Trade News

Self-driving truck startup Plus is in talks to merge with special purpose acquisition company Hennessy Capital Investment Corp. V, according to people familiar with the matter, making it the latest autonomous vehicle maker seeking to go public via a blank-check firm.

Sequoia Capital-backed Plus is set to have a valuation of more than $3 billion and raise $500 million to $600 million through the deal, which includes proceeds from the SPAC and new equity raised, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. BlackRock Inc. -- already a Hennessy investor -- is discussing putting in more money through a so-called private investment in public equity, or PIPE, the person said.

The parties could reach an agreement as soon as next week, the person said. Negotiations are ongoing and subject to change. Representatives for Plus and BlackRock declined to comment. A representative for Hennessy didn’t immediately respond to queries.

China is considering new regulations that would require data collected by intelligent cars to be stored in the country, a move triggered by recent concerns that cameras in Tesla Inc. vehicles can be used for spying, according to people familiar with the matter.

The draft regulation was published on a government portal Thursday and is open for public comment until May 15. It proposes mandating that any information collected from a car’s external cameras, such as location data or images of buildings or roads, be stored in China.

Tesla’s electric cars were banned from Chinese military complexes and housing compounds in March because of concerns about sensitive data being collected by cameras and sensors built into the vehicles. The proposed new regulation was motivated by these concerns, said the people, asking not to be identified discussing internal government matters.

A representative for Tesla in China declined to comment. China’s Ministry of Industry a…

Nio Inc. reported a narrower first-quarter loss, while warning the global chip shortage will keep a lid on deliveries.

The Shanghai EV startup posted a net lost of 451 million yuan ($68.8 million) in the three months ended March 31, compared with 1.69 billion yuan a year earlier, it said in a statement. It also marked an improvement on the 1.39 billion yuan net loss it posted in the last quarter of 2020. Revenue rose to 7.98 billion yuan, beating estimates of 7.16 billion yuan.

Nio delivered 20,060 vehicles in the quarter, a 423 percent increase from a year earlier when China was plunged into lockdowns during the first outbreak of the coronavirus. It forecast deliveries of between 21,000 to 22,000 vehicles this quarter. Like the rest of the auto industry, Nio has been hit by the global chip shortage. The company suspended vehicle production for five days at the end of March.

“The overall demand for our products continues to be quite strong, but the suppl…

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an inquiry into the U.S. unit of Volkswagen Group over a marketing stunt in which it falsely said it was changing its name in the United States to "Voltswagen," a person briefed on the matter confirmed to Reuters.

Spiegel first reported the inquiry and the SEC's request for information about the issue made in early April and quoted VW as confirming the investigation.

Volkswagen declined to comment on the matter to Reuters. The SEC did not respond to a request for comment.

The company in March apologized after a false statement it issued about a phony name change was widely slammed on social media.

The stunt, which came just ahead of April Fool’s Day, was meant to call attention to its EV efforts, the carmaker said.

The initial statement outlining the name change, posted on its website and accompanied by tweets, was reported by Automotive News, Reuters and other outlets glo…

Nissan will trim North American production in May because of the semiconductor shortage, the automaker said Thursday.

Frontier and Titan pickup production in Canton, Miss., will be cut for four days, and Altima sedan assembly will be reduced for eight days in May.

In Smyrna, Tenn., production of the Rogue crossover, Maxima sedan and Leaf electric vehicle will be trimmed two days next month. Murano crossover production will be cut one day next week.

In Mexico, production at a factory in Aguascalientes, where Nissan builds the subcompact Versa sedan and compact Kicks crossover, will be halted for seven days in May.

"We continue to work closely with our supplier partners to assess the impact of supply chain issues and minimize disruption for vehicle deliveries to our dealers and customers," Nissan spokeswoman Lloryn Love-Carter said in an email.

Visteon Corp., an auto supplier whose top customer is Ford Motor Co., flagged to investors that unidentified carmakers may seek compensation for computer chip shortages crimping vehicle production.

