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In this week's issue, and also next week's, we offer in-depth interviews with some of the top North American auto executives.

Every year, we sit down with the industry's North American chiefs to give readers a glimpse of the leadership thinking inside key brands.

This week, it's Jose Muñoz, CEO of Hyundai and Genesis Motors North America; Sebastian Mackensen, CEO of BMW North America; Kumar Galhotra, president of Ford Blue; and Pablo Di Si, CEO of Volkswagen Group of America.

That have a lot to talk about because each of their companies is in a state of change.

Hyundai is attempting to create a pipeline of U.S.-made electric vehicles, despite the headwinds the automaker is feeling from the U.S. government in the tax rules of the Inflation Reduction Act.

At BMW, Mackensen posed a question that's surely weighing on the mind of every manager in the auto business: "How do you do even more things simultaneously?" Just to name a few things, he po…

The vice president of homologation, vehicle safety and feature integration at Zoox describes the process the company used for self-certifying that its robotaxi conforms with federal standards and the status of the company’s self-driving deployments.

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North American auto leaders have a lot on their mind — and on their plate

In this week's issue, and also next week's, we offer in-depth interviews with some of the top North American auto executives.

Every year, we sit down with the industry's North American chiefs to give readers a glimpse of the leadership thinking inside key brands.

This week, it's Jose Muñoz, CEO of Hyundai and Genesis Motors North America; Sebastian Mackensen, CEO of BMW North America; Kumar Galhotra, president of Ford Blue; and Pablo Di Si, CEO of Volkswagen Group of America.

That have a lot to talk about because each of their companies is in a state of change.

Hyundai is attempting to create a pipeline of U.S.-made electric vehicles, despite the headwinds the automaker is feeling from the U.S. government in the tax rules of the Inflation Reduction Act.

At BMW, Mackensen posed a question that's surely weighing on the mind of every manager in the auto business…

DETROIT — "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." — Buckminster Fuller

Fuller's quote was recited by Cheryl Thompson, founder and CEO of the Center for Automotive Diversity, Inclusion & Advancement, during the organization's Rev Up 2030 summit here this month at Wayne State University.

As the editor who has overseen Automotive News' diversity, equity and inclusion coverage during the past two years, this quote resonated with me. It is easy to fall into the trap of arguing with those who dismiss company DE&I initiatives as "woke nonsense" and "unfair," despite a mountain of rigorous, credible research that shows the positive business outcomes of such policies. The anti-DE&I sentiment in emails sent to us criticizing our coverage, as well as on social media and in state political offices, can be discouraging.

The unfortunate…

The BorgWarner employee who has been detained in Russia since 2018 says he thinks progress is being made toward his release.

"I remain positive and confident on a daily basis that the wheels are turning," Whelan said in a phone call to CNN last week from his prison camp. "I just wish they would turn a little bit more quickly."

Whelan, a U.S. Marine who was BorgWarner's security director, was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in prison on spying charges that he has denied. He was arrested in December 2018 while attending a wedding in Moscow after receiving a flash drive with government secrets that he says he thought contained holiday pictures.

He told CNN that he's more confident in the U.S. government's efforts to bring him home than he was last December, when Russia released WNBA player Brittney Griner.

More recently, however, Russia arrested U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich on charges of espionage, another case that th…

WAIMEA, Hawaii — As the global online reveal of the redesigned 2024 Toyota Tacoma wound down at a posh seaside tropical island resort here, after the fire dancers had departed the volcano-themed stage, Kevin Hunter sat alone, nearly unnoticed, in the driver's seat of a white Tacoma with the door open.

For a few minutes, while journalists and guests just feet away largely ignored him, the president of Toyota Motor North America's Calty design studio let his hands glide across the much improved interior contours of what is easily one of Toyota's most important products.

His design teams in California and Michigan had been working on the Tacoma for more than three years, and this was an early opportunity to touch and feel what had previously existed only in a digital world. He wasn't going to let the moment pass, especially given the scope of a project that not only affected Toyota's third-bestselling nameplate in the United States, but its whole …

When Renault reimagined its Espace as a crossover after five model generations as a minivan, it was an acknowledgement that a once-iconic segment had truly run its course in Europe.

Minivans have been declining in popularity among European consumers, much as they have with American shoppers. Since the early 2010s, minivans have been replaced by crossovers and SUVs, as well as small passenger vans with more and more features.

Dataforce, which tracks sales by model and segment, no longer has a minivan category, instead combining passenger van versions of light-commercial vans with the few remaining minivans on the market.

Renault's Espace was the first minivan in Europe when it launched in 1984. Chrysler Corp.'s popular minivans, the Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager, launched in the U.S. nearly concurrently.

The Espace featured plastic composite body panels and seven seats that could be arranged like a living room, w…

Michigan dairy farmers and a Canadian distillery plan to transform milk into a $41.1 million investment in biofuels.

The Michigan Milk Producers Association, a farmer-owned cooperative of more than 1,000 dairy farmers with two processing plants in the state, created a joint venture with Dairy Distillery, of Ontario, which produces a milk-based vodka called Vodkow.

The venture plans to add onto a 30,000-square-foot facility in southwestern Michigan so it can process a byproduct called milk permeate into 2.2 million gallons of ethanol annually for use in cars and trucks starting in 2025, Crain's Detroit Business reported. That amount of ethanol, when blended with gasoline, can offset 14,500 metric tons of carbon a year.

By using technology developed by Dairy Distillery, which began turning milk permeate into vodka in 2018 and into hand sanitizer during the COVID-19 pandemic, Michigan dairy farmers hope to create more value for the milk…

European auto assembly plants have pulled 42,000 more vehicles out of production this week due to a lack of microchips, according to the newest estimate from AutoForecast Solutions. 

But the North American industry, which has made far more chip-related production cuts so far this year, was able to leave its factory schedules unchanged.

Chinese production plans also were unaffected for this week, the forecasting firm reported, as were the assembly plants of South America.

More than 23,000 of the new schedule cuts involved plants in Eastern Europe, according to the AutoForecast Solutions data.

The new weekly estimate also reports that nearly 11,000 vehicles will be cut from factory schedules in the Middle East and Africa.

Source: AutoForecast Solutions Inc. autoforecastsolutions.com