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Departing President Donald Trump pardoned Anthony Levandowski, saving the engineer from more than a year in prison for stealing trade secrets from his former employer, Alphabet's Waymo.

The pardon was supported by venture capitalist and Trump supporter Peter Thiel, virtual-reality developer Palmer Luckey and former Walt Disney executive Michael Ovitz, among others, according to a statement from the White House on Tuesday.

In August, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ordered Levandowski to spend 18 months in prison, concluding one of the highest-profile criminal cases to hit Silicon Valley and describing it as "the biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen."

Levandowski had pleaded guilty to trade secret theft.

Levandowski was an autonomous vehicle pioneer, helping the Google car project, now known as Waymo, during its early years.

Uber Technologies hired him to run its self-driving initiative and Levandowski allegedly downloa…

FRANKFURT -- Mercedes-Benz hopes to rekindle interest in its slow-selling full-electric vehicles with the EQA, which will compete with battery-powered compact cars such as the Tesla Model 3 and VW ID3.

Mercedes describes the EQA as an "urban entry model" targeted toward young, urban customers.

Marketing and sales chief Britta Seeger touted its "sustainability, versatility and fresh look."

The EQA can accelerate from 0 to 100 kph (62 mph) in 8.9 seconds and has a top speed of 160 kph (99 mph).

The small utility vehicle is being launched as the EQA 250 with a range of 426 km (265 miles) under the WLTP test standard. Output is rated at 140 kilowatts or 188 hp.

Additional variants including all-wheel-drive models with higher output and longer ranges will follow, including a version with a range of more than 500 km, Mercedes said.

The EQA 250 will go on sale in Europe on Feb. 4, with prices starting at 47,541 euros ($56,300) in Germany, …

The Porsche Taycan is about to get a bit more affordable — if you can get your hands on one.

The German sports car maker is expanding the full-electric Taycan lineup in the U.S. with a new entry-level variant.

Badged the Taycan, the rear-wheel-drive version starts at $81,250, including a $1,350 shipping fee. It will arrive in U.S. stores in the spring.

The base Taycan will be available in two battery configurations and deliver up to 300 miles of driving range, based on Europe's Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicle Test Procedure, or WLTP.

At launch, the car was offered in high-powered, high-priced Turbo and Turbo S versions. Those models arrived in late 2019 with starting prices of $154,860 and $188,960, including shipping.

U.S. demand for the Taycan has been brisk since the launch. The EV was Porsche's third best-selling car in the U.S. in the third quarter.

For all of 2020, Porsche delivered 4,414 units — a number that would have b…

Nissan Motor Co. is moving to promote all contract workers in Japan to full-time positions as the automaker’s push to cut fixed costs gives it more room to invest in its talent pool.

About 800 contract employees will become full-time employees from April, Azusa Momose, a spokeswoman for the company said, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report that said it would impact people at Nissan’s plants, R&D centers and head office in Yokohama. Nissan will also abolish its system of hiring contract workers.

The promotions, which will increase expenses, are a sign of Nissan’s confidence in its outlook as the automaker makes progress in its push to cut 300 billion yen ($2.8 billion) in annual fixed costs. The cuts have afforded the company a greater ability to push to retain skilled personnel by bringing them on full time, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

“This will help enhance workplace unity, increase operational efficiency, improve employee m…

China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, which owns Volvo Cars and holds 9.7 percent of Daimler, said Tuesday it has signed an agreement with Tencent Holdings to develop smart vehicle cockpit and autonomous driving.

In the latest such partnership in the fast-evolving sector, the companies will jointly develop smart car cockpits to have more mobile and mobility service applications, and explore testing of autonomous driving, Geely said in a statement.

The deal with Tencent, which has investments in EV makers including Tesla and Nio, is the third recent partnership by Hangzhou-based Geely with companies involved in the tech sector.

Geely said this month it would launch a smart electric-vehicle maker with Baidu Inc. and later that it would form a separate venture with Foxconn to provide contract manufacturing for automakers.

Unifor members ratified a three-year contract with General Motors that includes a $787 million (C$1 billion) investment commitment at CAMI Assembly in Ingersoll, Ontario, to begin building all-electric delivery vans later this year.

According to a post on Unifor Local 88’s website, 91 percent of CAMI workers who voted cast a ballot in favor of the new contract. Among production workers, 94 percent voted in favor of the deal, while 65 percent of skilled trades workers did so.

“The stakes going into these negotiations were high with the Equinox program ending, and there wasn’t a time during these difficult negotiations that we were not thinking about our members and their families, and we are grateful to all the members for their solidarity as we worked to ensure our plant is viable,” Mike Van Boekel, chair of Unifor’s master bargaining committee, said in a statement.

The ratification caps off a surprise round of bargaining, which occurred months before t…

WILMINGTON, Del. -- President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Federal Trade Commission member Rohit Chopra to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Chopra, whose consumer advocacy views align with Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, had been considered a top candidate for the job running the agency created after the 2008-09 financial crisis.

Separately, former Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler will be nominated to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Both appointments could be bad news for the banking industry and other lenders, as well as dealers, which braced for the prospect of stiffer rules since Biden was elected in November.

As an FTC commissioner, Chopra has been an outspoken critic of some dealership business practices, notably with regards to discrimination.

“Our administration will hit the ground running to deliver immediate, urgent relief to Americans; confront the overlapping crises of CO…

With production of Rivian's first saleable units less than six months away and the startup EV maker pivoting to becoming a revenue-generating enterprise, CEO RJ Scaringe has recruited an industry outsider as CFO, Claire McDonough, from J.P. Morgan.

Ryan Green, Rivian's CFO since 2018, will stay with the company "in a leadership role," Rivian said in a statement, without elaborating on what his duties will entail.

McDonough has more than a decade of experience in finance; Rivian's CFO position will be her first in the auto industry.

She began at J.P. Morgan in 2014 as vice president of retail and consumer investment banking. In April 2019, she became managing director, co-head of the firm's Disruptive Commerce Group, a joint venture between consumer retail and technology investment banking, Rivian said in a news release. Prior to J.P. Morgan, she held finance positions at the Fairway Market grocery chain and Credit Suisse, according to her LinkedIn profil…

Shares in Stellantis rose as much as 7.5 percent on their first trading day on Monday after the company was created on Saturday with the completion of the merger between Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Peugeot maker PSA Group.

"We have the scale, the resources, the diversity and the knowhow to successfully capture the opportunities of this new era in transportation," Stellantis Chairman John Elkann said in a video on the Borsa Italiana website on Monday.

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said the merger would add 25 billion euros ($30 billion) in value for shareholders over the years, thanks to projected cost cuts. "I can tell you that the focus from day one will be on the value creation that is the result of the implementation of those synergies," Tavares said in the same video.

Milan-listed shares of Stellantis started trading at 12.758 euros and at 1000 GMT were up 7.5 percent at 13.51 euros. The Paris-listed shares traded around the same level. That c…

Stellantis, the company created by the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Peugeot-owner PSA Group, had a positive start on its European stock market debut.

The company's shares rose 8 percent on their first trading day on Monday, valuing the business at around 42 billion euros ($51 billion).

"We have the scale, the resources, the diversity and the knowhow to successfully capture the opportunities of this new era in transportation," Stellantis Chairman John Elkann said in a video on the Borsa Italiana website.

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said the merger would add 25 billion euros ($30 billion) in value for shareholders over the years, thanks to projected cost cuts.

"I can tell you that the focus from day one will be on the value creation that is…