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WASHINGTON — The nation's top auto safety regulator is failing to complete defect investigations and upload related documents in a timely manner, potentially limiting its ability to address "rapidly evolving and severe" risks to motorists, a government audit found.

In a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Transportation Department's Office of Inspector General, auditors reviewed a sample of investigations conducted in 2018, 2019 and 2021 to determine whether the agency has adequate tools, processes and resources to probe and identify safety defects. The audit was conducted between May 2021 and March 2023.

Despite efforts to restructure its office, modernize its data systems and enhance its investigative processes, NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation does not meet its internal deadlines for investigations and relies on legacy information systems that impede its ability to conduct defect analysis, according to the report.

Additionally, the agency "d…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk's decision to host the presidential announcement of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Twitter was marred by technical glitches and relatively few listeners for the audio-only format. Analysts suggested it was bad for DeSantis, bad for Twitter and bad for Musk.

But it may have been good for Tesla.

Musk's widely covered public embrace of DeSantis, a conservative Republican, is part of a larger strategy to better position Tesla in red states where car buyers have been reluctant to consider the EV brand, one longtime industry analyst said. Blue-state California has by far been Tesla's most important market since its founding.

"No matter how altruistic Elon seems at any moment, he is first and foremost a businessman, and he will do things that will benefit him financially first and foremost," said Karl Brauer, executive analyst at iSeeCars and a former analyst at Cox Automotive and Edmunds.

Musk hosted the Twitter political event with D…

Chrysler-parent Stellantis and General Motors paid a total of $363 million in civil penalties for failing to meet U.S. fuel economy requirements for prior model years, documents seen on Friday by Reuters show.

The record-setting penalties include $235.5 million for Stellantis for the 2018 and 2019 model years and $128.2 million for GM covering 2016 and 2017, according to NHTSA, which administers the Corporate Average Fuel Economy program. 

Stellantis said the penalties "reflects past performance recorded before the formation of Stellantis, and is not indicative of the Company’s direction." Stellantis previously paid a total of $156.6 million in penalties for the 2016 and 2017 model years.

GM said Friday as "we work towards the goal of a zero-emissions future, we may use a combination of credits from prior model years, expected credits from future model years, credits obtained from other manufacturers, and payment of civil penalties to comply w…

General Motors and South Korea's Posco Future M said they will invest more to expand the production capacity at their chemical battery materials facility in Canada, taking their estimated total investment in the plant to over US$1 billion.

The companies said on June 2 the new investment in their Ultium CAM plant, expected to start operating in 2025, will be used to set up additional facilities for local on-site processing of critical minerals used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

The announcement comes less than a week after the two initially said it would be a C$600-million facility in Becancour, Que. The Quebec and federal governments are kicking in C$150 million each.

It will produce cathode active material (CAM) for EV batteries. CAM includes components such as processed nickel, lithium and other materials that make up about 40 per cent of the cost of a battery. Cathodes are also the most complex and costly chemical component of an electric vehicl…

The software fixes that Kia and Hyundai are distributing to help stop a nationwide crime fad in hot-wiring their older vehicles may need fixes of their own.

Both auto companies have notified their dealers that the software solutions are not working perfectly.

According to a service bulletin sent from Kia America to its dealers in February, the company identified a compatibility issue involving vehicles equipped with remote start accessories.

Another bulletin, issued last week, said the problem has not been remedied.

A spokesperson for Kia confirmed that the issue persists, but the company expects to release a new version of the software update this month that is compatible with the subset of vehicles equipped with remote start. The automaker remains "confident" the upgrade works as designed for eligible models, the spokesperson said.

The same software update is also available for older Hyundai models not equipped with an anti-theft device.…

After lengthy careers as dealership managers, two Canadian partners have acquired their first store: Coachella Valley Volkswagen in Southern California.

PATH Auto Group — a partnership formed this year by Phil Alalouf and Todd Hewitt — purchased the store in Indio on April 19 from the growing Nouri/Shaver Automotive Group.

The new owners kept the name of the store, which sold 244 new vehicles and 480 used vehicles last year.

The duo follow several other Canadians who have bought dealerships in the U.S. in the past several years.

Hewitt — an experienced used-car manager — is focusing on the store's sales department, while Alalouf oversees fixed operations, accounting and finance.

The partners each have three decades of automotive managerial experience. They met 25 years ago at what was then Cowell Auto Group near Vancouver, British Columbia, then later worked for Canada's Foundation Automotive Corp. in the U.S.

After they decided la…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ Israeli startup Imagry takes contrarian mapless approach to autonomous driving

TEL AVIV, Israel — To map or not to map? That is the question facing autonomous driving technology developers.

