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General Motors began sales of the first battery-electric vehicle under the Chevrolet brand in China, expanding its electrified vehicle lineup as required by local regulations. 

The sporty Chevrolet Menlo sedan is priced from 159,900 yuan ($22,617) to 179,900 yuan after government subsidies, GM’s China unit said. 

It is powered by lithium ion batteries, and the vehicle’s electric drive system generates 110 kW of maximum power and 350 Nm of maximum torque. 

The electric car has a range of 410 kilometers under the New European Driving Cycle conditions on one charge. 

Buyers are covered by a warranty of eight years or 160,000 km for the battery, motor and electric control systems. 

The Menlo is the third electrified vehicle produced and marketed through SAIC-GM, GM’s passenger-vehicle joint venture in China, following the battery-powered Buick Velite 6 and the plug-in hybrid Cadillac CT6. 

GM also builds and…

Honda Motor Co.’s China sales are poised to fall as much as 50 percent this month with three of the company’s assembly plants in the central China city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic, still closed. 

Automakers and other industrial companies are not allowed to resume production until March 11 to prevent the transmission of the virus, the Wuhan government said last week. 

In Wuhan, the three factories Honda runs with Dongfeng Motor Group can produce 650,000 vehicles a year at full capacity. 

In the south China city of Guangzhou, Honda operates two plants with GAC Motor Co., which build up to 600,000 vehicles annually. 

Honda’s January sales rose 9.8 percent to approach 150,000 despite the week-long Chinese New Year holiday that started January 23. 

Two of Honda’s three most-popular models, the Civic and CR-V, are assembled at plants in Wuhan, while the Accord is produced at factories in Guangzhou.…

Audi halted output of its e-tron crossover to resolve production issues including battery-supply bottlenecks as it prepares to flank the model with a sportier variant, underscoring the struggles traditional automakers face to boost electric cars.

Manufacturing at Audi’s factory in Brussels stopped on Thursday and the plant will remain idle until Tuesday, a company spokeswoman said Monday by phone. Audi sold about 26,400 e-tron vehicles last year, she said, declining to comment on estimated deliveries this year. In the U.S., Audi sold 5,369 e-trons in 2019. 

Audi, Volkswagen Group's largest profit contributor, had to delay the e-tron’s market launch after its unveiling in September 2018. Audi recalled its first all-electric model last year over potential fire risk. It plans to add the e-tron Sportback version -- which features a more coupe-like declining roofline -- later this year as well as a performance sedan dubbed the e-tron GT.

Former…

Many drivers' first experience with an advanced driver- assistance system is adaptive cruise control, which started gaining popularity in the early 2000s. Along with lane-keeping assist and automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise has helped people realize that someday, cars might just drive themselves.

The technology has become so pervasive that, according to AAA, it's marketed under at least 20 unique names.

With adaptive cruise control, the driver sets the desired cruising speed, and a radar or camera system automatically adjusts that speed so that the car stays a safe distance from the vehicle ahead.

Now, Hyundai has found a way to incorporate even more intelligence.

In October, the automaker said it had developed a version of its Smart Cruise Control system that uses machine learning to factor in individual driving patterns and habits. "Through machine learning, Smart Cruise Control autonomously drives in an …

Modern cars and trucks have become data-gathering machines. Wittingly or not, vehicle owners readily cough up large amounts of information by linking their smartphones with vehicles' computer systems. Their favorite music, contacts and location data may be stored in a vehicle. Telematics systems and tracking devices can keep details on driving habits.

Consumer Reports has several suggestions as to what vehicle owners should do to prevent this data from traveling to a subsequent owner.

The publication noted that a first step is unpairing all connected devices. That puts an end to sharing contact info, music preferences and GPS mapping data.

If a universal application, such as HomeLink, is used for garage door openers, it should be reset. That should remove codes used to enter your home.

Telematics services such as Hyundai's Blue Link, FordPass and OnStar should be reset, which can be done by summoning the service's cus…

Ever been stuck on the road far from home with a breakdown? Not fun. So imagine getting an email or text warning weeks or months before a starter quits, a battery dies or a fuel pump fails. Some of General Motors' connected-car owners are already getting alerts for the service bay.

Thanks to an engineering discipline called prognostics, carmakers are working on giving customers a digital warning before a check-engine light comes on. Prognostics tap sensors to monitor starting, charging and running systems, and telemetry hardware sends vehicle health messages to the automaker's centralized processing operation.

Algorithms and artificial intelligence weigh the results and determine the remaining service life of critical components — and whether to trigger a warning.

"The most obvious benefit is peace of mind," says Jim Kelly, GM program engineering manager for vehicle health. "These issues are very rare, but our customers can sleep…

Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk famously served as the inspiration for Robert Downey Jr.'s depiction of billionaire genius Tony Stark in Marvel's "Iron Man" movies.

Now he's trying to avoid a real-life Ultron moment.

In the fictional Marvel universe, Stark originally designed Ultron, an artificial intelligence program, to protect Earth. But when it gained sentience, it turned on its creators and attempted to destroy humanity.

Musk doesn't think it's the stuff of fiction. Although his Tesla vehicles come with boundary-pushing driver-assist features, he has called AI humankind's "biggest existential threat," tweeted that it's "potentially more dangerous than nukes" and referred to dabbling with AI as "summoning the demon."

He's taken a more fatalist approach in recent years, lamenting that his warnings have gone unheeded.

"I tried to convince people to slow down AI, to regulate AI; this was futile ... nobody liste…

Cars learn a lot from their owners. They know about their location. Where they're parked at night. What routes they usually take to work. What doctor's offices they visit. What churches they attend.

They know about their driving habits: how often they brake hard; how loud they set the volume; when and where they drive faster than the speed limit.

As they've added new connections to cars, automakers have increasingly harvested and stored such information to establish new revenue streams, using it for advertising purposes or selling it to third parties.

But a stringent new California law that went into effect at the start of this year presents new challenges. The California Consumer Privacy Act grants consumers greater access to their personal data that companies keep tabs on and perhaps, in some cases, more control over how that data is collected and shared.

Exactly what complications the CCPA introduces for carmakers and dealer…

Most of what consumers know about artificial intelligence comes from the movies or other pop culture.

Think The Matrix, A.I. Artificial Intelligence or WarGames. These are all films that depict AI as an almost-human force — often hidden behind a computer screen — that has a mind of its own. But for people in a variety of industries using AI, it's important to put aside these mischaracterizations and get down to the facts.

Definitions vary widely, but fundamentally, AI is technology that allows machines or computer systems to perform tasks in ways that mimic human intelligence. It's an umbrella term for systems that can adapt based on the data they receive.

"We have to teach these systems first, and then they can do what they've been taught better than a human, but they can't go beyond that scope," said Danny Shapiro, senior director of automotive at chip supplier Nvidia.

Artificial intelligence seems to have morphed…