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Jeff Guyton, who came to Mazda's North American operations as president from its European business two years ago, has been named CEO of the U.S. subsidiary, effective June 24.

Guyton, 54, will succeed Masahiro Moro, who will assume a newly created global position of chief communications officer at Mazda's headquarters in Hiroshima, Japan.

Mazda has been gaining traction in the U.S. as of late, eking out a slight sales increase for 2020 despite the market disruption of the pandemic. Lifted by sales of fresh crossovers and the establishment of an in-house finance arm, the automaker's U.S. market share rose to 1.9 percent last year from 1.6 percent in 2019.

As CEO of Mazda North American Operations in Irvine, Calif., Guyton will assume oversight of an expanding business. In addition to managing U.S. sales and marketing, he will be responsible for Mazda Canada Inc., based in Toronto; Mazda Colombia, based in Bogota; and Mazda Motors de Mexico, based in Mexic…

David Regn, co-founder of advertising agency Stream Cos., explains how dealers can leverage digital channels and first-party data to reach more consumers and enhance the car-buying experience.

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Dealer Bernie Moreno, who last month announced he would run for U.S. Senate in Ohio, wasn't able to buy back his old Cleveland Motorsports dealership after all.

Terry Rafih, CEO of Rafih Auto Group in Windsor, Ontario, who in March 2019 bought the dealership selling Aston Martin, Bentley and Rolls-Royce in North Olmsted, Ohio, along with Mercedes-Benz and Porsche stores from Moreno, said he opted to keep the luxury dealership.

"We were doing a handshake deal, and then Bernie decided that he was going to go into politics," Rafih told Automotive News. "So the deal changed on many, many different occasions. So finally on the first week of April, I called Bernie, and I said, 'Look, I think you need to go do your politics, and I'm just going to keep the whole deal.' And that's what happened."

Moreno told Automotive News last month that he owned a 50 percent interest in the dealership and planned to buy the full interest.

But last week, More…

WASHINGTON -- A group of U.S. senators are close to unveiling a $52-billion proposal Friday that would significantly boost U.S. semiconductor chip production and research over five years, sources briefed on the matter told Reuters.

Sens. Mark Kelly, John Cornyn, Mark Warner and Tom Cotton have been negotiating a compromise measure to address the issue in the face of rising Chinese semiconductor production and shortages impacting automakers and other U.S. industries.

A spokesman for Cornyn said the senator has "not signed on to a semiconductor amendment."

Sources said there remains at least one sticking point over whether to include a provision on labor rates.

The chips funding is expected to be included in a bill the Senate will take up next week to spend more than $110 billion on basic U.S. and advanced technology research to better compete with China.

The proposal includes $49.5 billion in emergency supplemental appropriations to fu…

Taiwan's Hon Hai Technology Group — better known as Foxconn, manufacturer of the Apple iPhone — appears to be edging closer to entering the auto industry after signing a deal with Fisker Inc. to build a high-volume electric car with a price tag starting under $30,000.

The deal calls for Fisker Inc., of California, to design the vehicle and then hand it off to Foxconn to assemble at a plant in the U.S. No manufacturing locations were announced Thursday. Production is projected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Foxconn has a U.S. presence in Mount Pleasant, Wis. In 2017, it announced plans with great fanfare to invest $10 billion to build LCD displays there and create 13,000 jobs, but in April it scaled back its plans to $672 million and about 1,454. It is still unclear what will be built there, according to PBS Wisconsin.

Fisker refers to the vehicle as Project PEAR — Personal Electric Automotive Revolution. It will be conventional in the sense…

Stakeholders in autonomous vehicle technology are calling for industry and government to come together to create a common framework for safely testing and deploying AVs in the U.S.

During an industry roundtable event held virtually Thursday, safety experts and executives from AV technology companies discussed the importance of lawmakers and federal agencies such as NHTSA working with stakeholders to develop common standards that can speed the deployment of these technologies without stifling innovation.

"We need, first of all, for the public to understand why this is just bigger than saving lives on the road. It will impact everything in our lives, and we need to make sure that the United States is ahead," said Robbie Diamond, CEO of Securing America's Future Energy, the Washington-based group that hosted the event.

"We need a road map, of course, so that companies can do this safely and that people have trust. We need our agencies to step up if Capitol…

Penske Automotive Group Inc. has named a new CFO.

The retailer has promoted Shelley Hulgrave, a more than 14-year Penske employee, to replace J.D. Carlson, who is retiring after holding the position since June 2015. The moves are effective June 1.

