News

India’s transition to electric vehicles is giving automakers whose conventional gasoline cars have failed to make a mark a second chance.

High taxes, price-conscious consumers and tricky logistical issues have made it tough for many foreign carmakers to thrive in one of Asia’s biggest economies. They’ve found it difficult to loosen the grip of local players like Maruti Suzuki India Ltd., a household name since the 1980s thanks to its iconic Maruti 800 that became the first affordable car for the masses.

But with the advent of EVs, firms like MG Motor India Pvt, the local unit of China’s SAIC Motor Corp., Renault SA, Nissan Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG may finally gain a better foothold.

While MG Motor controls just a fraction of the local passenger vehicle market, last month it announced ambitious plans to grab a share of the country’s budding EV space, expecting to derive as much as three-quarters of its sales in India from electric cars by 2028 via the…

The supply chain crisis that roiled automakers and suppliers during the COVID-19 pandemic provided costly lessons about pinpointing vulnerabilities, increasing visibility and improving communication across tiers.

Those lessons have been top of mind as the industry builds a new supply chain around electric vehicles, automotive executives said during a roundtable discussion Monday.

"Last year and the year before, the supply chain was broken," said Bob Young, group vice president of purchasing supplier development at Toyota Motor North America Inc. "I would say today, it's fragile."

Young was joined by Jonathan Jennings, vice president of supply chain for Ford Motor Co.; Jeff Morrison, vice president of global purchasing and supply chain for General Motors Co.; Ray Scott, president and CEO of Lear Corp.; and David Dauch, chairman and CEO of American Axle & Manufacturing.

The roundtable was part of the Automotive Golf Classic, an annual event ho…

WASHINGTON — Sen. Joe Manchin is once again criticizing the U.S. Treasury Department for how it is implementing the Inflation Reduction Act's tax credit for new electric vehicles.

In public comments submitted Sunday to Treasury, the West Virginia Democrat further detailed his concerns over the department's handling of the provision known as Section 30D, arguing that it "has seriously misconstrued the plain language and clear purpose of the critical minerals and battery component requirements."

Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said proposed guidance released by Treasury in March "deviates from the will of Congress in at least three major respects," including its interpretation of the critical mineral requirement and free-trade agreement.

"My comment is simple: Follow the law," he wrote in an 11-page letter to Treasury, explaining that the tax credit's purpose is "no longer to promote the purchase and use of [EVs] ..…

The EV battery's circle of life

EV batteries. You have to build them, charge them, recycle them — and make sure there's enough of them.

This week's Automotive News covers a variety of topics surrounding the batteries that power electric vehicles, from their birth to their useful life to their disposition to their rebirth.

One story goes in-depth about a relatively obscure provision of the Inflation Reduction Act: Section 45X. While most of the attention has been on the federally funded incentives granted to consumers of certain EVs, the advanced manufacturing production tax credit has the potential to be a boon to U.S. battery manufacturers and their automaking partners. The credits they can receive through 2032 — in some cases, as direct payments from the federal government — could be substantial. But with billions of dollars on the table, Section 45X has come under criticism from Republican lawmakers.

We also examine a watershed moment in the …

EV batteries. You have to build them, charge them, recycle them — and make sure there's enough of them.

This week's Automotive News covers a variety of topics surrounding the batteries that power electric vehicles, from their birth to their useful life to their disposition to their rebirth.

One story goes in-depth about a relatively obscure provision of the Inflation Reduction Act: Section 45X. While most of the attention has been on the federally funded incentives granted to consumers of certain EVs, the advanced manufacturing production tax credit has the potential to be a boon to U.S. battery manufacturers and their automaking partners. The credits they can receive through 2032 — in some cases, as direct payments from the federal government — could be substantial. But with billions of dollars on the table, Section 45X has come under criticism from Republican lawmakers.

We also examine a watershed moment in the brief history of the…

The deputy assistant secretary provides a status report on the DOE’s Hydrogen Hub initiative, the role of the national laboratories in researching new battery technology and progress toward electrification across America.

How do I subscribe?

