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BMW's largest plant in the world, in Spartanburg, S.C., delivered a record 411,620 vehicles last year, as global demand for crossovers soared.

The 7 million square-foot factory, which assembles five BMW X-series crossovers, produced 15 percent more vehicles in 2019 than the prior year. Production volume topped the previous record, set in 2016, by 449 units. The plant has an annual capacity of 450,000 units.

Since 2017, the Spartanburg plant has launched five new or redesigned BMW X models, four Motorsport X models and two electrified vehicles.

Luxury crossover and SUV sales in the U.S. rose 6.6 percent to 1.386 million last year from 1,300,901 in 2018, according to the Automotive News data center.

The X5 was the volume leader in Spartanburg last year, accounting for 161,096 units produced. The compact X3 came in second, accounting for 115,088 units.

The X7, BMW's largest SUV to date, arrived in U.S. store…

Volvo will build its own U.S. battery assembly plant as it readies a line of electric vehicles for this market.

The expansion is part of a previously announced $600 million project that the Swedish automaker has begun at its plant in Ridgeville, S.C., which includes a second production line and Volvo Car University.

Volvo will create an electric version of its next XC90 crossover and build it at the plant starting in late 2022. The factory, 45 miles northwest of Charleston, employs about 1,500 workers building the S60 sedan.

The South Carolina plant will become the global production center for the third-generation XC90 flagship crossover.

That vehicle will be built on the next version of Volvo's Scalable Product Architecture platform, referred to as SPA2. Volvo has not said how much of the XC90's production at the $1.1 billion factory will be devoted to the battery-electric variant.

Construction of the b…

DETROIT — The 2020 Detroit auto show will feature a prelude weekend event, June 5-8, to showcase European supercars.

Motor Bella will feature Italian and British supercars, provided by global auto companies, local dealers and car clubs. The vehicles will be displayed in an emerging section of downtown Detroit that includes new, upscale hotels and other attractions.

"The event will feature well over 100 Italian and British supercars, representing 12 brands including Ferrari and Rolls-Royce, to name a couple," auto show Chairman Doug North said at the North American Car, Utility and Truck of the Year award ceremony on Monday.

During the four-day festival, local food trucks, street vendors and restaurants will offer Italian and British food.

The 2020 North American International Auto Show has doubled in size for 2020, North said, with 14 added acres of outdoor space in downtown Detroit's Hart Plaza next to the TCF Center…

FRANKFURT -- German prosecutors on Tuesday filed charges against six Volkswagen employees for their role in the automaker's emissions-cheating scandal.

Prosecutors in Brunswick, Germany, accused the unnamed employees of fraud and false advertising as well as tax evasion, since VW cars equipped with illegal emissions-cheating software should not have received road worthiness certification and tax breaks.

The employees worked at the automaker between 2006 and 2015 and were below management board level, prosecutor Klaus Ziehe said, adding it was unclear whether they are still employed at the automaker.

Volkswagen declined to comment.

Opel plans to cut as many as 4,100 jobs, according to a person familiar with the matter, joining automakers around the globe in restructuring amid a sales slowdown and technological disruption.

The automaker will eliminate at least 2,100 positions by 2025 and could take measures to cut another 1,000 workers twice in two-year increments through 2029, said the person, who asked not to be identified ahead of an official announcement.

Opel will brief employees on Tuesday, the person said.

A spokesman for parent PSA Group declined to comment.

While PSA breathed life into Opel after acquiring it from General Motors in 2017, German brands have been struggling to prove they are ready to meet stricter emissions standards and go electric. Transitioning from the internal combustion engine could be taxing for the German economy because full-electric cars require fewer parts and less labor to build.

Automakers are eliminating more than 80,000 jobs dur…

PARIS -- French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Tuesday he expected Renault to name its new CEO in a few days.

Luca de Meo, who stepped down as the head of Volkswagen Group's Seat brand last week, is seen as a frontrunner for the job, although a stringent non-compete clause in his contract with VW Group may prove a hurdle, sources have told Reuters.

Renault's board ousted Thierry Bollore, a Ghosn-era appointee, as CEO in October.  The automaker's finance chief, Clotilde Delbos, is interim CEO.

Le Maire also said on French CNews TV that media reports that some Nissan executives wanted to break up the alliance with Renault were "malicious."

The French government is Renault's largest shareholder with a 15 percent stake.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of Renault's chairman.

TOKYO/PARIS -- Renault and Nissan denied media reports of a potential break-up that sent their shares skidding to multiyear lows.

