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STOCKHOLM -- Sweden's Autoliv , the world's largest producer of airbags and seatbelts, on Friday said it more than doubled its first-quarter net income amid strong sales growth across all its regions.

Autoliv, which rivals ZF and Joyson Safety Systems, said that although the pandemic was still affecting it in some ways, organic, or like-for-like, sales growth reached 17.9% in the first quarter.

The company said net income surged 110 percent to $157 million during the quarter. Revenue improved 21 percent to $2.24 billion.

Shares in Autoliv gained 6.8 percent to $104.77 in midday trading.

CEO Mikael Bratt said a global shortage of materials, including semiconductors, had limited light vehicle production.

"And we expect this situation to continue in the second and third quarter of this year," Bratt said in a statement.

Autoliv said in January that the semiconductor shortage, which has impacted vehicle makers across the world, could have…

Renault has hired Luc Julia, a global expert in artificial intelligence and one of the inventors of Apple's Siri voice assistant, as its chief scientific officer.

Julia will oversee R&D of future technologies and innovations such as AI, man-machine interfaces, connectivity, and software at the automaker.

Julia's "exceptional track record in artificial intelligence, data and object connectivity will be key to accelerating the deployment of our strategy and becoming a tech company that integrates vehicles," Renault CEO Luca de Meo said in a statement.

Julia, from Toulouse, France, has a degrees in mathematics and computer science from two universities in Paris.

He began his career in 1994 at the Stanford Research Institute International, a U.S.-based non-profit research institute, where he helped to launch Nuance Communications, a world leader in speech recognition, and also co-founded several start-ups in Silicon Valley. 

In 19…

Ryan Gamble, president of software systems company Intraratio, says the Industry 4.0 technology uses data to prevent chip defects during the manufacturing process.

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Mitsubishi Motors Corp. will cut production by as many as 16,000 cars globally next month due to the chip shortage, according to a company spokesperson, the latest automaker to succumb to the malaise that’s gripped the world’s automobile industry.

The Japanese automaker produced 90,745 units globally in January and 88,754 cars in February, according to its website, so that trim represents almost one-fifth of total output. Mitsubishi said in March that it would reduce its domestic output of vehicles by 4,000 to 5,000 units that month and was reviewing its production plans for April.

The list of carmakers idling factories around the world over the global semiconductor shortage is growing, a sign the supply-chain challenge is only intensifying. Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc on Thursday said it will halt production at some plants in the U.K. while French manufacturer Renault SA said the bottleneck’s effects could last beyond this quarter. German parts maker Robe…

Mitsubishi Motors Corp. will cut production by as many as 16,000 vehicles globally next month due to the chip shortage, according to a company spokesperson, the latest automaker to succumb to the malaise that’s gripped the world’s automobile industry.

The Japanese automaker produced 90,745 units globally in January and 88,754 cars in February, according to its website, so that trim represents almost one-fifth of total output. Mitsubishi said in March that it would reduce its domestic output of vehicles by 4,000 to 5,000 units that month and was reviewing its production plans for April.

The list of carmakers idling factories around the world over the global semiconductor shortage is growing, a sign the supply-chain challenge is only intensifying. Jaguar Land Rover on Thursday said it will halt production at some plants in the U.K. while French manufacturer Renault SA said the bottleneck’s effects could last beyond this quarter. German parts maker Robert Bosch Gm…

Bart Reagor, a co-principal of Reagor Dykes Auto Group in Texas leading up to its collapse in 2018, has been charged with lying about using business loans for personal expenses.

The U.S Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas said Thursday that Reagor has been indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a bank insured by the FDIC.

Reagor is set to appear before a federal judge at 2 p.m. CDT on Monday.

If convicted, he faces up to 90 years in federal prison and will be required to forfeit any property traceable to the alleged offense, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

The federal indictment alleges that one of Reagor Dykes' floorplan lenders did an audit in the first quarter of 2017 that showed the auto group was in a weak cash position.

A limited liability company was formed to hold Reagor Dykes' real estate assets while getting cash fo…

WASHINGTON -- The Biden administration proposed Thursday spending $15 billion to install 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations along roads, parking lots and apartment buildings, as part of its infrastructure plan now before Congress.

Some of the money would go toward grants and incentive programs for state and local governments as well as private companies to install the chargers, according to a fact sheet from the White House that spelled out the program in detail.

