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DETROIT — Ford Motor Co., resurrecting a historically popular nameplate with modern amenities such as a trail-mapping system and 360-degree camera views, aims to attract a new generation of overlanding enthusiasts with the first members of the Bronco family of off-roaders.

The 2021 Bronco SUV and Bronco Sport crossover signify a new direction for the automaker as it aims to wrest back a slice of the market long ago ceded to rivals -- particularly Jeep. Under CEO Jim Hackett, Ford is pruning its lineup to focus on more profitable vehicles that elicit more emotion and passion from customers.

It expects the pair of rugged utilities — unveiled Monday directly into the living rooms of would-be buyers via primetime introductions on ESPN, National Geographic and ABC — to do just that.

Under development for the past half-decade and arriving nearly 25 years after the last Bronco departed, the sixth-generation SUV will serve as the flagship for a new off-road sub…

Tesla Inc. needs to succeed in China if it wants to dominate the world of electric cars -- especially in a post-virus world. To do that, Elon Musk is turning to a battery engineer who once helped Apple Inc. extend the life of its MacBook laptops.

Zeng Yuqun, 52, built Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. into China’s battery champion in less than a decade, creating the largest global producer of rechargeable cells for the plug-in vehicles considered to be the future of cars. That effort has helped propel Zeng from a modest hillside village and $30-a-month job with a state-run company to an estimated $17 billion fortune.

CATL’s products are in the vehicles of almost every major global auto brand, and starting this month they’ll also power electric cars manufactured by Tesla at its new factory on the outskirts of Shanghai. It’s an alliance with lucrative potential, combining the sector’s most-popular plug-in model -- the Tesla Model 3 -- with low-cost batteries in…

Electric vehicle maker Fisker Inc. plans to go public through a merger with a special purpose company backed by private equity firm Apollo Global Management Inc. at a $2.9 billion valuation, the companies said on Monday.

Reuters reported last week that the special purpose acquisition company, Spartan Energy Acquisition Corp., was leading a bidding war among special purpose companies for Fisker.

The proceeds are expected to be used to bring the company's first product, the Fisker Ocean, to production in late 2022.

Spartan's shares rose 19.4 percent in premarket trading.

The deal will provide Fisker with $1 billion in gross proceeds, including $500 million of funds from existing and new investors such as AllianceBernstein and BlackRock Inc.

Henrik Fisker, a one-time Aston-Martin designer, launched the eponymous Los Angeles-based company in 2016, and plans to begin selling the Fisker Ocean luxury electric SUV at a starting price of $37,500. Read more

FRANKFURT -- Labor representatives at Daimler said Monday that discussions with management over cost cuts had become "rougher" after a board member said over the weekend that more than 15,000 jobs were at risk.

The auto industry has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, which shut factories and showrooms forcing traditional automakers to seek deeper cuts.

Daimler had already said in November, before the pandemic started, that it would cut at least 10,000 jobs worldwide over the following three years, following peers as they cut costs to invest in electric vehicles while grappling with weakening sales.

The owner of the Mercedes-Benz brand had stuck with a pledge at the time to avoid forced redundancies at its German workforce until 2029.

Daimler board member Wilfried Porth told the Stuttgarter Zeitung over the weekend that more than 15,000 workers would now have to take a buyout or retire to avoid forced layoffs.

The works council for D…

DETROIT — By killing the Chevrolet Cruze last year and now the Sonic in a few months, General Motors is leaving itself with just two vehicles that start at less than $20,000.

That includes the new Trailblazer, which aims to put Chevy on more consumers' radars by landing in one of the industry's fastest-growing segments: small crossovers.

The Trailblazer complements the Trax, which posted a 30 percent U.S. sales gain last year but is too small for some buyers, by giving Chevy a roomier option with a more mature look. And unlike the Trax, it was designed from the ground up with U.S. consumers top of mind.

"We're thinking the Trailblazers are going to catch on in a big way," said Paul Waatti, industry analyst at AutoPacific.

In the second quarter, Chevy sold 6,699 Trailblazers, which just started reaching dealerships in March. It's already more popular than GM's other sub-$20,000 entry, the Spark, which logged 5,311 sales i…

In early March, the team at Outsell held an off-site, multiday meeting to create the dealership marketing company's long-term product development road map.

There were plans for a new content management system, more product integrations and new reporting tools.

But within weeks, the situation changed. The pandemic prompted states across most of the country to order retailers to shutter showrooms, with sales and service business being slashed.

"We took that road map we had just spent weeks trying to finalize and set it completely aside," Gary Marcotte, Outsell's senior vice president of customer engagement innovation, told me.

Outsell, which automates dealership marketing messages aimed at consumers across their life cycles, shifted gears to focus instead on products that retailers would need to get through the virus-induced economic crisis. They included a new equity-mining tool to help dealers identify people in the market who might want to trade …