News

SHANGHAI -- China needs to step up the recycling and repurposing of batteries for electric vehicles in order to ease supply strains and curb pollution and carbon emissions, environmental group Greenpeace said on Friday.

Though the deployment of EVs is an important environmental initiative, the manufacturing of batteries is energy- and carbon-intensive and puts the supply of key raw materials like lithium and cobalt under severe strain, the group said in a research report.

"We're about to see a tidal wave of old EV batteries hit China," said Ada Kong, Greenpeace East Asia's senior programme manager. "How the government responds will have huge ramifications for Xi Jinping's 2060 carbon neutral commitment."

Greenpeace said 12.85 million tons of EV lithium ion batteries will go offline worldwide between 2021 and 2030, while more than 10 million tons of lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese will be mined for new batteries.

Repurposed batteries could be…

Chinese automakers and their vast network of auto-parts suppliers need to become more competitive in order to fend off increasing competition from Tesla Inc. and foreign battery and chip manufacturers, an industry group said.

Although Asia’s biggest economy is home to the world’s biggest automobile market, it doesn’t have a competitive supply chain and not one local auto-parts maker is ranked among the top 500 companies globally, Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the China Passenger Car Association, told an electric-vehicle battery forum in Ningxiang this week.

Tesla has triumphed over domestic players like Nio Inc. and Li Auto Inc. when it comes to controlling costs and lowering the price of EVs quickly to spur consumer demand, Cui said.

Cui’s admonition comes as EV sales in Europe jump as governments there stoke sales via incentives and subsidies. The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said last week that many of the home-grown companies tha…

DETROIT -- American Axle and Manufacturing Holdings said Friday the coronavirus pandemic cost the supplier about $87 million in the third quarter.

Sales for the third quarter slipped 16 percent to $1.41 billion, as repercussions from the pandemic continued to impact some parts of the global supply chain.

Still, net income for the third quarter was $117.2 million compared with a net loss in the same quarter last year of $124.2 million. The net loss last year included the impact of a $225 million pretax impairment charge. The UAW strike at General Motors also impacted the supplier last year.

American Axle joined several other suppliers this week that reported third-quarter earnings as the coronavirus crisis lingers — with some suppliers experiencing rebounds and higher-than-expected results compared with earlier this year. More companies are set to report earnings in the coming weeks.

American Axle also reported that third-quarter adjusted earnings,…

Lear Corp. produced strong third-quarter results as the seating and electronics systems supplier caught up from COVID-19 related closures during the last quarter.

The supplier on Friday said net income fell 19 percent to $174.4 million while revenue ticked up 1 percent to $4.9 billion.

Even though net income fell year-to-year, the net gain was a dramatic swing from the $294 million net loss posted amid the pandemic in the second quarter.

The improvement in sales is hinged on increased market share, considering global production for Lear declined 3 percent during the quarter compared with a year earlier. Global vehicle production declined 4 percent in the quarter, with North American and China being the bright spots with production up 1 percent and 9 percent, respectively, as automakers race to catch up from COVID-19 related shutdowns in both countries.

Lear's e-systems segment was the main driver in better sales as the supplier increased third qua…

Executives and engineers pioneering self-driving technology have long believed autonomous vehicles hold the potential to dramatically reduce the number of traffic deaths and collisions.

Waymo has offered what might be a first glimpse into how those reductions occur.

The company, the commercial offspring of Google's autonomous-vehicle project, issued a report Friday that contains a trove of safety-related insights distilled from 6.1 million miles of real-world driving data in its metro Phoenix test hub since the start of 2019.

The data includes information on 47 collisions — both actual and simulated — that Waymo identified from January 2019 through September 2020.

Waymo and other industry experts say the report is the first of its kind in terms of the breadth of detailed information provided, and it could set a benchmark for an industry in which federal regulators have otherwise merely asked companies to file voluntary safety reports.

"I t…

Daimler’s truck unit is investing in a laser-sensor startup to bolster its development of self-driving trucks in the U.S. less than a week after striking a deal to use driverless technology from Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo.

Daimler Truck said Friday it will take a minority stake in Luminar Technologies Inc., a lidar developer that plans to go public via a reverse merger. The world’s biggest commercial-vehicle maker joins other investors including tech billionaire Peter Thiel and an arm of Volvo Car in an equity financing ahead of the startup’s public-market debut.

The announcement comes just days after Daimler agreed to incorporate self-driving technology from Alphabet unit Waymo in its Freightliner Cascadia trucks to be sold to U.S. customers.

