Trade News

DETROIT — General Motors said it plans to establish a joint venture with Posco Chemical, a Korean advanced materials company, to process cathode active material for GM's proprietary Ultium batteries in North America by 2024.

GM said Wednesday that it signed a nonbinding term sheet with Posco to create the joint venture. The companies expect to execute definitive agreements by the first quarter of 2022, said Doug Parks, GM executive vice president, global product development, purchasing and supply chain.

Parks called the cathode “the energy source” of lithium-ion batteries. The cathode has the greatest impact on battery performance, safety and cost, he said.

The move is part of GM's $35 billion investment in electric and autonomous vehicle development through 2025. The automaker plans to launch 30 EVs globally by then, with more than two-thirds available in the U.S., and aims for a fully electric light-vehicle portfolio by 2035. As EV production begins to…

DETROIT -- Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said external pressure on automakers to accelerate the shift to electric vehicles potentially threatens jobs and vehicle quality as producers struggle to manage the higher costs of building EVs.

Governments and investors want car manufacturers to speed up the transition to EVs, but the costs are "beyond the limits" of what the auto industry can sustain, Tavares said in an interview at the Reuters Next conference released Wednesday.

"What has been decided is to impose on the automotive industry electrification that brings 50 percent additional costs against a conventional vehicle," he said.

"There is no way we can transfer 50 percent of additional costs to the final consumer because most parts of the middle class will not be able to pay."

Automakers could charge higher prices and sell fewer cars, or accept lower profit margins, Tavares said. Those paths both lead to cutbacks.

Union leaders in Europe a…

Self-driving tech startup Nuro said on Wednesday it was rolling out California's first commercial autonomous delivery service in partnership with convenience store operator 7-Eleven.

Nuro and rivals such as Waymo are launching or planning to launch autonomous delivery services with regulatory approval in the United States, though the services are limited or not in the form of driverless vehicles.

The service will start with Toyota Priuses converted into autonomous vehicles and include a safety driver to monitor the technology, Nuro said.

"The Priuses are the first step in Nuro's multi-phase approach to introducing commercial autonomous delivery to select service areas," Nuro said in a statement, adding that the company and 7-Eleven will make the joint decision to introduce Nuro's R2 driverless vehicles "as soon as possible."

The service will be available to customers in Mountain View where Nuro is headquartered. It is already delivering Domino's P…

Supply-chain disruptions, driven by the ongoing shortage of microchips that has dented new-vehicle stockpiles, undercut U.S. sales at Toyota Motor Corp., American Honda, Hyundai and Kia for the fourth straight month in November.

Deliveries at Subaru skidded for the sixth consecutive month, down 35 percent in November.

Volume dropped 25 percent at Toyota Motor, 17 percent at American Honda, 20 percent at Hyundai -- its biggest decline of the current slump -- and 5.4 percent at Kia last month, the companies said Wednesday.

Toyota Motor, which has overtaken longtime U.S. market leader General Motors this year, has been forced to cut output in recent months because of tight chip supplies. It has now posted declines of 22 percent or more three consecutive months. Sales last month dropped 24 percent at the Toyota brand and 32 percent at Lexus.

The Toyota brand was hampered by a 47 percent drop in November car deliveries, with Corolla sales skidding 63 …

Amazon Web Services has launched a new cloud-based data service that it says could help automakers remotely diagnose issues in their vehicles to prevent recalls and improve safety, as well as manage related data.

Called AWS IoT FleetWise, the latest tool in the company's newly branded AWS for Automotive portfolio of products and services for the transportation industry is being rolled out on Tuesday at Amazon.com's annual re:Invent conference in Las Vegas.

FleetWise enables customers, including auto suppliers and transportation providers such as Lyft and Uber, to collect, organize and transfer vehicle data to the cloud, while standardizing different data formats to simplify data analysis, according to Mike Tzamaloukas, general manager of AWS for Automotive.

"As vehicles become more intelligent and advanced, the sheer amount of data produced from vehicles equipped with cameras, lidars and radars is growing exponentially," Tzamaloukas said. FleetWise was d…

The future of Stellantis’ Brampton Assembly Plant will remain in limbo until U.S. lawmakers firm up or drop a Biden administration-backed bill aimed at boosting electric vehicles adoption south of the border, according to the union that represents workers at the plant outside Toronto.

Unifor Local 1285 President Danny Price told members last week the automaker’s COO for North America, Mark Stewart, informed union leadership the company’s product allocation choices hinge on the outcome of the U.S. bill that includes funding for automakers and incentives for American EV buyers,

“He was very candid when explaining the final decisions on product allocation,” Price said in a Nov. 22 letter to members. “These decisions are contingent on what happens with the legislation before the United States Congress.”

Stellantis refused to comment on the meeting with union leadership.

“When it comes to new investment and product allocation, many factors are taken in…

Diversified powertrain and electronics supplier Marelli said Tuesday that it aims to become carbon neutral throughout its operations by 2030.

The Japanese-Italian supplier said it would take a series of steps to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, including using new, higher-efficiency equipment at its plants, using renewable electricity and generating its own power.

"This is a first step for Marelli in outlining firm plans to reduce our overall carbon emissions," Marelli CEO Beda Bolzenius said in a statement. "Our next step will be to define clear goals and measures across indirect emissions, which includes working with suppliers, customers, as well as internally within our own product and manufacturing processes. We have a long way to go, but the investments being announced today are a significant step forward."

The company said in a news release that its strategy would be based on "energy efficiency Monozukuri," a Japanese word meaning "the making o…