Trade News

AUSTIN/TOKYO -- Toyota will acquire Lyft's self-driving technology unit for $550 million, the companies said, as the Japanese automaker steps up its automation ambitions with its newly created Woven Planet division.

Woven Planet will take over the 300-plus employees of Lyft's so-called Level 5 division. The acquisition will provide Toyota access to the U.S. ride-hailing company's advanced autonomous driving technology.

Jody Kelman, Lyft’s director of product and program management for the self-driving platform, will stay at Lyft, joining its two dozen or so product managers and engineers in San Francisco focused on making the company’s platform accessible and ready to work with all self-driving cars.

The acquisition will give Toyota a direct presence in Silicon Valley and London and expand the Woven City smart-city project at the base of Japan's Mount Fuji, effectively helping it ride through dramatic changes expected in the mobility industry and major …

LOS ANGELES — Honda previewed a new interior design language with a concept sketch and explanatory video, with the real-life version coming in the redesigned 2022 Honda Civic on sale this summer.

The new design philosophy is called "simplicity and something" and focuses on Honda's tradition of ease-of-use for the consumer while incorporating eye-pleasing design, the company said Monday.

The interior concept sketch shows a clean, horizontal dash design that maximizes outward visibility and incorporates tactile controls, said Johnathan Norman, creative lead at Honda Interior Design.

The infotainment system will use a physical knob for volume control, large icons that are easy to read and a fast processor for moving through simplified menu choices, Norman said. The concept sketch didn't detail the new infotainment screen.

In the recent past, Honda experimented with a capacitive-touch slider for volume control, which drew consumer complaints and a ret…

Luminar Technologies has embarked on its first foray beyond the automotive realm.

The lidar supplier said Monday it has entered a partnership with Airbus UpNext, the future-looking subsidiary of the aviation giant that tests and evaluates new technologies.

Working together, the companies will develop lidar sensors that can augment the sensing capabilities of both traditional and new aircraft, helping to detect obstacles that pose hazards in the takeoff and landing environments.

Luminar, which went public in December, already has become a leading lidar technology company. Among its automotive customers: Toyota Motor Corp., Daimler AG, Volvo Cars and Mobileye. Expanding into aviation seemed like a natural next step, says Luminar CEO Austin Russell.

"It's an industry that has been working with legacy technologies from a sensing standpoint and perspective, but hasn't seen any kind of breakthrough or revolution in decades," he tells Automotive News. "I…

TOKYO — Honda's new CEO wants the company's U.S. lineup to be gasoline-free by 2040 as part of an ambitious new electrification plan that will lean on General Motors and solid-state batteries.

Toshihiro Mibe, who took office April 1, pitched the vision last week as a mission to derive all of Honda Motor Co.'s global auto sales solely from electric and fuel cell vehicles by 2040, just 19 years from now. The timeline makes Honda — a company that currently assembles only one EV model — the first Japanese automaker to declare its aspiration to completely ditch the internal combustion engine.

Honda wants to achieve the goal in steps, first getting 40 percent of its sales in major markets from full- electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in 2030, then 80 percent in 2035 and all of them by 2040.

"The hurdles are quite high," acknowledged Mibe, who formerly was head of Honda's R&D division. "But I think we can get them. The fact that…

In 1976 in Frenchtown, N.J., 26-year-old Steve Kalafer opened a Ford dealership inside a Mobil gas station. He had seven employees, two gas pumps, one display vehicle and no office.

His son Joshua Kalafer told Automotive News that even when the business expanded to eight stores selling 16 brands, his father's open-door policy from those early days stayed in place.

"He knew everyone by name — every technician, every lot attendant, every salesperson, every service adviser, every manager," Joshua Kalafer said. "He either sat in a desk on the showroom floor by the coffee maker or in a small office with no door. That was something he was famous for in our little part of the world."

Steve Kalafer — who also founded a minor league baseball team and attained national acclaim for producing short films — died Wednesday, April 21. The cause was cancer, according to a colleague. He was 71.

Joshua Kalafer and his brother, Jonathan,…

TOKYO — Toyota's new bZ subbrand shows the automaker has been busy with electric vehicles after all, complete with its own design language, platform and powertrain.

The automaker announced plans last week in Shanghai ahead of the auto show for a line of bZ-badged EVs, starting with the bZ4X Concept. The compact crossover kicks off Toyota's scramble to catch the pack of rivals sprinting out of the blocks in the global EV race. When the futuristically styled electric utility vehicle goes on sale by mid-2022, it will be competing against the Volkswagen ID4, Kia EV6, Ford Mach-E and Tesla Model Y.

Although Toyota Motor Corp. is late to the game, it has been working on an EV portfolio for years. The Japanese automaker even previewed the lineup in 2019, outlining the technology behind the electric drivetrains and teasing a new unified design language for the entire vehicle family.

The looks of the bZ4X cleave very close to a crossover moc…

Billionaire Elon Musk will host “Saturday Night Live” for the first time on May 8, NBC said Saturday.

Musical guest Miley Cyrus will mark her sixth appearance as the musical guest. Cyrus retweeted the scheduling announcement of Saturday Night Live, which also streams on Peacock.

The news comes as Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, celebrates the arrival of the Dragon spacecraft at the International Space Station on Saturday.

Musk, who has a cult-like following on social media, has made appearances in entertainment shows over the years. In 2018, he smoked weed during a podcast with California comedian Joe Rogan that touched upon everything from flame throwers and artificial intelligence to the end of the universe.