News

DETROIT -- Rivian, the startup electric vehicle manufacturer that is less than a year from launching its first two vehicles, is planning to transfer most of its engineering and product development staff from suburban Detroit to its battery systems and vehicle dynamics operation in Irvine, Calif.

Also, some of Rivian's 750-strong Michigan work force will transfer to the company's Normal, Ill., plant as the company gears up for production.

It's unclear how many employees are moving out of Rivian's offices in Plymouth, Mich.

Rivian spokeswoman Amy Mast confirmed some product development staff will be moving out of Michigan, but she said the company plans to keep some functions in its suburban Detroit facility. Rivian has eight facilities -- six in the United States, one in Canada and one in the United Kingdom.

"Of Rivian's 2,300 employees, approximately 1,000 are based in California and 750 in Michigan," Mast told Automotive News in an e-mail. "We a…

DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. will use a familiar name to help reveal the next-generation F-150 pickup this week in an unfamiliar way.

The automaker is tapping actor and Ford trucks pitchman Denis Leary to show off the redesigned pickup during a livestream slated for Thursday night. The automaker originally planned to show the vehicle earlier this year but had to postpone the reveal until now because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Leary, who has worked with Ford since 2008, will serve as the host for the online reveal. He prerecorded some pieces of the program last week, featuring interviews with current truck customers. He said he fell in love with the 14th-generation F-150 as soon as he saw it on set and thinks buyers will be wowed by the pickup's new technology.

"People aren't just using the truck for work anymore," he told Automotive News. "Trucks have evolved along with customer needs. You want all the luxury and the technology that your car has, and we've…

Executives from Tesla Inc. will use an unassuming job-type description in their pitch to a Texas county on the merits of the carmaker’s Cybertruck plant project.

The factory would bring 5,000 “middle-skill” jobs to Travis County, according to the presentation Tesla officials will deliver during an online meeting Tuesday. The company says it will create positions that pay solid wages without requiring substantial levels of higher education.

The pitch is an early indication of how companies may tout economic-development projects to localities that have sustained significant job losses following the coronavirus outbreak. The unemployment rate for Travis County, which is home to Texas’s capital city of Austin, soared to 12.4 percent in April from 2.2 percent a year earlier, according to Federal Reserve data Tesla cites in its presentation.

CEO Elon Musk first announced plans in March to build Tesla’s second U.S. auto assembly plant that w…

Mercedes-Benz and Nvidia are working to enable advanced technology features that can be continuously updated over the air across Mercedes' entire lineup beginning in 2024 — effectively ensuring vehicles won't be rendered obsolete as new advancements hit the market.

The Silicon Valley chipmaker and the German automaker announced Tuesday that they are developing a "software-defined" vehicle system that will enable updates for automated driving features and other safety and convenience applications.

They will deploy the system using Nvidia's Drive platform.

The platform includes a full computing system for automated driving applications, which will allow Nvidia and Mercedes-Benz to jointly develop Level 2 and Level 3 automated vehicle applications and automated parking functions, up to Level 4 autonomy.

The companies did not further detail which functions the technology will enable. Typical Level 2 and 3 systems run the gamut from automatic emergency…

DETROIT — The CEOs of General Motors and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles were ordered by a federal judge Tuesday to meet in person by July 1 to try to resolve GM's racketeering suit against FCA.

Without an agreement, the litigation is likely to be contentious and drag on for years, with hearings and depositions from the automakers, the UAW and third-party experts, U.S. District Judge Paul Borman said. The lawsuit, in which GM accuses FCA of bribing UAW leaders to gain an unfair labor-cost advantage, will be a distraction for the companies and a "waste of time and resources for the years to come," Borman said.

"These legalities will not only divert and consume the attention of key GM and FCA executives from their day jobs — issues of vehicle production, sales, worker safety, rollouts, supplier issues, etc. — but also prevent them from fully providing their vision and leadership of this country's most pressing social justice and health issues. I mean directly, not thro…

The Aston Martin Volante, the exotic brand's first eight-cylinder convertible, makes its long-awaited debut on June 21, 1978, almost nine years after the launch of the DBS V8.

Aston Martin had used the Volante badge — Italian for "flying" — to distinguish its convertible models starting in 1965.

The 5.3-liter V-8 engine produced up to 305 hp and 320 pound-feet of torque.