Daimler plans to use technology from Luminar, which makes laser-based sensors that allow a vehicle to “see” its surroundings, for its in-house effort to develop automated heavy-duty trucks.

Trucks not taxis

DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. said on Friday it expects to sell 100,000 cars and trucks equipped with the company's new hands-free driving system in the first full year of availability.

The catch is, only the system hardware will be installed. The software will not be ready for nearly another year, Ford said.

The automaker's Active Drive Assist will be offered first on the redesigned F-150 pickup and the new Mustang Mach-E electric crossover, both of which go on sale later this year. But the feature will not be activated until the third quarter of 2021, the company said.

Customers can order a Mach-E or an F-150 with the Co-Pilot360 advanced driver assistance package, which includes the hardware for Active Drive Assist. That feature will be switched on via a wireless over-the-air update when the software is finalized next year, Ford said.

Active Drive Assist will be standard on selected high-end models and available as an option on others, priced from …

Fisker Inc. said Thursday it completed a deal to go public by merging with a special-purpose acquisition company, with the proceeds funding operations and development of its first electric vehicle through the start of production in late 2022.

Shares of the combined company are expected to trade on the New York Stock Exchange starting Friday under the ticker symbol FSR.

The transaction with Spartan Energy Acquisition Corp. is expected to give Fisker more than $1 billion of cash on the balance sheet and no funded debt, the company said. Spartan is a SPAC, or a shell company, that raises money through an initial public offering to buy an operating entity, typically within two years. SPACs have emerged as a quick route to the stock market for companies, particularly auto technology startups.

Fisker this month cemented an agreement with Canadian supplier Magna International Inc., which will supply the vehicle platform and build the electr…

Carvana posted an operating profit in the third quarter -- its first since becoming a public company in April 2017 -- and record gross profit per unit.

Top-line growth at the online used-vehicle retailer, like its peers and competitors, remained strong but below the pace of prior quarters, largely because of inventory shortages.

Revenue rose 41 percent in the third quarter to $1.54 billion. Retail unit sales grew 39 percent to 64,414.

Carvana reported a net loss of $17.7 million in the period, versus a net loss of $92.2 million in the third quarter of 2019.

"As in Q2, inventory constraints impacted growth in retail units sold, and we are continuing to focus on growing inventory to meet demand," the company said in a letter to investors Thursday. "We ended the quarter with 26,897 website units and 11,900 available for immediate purchase, up from 5,914 at the end of Q2 but still only half as many as pre-pandemic levels.…

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Transportation and Treasury departments raised strong objections to a plan proposed by the Federal Communications Commission to shift much of a key spectrum block set aside for auto safety to accommodate the burgeoning number of wireless devices.

Documents reviewed by Reuters show strong pushback against the plan. The Transportation Department said the FCC plan is "a particularly dangerous regulatory approach when public safety is at stake."

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said this week the commission will vote Nov. 18 to finalize a plan to divide the 5.9 GHz spectrum block reserved in 1999 for automakers to develop technology to allow vehicles to talk to each other and traffic infrastructure, but has so far gone largely unused.

Pai would shift 30 megahertz of the 75 megahertz reserved for Dedicated Short-Range Communications to enable a different automotive communications technology called Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything, or C-V2X, while sh…

Continental CEO Elmar Degenhart is stepping down, citing health reasons, amid a push by the supplier to overhaul management and speed up structural changes.

Degenhart, 61, is resigning his post as of Nov. 30 "for reasons of immediately necessary preventive health care," Continental said in a statement on Thursday.

The company did not name Degenhart's successor. It said its supervisory board will meet shortly to decide on the appointment of a new CEO.

Degenhart is likely to be succeeded by the head of the supplier's core automotive operations, Nikolai Setzer, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Degenhart, who has been Continental's CEO since 2009, has a contract through 2024. He has faced criticism for several missteps including communication around the closure of a German tire plant in Aachen as well as an unusually harsh letter to employees in September 2018.

Those actions have undermined some supervisory board mem…

The pandemic forced many dealership service departments across the country to implement or accelerate new amenities for customers such as mobile service vans and scheduling and payments by phone. Here's which of these new amenities will become staples in the service lane and why. 

Speakers:David Bergamotto, Service Manager, Park Avenue BMWJim Henne, General Manager, Performance Toyota/Performance Volvo CarsLarry Hourcle, NADA Academy Instructor, NADAEd Roberts, Fixed Operations Director, Bozard FordDan Shine, Editor, Fixed Ops Journal

This conversation was originally broadcast on October 29, 2020, as the fourth of five conversations in the Fixed Ops Journal Forum series. The series runs through November 5. Learn more and register for future broadcasts here.