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Since taking the wheel of Kia Motors Corp. in April, CEO Ho Sung Song has been positioning the South Korean automaker for a new era of industry upheaval.

Under Kia's five-year business plan unveiled this year, Song, 58, wants to make the company a global leader in electric vehicles, branch into so-called purpose-built vehicles and invest heavily in new mobility. To jump-start that makeover, he also will "relaunch" the brand in January.

Under the strategy, called Plan S, Kia will create a lineup of 11 models with electric powertrains by 2025, with seven EV-only models by 2027. By 2026, Kia plans to sell 500,000 battery-electric vehicles and another 500,000 hybrids, plug-in hybrids and other eco-friendly offerings.

In doing so, Kia wants EVs to generate 20 percent of its worldwide sales by 2025, and a quarter of them in 2029. Its first dedicated EV will be delivered next year.

Kia's U.S. sales were down 7.6 percent to 428,350 vehicles in the first …

Jim Farley made clear that he wouldn't stop driving race cars just because he's now the CEO of Ford Motor Co.

And Farley showed last week that he isn't just content racing for fun; he's out there to win.

Behind the wheel of his Ford Cosworth-powered 1978 Lola T298, Farley took first place in his class in the Enduro race at the Road Atlanta Grand Prix. Ford's top executive set the fastest lap time — 1:25.592 — and highest speed — 106.832 mph — during the 70-minute race, which required one pit stop.

Some of the 13 teams competing used more than one driver, but Farley competed solo. His winnings? A medal and a bottle of champagne.

"I don't know that a CEO from any car company has won a truly authentic auto race before," Mark Dill, vice president of public relations for the Sportscar Vintage Racing Association, told the Detroit Free Press.

If you've never tried to lick the side of your car during the winter, you must not be a moose.

Officials in rural western Canada have put up signs warning drivers not to let moose lick salt from the roads off their vehicles. Moose love to eat salt, and allowing the animals to be more comfortable around cars can increase their chances of becoming a highway hazard.

"They're obsessed with salt, it's one of the things they need for the minerals in their body," Steve Young, a spokesman for Jasper National Park in Alberta, told CNN. "They usually get it from salt lakes in the park, but now they realized they can also get road salt that splashes onto cars."

Jasper Tour Co. owner Joe Urie told CBC Edmonton that for a moose, "road salt is kind of like crack."

DETROIT — The GMC Hummer will be an extreme, six-figure showpiece of General Motors' electric vehicle prowess. It also will be a test for GM's ability to exert greater control over the dealership sales process in the dawning EV era.

For the next two years, GM will be pulling Hummer dealers' strings, doling out inventory based solely on customer orders and encouraging standardized pricing. The automaker even asserts the right to limit GMC dealers' interactions with Hummer buyers, according to a portion of the brand's "electric models participation agreement" shared with Automotive News by a dealer.

Dealers "can feel the breathing on the back of their necks," said Joe Aboyoun, partner at the Aboyoun-Dobbs law firm in Pine Brook, N.J. "Hopefully that's just part of the startup process. But there is a concern that this is just the beginning of a new methodology that clearly constitutes a violation of the franchise relationship."

In order to sell Hummers, G…

TOKYO — Rumor that Nissan is eyeing unwinding its controlling stake in Mitsubishi Motors Corp. comes at a delicate moment for the junior partner of the three-way alliance with Renault.

Mitsubishi is mired in red ink and just embarked on a joint strategy with Nissan and Renault to carve up international markets in a scheme that greatly reduces its global footprint.

And any unwinding could cut loose the smaller player — which sells just a fifth of Nissan's worldwide volume — at a time when industry wisdom holds that consolidation is a key to success.

Executives at both companies scurried to do damage control after Bloomberg News reported this month that Nissan was exploring ways to sell all or part of its controlling 34 percent stake in Mitsubishi. Nissan bought the stake in 2016 under a deal brokered by then-Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn and his counterpart at Mitsubishi, Osamu Masuko.