Apple Podcasts: “Shift: A podcast about mobility” is available on the iTunes Store and through the ‘Podcast’ app pre-installed on all iOS devices. Click here to subscribe.

Spotify: "Shift: A podcast about mobility" can be streamed through Spotify on your desktop, tablet or mobile device. Click here to subscribe.

Google Play: "Shift: A podcast about mobility" is available on Android devices through the Google Play store. Click here to subscribe.

Before becoming Automotive News' retail technology reporter this year, I wrote about biotech, health care, medical devices and property and casualty insurance startups, as well as the venture capital driving each sector.

The most prominent investors typically came from large VC firms in Silicon Valley in California, New York or emerging startup hubs such as Austin, Texas, or Washington, D.C. International firms from places including Tel Aviv, Isarel; Paris; or London committed money to companies in the U.S. or are about to expand here.

Some large hospital groups, medical device firms, biotech companies and property and casualty insurers also joined the investment party through venture funds they created. Their strategy: to back promising technology they might acquire someday or at least use in their operations.

Some of those strategies carry over to auto technology and auto retail technology investing, but with interesting twists. Read more

Assembly plants in each auto-building region of the world cut vehicles from their production schedules because of microchip shortages last week, according to AutoForecast Solutions.

Plants in China were the most impacted, with 14,013 vehicles lost due to a lack of semiconductors. 

Still, the total number of vehicles expected to be cut by year’s end stayed steady at about 2.82 million — a sign that the chip situation is slowly improving, if “sometimes painfully so,” said Sam Fiorani, AutoForecast Solutions vice president of global vehicle forecasting.

Source: AutoForecast Solutions Inc. autoforecastsolutions.com

MEDFORD, Ore. — Dealership acquisitions, already a hallmark of Lithia Motors Inc.'s long-term growth strategy as it became the country's largest seller of new vehicles, will play an even bigger role in an update to its audacious plan to reach $50 billion in annual revenue by the end of 2025.

CEO Bryan DeBoer said Lithia's network development, or acquisition, target is now $25 billion in revenue, up from the previously stated $20 billion.

The change stems from Lithia pulling back on its overall revenue target for Driveway, its online sales platform, by $5 billion, DeBoer said.

"We just hit 75 percent of the way through our initial network development plan," DeBoer said in a wide-ranging interview last week at the auto retail giant's headquarters here. "And we had just reached [the] halfway point of the 2025 plan. So we thought that was an easy give."

Lithia bought 25 U.S. franchised dealerships last year, down from 67 in 2021, according to data tr…

When a 14-year-old boy showed up at an Arizona dealership this spring asking for a job, he was told that the store normally doesn’t hire minors.

Josh Ozga’s persistence led Henry Brown Buick-GMC in Gilbert to not only hire him but also to raise enough money to send his family on a dream vacation. Managers learned that Ozga wanted a job to help pay the bills that had accumulated since his younger brother, Luke, was diagnosed with cancer four years ago.

“We’d moved just out of our house because we couldn’t afford it anymore and went into a two-bedroom apartment across the street,” their mother, Heather, told Fox 10 in Phoenix. Josh “left one day saying he was going to go look at cars, because he loves cars, and he came back and said he had a job interview.”

The dealership raised more than $9,000 to send Josh and his family deep-sea fishing in the Gulf of Mexico and help pay the rent on their apartment. It revealed the trip to them during a scavenger hunt arou…

The former site of Buick City, a long-vacant property in Flint, Mich., that was once the world's largest auto plant complex, is getting new life.

Officials held a ceremonial groundbreaking last week at the 400-acre site, which had nearly 30,000 General Motors workers at its peak in the 1950s. Factories there churned out nearly 16 million vehicles before GM began abandoning it in 1999.

The company redeveloping the site into an industrial park, Ashley Capital, has bought 20 acres of it so far. It expects to acquire 330 more acres this summer from the trust formed to clean up and sell off old GM properties during the automaker's bankruptcy.

Plans call for a total investment of $300 million in up to 10 buildings, creating as many as 3,000 jobs. Construction of the first building is expected to be completed in 2024.

Though that's only a fraction of the employment previously supported by the site, the project would fill a major…