The automakers said their alliance, which was shaken even further by the dramatic escape of former chairman Carlos Ghosn from trial in Japan, was in no danger of being dissolved.

"The alliance is the source of Nissan's competitiveness," Nissan said in a statement Tuesday, pushing back against reports that its executives have looked at the possibility of breaking with the global carmaking partnership.

"Through the alliance, to achieve sustainable and profitable growth, Nissan will look to continue delivering win-win results for all member companies," the statement said.

Renault Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard told Belgian newspaper L'Echo that the alliance is "solid, robust, everything but dead."

French Finance Min…

Zeigler Automotive Group, a large privately owned dealership group, said Monday it's buying three luxury dealerships in suburban Chicago from the Motor Werks Auto Group in its largest acquisition to date.

The deal, expected to close on Jan. 20, includes Mercedes-Benz and Sprinter of Hoffman Estates, Jaguar-Land Rover Schaumburg and Infiniti of Hoffman Estates, all in Illinois. The acquisition adds Mercedes-Benz, Sprinter, Jaguar and Land Rover to Zeigler's portfolio, its second Infiniti store and grows its presence of stores outside of Chicago.

The new stores are expected to add 5,000 unit sales a year and $350 million in annual sales. Including the three stores, Zeigler is expected to sell more than 40,000 new and used vehicles on sales of $1.7 billion a year.

"We are excited to be adding these new dealers to our lineup," Aaron Zeigler, president and owner of Zeigler Automotive, said in a statement. "These are high-performing stores that will undoubtedl…

DETROIT -- It turns out millennials don’t hate driving, after all.

As the generation born between 1981 and 1996 begin to reach their family formation years, they are getting licensed to drive at the highest rate in 40 years, an analyst at Benchmark Co. said in a report Monday.

Licensed drivers in the U.S. reached a record 227.5 million in 2018, and the portion of the population that’s driving has risen every year since 2014, the report said.

That’s good news for automakers that have fretted over young Americans spurning the rite of passage that is getting one’s driver’s license at age 16. Millennials have simply delayed that step, but are now beginning to get them in numbers equal to or higher than their car-loving baby boomer parents. At 84 million strong, they now outnumber boomers, with about 20 percent more births per year.

“The impact on the auto sector from the millennial generation could be as great as the impression the baby boomers h…

Self-driving vehicles that encounter tricky scenarios may soon have more options for determining how to proceed.

Visteon, a supplier of cockpit electronics, is working with startup Designated Driver to add remote-control capabilities to its autonomous-driving platform.

Via remote connections, remote human monitors could either send vehicles instructions on how to navigate, or in some cases, control cars themselves and steer them through complex scenarios the cars cannot handle on their own.

The companies said Monday that they have been working together in recent months to integrate remote-driving technology on Visteon's Drive Core platform, which is designed to enable advanced driver-assist functions today and be a scalable building block for higher levels of autonomy in the future.

Along with valet parking and autonomous highway pilots, remote driver, also called teleoperation, is one of several advanced features Visteon is building on top of th…

China’s new-vehicle market, a reliable source of growth and profits for automakers worldwide, contracted for the second consecutive year as a weakening economy and prolonged trade war with the United States continued to sap demand. 

New-vehicle deliveries slipped 8.2 percent to just below 25.8 million, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said Monday. 

The protracted downturn largely reflected weaker demand for new cars and light trucks, which fell 9.6 percent to below 21.5 million, the group said.

Sales of commercial vehicles such as buses and trucks dipped 1.1 percent to roughly 4.3 million for the year.

"We have moved away from the high-speed development stage. We have to accept the reality of low-speed development," Shi Jianhua, a senior official at CAAM, said at a news briefing.

"We had high-speed growth for a consecutive 28 years, which was really not bad, so I hope everyone can calmly look at the market."

Google's self-driving affiliate Waymo took a big step forward last fall when it began ferrying riders around the Phoenix area in robotaxis without human safety drivers. Humans have been behind the wheel for almost all of the 20 million miles of testing the company says it’s completed on public roads.

But the driverless rides in Arizona don’t mean the end for Waymo’s human operators. Last summer, the company quietly finalized a multiyear contract with Transdev North America, which provides bus drivers, streetcar conductors and other transportation workers to airports and cities. The partnership is an acknowledgement that Waymo will be relying on test drivers for many years to come.

“For the foreseeable future, as we expand and are driving in some of these new areas, it’s critical that we have vehicle operators,” said Rocky Garff, Waymo’s head of operations. “They’re part of the equation that gets us to fully self-driving.”

Rather than supply Waymo with co…