Most use sensor data to compile detailed high-definition maps that chart roadway dimensions and features such as merging lanes, overpasses, signals and crosswalks. Others take a lighter approach, building maps that provide less detail.

While these maps inform the driving system about the fixed aspects of the road and potential hazards, some companies, most notably Tesla, go without them.

Imagry, an Israeli startup in Haifa, is moving ahead without high-definition maps, arguing that its system better mimics human perception and is more efficient and less costly than other autonomous systems.

"It's impractical to try to map the entire world in a resolution of a few centimeters," Imagry CEO Eran Ofir told Automotive News.

M…

TOKYO – Struggling Infiniti is getting a new global brand chief with the appointment of Jose Roman, Nissan's most senior executive in Mexico and Latin America.

Roman, a native of Ecuador, joined Infiniti parent Nissan Motor Co. in 2012 and has more than 25 years of automotive experience in such markets as Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Japan, the company said in a June 1 news release announcing his promotion.

He is currently managing director of Nissan Mexico and of the Nissan Importers Business Unit, which oversees 34 markets throughout Latin America.

Infiniti's newest leader starts on July 1 and will be based at the company's global headquarters in Yokohama, Japan, just south of Tokyo. Roman, 56, will also serve as a senior vice president at the parent company and report to Asako Hoshino, Nissan's global sales chief and executive vice president.

"Jose's human-centric leadership style, paired with a wealth of experience gained across diverse marke…

New vehicle inventory might never return to pre-COVID levels, according to Cloud Theory.

Both inventory and sales initially plummeted when the pandemic began in March 2020, but while sales recovered rapidly and even surpassed pre-pandemic levels in the ensuing months, inventory continued to droop, falling below 1 million by fall 2021.

Inventory has climbed back toward 2 million in the last quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, but Rick Wainschel, Cloud Theory's head of data science and analytics, does not expect the industry to get back to the pre-COVID inventory levels of 3 to 3.5 million

"I don't think it's going to go back to that level any time soon, if ever," Wainschel said.

Parts procurement remains difficult for some manufacturers, but there is more to the story; many manufacturers realized during the pandemic that they did not need as much inventory as they had previously operated with and that it was sometimes more profitable to…

Shares of Rivian Automotive Inc., the money-losing EV startup, may get pushed out of the Nasdaq 100 Index as early as this month after plunging more than 90 percent from their record high, according to JP Morgan Securities.

The index typically removes the smallest members of the Nasdaq 100 if the company is weighted at less than 0.1 percent of the gauge for two consecutive months, JPMorgan analyst Min Moon writes in a note on Thursday. As Rivian was below 0.1 percent as of April 28 and May 31, Moon expects the carmaker to be excluded from the index on the third Friday of June. 

ON Semiconductor is ranked at the top of the eligible companies to replace the EV maker, Moon added. 

A removal from the index would deal another blow to a stock that’s been pummeled since soon after its November 2021 initial public offering.

After briefly riding the frenzy for all things related to EVs, Rivian’s shares started unraveling. Investors soured on ri…

Ford Motor Co. sued Blue Cross Blue Shield Association in U.S. court on Wednesday, accusing it of a price-fixing conspiracy that caused the automaker to pay inflated costs for health insurance products for its employees.

The lawsuit Ford filed in Detroit federal court accused the health insurer and its regional Michigan branch of unlawfully dividing up parts of the country in a scheme to reduce competition with each other in order to drive "astronomical profits."

The allegations from Ford, employing more than 170,000 workers worldwide, relate to a $2.7 billion settlement that Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and its three dozen member companies reached in 2020 with corporate and individual policy holders in Alabama federal court.

Ford opted out of that settlement, now on appeal at the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in order to pursue its own claims. The appeals court agreed to fast-track its consideration of the settlement.

A …

Stellantis is shuffling its design team after two key departures.

Jeep's head designer, Mark Allen, is retiring after 30 years and Chris Benjamin, the former interior design lead for Stellantis North America, left to become design chief for Volkswagen's Scout Motors brand.

Vince Galante, who previously led user experience, is now vice president of Jeep exterior design. Stellantis said Galante has held a variety of positions of increasing responsibility for interior and exterior design, global user experience, and the management and execution of various products and programs, including the Uconnect platform, Grand Wagoneer Concept and the Airflow Vision Concept. Galante, who joined the company in 2005, worked under Allen for 12 years in the Jeep design studio.

Ryan Nagode has been appointed vice president of interior design. He'll handle Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram Truck vehicles, "ensuring a cohesive and consistent interior design language representat…