The automotive cockpit electronics supplier said in a quarterly filing Thursday that semiconductor suppliers have at times been unable to deliver sufficient chips.

“This has led certain customers to allege that the company has contributed to production reductions,” Visteon said, referring to itself. “As a result, these customers have communicated that they expect the company to absorb some of the financial impact of those reductions and are reserving their rights to claim damages arising from the supply shortages.”

Ford, which spun off Visteon in 2000, is still Visteon’s largest customer by far, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The automaker accounted for 22 percent of the supplier’s revenue last year, followed by 11 percent apiece for Mazda Motor Corp…

General Motors plans to invest more than $1 billion to retool its Ramos Arizpe, Mexico, plant for electric vehicle production, making Ramos GM's fifth EV facility in North America, GM Mexico said Thursday.

GM plans to begin building EVs at the plant in 2023 and make batteries and electrical components for drive units starting in the second half of this year, GM Mexico said in a statement.

Ramos will join Orion Assembly and Factory Zero in Michigan, CAMI in Ingersoll, Ontario, and Spring Hill Assembly in Tennessee as GM's EV plants.

The plant will continue to build the Chevrolet Equinox and Blazer, in addition to new EVs.

The renovations also include a new paint shop, which will begin operations in June.

"I'm sure this investment will contribute to continue boosting Mexican manufacturing while bringing development to the region, the industry and the country," said Francisco Garza, president of GM's Mexican unit, during a webcast announcement…

DETROIT — Nearly six months after NHTSA launched an investigation into select Chevrolet Bolts for catching fire, General Motors has developed a solution, the automaker said Thursday.

On Nov. 13, about a month after NHTSA announced the investigation, GM recalled 68,667 Bolts from the 2017 to 2019 model years. Of the recalled Bolts, 50,925 were sold in the U.S.

Since then, dealers have been unable to sell the affected vehicles to customers, trade the Bolts with other dealers or send the vehicles to auctions.

GM believes the cause of five known fires is related to a rare manufacturing defect in the production of the battery cells by LG Chem in South Korea, said spokesman Dan Flores. The defect could result in a heat source or a short in a cell, which could cause a fire, he said.

Dealers will use a GM-developed diagnostic tool to identify potential battery anomalies and replace battery module assemblies as necessary, GM said in a statement. Dealers wi…

Faraday Future has selected Velodyne Lidar Inc. as an exclusive supplier for its flagship luxury electric car FF 91, which is due to be launched next year, the sensor maker said on Thursday.

Lidar, which stands for light detection and ranging, is a remote sensing system that generates a three-dimensional map of the road ahead for vehicles and also helps with applications such as augmented reality in smart devices.

San Jose, California-based Velodyne, an early entrant into the lidar market, said Faraday's FF 91 cars would use the Velarray H800 lidar sensors to power their autonomous driving system.

The deal comes days after the sensor maker signed a multiyear sales agreement with Silicon Valley self-driving startup Gatik, to use its lidar technology in on-road transportation networks.

Faraday Future, which agreed to be taken public by the blank-check firm Property Solutions Acquisition Corp. in January, initially planned to launch its FF 91 car in …

MEXICO CITY -- Ford Motor Co.'s plant in the northern Mexican city of Hermosillo, which makes the hot-selling Bronco Sport crossover, will pause production from May 3 to May 17 due to supply shortages, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.

Details of the Ford stoppage were revealed in an internal advisory seen by Reuters that was shared among union members at the plant, and confirmed by two industry sources in the state of Sonora, where Hermosillo lies. The union advisory said workers will get 75 percent of their pay during the stoppage.

Ford sold 23,356 Bronco Sports in the U.S. during the first quarter.

Mexico's auto industry has been hit by global shortages of chips, leading to temporary stoppages elsewhere too.

Ford did not reply immediately to a request for comment.