Both men are now gone. Ghosn was arre…

LOS ANGELES — Ever since the turbocharged Mazda3 was discontinued after the 2013 model year, auto enthusiasts have been pining for a reprise of the hot hatch that was sold under the Mazdaspeed performance moniker.

And just in time for Christmas, the automaker will deliver something closer to it — the Mazda3 2.5 Turbo — as its top trim for the 2021 model year. But it's not really a spiritual heir to the Mazdaspeed3 because Mazda is a different car company now and racer hatchbacks no longer fit with its premium intentions.

The new turbocharged Mazda compact, available in sedan and hatchback, is refined and sporty, with all-wheel-drive and 250 hp from a 2.5-liter engine mated to a smooth-shifting six-speed automatic transmission.

"This is not a hot hatch," said Jay Chen, manager of powertrain performance at Mazda North American Operations. "We didn't build this car because we were trying to relive the days of our Mazdaspeed youth. Real…

While Carlos Ghosn sits free as a fugitive in Lebanon, two men who helped him escape house arrest in Japan are sitting in jail.

"There is only one positive in this, which is that I helped save a man's life," Michael Taylor, an inmate in Dedham, Mass., told The Wall Street Journal for a story published last week. "I wish I was never involved."

Taylor and his son Peter helped sneak Ghosn, the former Nissan and Renault chairman, out of his home in Japan inside a musical instrument case. The Taylors were arrested in May and are now fighting extradition to Japan. They haven't disputed helping Ghosn but argue that their assistance didn't break any Japanese law.

Michael Taylor, a security specialist who was in the U.S. Army Special Forces, got a call from a former client who asked him to help Ghosn flee Japan, and prosecutors say he and his son received wire transfers totaling $1.3 million for their help. Ghosn was slated to go on trial in …

Elon Musk is having a better 2020 than most people.

Tesla's CEO passed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates last week to become the world's second-richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Musk started the year as the 35th richest, and his net worth has more than quadrupled since then, thanks mostly to Tesla's soaring share price.

Tesla's market cap topped $500 billion for the first time last week, increasing Musk's wealth to about $128 billion. About three-quarters of his net worth is based on Tesla's shares, which surged further after recent news that the company would join the S&P 500 index in December.

Gates and Musk have had several public spats over electric vehicles and COVID-19. Gates' charitable foundation has helped fund research to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus, while Musk insisted in the spring that the disease was not a major concern.

It's only the second time since Bloomberg start…

General Motors continues to draw back the curtains on its electric vehicle plans, flashing glimpses of a Hummer SUV and Chevrolet pickup.

At a Barclays conference this month, CEO Mary Barra, Doug Parks, global product development, purchasing and supply chain chief, and Travis Hester, chief EV officer, sat in front of the Hummer SUV, a Chevy pickup and the Cadillac Lyriq, which was unveiled in August.

The Hummer SUV and Chevy pickup are expected to be built starting in 2023 or 2024, but those schedules likely will be accelerated. GM has moved up the start of production for a GMC Hummer pickup, three other GMC EVs, four Chevrolet EVs and four Cadillacs. Lyriq production was pulled ahead nine months to early 2022.

The Hummer pickup, which GM revealed last month, was developed in only 26 months, and GM intends to apply that swift timeline across its lineup.

GM has said that the Hummer SUV will be an off-road-capable version of the Hummer pickup that…

The seeds of Faith Mba's entrepreneurial spirit were planted while growing up in Nigeria, but they sprouted thousands of miles away in Vermont.

Mba's journey to owning a Toyota-Ford dealership in New England spanned three continents, beginning at a flea market in Nigeria where he hawked women's clothing with his mother. He worked for a few years in the Netherlands before coming to the northeastern U.S., where his wife was raised.

As one of the few Black people in tiny Westminster, Vt., and with his thick accent, Mba knows he stands out. His worldly perspective has taught him to approach uncharted territory as a cultural chameleon of sorts.

He learned to speak Dutch and German in the Netherlands, where he met his wife. Coming from a tropical climate, the 44-year-old says he hates snow — which there's plenty of in the Northeast — but has learned to ski.

He left eastern Nigeria for the Netherlands in 2002 to attend school.…