Trade News

DETROIT — General Motors plans an electric GMC Sierra Denali that will be introduced next year, GMC said Wednesday in a statement previewing the pickup's grille and lighting sequence.

The electric Sierra will only be available in the high-end Denali subbrand at launch. It will be powered by GM's proprietary Ultium battery and built at its Factory Zero electric truck plant in Detroit.

GMC's Denali and AT4 subbrands make up about 45 percent of the gasoline-powered Sierra's retail sales, GMC Vice President Duncan Aldred said in October.

The electric Sierra makes for the third electric vehicle in GMC's lineup: The Hummer pickup is expected to ship to dealerships this month, and the Hummer SUV is slated to go sale in 2023.

GM plans to reveal the electric Chevrolet Silverado at CES next month, with production set to begin in 2023.

"Sierra Denali holds tremendous equity for GMC and our customers," Aldred said in a statement. "We now have an oppo…

Don Hudler, who was instrumental in starting Saturn Corp. and marketed the General Motors division as "a different kind of car company," then became a top Saturn dealer as a postscript to his 42-year GM career, died Thursday at his home in Charlotte, N.C. He was 87.

Hudler was involved in Saturn from the run-up to its 1990 launch until its 2010 shutdown after GM emerged from bankruptcy. As Saturn's first vice president of sales, service and marketing, he is credited with the idea of inviting owners of the brand's plastic-bodied cars to the innovative new factory in Spring Hill, Tenn., for "homecoming" celebrations.

"This grew from road rallies and service clinics and picnics and parties dealers have sponsored for their customers and which all have had fabulous turnouts," he told the Chicago Tribune at the first Saturn homecoming in 1994, when nearly 40,000 people converged on farm fields around the plant for tours, a Wynonna Judd concert and fireworks.

H…

WASHINGTON — The Alliance for Automotive Innovation has named Kumar Galhotra, Ford Motor Co.'s president of the Americas and international markets group, as its 2022 board chair.

Galhotra succeeds Chris Reynolds, Toyota's chief administrative officer for corporate resources in North America, who was the 2021 chair.

General Motors President Mark Reuss was the association's inaugural chair in 2020.

"This is an incredible time of transformation for the entire automotive industry, and I look forward to helping lead the charge into the electric vehicle future," Galhotra said in a statement Wednesday.

The alliance "is uniquely positioned now to build on the groundwork laid over the past several years and shape the future as public policy assumes ever more significance in the transition to electric and connected transportation," he said.

Galhotra was honored by Automotive News as a 2018 All-Star for helping to revive Ford's Lincoln brand.

T…

DETROIT — Ford Motor Co.'s four-door Bronco SUV failed to qualify for two safety awards from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety because of issues with its head restraints and headlights, the organization said Wednesday.

The Bronco earned "good" ratings in five of IIHS' six crashworthiness tests but a lower "acceptable" rating in the head restraint test. IIHS said its crash test dummy "was subject to moderate force" in a simulated rear-end crash.

Additionally, both of the Bronco's headlight systems earned "marginal" ratings because their low beams did not illuminate the road to a far enough distance on curves, the organization said.

That means the vehicle missed out on both the IIHS Top Safety Pick and Top Safety Pick+ designations.

"Safety is a top priority and we're proud that Bronco earned top ratings in five IIHS crash tests, in addition to earning a superior rating for front crash prevention with standard automatic emergency braking," …

The base single-motor, long-range variant of the Polestar 2 fastback was rated by the EPA to get 270 miles of range, the most of any Polestar model to date, the electric vehicle maker said Wednesday.

That range narrowly beats that of the base Tesla Model 3, the Polestar 2's biggest competitor in the market. According to Tesla's website, the base rear-wheel-drive Model 3 gets an estimated 267 miles of range.

Polestar, set to go public next year via a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company, introduced the single-motor variant as a way to lure in cost-conscious consumers. According to Polestar's website, the model starts at $47,200 after the shipping fee but before federal and state incentives.

