Trade News

LONDON -- Rolls-Royce has appointed former Mini design chief Anders Warming to head up its design team, which has lacked a director since Jozef Kaban left in 2019.

Warming, 48, takes up the position July 1, Rolls-Royce said in a statement.

"Anders joins us as we move forward to full electrification of our brand, which will shape Rolls-Royce for decades to come," CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös said in the statement.

Warming left the BMW Group in 2016 after six years leading design at Mini. He previously spent three years as head of exterior design at BMW. He briefly joined the Chinese-backed Borgward brand before starting his own design studio in 2019.

BMW said at the time the departure was amicable, paving the way for his return. Rolls-Royce is owned by the BMW Group.

The ultraluxury brand has lacked a design chief since former head of design for Skoda, Jozef Kaban, left the company after just six months to rejoin the VW Group as head of design f…

BMW of North America CEO Bernhard Kuhnt, 53, is leaving the U.S. to run the automaker's German business.

Sebastian Mackensen, 49, a former Volkswagen Group executive with U.S. market experience, will take over in North America effective Sept. 1, BMW said Friday.

In his new position, Mackensen will manage all sales, marketing and distribution activities for BMW Group from Canada to Argentina, in addition to serving as president and CEO of BMW of North America.

Mackensen is a senior vice president and head of BMW's German market. Previously, he ran BMW's Mini unit.

Mackensen has extensive experience in North America, including as Audi's sales chief for the Americas for five years.

Before that, he held management roles in customer relations and business development at Porsche Cars North America.

In his new role, Mackensen must steer BMW through the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and this year's microchip…

NHTSA has opened a preliminary evaluation to assess potential issues related to a loss of power in 2020-21 model year Porsche Taycan electric vehicles.

The agency's Office of Defects Investigation has received nine complaints from vehicle owners and two field reports alleging "a loss of motive power while in motion at any speed without warning to the driver," according to a NHTSA document.

The investigation was opened Monday. The agency said 12,146 Porsche Taycans — an 800-volt battery-electric vehicle with an auxiliary 12-volt battery — could be affected.

Porsche on Friday contested NHTSA’s estimated number of affected vehicles, stating it has delivered a total of 6,552 Taycans from the 2020-21 model years in the U.S. through the end of the first quarter this year — the German automaker’s last reporting period.

A spokesperson for Porsche Cars North America said it wasn’t sure where NHTSA’s population figure came from, “but it bears no relation to…

Tesla Inc. has increased the price of its Model 3 Long Range and Standard Range Plus and Model Y Long Range by $500, the electric-car maker’s website showed on Friday.

The price of its cheapest Model 3 Standard Range Plus has been increased to $39,990, while the Model 3 Long Range AWD was raised to $48,990.

Its Model Y Long Range AWD is now priced at $51,990 compared with $51,490 previously, according to the website.

Tesla delivered 182,780 Model 3s and Ys in the first quarter, up 13% from the preceding quarter. A ramp-up in production and solid demand for its less-expensive models had helped offset the impact of a global parts shortage.

BERKELEY, Calif. -- Fisker Inc. plans to supply the first pure EV for Pope Francis next year, it said on Friday, with features such as a solar roof and carpets made of recycled plastic bottles from the ocean.

Fisker will covert its all-electric Ocean sport utility vehicle for use by the pope, providing a retractable glass cupola and sustainable interior materials, such as the carpets.

Co-founders Henrik Fisker, formerly a designer for British luxury carmaker Aston Martin, and Geeta Gupta-Fisker, met the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Vatican City, the company said.

"I got inspired reading that Pope Francis is very considerate about the environment and the impact of climate change for future generations," said Fisker.

Production of the Ocean electric SUV is planned to start in November next year, through contract manufacturer Magna International Inc in Europe.

The firm did not reveal the cost of the modified vehicle intended for the po…

Rapidly growing Canadian dealership group Foundation Automotive Corp. has acquired a Hyundai store in Colorado from auto retail giant AutoNation Inc.

The acquisition, Foundation's first Hyundai dealership, is just one of the more than a dozen U.S. dealerships the group hopes to acquire this year.

Foundation Automotive, based in Calgary, Alberta, on Wednesday bought AutoNation Hyundai 104 in Northglenn, Colo., north of Denver.

Cole Kutschinski, Foundation's vice president of marketing, said the group approached AutoNation about whether it would be willing to sell the dealership.

"We've been speaking with Hyundai for some time looking at different opportunities," Kutschinski told Automotive News. "They said that it might be available. So we approached and it worked out."

Part of the agreement required Foundation to move the Hyundai store to a different building, a former AutoNation dealership, about two miles away in Westminster, Colo. Auto…

Baidu, a leading Chinese self-driving technology developer, has started testing vehicle-to-everything technology that can help vehicles without sensor equipment achieve L4 autonomous driving on open roads with roadside sensing and 5G communication technology.

It has conducted tests at several upgraded road intersections in the Chinese capital of Beijing, the southern China city of Guangzhou and the northern China city of Cangzhou, Baidu said last week.

By deploying autonomous driving capabilities through vehicle-road-cloud coordination, the technology can “supersede the ingrained perception system” of a self-driving vehicle, the company noted. 

“This novel approach will help the industry overcome existing challenges to safely scaling autonomous driving by providing a universal, shared infrastructure that can be applied to any smart transportation vehicle,” it said of the technology.

FRANKFURT -- Daimler Truck AG on Thursday said it had intensified a partnership with Contemporary Amperex Technology, choosing the Chinese battery maker as the supplier for the Mercedes-Benz eActros longhaul electric truck.

The truck is scheduled to be ready for series production in 2024, Daimler Truck said, adding the supply agreement with CATL would go beyond 2030.

The truck maker also struck an agreement with Shell under which the oil major will from 2024 launch heavy-duty hydrogen-refueling stations between the green hydrogen production hubs at the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands and in Cologne and Hamburg in Germany.

Some autonomous vehicles are subtle. There's no easy way for passersby to detect whether they're sharing the road with a self-driving car. With other AVs, the spinning lidar sensor on the rooftop leaves no doubt.

Whether self-driving vehicles should be easily identifiable remains a complicated question for regulators and companies that operate test vehicles. A majority of motorists, though, want clear indications.

Sixty-two percent say that clear markings would make them feel safer in mixed traffic, according to a new survey conducted by AAA and the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. It's the single-most important factor in helping assuage anxiety, per the results, followed by 60 percent of respondents who desire designated lanes for self-driving vehicles.

"Regulators must establish guidelines that ensure self-drivin…

BYD Co. has become the second Chinese automaker to choose Norway as the first stage of plans targeting Europe’s electric vehicle market, following domestic EV startup Nio. 

It plans to deliver 1,500 Tang full-electric crossovers to Norway before the end of the year, with the first batch of 100 EVs to be shipped to the Scandinavian country at the end of this month, BYD said Wednesday. 

The Tang, powered by BYD’s proprietary phosphate iron lithium batteries, has a range of 505 kilometers on one charge under the New European Driving Cycle and can accelerate to 100 km per hour in 4.6 seconds, according to BYD. 

Exporting the electric crossover to Norway represents the “start” of its “European dream” to expand into key EV markets worldwide, the company noted. 

BYD, based in the south China city of Shenzhen, is the largest domestic Chinese electrified-vehicle maker. In the first four months of the year, it delivered 80,413 elect…