Trade News

The event will be smaller than usual and run only half as long as in normal times. But there will be a Chicago Auto Show at McCormick Place this year — the first really large gathering allowed here since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

That’s the word Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot are scheduled to deliver at a news conference this morning, a development that has been expected, but was delayed as the number of COVID cases spiked in April.

According to Deputy Gov. Dan Hynes and Dave Sloan, president of the show-sponsoring Chicago Automobile Association, the show will take place July 15-19. In many ways it will look similar to the usual February event, but it will also have new precautions designed to minimize any health risk.

For instance, the show will use only McCormick Place’s West Building and add new space outside, using a stretch of Indiana Avenue.

Sloan says the show will use Indiana as a test-drive locale for customers who want …

President Joe Biden’s plan to wean U.S. drivers off fossil fuels requires massive investment in public charging stations to power the electric-car revolution. So far, none of the companies that deploy the equipment has figured out how to make a profit.

The dilemma boils down to demand, and there’s a certain chicken-and-egg quality to it. Most electric-vehicle drivers charge their cars at home, so many public charging stations get little use. But lots of people still driving gasoline-powered cars won’t consider going electric until they see charging stations widely deployed, for fear that they will run out of juice on the road.

Speculators are piling into the industry, convinced that boom times are around the corner, while short sellers and other skeptics warn that some of these companies will go belly-up long before they figure out how to make money. Biden’s plan to spend $15 billion to help create 500,000 more public stations by 2030 is feeding the optimism, …

BERLIN -- German chipmaker Infineon highlighted a lack of investment in new capacity by its manufacturing partners for tightness in semiconductor markets, saying it had invested to expand its own capacity to match market growth.

A rebound in demand for everything from smartphones to cars, following a slump caused by the coronavirus pandemic, has disrupted chip supply chains, especially in the car industry.

Infineon said there have been bottlenecks in areas where it relies on contract manufacturers, known as foundries, such as TSMC, especially automotive microcontrollers and products used in the industrial internet.

"Foundries have not invested enough to keep up with the situation," CEO Reinhard Ploss told analysts on Tuesday after Infineon raised its forecast for sales and profit margins for its fiscal year to Sept. 30.

Despite the upbeat outlook, Infineon has suffered since a winter storm, which knocked out its own plant in Austin, Texas, exert…

LONDON -- British electric van and bus maker Arrival will develop an electric car for Uber Technologies that will go into production in late 2023, the two companies said.

Arrival and Uber will also explore a strategic relationship in key markets, including the U.K. and the European Union.

The "Arrival Car" will be an "affordable, purpose-built electric vehicle for ride-hailing," and will go into production in the fourth quarter of 2023, the companies said on Tuesday.

Uber plans to be a fully electric mobility platform in London by 2025, and across North America and Europe by 2030.

The company has raised more than 135 million pounds ($188 million) to help its drivers in London upgrade to an electric vehicle by 2025.

"Our focus is now on encouraging drivers to use this money to help them upgrade to an electric vehicle, and our partnership with Arrival will help us achieve this goal," Jamie Heywood, Uber regional manager for northern and east…

Editor's note: A previous version of this story incorrectly implied AB5 was no longer the law in California for anyone. While the law no longer applies to ride-hail and food delivery workers, it remains in effect for other freelancers.

Uber, Lyft and other gig-economy companies face a new challenge from the Biden administration to their use of contract workers, but as they gear up for a fight in Washington they could turn to a lobbying playbook that helped them score a decisive win against California regulators last year.

President Joe Biden campaigned on the promise of providing legal protections and benefits to gig workers, who as independent contractors generally have no access to unemployment insurance, sick pay and health insurance. U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said last week: "A lot of gig workers should be classified as employees."

In Congress, Democratic lawmakers are pushing a union-supported labor bill, the PRO Act, that in part is modeled…

DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. and BMW AG are leading a $130 million funding round in a solid-state battery startup, Solid Power, as carmakers push to lower the cost of electric vehicles by investing in the development of affordable but powerful rechargeable batteries, the companies said on Monday.

The Series B investment round, which includes venture capital firm Volta Energy Technologies, allows Solid Power to expand in-house manufacturing capabilities and positions the battery maker to eventually supply future EVs, possibly by the end of the decade according to BMW battery cell technology chief Peter Lamp. Solid Power declined to say at what level the funding round values the company.

"The partnerships and the capital that comes along with it are really going to put us on a good footing to execute on our road map, which simply speaking is qualifying this technology for vehicle use and getting them into vehicles in the not-too-distant future," Solid Power CEO Doug…

Ford is pausing production at nearly all its car plants in Europe for several weeks due to a shortage of microchips.

"We had already planned short-time work for several plants due to the semiconductor situation. Since the situation is not easing, we have now decided to schedule longer production breaks," a Ford spokesman told Automobilwoche, a sister publication of Automotive News Europe.

The Fiesta plant in Cologne, Germany, will stop producing vehicles until early July except for one week at the end of June, the spokesman said.

Short-time working will take place at the Cologne plant from May 3 to June 18 and from June 30 to July 9. The plant vacations will start immediately afterwards, so production will not start again until August 16.

Factories in Saarlouis, Germany (Focus), Valencia, Spain (Mondeo, S-Max, Galaxy) and Kocaeli, Turkey (Transit, Transit Custom) are also affected.

The Saarlouis plant will have short-time working from May 3…

MATAMOROS, Mexico -- After successfully staging a wildcat strike for higher wages in 2019, many workers at the Tridonex auto-parts plant in the Mexican city of Matamoros, across the border from Texas, set their sights higher: replacing the union that they say failed to fight for them.

Six workers at the factory, which refits second-hand car parts for sale in the U.S. and Canada, told Reuters they felt let down that their union, SITPME, did not back their demands for better pay. About 400 Tridonex workers protested outside a Matamoros labor court last year to be allowed to switch unions.

When the first protests broke out in 2019, many of the plant's roughly 4,000 workers earned just above the then-minimum wage of 176.72 pesos ($8.82) a day.

The Tridonex workers and thousands more at other Matamoros factories walked off the job demanding a 20 percent raise and 32,000-peso bonus, many without union backing. In nearly all cases, the companies conceded.

The semiconductor shortage has slashed vehicle production so much that rental-car companies can’t get the new cars they need, so they have resorted to buying used vehicles at auction.

This is uncharted territory for the likes of Hertz Global Holdings Inc. and Enterprise Holdings Inc., which have made their profits by purchasing new vehicles cheaply in bulk, renting them out for as much as a year and selling them at auction. In the past, they have bought some used cars to shore up an occasional unforeseen burst in demand, but rarely for the mainstays of their fleets.

“You would never go into auction to buy routine sedans and SUVs,” said Maryann Keller, an independent consultant who used to be on the board of Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, which is now part of Hertz. “These are special circumstances. There is a shortage of cars.”

The demand is sending used-car costs soaring. The Manheim Index, which measures prices at wholesale auctions, shows they’re 52…