Hulgrave, 42, has been the retailer's senior vice president and corporate controller since February 2020. She was promoted to that position after serving as Penske's vice president and corporate controller since June 2015. Penske, in a regulatory filing on Thursday, said Hulgrave’s salary is being increased to $500,000.

She joined the company in October 2006 as a corporate accounting manager, working with accounting teams in the U.S., Europe and Australia. Before working for Penske, Hulgrave held positions with DaimlerChrysler Financial and Ernst & Young.

"Ms. Hulgrave has a strong operational and technical background in finance and accounting and her experience and tenure with the Penske Automotiv…

For many car enthusiasts, attending the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance is a bucket-list occasion. Since 1950, the annual event in Carmel, Calif., has hosted the world’s most beautiful and expensive collectible cars for a week of lavish parties, blue-chip auctions, glamorous rallies, and exclusive high-roller meetings.

It was canceled last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, losing half of its routine $2 million-plus in sponsorships and ticket sales—not to mention the millions generated by the influx of tens of thousands of the world’s most avid car lovers to the Monterey Peninsula. But Sandra Button, the chairman of the Pebble, as long-timers call it, confirmed on May 12 that the show will indeed go on this year on its usual date, the fourth Sunday in August.

How many automakers come on board, however, remains to be seen. Mercedes-Benz, for years one of the brands with the biggest presence, will reportedly not inhabit the circus-size white tent it has …

A former Gentex Corp. project engineer who says she was advised to ask male co-workers to explain things to her to "make them feel better about working with her" has filed a lawsuit against the company.

Elizabeth Helminski is suing Gentex — a Zeeland, Mich., supplier of dimmable rearview mirrors and other electronic components — alleging gender discrimination and retaliation.

Helminski says she was regularly treated differently from her male co-workers. Brian Brackenbury, her supervisor at the time, is also named as a defendant.

Helminski was hired by Gentex in September 2018 and worked in a male-dominated environment, the lawsuit says.

"It was clear in the first couple months of employment that in addition to the males on the leadership team, there was generally a pro-male 'bro culture' in the working environment in many departments," the complaint said.

Helminski believes she was terminated in late September 2019 for raising concerns abo…

House lawmakers advanced language authorizing $8 billion for the U.S. Postal Service to buy more electric vehicles as the agency modernizes its aging fleet.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee added the measure before approving and sending to the full House legislation aimed at better tracking mailed ballots. Separately the panel approved a bill to shore up Postal Service finances after years of losses at the agency.

The Postal Service in February announced that Oshkosh Corp. had won a contract for tens of thousands of mail-delivery vans, and initially said only 10 percent of the fleet would be electric.

The award set off complaints from lawmakers dismayed at funding a fleet dependent on polluting technology. The amendment adopted Thursday would ensure that 75 percent of purchased vehicles would be electric or zero-emission vehicles.

Oshkosh has said its vehicle can be built to use either electric power or a gasoline engine.

The contra…

China Evergrande Group raised about HK$10.6 billion ($1.4 billion) selling shares in its electric vehicle unit, the latest effort by the nation’s most indebted developer to boost capital.

The sale amounts to about 2.7 percent of outstanding shares in China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group, the real estate firm said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Thursday.

Evergrande NEV shares tumbled as the shares were sold at a 20 percent discount.

Evergrande has been selling assets to repair its balance sheet in line with Chinese regulators’ efforts to deleverage the property sector. The company was in breach of all key metrics for reducing debt levels -- known as the “three red lines” -- at the end of last year, even as many of its peers improved.

After reporting its second straight year of declining profit in March, Evergrande unveiled plans to roughly halve the remainder of its borrowings over the next two years. To meet the goal, it need…

BEIJING -- WeRide, the Guangzhou-based autonomous driving startup backed by Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi Motors, said it raised "hundreds of millions" of dollars in a funding round that it said valued the firm at $3.3 billion.

WeRide, which is testing vehicles in California, as well as in China's southern city of Guangzhou - where it is headquartered - and the central city of Zhengzhou, did not disclose details on the size of the funding.

Investors taking part in the latest funding round include IDG Capital and Homeric Capital, WeRide said in a statement on Thursday. It raised $310 million in January.

WeRide is pursuing a Level 4 autonomous standard, in which the vehicle can handle all aspects of driving in most circumstances with no human intervention.

Last month it received a permit to test two passenger vehicles on California's public roads without a safety driver in the front section.

Automakers and technology firms are investing bill…