The EV maker also announced a host of free over-the-air updates for the Polestar 2 across all trims and model years. Those updates include "refinements" to the advanced driver-assistance systems and the ability to schedule charging sessions, the company sa…

DETROIT — Pamela Fletcher, an engineer who launched the Chevrolet Bolt and had been charged with leading much of General Motors' transformation heading into the electric vehicle era, has left the automaker to become an executive with Delta Air Lines.

Fletcher, 55, will become Delta's chief sustainability officer on Feb. 1, Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in a letter to the carrier's employees Wednesday. It's her first job outside the auto industry in a career that spans more than three decades.

"Pam is credited for her natural ability to build talented teams, especially when working on new technologies like EV and AV, for developing innovative business models and seeing what's possible," GM said in a statement confirming Fletcher's departure.

Fletcher has held leadership roles with GM for more than a decade, including overseeing the automaker's electric and autonomous vehicle technology and much of its software expansion plans.

Most recently, Fletcher w…

Like the early days of the auto industry, there was a lot of trial and error as motorsports took root around the world.

Mankind has always been fond of racing, whether chariots, horses, bicycles or boats. Automobile racing proved just as challenging when it came to surface, length, tire type and car type.

Even one of the most celebrated race courses in the world struggled to get it right in the early days. 

On Dec. 14, 1909, workers finished installing the last of 3.2 million, 10-pound bricks that paved the 2.5-mile oval Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Ind.

Most of the bricks have since been removed or buried under asphalt, but one yard remains exposed at the famed start-finish line. Winning drivers at the track, which has hosted NASCAR and Formula One in addition to its famous open-wheel races, often kneel and kiss the bricks as part of the speedway's tradition.

Carl Fisher, an auto-headlight magnate, entrepreneur and motors…

LANSING — Michigan lawmakers are planning to help the Detroit auto show get back in business after what could be a 44-month hiatus for the event.

A $795 million spending bill headed to passage in the Legislature on Tuesday contained a $9 million one-time grant for Detroit's auto show.

The Detroit Auto Dealers Association canceled NAIAS in June 2020 and September of this year because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic after attempting to move the auto show in 2020 from January to early summer. Detroit hasn't hosted an auto show since January 2019.

DADA is planning to resurrect the auto show next September at Huntington Place, the new name of Detroit's riverfront convention center (formerly TCF Center and Cobo Center).

"This is just to help them get back, get them up and running again," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Thomas Albert, R-Lowell, told Crain's Detroit Business, an affiliate of Automotive News. "It's really important for the sta…

The CEO of Uber Technologies Inc. on Tuesday said the company was looking sell stakes in what it considers non-strategic investments in other companies, including its shares in Chinese ride hailing company Didi Global .

Speaking at a virtual fireside chat with a UBS analyst, Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said many of the companies Uber has a stake in have recently gone public and are still subject to a lock-up period.

While Khosrowshahi said Uber would continue to hold some stakes for strategic reasons, it was looking to sell many of them, including in Didi.

"Our Didi stake we don't believe is strategic. They're a competitor, China is a pretty difficult environment with very little transparency," the Uber CEO said.

Khosrowshahi said the company was in no rush to sell the shares. "Those kinds of stakes we look to monetize smartly over time," he said.

Some investors have grown concerned that the roughly $13 billion Uber has tied up in oth…

Large sedans may be a shrinking market segment in the U.S., but Genesis is looking for a bigger piece of the pie with a major redesign of its flagship G90.

The crisp lines of the new exterior are complemented in the chassis by a multichamber air suspension and rear-wheel steering for a more luxurious ride, the company said in a statement.

"The vehicle's refined and voluminous body has been highlighted with athletic power lines on the fenders around the wheels," Genesis said.

The interior of the second-generation G90 is designed to be high-tech but relatively simple, Genesis said. It employs the automaker's design language, called Beauty of White Space, "combining the feeling of a high-tech device ... with the luxurious details that come with analog sensitivities," the company said.

When launched in North America next year, the redesigned G90 will have two independently operated panoramic sunroofs for the front and rear…