Convertibles fell out of favor in the 1970s largely because of federal safety requirements, a volatile economy and slumping industry sales and profits.

But Rex Woodgate, Aston Martin's U.S. representative, and Los Angeles dealer Chuck Vandergriff, citing consumer requests, had lobbied for a convertible for several years. They even commissioned automotive artist Dale W. King to produce a rendering of an Aston Martin convertible, according to author David Dowsey's book, Aston Martin: Power Beauty and Soul.

Harold Beach completed the design …

DETROIT — General Motors CEO Mary Barra has appointed an inclusion advisory board as part of GM's commitment to take action against racism and discrimination following nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd while in police custody in May in Minneapolis.

Barra will chair the board, and on Monday she named 11 other members.

"The board will guide our work to improve diversity and inclusion in our company, with the ultimate aspiration of making GM the most inclusive company in the world," Barra wrote Monday in an internal memo obtained by Automotive News.

The board includes four members from outside the company:

Tonya Allen, social justice advocate and CEO of the Skillman Foundation, a Detroit foundation focused on education and economic wellbeing for children. Dennis Archer Jr., CEO of Ignition Media Group, president of Archer Corporate Services and son of former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer. Arden Hoffman, chief people officer at Cruise, GM…

PARIS -- A PSA Group shareholder is calling for the French carmaker to change the terms of its merger with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to reflect the downturn in the global auto industry and declining prospects of the Italian-American manufacturer.

Six months after striking a deal to combine, the two companies’ fortunes have diverged, Paris-based Phitrust said in a statement Monday ahead of Peugeot-maker PSA’s annual meeting June 25. “Even back in December 2019, the respective situations of each group didn’t justify a 50-50 merger,” it said.

The auto sector has undergone a seismic shift since the two carmaking dynasties unveiled their plan to combine into the world’s fourth-biggest producer. The coronavirus pandemic shut factories and dealerships across the globe, leading to a collapse in sales.

While Fiat Chrysler is poised to get a state-backed 6.3 billion euros ($7.1 billion) credit facility in Italy, PSA CFO Philippe de Rovira has said the French compa…

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Justice Department denied politics played a role in its decision last year to open an antitrust investigation of four automakers that reached an agreement with California on fuel-efficiency standards.

The department said it had a legitimate legal basis to believe that the companies -- Volkswagen Group, BMW AG, Honda Motor Co. and Ford Motor Co. -- violated antitrust laws, according to a June 19 letter to U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.

“We share the view that political interference from outside the Department must never govern law enforcement efforts,” according to the letter obtained by Bloomberg News. “This inquiry was, based on the information known to it at the time, entirely reasonable.”

The letter is the first detailed explanation about why the Trump administration opened the investigation. The inquiry, which was closed six months later, was widely criticized as motivated by the administration’s clash with the automakers…

South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group and battery maker LG Chem Ltd. on Monday launched a global contest to identify up to 10 electric vehicle and battery startups for potential investment and development of green vehicles.

The companies want to select startups with technological capabilities to help the development of future non-polluting vehicles through the competition, called "EV and Battery Challenge."

Automakers are making massive investments in zero-emission and self-driving technology as they look to move away from traditional internal combustion engines.

Hyundai Motor Group, which includes Hyundai Motor Co. and sister company Kia Motors Corp., has said it plans to deploy 44 eco-friendly vehicles by 2025, including 23 EVs.

Earlier this year, LG Chem was chosen as one of the battery suppliers for Hyundai Motor Group's new EVs.

Applications for the competition are open through Aug. 28.

"Start-ups that have working prototypes and ar…

MUMBAI -- A state in India has stalled a proposal by China's Great Wall Motor to invest nearly $500 million, days after a deadly border clash between the two nations, potentially delaying the company's plan to tap one of the world's biggest new-vehicle markets.

The state government of Maharashtra, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, said on Monday it had put on hold three investment proposals from Chinese firms worth a combined 50 billion rupees ($658 million) in total, including Great Wall's.

The initial agreements are not canceled, but further action is awaited, said Maharashtra's industries minister Subhash Desai, days after the state government signed them.

It is the latest setback for Chinese companies that are facing calls for boycott after 20 Indian soldiers were killed in clashes at a disputed border site, in a major escalation of a weeks-long standoff between the two nuclear-armed Asian giants.

"In the current environment, we will wa…