Trade News

A Colorado public health agency on Tuesday announced a third person has died from a COVID-19 outbreak at Nissan of Durango.

San Juan Basin Public Health said the number of confirmed coronavirus cases linked to the dealership had grown to 12.

In addition to the third death, the agency reported that a fourth person had died after contracting COVID-19. But that death "does not meet the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's (CDPHE) case definition to be added to the outbreak fatality list," the agency wrote in a news release Tuesday.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment confirmed five of the cases involved the Delta variant of the coronavirus. The San Juan health department reported two of the 12 cases as of Monday had been identified as "breakthrough" infections of fully vaccinated people.

The San Juan agency on July 9 had reported 10 "employees and contractors" had tested positive in the outbreak, with one confir…

Editor's note: An earlier version of the story incorrectly characterized the number of plants affected by the shortage. Only Nissan’s plant in Smyrna, Tenn. is affected.

A new COVID-19 outbreak at a microchip supplier plant in Malaysia has caused Nissan to shut down production lines at its large assembly plant in Smyrna, Tenn., until the end of the month.

Nissan North America did not disclose the name of the supplier, but said that the plant will halt for the weeks of Aug. 16 and Aug. 23. Nissan said it now plans to restart the lines on Aug. 30.

Like other automakers around the world, Nissan has already had its share of production line interruptions this year because of a shortage in allocations of microchips. But those shortages have been due mostly to demand miscalculations by chipmakers with limited capacity and automakers with uncertain 2021 forecasts.

AutoForecast Solutions LLC now estimates the chip shortage has already resulted in the loss …

MUNICH -- Strategic suitors are expected to hand in binding bids for Hella on Wednesday that value the German automotive lighting group at about 7 billion euros ($8.2 billion), two people familiar with the matter said.

French car parts suppliers Faurecia and Cie Plastic Omnium, as well as German automotive supplier Mahle, are still in the race, one of the people said.

The bids, due on Wednesday, are expected to be based on the three-month average of Hella's share price, the people said, adding this amounted to about 60 euros. Hella shares closed at 67.2 euros on Tuesday.

Bloomberg on Monday reported that Hella could be valued at around 8 billion euros, or more than 70 euros per share, in a potential deal, causing Hella shares to shoot up 11 percent.

Hella's founding family, which is seeking a buyer for its 60 percent stake, is working with investment bank Rothschild on the transaction, the people said.

Under German takeover rules,…

Audi has created a sleek, low electric one-off roadster concept with a variable-geometry wheelbase that transforms between autonomous Grand Tourer mode and a sports car.

The Audi Sky Sphere — the first of three electric vehicle concepts that will lay out a path for the brand as it transitions beyond the internal combustion engine — will be on display at this week's Concours d'Elegance events in Pebble Beach, Calif. The two still-unrevealed concepts are called Grand Sphere and Urban Sphere, and they are intended to define how users will interact with vehicles with Level 4 autonomous capabilities, as well as how those vehicles interact with their surroundings.

The Sky Sphere has a cool, defining trick — one that is very likely to remain in concept form, given regulatory requirements: the "engine bay" and front wheels retract nearly 10 inches rearward while a steering wheel and foot pedals appear in the cockpit when the user transitions from autonomous mode into t…

WASHINGTON -- The Senate passed a $1 trillion infrastructure plan that would represent the biggest burst of spending on U.S. public works in decades and notch a significant victory for President Joe Biden’s economic agenda.

The bipartisan 69-30 vote Tuesday was a breakthrough that has eluded Congress and presidents for years, despite both parties calling infrastructure a priority and an issue ripe for compromise.

The bipartisan spirit will quickly give way, however, as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer immediately pivoted to a partisan budget resolution that will lead to a $3.5 trillion package of social spending and tax increases.

Senate passage of the infrastructure bill came after months of negotiations and days of slow-moving Senate debate during which Republicans opposed to the legislation forced Democrats to run out the clock on procedural motions.

“It’s been a long and winding road but we have persisted and now we have arrived,” Schumer…

Daimler-backed car-sharing marketplace Turo Inc. confidentially filed paperwork with regulators on Monday for a U.S. initial public offering, seeking to take advantage of the country's red-hot capital markets.

The company's platform allows car owners in 5,500 cities across the United States, Canada and the U.K. to rent out their vehicles. It has over 450,000 listed cars ranging from pickup trucks and minivans to luxury options such as Lamborghini, Rolls-Royce and Porsche vehicles.

Several other venture-funded companies in the automobile space, including SoftBank-backed Full Truck Alliance and self-driving truck startup TuSimple Holdings, have also gone public this year.

Companies typically file IPO paperwork confidentially to sort out any potential issues in their financial reporting with regulators behind closed doors. It also allows companies to shield their finances from competitors for a longer time.

Turo's business boomed during COVID-19 lo…

Tesla Inc. has paid more than $1 million to a Black former employee who won a ruling that the company failed to stop his supervisors from calling him the “N-word” at the EV maker’s northern California plant.

The rare discrimination award by an arbitrator to Melvin Berry, which followed a closed-door proceeding, caps years of complaints from Black workers that Tesla turned a blind eye to the commonplace use of racial slurs on the assembly line and was slow to clean up graffiti with swastikas and other hate symbols scrawled in common areas. It ends a yearslong and emotionally grueling fight launched by Berry, who was hired by the company as a materials handler in 2015 and quit less than 18 months later.

Arbitration typically keeps disputes between employees and companies secret, but court filings reveal that the arbitrator found Berry’s allegations more credible than Tesla’s denials, though she called it a “difficult” case after hearing from witnesses on both sid…

French automotive suppliers Faurecia and Plastic Omnium SA are competing in the final bidding for a majority stake in German rival Hella GmbH, people with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg.

Hella’s founding Hueck family has asked for binding offers by Aug. 11 and could make a decision on a winner in the following days, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Any deal could value Hella at around 8 billion euros ($9.4 billion), equivalent to more than 70 euros a share, the people said.

That could make it the second-largest takeover in Germany this year and one of the biggest ever acquisitions of a German company by a French suitor.

Hella makes a variety of automotive lighting systems, sensors, battery systems and electronic power steering components.

Faurecia and Plastic Omnium, which both have smaller market values than Hella, are both planning capital increases to fund the potential acquisit…

We revisit our October 2020 talk with Bob Shuman, who discussed the "stresses" of being a dealer and why he exited the auto industry.

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For years, auto dealers were told they had to price pre-owned vehicles at 92 percent to market to move them. Of course, dropping prices forces your competitors to lower theirs, and so begins the race to the bottom. The problem with that approach is it has sucked billions of dollars out of the automotive market, with dealers struggling to average $1,500 in front-end profit per vehicle retailed even before COVID-19 hit.

The pandemic and the inventory shortage it caused confirmed that you don’t have to be the cheapest. In fact, many dealers started pricing vehicles at 115 percent to 135 percent to market and generated more gross profit than they have in years. They’re operating with less staff, less overhead, fewer days’ supply and making two to three times more gross per vehicle than before the pandemic.

Do we have to return to normal? Or is it time to reset the market and create a new normal — one in which dealers can enjoy healthy margins again? I would argue…