Trade News

Tesla Inc. is facing further fallout in China, with some local governments and official institutions reviewing vehicle ownership among their staff, citing concerns the cars pose security risks, according to people familiar with the matter.

Authorities in Zhejiang and Guangxi provinces have either asked government bodies to check and report on any employees who have bought the cars, or forbidden staff from key agencies to drive Teslas into certain official areas, the people said, asking not to be identified because the details are private.

The China Meteorological Administration, the national weather service headquartered in Beijing, has told staff not to buy the company’s EVs and if they already have, has requested they transfer ownership of the car to another person, one person said.

The Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party, meanwhile, is checking whether any employees or their family own Teslas. The moves are motivated by potential secu…

When technology transforms an industry, it can begin quite slowly … and then it happens all at once.

Take the first iPhone. When it first launched in 2007, it was often discussed with derision as many failed to grasp its revolutionary potential, especially by traditional cell phone makers. Yet since then, it’s transformed the way we communicate and live. It’s destroyed legacy players and forced an entire industry to adapt to its technology, rather than the other way around.

We’re now at a similar pivot point in the auto industry.

When Tesla Inc. launched the Model S in 2012, the electric car was widely panned as unrealistic for the mass consumer. Even today, EVs only make up a tiny portion of the vehicles on U.S. roads, so it’s easy to think that the era of gasoline-powered internal combustion engines has a long runway.

In fact, the future has already arrived and the internal combustion engine isn’t in it.

Highly anticipated EV launches, in…

SEOUL/BEIJING -- South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co. is in talks with the Chinese government to sell one of its factories in Beijing, news agency Yonhap reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources.

Yonhap said Hyundai Motor is promoting the sale of the plant, the first one it had built in Beijing, to the Shunyi district government in China's capital city.

Beijing Hyundai, the joint venture between Hyundai Motor and China's BAIC Motor Corp., has three manufacturing plants in Beijing.

Hyundai and BAIC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Chinese media on Thursday reported electric vehicle maker Li Auto is interested in taking over the factory, citing unnamed sources. Li Auto declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

In April, Hyundai Motor Group said it plans to launch EVs in China every year starting 2022 to enhance its presence in the world's biggest car market.

SHANGHAI – Battery swap sites are costly to build and operate. Automakers are still wary of battery swapping to charge electric vehicles after Tesla ditched it in the U.S. in 2013.

Yet in China, battery swapping has gained traction with the participation of a diverse range of domestic companies. 

Because of varying land prices in Chinese cities, a battery swap station requires an investment of an estimated 3 million yuan ($470,000) to 5 million yuan. 

Because of the high costs, most Chinese EV makers have been reluctant to embrace battery swaps. 

Until 2019, state-owned BAIC Motor Co. and EV startup Nio were the only two automakers offering battery swap services for customers. 

Market dynamics are playing a bigger role. EV sales hit a record 1.115 million in 2020, and surged 280 percent to 615,000 in the first four months of 2021, accounting for 7 percent of China’s new-vehicle deliveries, up from 3.5 percent of all indu…

Huawei Technologies, the Chinese tech giant subject to intense speculation over how big a role it wants to play in the auto industry, is dispelling persistent rumors it aims to build intelligent vehicles by acquiring automakers. 

It hasn’t made any investment in automakers, the private Chinese technology giant said in a statement this week. 

“We won’t invest in auto companies in the future either, nor will we control or acquire shares [of any auto company],” it added.  

What the auto industry needs is not “Huawei-brand vehicles” but its “information and communication technology accumulated over the past 30 years to help automakers better develop future-oriented vehicles,” the company said.

It is not the first time Huawei has signaled it has no intention of becoming a smart vehicle maker.

In a November posting on its website, Huawei admonished managers pressing the company to build intelligent vehicles and reaffirm its positio…

Electric-vehicle startup Nio signed an agreement with its contract manufacturer JAC Motor Co. to increase annual production vehicle capacity to 240,000 vehicles, from 150,000 vehicles in 2020.

The expansion, to be carried out over the next three years, will help Nio meet growing market demand, the company said this week. 

Nio, incorporated in Shanghai in 2014, has launched three products – the ES8 SUV, the ES6 crossover and the EC6 coupe-like crossover. 

In the first four months, it delivered 27,162 vehicles, nearly triple the tally a year earlier. 

Due to the global chip shortage, Nio suspended production at JAC for five days starting March 29. 

Nio only sells vehicles in China but earlier this month the company announced it will begin sales in Norway in September as a first foray in Europe.

Vehicle output at 11 key auto groups in China slipped 11 percent to roughly 983,000 vehicles in the first 20 days of May, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said this week. 

The 11 company groups, comprised of all foreign automakers producing locally as well as every major domestic manufacturer, account for more than 90 percent of auto output in China. 

During the 20-day period, production of commercial vehicles such as buses and trucks slumped 14 percent from a year earlier, while output of light vehicles —sedans, crossovers, SUVs, MPVs to minibuses – dropped 9.9 percent, according to CAAM.

CAAM didn’t release additional details on the production cuts or the reason for the decline. The trade group normally discloses vehicle output and sales around the tenth of each month for the previous month.

It warned earlier a global chip shortage, which started to dent auto production in China late last year, is likely to worsen in t…

Automakers continue to retire long-standing plant names as the industry transitions to building electric vehicles.

Ford Motor Co. announced this week that its Van Dyke Transmission Plant north of Detroit would be rebranded as the Van Dyke Electric Powertrain Center. The change comes roughly seven months after General Motors said its Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant would be known as Factory Zero.

Since the Van Dyke plant opened in 1968, workers have built suspension components and transmissions for gasoline and hybrid vehicles, including the Taurus, Windstar, Transit, EcoSport, Edge and Explorer.

They will soon transition to making electric motors and electric transaxles for hybrid and full-electric vehicles, including the 2022 F-150 Lightning. Ford says electric motor production will begin this summer, and it expects one to come off the assembly …

BEIJING -- BMW, Daimler and Ford have set up facilities in China to store data generated by their cars locally, they told Reuters, as automakers come under growing pressure in the world's biggest car market over how they handle information from vehicles.

Cars are being fitted with an ever-increasing array of sensors and cameras to assist drivers.

But the data they generate can also be used by manufacturers to help develop new technologies, such as autonomous driving systems, raising privacy and security concerns, particularly when the information might be sent abroad.

U.S. EV maker Tesla is under public scrutiny in China over its storage and handling of customer data in the country.

Last week, Reuters reported that staff at some Chinese government offices were told not to park their Tesla cars inside government compounds due to security concerns over vehicle cameras, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Tesla said on Tuesda…

Ted Cannis, Ford's head of North America commercial vehicles, chats about the automaker's push to give its iconic nameplates electrified variants, including the Mustang Mach-E crossover and upcoming F-150 Lightning pickup.

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