Trade News

DETROIT-- General Motors said it will soon lift charging, parking and range restrictions on Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUVs that have been recalled because of battery-fire risk.

Owners of 2019 Bolts who have not yet received battery module replacements can receive a software update from their dealership that will remove the restrictions starting Friday. The software will be available to owners of 2017-18 and 2020-22 Bolts within the next 30 days, GM said in an emailed statement on Friday.

The new software significantly reduces fire risk by automatically setting the vehicle's maximum state of charge to 80 percent, spokesman Kevin Kelly told Automotive News. The software reduces vehicle range but eliminates the need to follow GM's previous guidance. It allows owners to safely charge indoors overnight, park indoors after charging and operate their vehicles below 70 miles of range.

The software also includes diagnostics to detect specific abnormalities that migh…

HOUSTON — Reynolds and Reynolds Co. CEO Tommy Barras testified Thursday that he had no doubts that Bob Brockman, his predecessor in the role at the dealership management system giant, was capable of leading the company.

Barras, who took over as CEO at privately held Reynolds and Reynolds after Brockman stepped down from the chairman and CEO roles in November 2020, testified on the fourth day of Brockman's competency hearing in federal court in Houston that he has known and worked with Brockman for decades. Brockman, Barras testified, remained involved in all important company decisions after Barras was promoted to be Reynolds' president in June 2020.

He testified that it was Brockman who decided to make Barras president of Dayton, Ohio-based Reynolds, as well as chairman and CEO that November. A prosecutor asked Barras about his compensation before he became CEO and his current compensation. Barras testified that his compensation prior to taking the CEO job wa…

Apple Inc. is pushing to accelerate development of its electric car and is refocusing the project around full self-driving capabilities, according to people familiar with the matter, aiming to solve a technical challenge that has bedeviled the auto industry.

For the past several years, Apple’s car team had explored two simultaneous paths: creating a model with limited self-driving capabilities focused on steering and acceleration -- similar to many current cars -- or a version with full self-driving ability that doesn’t require human intervention.

Under the effort’s new leader -- Apple Watch software executive Kevin Lynch -- engineers are now concentrating on the second option. Lynch is pushing for a car with a full self-driving system in the first version, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. 

It’s just the latest shift for the car effort, known as the Special Projects Group or “Project Titan,” wh…

DETROIT — General Motors plans to launch a strategy that will reduce the number of unique microcontroller units required by 95 percent in order to streamline hardware and software advancements and secure its semiconductor supply chain, GM President Mark Reuss said Thursday.

Under the strategy, hardware and software developers will draw from three families of chips, put together by partnerships between GM and various suppliers, Reuss said during Barclays Global Automotive and Mobility Tech Conference. The plan will help the automaker meet its goal to double revenue by 2030 and could strengthen GM's flow of semiconductors after the global microchip shortage pummeled vehicle production industrywide this year.

GM expects semiconductor requirements to more than double over the next several years. It will consolidate core microprocessor chip purchases into three families co-developed, sourced and built with leading semiconductor manufacturers. The strategy is design…

DETROIT - Within 24 months Ford Motor Co. plans to become the No. 2 maker of electric vehicles in the U.S. behind only Tesla with the capacity to produce 600,000 EVs per year.

The automaker’s 600,000-per-year global EV projection is double what it originally intended, CEO Jim Farley told Automotive News. The production would be spread among its first three EVs: the Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning and E-Transit, and would come before its Blue Oval City campus in Tennessee comes online.

Once that occurs, Farley said Ford could challenge for the No. 1 spot. 

“The demand is so much higher than we expected,” Farley said in an interview. “It’s a really new experience for this big company, trying to be agile. We had to approach it very differently than we’ve done capacity planning.”

Farley says Ford has the capability to add another shift of capacity at the Mexico plant that produces the Mach-E, but the situation is different with the F-150 Lightn…

Nio, a Shanghai-based electric-vehicle startup, is looking to raise annual vehicle production to 600,000 in late 2022 or early 2023 when two plants begin operating on two shifts in the east China city of Hefei. 

Nio founder and CEO William Li disclosed the information last week during a conference call to discuss the company’s third-quarter financial results. 

In March, annual production capacity of the company’s first plant topped 10,000. 

In September and October, Nio upgraded the factory’s production lines with the main purpose of expanding capacity, Li said during the call.

With output reduced by production line upgrades and the lingering semiconductor chip shortage, Nio’s deliveries slumped 28 percent to 3,667 last month. But the company’s sales in the first ten months surged 123 percent to 70,062.

Nio’s second plant in Hefei is slated to start output in the third quarter of next year, Li said, without disclosing the fac…

SHANGHAI – While electric-vehicle startups continue to follow Tesla Inc. in opening direct stores, several foreign automakers have taken a different approach to enabling direct sales for new brands or new products.

Adopting a so-called “agent model,” select dealers serve as a co-investor and sales agent, rather than retailers, to assist a brand in selling vehicles and providing services to customers. 

Hyundai Motors Group is the latest global automaker to adopt the approach in introducing the young luxury brand Genesis in China.

Genesis this year participated in the Shanghai auto show and opened two “studios” – experience centers – in central Shanghai and the southwest China city of Chengdu.

Last month, it opened a full-service store on Kangning Road in the northern section of Shanghai. 

The store is jointly owned by Genesis and Greenland, a Shanghai-based dealership group which the Korean luxury brand selected based on customer …

SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile, General Motors’ light-vehicle joint venture with SAIC Motor Corp., said it has shored up output and sales this year with semiconductor chips developed by domestic Chinese companies. 

The company’s deliveries rose 12 percent to some 200,000 in October, with year-to-date volume advancing 21 percent to some 1.43 million, SAIC-GM-Wuling said Thursday.

SAIC-GM-Wuling is one of the few automakers to maintain growth amid the global chip crunch. 

The company said it has secured supplies under agreements for the development and certification of chips first established in 2018 in collaboration with domestic semiconductor producers, chip makers and other related parts suppliers.

It has installed more than 5 million domestically developed chips in vehicles, the company said. 

SAIC-GM-Wuling, based in the southwest China city of Liuzhou, produces minibuses for the Wuling brand and entry-level cars under the Ba…

A partnership between ZF Friedrichshafen and Microsoft will allow the German parts supplier to create new capabilities for its autonomous shuttle systems, the company said.

ZF said this week that it expanded its partnership with Microsoft to move all of its business, production and industrial processes onto the tech company's Azure cloud platform. It's a move that ZF said will be far-reaching, allowing for everything from more efficient manufacturing to a better understanding of the global supply chain.

It could also be a boon for its autonomous-shuttle business. ZF said the cloud platform will allow for "continuous data flow" between its autonomous shuttles and their environments, providing real-time information on traffic and weather, for example. It could also allow for new mobile applications for customers, including giving them live updates on shuttle…

SHANGHAI -- WeRide, a China-based autonomous driving startup, said on Thursday it plans to make its robotaxis available for booking by the public on Guangzhou Automobile Group's Ontime ride-hailing app by next year.

Backed by Nissan Motor, WeRide said in a statement it plans to offer test rides for the public at the Guangzhou Auto Show, which begins in the southern Chinese city on Friday. It added that its robotaxi has been integrated into the Ontime platform and they were conducting testing.

Automakers and technology firms are investing billions of dollars in autonomous driving, aiming to take an early lead in what many consider the future of mobility.

On Tuesday, Chinese autonomous vehicle startup AutoX, which is backed by Alibaba Group said it had expanded its robotaxi zone in China's southern city of Shenzhen to become the country's largest fully driverless robotaxi zone, at 65 square miles (168 square km).