Trade News

What does Zeekr even mean? The word can’t be found in any dictionary yet Zhejiang Geely likes it so much that it’s applied for several dozen sub-brands under the moniker, commercial registration data show.

One of those brands is for an electric vehicle. That makes sense -- while Geely is China’s biggest manufacturer of local-branded conventional automobiles, it’s plowing resources into EVs, like all carmakers. But it’s also applied to use the Zeekr name for air conditioners, clothing, furniture, fast food, beer and even firecrackers. What is the company playing at?

Geely isn’t changing direction, quite the contrary. The Hangzhou company is making a renewed push into EVs under the Zeekr brand, and may absorb its existing Geometry EV brand into the mix as part of that. But just as Tesla aims to create an aura and lifestyle around its brand, so too does Geely wish to snare consumers and convert them. Imagine, a Zeekr car owner could wear a Zeekr hoodie while driv…

Volkswagen said its new Amarok pickup will be clearly different in design from the next Ford Ranger pickup it will be based on.

VW's commercial vehicles division has released a sketch of the new pickup, which it will launch next year.

The design hints at a beefy, off-road performance version in line with the Raptor top-spec model of the current Ford Ranger.

The Amarok will be developed and built by Ford as part of a wider agreement between the two companies.

"It's not going to be just a fantastic pickup. It's going to be a genuine Volkswagen too -- with clear DNA in both technology and design," VW Commercial Vehicles CEO Carsten Intra said during the unit's annual media conference on March 25.

The pickup will be "exactly what our customers would want," Intra said.

Ford said in January that it will build the Amarok at its plant in Silvertown, South Africa, where it is investing $686 million to raise annual production capacity to 200,0…

In normal times, Nellie Brown goes around to people's workstations, adjusts their furniture and changes their lives.

That's what ergonomic experts — in her case, a certified industrial hygienist — do. They help people place their bodies on furniture properly, so their work doesn't injure them and take them out of the work force.

Controlling that optimal fit has gotten harder over the past year as millions of Americans started working from home, where they may not have an office, spare bedroom or other quiet space to work at their computer.

I think Ford Motor Co. is doing the right thing in proceeding with a hybrid model that has people come in to an office when it's necessary or beneficial and work from home or elsewhere when that makes the most sense.

But it is going to be challenging, and ergonomics is just part of it.

There are economic matters, for instance. Who pays for that proper-fitting home office chair? Who pays for the addition…

Toilets are apparently a central issue in an effort by Stellantis to cut costs at Fiat's factories in Italy.

The FIM union that represents workers at the Fiat New 500 plant in Turin, said Stellantis — the company formed through the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Group — had reduced the number of toilets available to workers, decreased cleaning shifts and adjusted the temperature to save money.

"This is happening during COVID-19, when you should be increasing toilets available and cleaning services, rather than cutting them," union representative Davide Provenzano told Reuters.

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares has promised nearly $6 billion in savings from the merger, which closed in January, without shutting plants or cutting jobs. Company officials declined to comment on the Reuters report.

At a Fiat van plant in central Italy, Nicola Manzi of the UILM union said Stellantis had cut cleaning work by more than a third but didn't take away…

The Chevrolet bow tie is finally disappearing from the jerseys of the Manchester United soccer club, marking the end of an expensive, eight-year debacle that cost Joel Ewanick his job as General Motors' chief marketing officer. GM signed the nearly $600 million deal in 2012, a year before it decided to pull Chevy out of the European market.

Man U's new sponsorship deal with German software company TeamViewer, effective at the start of the 2021-22 season, is worth about $20 million a year less than the GM contract. Still, the five-year arrangement is reported to be the Premier League's most lucrative jersey-only deal and the largest sponsorship signed by any sports team during the coronavirus pandemic. The club is in discussions to add a new automotive sponsor as well, according to the Manchester Evening News.

Although Ewanick called the sponsorship he orchestrated "the biggest no-brainer I've ever seen," former GM CEO Dan Akerson allegedly ouste…

Along with everybody else in the global auto industry, Dave Gardner has been dealing with one manufacturing and supply chain headache after another this year.

In an era of wildly changing plans and rapidly emerging new technologies, those challenges are sure to continue.

Gardner, American Honda Motor Co.'s executive vice president of national operations, has been trying to get vehicles from factories to dealer lots to cash in on the reawakening U.S. retail market. But he says he has been fighting developments on multiple fronts.

There has been COVID-19, of course, the international health crisis that halted assembly lines and supply chains across North America, Asia and Europe. And there have been issues with individual pandemic-affected parts suppliers that are struggling to get their volumes back up to customers' expectations.

There are lingering tariff and other trade issues that preceded the pandemic, still complicating the flow and price of…

DETROIT — Leftover paint particles won't land on pickups, SUVs and vans built at General Motors' electric vehicle Factory Zero plant when robots switch from a pallet of red to blue.

Factory Zero is the first new GM plant in the U.S. to get a Kaiser Compact Eliminator, which is a technology from paint finishing supplier Gallagher-Kaiser that removes overspray. The compact eliminator helps with paint shop cleanliness. But more importantly, it ensures that paint colors do not mix. A white GMC Hummer won't have a speck of red, for example, that workers have to remove.

"It's all about getting first-time quality," Alonso De Avila Jr., GM's senior project manager for sustainable workplaces, said of the push behind the new technology. "Any time we can produce a product that's of top quality the first time around, that avoids rework, avoids waste — that's a lean manufacturing idea."

Factory Zero, formerly Detroit- Hamtramck, has been under construction since ear…