News

FRANKFURT -- German auto supplier ZF Friedrichshafen plans to cut up to 15,000 jobs, or around 10 percent of its work force, by 2025 as a result of a slump in demand, according to a company memo.

ZF, which helps automakers develop gearboxes and hybrid drivetrains, said in an email to employees that half of the 12,000-15,000 job cuts would be in Germany.

The company employed 147,797 people at the end of 2019, according to its annual report.

"As a result of the demand freeze on the customer side, our company will make heavy financial losses in 2020," CEO Wolf-Henning Scheider wrote in the email memo that was seen by Reuters.

"These losses threaten our financial independence," he wrote. "The crisis will last longer, and even in 2022 we will fall noticeably short of our targets for sales."

A spokesman declined to comment.

German media including DPA and Suedkurier first reported the planned cuts.

FRANKFURT -- Volkswagen said Thursday its supervisory board had approved several projects in a multibillion-dollar alliance with Ford Motor that was first announced in July.

The German automaker said various contracts between the two companies were nearing completion and would be signed soon.

Among the shared projects specified by VW are a midsize pickup to be developed by Ford; a city delivery van to be developed by VW; a larger commercial van to be developed by Ford, and a new electric vehicle for Ford of Europe, to be built on VW's electric vehicle architecture.

Regarding official approval of the agreements, a Ford spokesman said Thursday, "We look forward to jointly providing an update soon."

VW's statement said "further projects are to follow, as is the investment in Argo AI," the self-driving software company backed by Ford and which eventually will be jointly controlled with VW.

VW's planned $3.1 billion investment in Argo "rema…

Chinese electric vehicle startup Aiways has begun shipping 500 electric vehicles to the French island of Corse as part of efforts to explore the European market. 

The vehicles – all U5 crossovers – will be used for leasing on the island in the Mediterranean Sea, the company said. 

The U5 – about the size of an Audi Q5 – is Aiways’ first product and is equipped with a 140-kilowatt electric motor, with a range of more than 400 kilometers. 

Aiways was established in Shanghai in 2017 by Volvo Car Corp.’s former China sales chief, Fu Qiang, and SAIC Motor Corp.’s former CFO, Gu Feng. It has an assembly plant in Shangrao of east China’s Jiangxi province. 

The startup, eager to demonstrate its engineering capabilities, product quality and ambitions to enter the European market, staged a test drive of two U5s on a 14,231-kilometer (8,843-mile) journey stretching from the northwestern China city of Xi’an to Frankfurt, Germany, last yea…

Mazda Motor Corp. is resuming new-product launches in China after a two-year interval. The Mazda CX-30 will go on sale next week as the Japanese carmaker’s fifth crossover in the market. 

The compact crossover will be priced from 129,900 yuan ($18,180) to 176,900 yuan, according to Changan Mazda, Mazda’s joint venture with Changan Automobile Co., which produces the CX-30.

The crossover, similar in size to the Toyota C-HR and Honda XR-V, is fitted with Mazda’s Skyactiv powertrain comprised of a 2.6-liter gasoline engine and a six-speed automatic transmission. 

Aside from the CX-30, Mazda assembles the CX-5 and CX-8 crossovers as well as the Mazda 3 sedan at Changan Mazda. 

It also builds the CX-4 and the Mazda 6 sedan at a partnership with China FAW Group Corp. 

Mazda’s China sales, reflecting a lack of new products, slumped the past two years after peaking at 309,000 in 2017. 

In 2019, the company’s China de…

Volvo Car Corp., tapping China as a key export hub, launched shipments of the XC40 compact crossovers to South Africa. 

The vehicles, loaded on an ocean liner in Shanghai on Sunday, are scheduled to dock at South Africa’s Durpan port in mid-June, Volvo’s China sales company said. 

The XC40 also will be exported to other countries, including those in the Americas, Oceania and Asia, the company added.

It is the fourth vehicle Volvo has shipped to other markets from plants in China, following the S60 and S90 sedans and the XC60 crossover. 

In China, Volvo builds the S60 and XC60 in the southwest city of Chengdu. The S90 is manufactured in Daqing. 

The XC40 is built at Geely Automobile Holdings’ factory in the east city of Luqiao. Volvo and Geely are both owned by private Chinese company Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. 

China is Volvo’s largest market globally. The Swedish brand’s local deliveries, dampened by the…

Thousands of Jump bikes scrapped, report says

Tens of thousands of electric Jump bikes appear to be getting kicked to the curb, just weeks after a scooter company shake-up.

In a report Friday, the Bike Share Museum — a digital archive of bike models that have been retired by micromobility companies — shared images of hundreds of discarded red Jump bikes in Seattle.

The news came two weeks after scooter company Lime announced that it had secured a $170 million investment round, led by ride-hailing giant Uber. As part of the deal, Lime will acquire Uber's Jump bike-rental business. Uber acquired Jump in 2018, but the venture struggled to be profitable.

The Bike Share Museum has since updated its post, saying that at least 20,000 Jump bikes were being scrapped. An employee at one North Carolina recycling facility reports receiving several trailers full of the bikes, and some accounts say electronic and battery components were removed from the…

New-vehicle demand softened in the first 20 days of May after a modest rebound in April, underscoring the halting recovery the industry faces as consumers hunker down following the COVID-19 outbreak, even with widespread discounts and promotions.

Sales across the industry dipped 2.5 percent to some 971,000 in the first several weeks of the month, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

By contrast, new-vehicle production surged 17 percent to nearly 1.14 million during the period, the trade group said.

With plants idled and showrooms shuttered during the coronavirus outbreak, which broke out in China in late January, new-vehicle deliveries across the country plunged 42 percent to approach 3.7 million in the first quarter. 

The outbreak was largely brought under control in mid-March, and industry sales rose 4.4 percent to 2.07 million in April, ending 21 straight months of contraction. 

In the first four mon…

LOS ANGELES — Acura's second-generation TLX has big shoes to fill.

Honda Motor Co.'s luxury brand is discontinuing the bigger RLX, elevating the midsize TLX to flagship sedan status. Acura is banking on the redesigned model to add cred that a strategic shift to performance is taking hold — even as Americans abandon the traditional sedan in all stripes.

The Japanese automaker detailed the features of the re-engineered TLX in a 15-minute video on Thursday that served as a global reveal. The latest sedan was scheduled to appear at the New York auto show in April before the event was canceled because of the coronavirus outbreak.

The 2021 TLX is longer, wider, lower and has a more expansive hood to give it the classic proportions of a sports sedan. It echoes the well-received 2019 Type S Concept that was a thinly veiled precursor to the production sedan. Acura's Type S performance variant is also being revived on the latest TLX after …

American Honda, BMW and Mercedes-Benz are canceling their traditional summer factory downtime at U.S. and Canadian plants in order to boost vehicle inventory as sales improve thanks to easing stay-at-home guidelines.

The automakers are eager to replenish inventory after their factories were idled for several weeks in accordance with government coronavirus rules.

Detroit 3 automakers have until next week to notify the UAW of planned changes in their own production calendar. Full-size pickups, in particular, have seen falling inventories as sales have remained surprisingly brisk during the lockdown.

Honda lost seven weeks of production from March 23 to May 11 as factories across North America shut down to reduce coronavirus transmission. Now it is adding production days on June 27, 29 and 30 that had previously been designated as days off for plant workers, the company said in an email to Automotive News.

"With the auto market improving as stay-at-h…