But $10 million would be devoted to research into ways to lower the cost of the chargers themselves, while $20 million would go community projects -- like switching to electric school buses -- that can pave the way to wider deployment.

The Transportation Department also issued guidance showing how nearly $42 billion of existing federal financing programs could be used for EV charging infrastructure.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced the plans during a news con…

WASHINGTON -- Two U.S. senators are working on legislation that would allow automakers to deploy tens of thousands of self-driving vehicles on U.S. roads, a significant reform that could help speed the commercial use of automated vehicles.

Sens. Gary Peters, a Democrat, and John Thune, a Republican, have circulated a draft amendment seen by Reuters that would grant NHTSA the power to initially exempt 15,000 self-driving vehicles per manufacturer from safety standards written with human drivers in mind. The figure would rise to 80,000 within three years.

The pair hope to win Senate Commerce Committee approval for their amendment on Wednesday when the panel takes up a bill to provide $100 billion in funding for science and technology research and development over concerns about maintaining U.S. competitiveness with China.

The amendment would also allow self-driving companies to disable human driving controls in vehicles when in full self-driving mode.

…

Virginia dealer Dan Banister has expanded into a new state and added a new brand with his latest acquisition.

Banister acquired Sheehy Ford of Marlow Heights in Maryland on April 13. Terms were not disclosed. The store has been renamed Banister Ford of Marlow Heights.

The Ford store is the third dealership for Banister Automotive. The group also owns Banister Nissan of Chesapeake and Banister Nissan of Norfolk, both located in southeastern Virginia.

Banister said he first met Ford Motor Co. representatives more than 12 years ago through his involvement in the National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers.

"Ever since, we've been trying to find the right opportunity for me," he said.

When the Maryland Ford store became available, those reps contacted Banister about a purchase, he said.

"When they brought this one to me — I mean, I know the area, I've operated dealerships in this area — I thought it was a perfect opportunity to…

Consumer Reports engineers said they “easily tricked” a Tesla Inc. vehicle to drive via its Autopilot feature without anyone in the driver’s seat, just days after a fatal crash in Texas where police said they found no one behind the steering wheel of a Tesla car.

In a test conducted this week, test drivers took several trips on a closed half-mile track in a Tesla Model Y, the nonprofit research organization said in a statement Thursday. The vehicle -- with Autopilot technology engaged -- was able to steer itself along painted lines but at no time displayed a warning that the driver’s seat was empty. The engineer who conducted the test placed a small weighted chain on the steering wheel to simulate the weight of a driver’s hand.

“In our evaluation, the system not only failed to make sure the driver was paying attention, but it also couldn’t tell if there was a driver there at all,” said Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports’ senior director of auto testing. Fisher was a…

A pandemic that led more Americans to give digital shopping a try would certainly benefit online used-vehicle retailer Carvana, right?

The reality is more nuanced than that, as CEO Ernie Garcia illustrated during this week's installment of Automotive News' Congress Conversations.

Garcia said there was an acceleration in behavioral shifts underway before dealers pivoted to digital retail the past 11 months.

"But I think in many ways the visibility and the awareness of those shifts changed more than the behavior themselves changed," he said. "There's such an awareness now in automotive of digital retail."

For Carvana, however, that did not equate to a boom in sales — relatively speaking. The company was more than doubling its sales annually until 2020 when it grew at a much slower rate, Garcia noted.

"From our perspective, we likely would have grown faster if it weren't for the pandemic last year," he said.

The retailer's net sales wer…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ Motional vehicles to see with a bird's-eye view in Vegas this spring

Driverless vehicle company Motional and artificial intelligence startup Derq will partner on a pilot in Las Vegas this spring to give Motional's vehicles a bird's-eye view.

Motional, based in Boston, is the year-old, $4 billion autonomous-driving joint venture of supplier Aptiv and Hyundai. Derq is a vehicle-to-everything spinoff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is based out of Dubai and Detroit. The companies will work together to identify challenging situations that could come in the way of Motional's vehicles.

Along with using data from their sensors to navigate their surroundings, Motional vehicles can receive data transmitted wirelessly from the road infrastructure using Dedicated Short Range Communications.

The companies said Tuesday that Derq's AI technology supplies self-driving cars with even more information about their …