Trade News

DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. said Monday that it's recalling nearly 88,000 2021 model year F-Series pickups with improperly bonded windshields that could come off in the event of a crash.

The notice covers F-150 pickups built at the Dearborn Truck Plant from Oct. 27, 2020, to Feb. 3, 2021, as well as Super Duty pickups built at the Kentucky Truck Plant from Oct. 13, 2020, to Jan. 23, 2021.

Together, the models make up the bulk of the best-selling pickup line in the country. The F-150 was redesigned for the 2021 model year.

Ford said there are 79,017 defective vehicles in the U.S., 6,986 in Canada and 1,347 in Mexico. It is not aware of any accidents or injuries related to the defect.

The automaker said it would begin contacting owners the week of April 6.

Ford on Monday also issued a recall for nearly 12,000 2020 model year Super Duty pickups with 6.7-liter engines that display incorrect payload information on the tire and loading information…

PARIS -- Valeo is in a “sound financial position” for 2021 after a strong second half performance in 2020, CEO Jacques Aschenbroich said, and is targeting free cash flow of 550 million euros ($668 million) this year. 

Free cash flow in the second half was a record 1.34 billion euros, Valeo said, and 294 million euros for the year.

For the year, Valeo recorded a loss of 1.09 billion euros on 16.4 billion euros in sales, a decline of 16 percent from 2019 sales of 19.5 billion euros. Net income was positive in the second half at 126 million euros.

Aschenbroich credited efficiency and cost-cutting measures in the first half with bolstering second-half performance. 

He said in a news release Friday that Valeo’s position in electrification and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) would enable it to outperform the market in coming years. Those two business units performed best versus the market in 2020, with Comfort and Driving A…

Two significant things happened at Honda back in 1987: It asserted its self reliance and it hired Toshihiro Mibe.

In a big ceremony that September in Marysville, Ohio, the company outlined plans to construct a second car assembly plant in the U.S., build a new R&D center, and expand its Anna, Ohio, engine plant.

"We are trying to establish in the United States a self-reliant motor vehicle company,'' Tetsuo Chino, then president of Honda North America, said that day.

As for Toshihiro Mibe, in just over five weeks, on April 1, he will become the next CEO of Honda Motor Co. — but with a decidedly different attitude than Chino on going it alone.

We begin a Page 1 story Monday with an eye-opening discovery that stemmed from a joint project with Honda and General Motors. It had to do with an effort to reduce the amount of precious metals used in catalysts. And GM's soluti…

Alisyn Malek, executive director at the Commission On The Future Of Mobility, a nonprofit thinktank, discusses the infrastructure needs for electric vehicles, the role of public transit in a post-COVID world, and kickstarting a new effort to address global mobility challenges.

How do I subscribe?

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Thierry Bollore, the former Renault CEO who took the wheel at Jaguar Land Rover in September, last week ripped the covers off his new global strategy. If his plan is successful, JLR will shrink and grow at the same time — and build a stronger identity for troubled Jaguar.

The shrinkage will come from fewer nameplates and lower volume for Jaguar. JLR is abandoning its goal of 1 million global sales per year, a strategy put in place by Bollore's predecessor, Ralf Speth, who stepped down last fall from the CEO role and now is nonexecutive vice chairman. The company also announced last week that it is shrinking its global salaried work force by 2,000 employees.

JLR's growth will come in efficiencies gained from producing its vehicles on fewer architectures and deriving more revenue per vehicle by selling connected services and from subscriptions. "As a business we will be focused on value creation, on delivering quality and profits over volume," Bo…

Several public retailers that largely sat on the sidelines during the dealership acquisition action of the past few years say they are getting back in the game.

AutoNation Inc., Penske Automotive Group Inc., Group 1 Automotive Inc. and Sonic Automotive Inc. each indicated this month that they again are shopping for franchised dealerships and looking to expand store counts.

The plans by the four dealership groups come amid a recent surge in stock prices for public auto retailers and as competitors such as Lithia Motors Inc. and Asbury Automotive Group Inc. have snapped up stores. Dealership buy-sell activity has broadly skyrocketed following the early months of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, when deals came to a short-lived standstill.

"We definitely have a lot of conversations going on, a lot of negotiations," Mike Jackson, CEO of AutoNation, the largest U.S. new-vehicle retailer, said last week. "I fully expect we'll have some…

PARIS — Europe's car sales, slam-med by the coronavirus crisis in 2020, were supposed to bounce back this year. But instead, registrations fell by 26 percent in January.

The declines more closely resembled the dark days of last spring, when factories were closed and Europeans were confined to their homes in an effort to combat the coronavirus. Last month's sales in Spain took a 51 percent hit, Britain's fell 40 percent — to a low last seen in 1970 — and mighty Germany, Europe's biggest market, lost 31 percent.

At the same time, sales in China rose 30 percent. And demand in the U.S. held up, too, with the seasonally adjusted annual sales rate just under pre-pandemic levels of 17 million.

So what happened in Europe?

Initial optimism over COVID-19 vaccines faded as countries descended into infighting over supply and bureaucratic snags. With vaccine rollout slow and new virus variants discovered in Britain and other coun…

LOS ANGELES — Mazda's CX-30 subcompact crossover was called on to do some heavy lifting when it was offered for the 2020 model year. Its sales of just more than 38,000 last year kept the automaker in the black, with a 0.2 percent rise in deliveries across its seven-vehicle lineup, despite the pandemic.

But for 2021, the CX-30 has an even bigger challenge: to take on brands such as BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz in the small-crossover segment where labels still mean a lot.

Mazda engineers have armed the CX-30 with a new turbocharged engine, all-wheel drive and an upscale interior for the heavy lift.

The CX-30 2.5 Turbo, launched last month, is Mazda's strongest play yet as it seeks to move the brand upmarket without losing its mainstream buyers. The crossover sits on a new platform, with new infotainment software, high-end materials such as red leather and a full standard safety suite.

"We know the CX-30 has had great success in its current positioni…

DETROIT — At first glance, it can be tough to see much difference between the Chevrolet Bolt EV and its new crossover variant, the Bolt EUV, even though General Motors says the two electric vehicles have no exterior sheet metal in common.

But GM thinks it has differentiated the EUV from its smaller sibling just enough to address some of the shortfalls that have held back the Bolt EV. The EUV is 6 inches longer and has 3 inches of additional rear legroom, a change Bolt EV customers had requested, said Jesse Ortega, the vehicles' executive chief engineer. According to GM's specs, the front seats and cargo areas are almost exactly the same size.

It's a strategy that has worked for GM recently with the Buick Encore and Encore GX and the Chevy Trax and Trailblazer. Chevy also has successfully sold the Tahoe alongside the longer-wheelbase Suburban for a quarter century. In each case, the automaker effectively divided one segment between two entries f…

Self-driving vehicles hold the potential to deliver a safer and more efficient era of transportation, but merely replacing human drivers with automated ones only takes progress so far.

Although autonomous vehicles are engineered to function largely without reliance on the outside world, there may be benefits unlocked — both for AV companies and society at large — by connecting the two. What if they acted not as lone rangers on the road, but as voluntary contributors to a larger traffic information network?

That's a question Argo AI sought to answer with a fellow Pittsburgh tech company, Rapid Flow Technologies, in a pilot project completed late last year. Findings were published this month, and they hint at what the future could hold.

On its own, Rapid Flow Technologies has deployed software on traffic lights to passively analyze vehicle, bicycle and pedestrian traffic at intersections and adapt signals. That can reduce delays by …