Trade News

Bart Reagor, a co-principal of Reagor Dykes Auto Group in Texas leading up to its collapse in 2018, has been charged with lying about using business loans for personal expenses.

The U.S Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas said Thursday that Reagor has been indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a bank insured by the FDIC.

Reagor is set to appear before a federal judge at 2 p.m. CDT on Monday.

If convicted, he faces up to 90 years in federal prison and will be required to forfeit any property traceable to the alleged offense, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

The federal indictment alleges that one of Reagor Dykes' floorplan lenders did an audit in the first quarter of 2017 that showed the auto group was in a weak cash position.

A limited liability company was formed to hold Reagor Dykes' real estate assets while getting cash fo…

WASHINGTON -- The Biden administration proposed Thursday spending $15 billion to install 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations along roads, parking lots and apartment buildings, as part of its infrastructure plan now before Congress.

Some of the money would go toward grants and incentive programs for state and local governments as well as private companies to install the chargers, according to a fact sheet from the White House that spelled out the program in detail.

But $10 million would be devoted to research into ways to lower the cost of the chargers themselves, while $20 million would go community projects -- like switching to electric school buses -- that can pave the way to wider deployment.

The Transportation Department also issued guidance showing how nearly $42 billion of existing federal financing programs could be used for EV charging infrastructure.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced the plans during a news con…

The battery materials unit of SK Innovation Co. said the global market for premium wet-type separators, a key component for electric vehicles, will run into a supply shortage in 2023 due to “explosive” growth.

SK IE Technology Co. said in a statement Thursday that its sales of separators for EVs jumped 490 percent last year from 2018. The company -- part of South Korea’s third-largest conglomerate SK Group -- expects separators will account for about 80 percent of total sales in the next three years or more, from about 55 percent currently.

“We’ve been keeping a close track of demand and supply and it looks like supply will fall short of meeting the rising demand from 2023,” CEO Rho Jae-sok told reporters at a briefing in Seoul.

Separators improve the output and stability of lithium-ion batteries. Wet separators are thinner and stronger than dry separators, and allow for higher capacity. While lithium-ion batteries are found in everything from…

WASHINGTON -- Honda Motor Co. said on Wednesday it had confirmed the 19th U.S. death tied to a ruptured Takata airbag inflator since 2009 -- and the 16th in one of its vehicles.

The Japanese automaker said that following a joint inspection, the company and NHTSA confirmed that a defective Takata driver’s airbag inflator ruptured in the crash of a 2002 Honda Accord on Jan. 9, 2021, in Lancaster County, South Carolina.

The defect, which leads in rare instances to airbag inflators rupturing and sending dangerous metal fragments flying, prompted the largest automotive recall in history.

More than 400 injuries are also tied to faulty Takata inflators and at least 28 deaths worldwide. There have been two U.S. Takata deaths in Ford vehicles and one in a BMW.

The Takata recalls cover about 100 million inflators among 19 major automakers worldwide, including about 67 million inflators in the United States. The vehicle involved in the fatal crash had b…

Stellantis NV is planning to temporarily lay off workers at a Jeep plant in Detroit during April and May due to a shortage of semiconductor chips, the company confirmed.

Stellantis will cut two work crews at its Jefferson North plant in Detroit for three weeks starting April 26, then call them back and lay off a third crew from May 17 through the week of May 31, according to a schedule obtained by Bloomberg News. The plant on Detroit’s east side normally operates two shifts with three work crews six days a week to keep it running 20 hours a day.

“Stellantis continues to work closely with our suppliers to mitigate the manufacturing impacts caused by the various supply chain issues facing our industry,” company spokeswoman Jodi Tinson said in a statement. “Due to the unprecedented global microchip shortage, Jefferson North will adjust its production schedule through the end of May.”

The plant, known as JNAP, employs about 4,800 hourly workers and makes the…

MILAN -- Alfa Romeo will base future models on a new platform being developed by parent Stellantis, dropping the much-touted Giorgio platform that underpins the Giulia sedan and Stelvio SUV, currently the only vehicles it sells.

Upcoming Alfa models will use the "STLA large" architecture, the brand's new CEO, Jean-Philippe Imparato, said during a roundtable with Italian media on Wednesday.

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said at the automaker's first annual meeting on April 15 that the company will use four electrified platforms across the 14-brand group -- small, medium, and large for cars, and "frame" for high-margin SUVs, crossovers and pickups.

Stellantis was created in January from the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Group.

During the roundtable, Imparato said that all future Alfas will be electrified, either with a full-electric drivetrain or a gasoline-electric plug-in hybrid powertrain. "If you are not electrified, you are dead,…

Canadian supplier Martinrea International Inc. has entered into a joint venture with Montreal-based graphene company NanoXplore Inc. to develop graphene-enhanced batteries, designed to reduce charging times and increase electric-vehicle range.

“Graphene will be a differentiator by improving charge time and vehicle distance, ultimately bringing solid state battery technology to the market sooner,” Martinrea CEO Pat D’Eramo said in a statement. “Combining our advanced lightweighting technologies with graphene-enhanced batteries is a big step forward in the EV space.”

NanoXplore and Martinrea will each invest $4 million into the JV, dubbed VoltaXplore Inc., to build a demonstration facility in Montreal. There, the companies hope to successfully demonstrate the value of using graphene, a thin but strong and highly conductive material, in lithium ion batteries. Should it do so and build a business case for it, VoltaXplore aims to eventually build a battery productio…

SEOUL -- Hyundai Motor posted a first-quarter profit that nearly tripled to its highest in four years, but warned it would have to adjust production again in May because of a chip shortage.

Unlike its rivals, the automaker avoided production halts in the first quarter, thanks to a healthy chip inventory. But the shortage, exacerbated by factors including a fire at a chip factory in Japan and storms in Texas, is now catching up with Hyundai.

Hyundai, which together with affiliate Kia is among the world's top 10 automakers by sales, has temporarily paused production three times since the beginning of this month and saved chips for its most popular models.

"The condition of semiconductor parts is being a little more prolonged than we expected," said Seo Gang-hyun, an executive vice president at Hyundai. "As the semiconductor procurement condition is rapidly changing, it's difficult to predict production status after May. We expect that there will likely be…

TOKYO -- Despite the odds, the beleaguered Tokyo auto show survived the Great Recession, the 2011 earthquake-tsunami in Japan and the rivalry of bigger, bolder shows next-door in China.

But it could not withstand the COVID-19 pandemic.

Organizers of Asia's erstwhile premium auto exhibition have pulled the plug on the 2021 event and said that the show will be rebranded as the Tokyo Mobility Show in the future.  

It marks the first time the show has been canceled since its inception in 1954.

When that next show, under the banner of mobility, might be held is an open question. The show's organizer, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association, is considering 2022 or 2023.

The decision was announced on Monday by Akio Toyoda, the Toyota president who also serves as chairman of JAMA. Toyoda has been among the Tokyo show's top advocates in recent years, pushing to reinvent the event, attract more visitors and restore its former glory.