

That's one fewer powertrain option on the menu. The …

Unifor is seeking a three-year contract with the Detroit 3. Cadillac unveils its first all-electric Escalade. Plus, dealership buy-sell expert Stephen Dietrich talks about what the market looked like in 2022 and what he’s seeing this year.

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The checklist for a safe car trip in the era of climate change goes a little something like this: four-wheel drive to handle more intense rainfall, two-way charging to withstand a blackout, and seatbelts all around because EVs are dangerously heavy. Drivers dealing with wildfire smoke might add one more accessory to the lineup: five small air filters taped to a box fan.

This little Apollo 13 apparatus, which can be plugged into a car’s cigarette lighter, is known as a Corsi-Rosenthal box. It was developed by Richard Corsi, dean of the college of engineering at the University of California Davis, and his buddy Jim Rosenthal during the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when it became clear that school districts weren’t taking air purification seriously. Today, Corsi is similarly irked by the auto industry’s lackluster approach to the air inside its vehicles.

“We can do a lot to improve indoor air quality in cars,” he says. “What’s fascinating is that wildfire…

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WASHINGTON — U.S. auto safety regulators said Thursday they are opening a special crash investigation into a fatal accident in Virginia involving a Tesla Model Y suspected of relying on advanced driver assistance systems and striking a heavy truck.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is probing a July 19 fatal crash in which the driver of a Tesla died after striking a tractor-trailer truck in Warrenton, Va.

The Fauquier County Sheriff's Office said the 57-year-old Tesla driver was killed after the tractor trailer was attempting to turn onto a highway from a truck stop. The Tesla struck the side and went underneath the tractor trailer and the driver was pronounced deceased on the scene. The driver of the tractor trailer was issued a summons for reckless driving.

Since 2016, the U.S. auto safety regulator has opened more than three dozen Tesla special crash investigations in cases where driver systems such as Autopilot were suspected of be…