Trade News

Renault plans to sell its stake in Daimler worth about 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion), securing funds for its turnaround efforts after a record annual loss.

The French automaker will exit its entire holding in Daimler, a roughly 1.5 percent stake, according to a statement on Thursday.

Renault already has enough demand for all the stock, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.

Proceeds from the sale will allow Renault to "accelerate the financial de-leveraging of its automotive activity," the company said.

It added that its industrial partnership with Daimler, which dates back more than a decade, remains unchanged and is not affected by the transaction.

Renault warned investors last month that another challenging year is ahead after recording a worse-than-expected 8 billion euro annual net loss.

CEO Luca de Meo has been battling daily to secure enough semicondu…

WASHINGTON/SEOUL -- LG Energy Solution said Thursday it plans to invest more than $4.5 billion in its U.S. battery production business through 2025 and add 4,000 jobs as it considers building at least two new U.S. plants, a company executive told reporters.

The South Korean supplier, a unit of LG Chem, said the investment will result in an additional 70 gigawatt-hours of U.S. battery production capacity. The company declined to say where in the United States it is considering a new battery manufacturing plant.

Denise Gray, president of LG Energy Solution's Michigan unit, said the investment, which would indirectly create another 6,000 jobs during construction, was being made to respond to the growing electric vehicle market.

"We are eager to expand our production capacity so that it can meet the needs of the numerous global automakers across the U.S. and Europe," Gray said.

LG is also in advanced talks with General Motors to build a more than $2 b…

DETROIT -- Electric vehicle startup Canoo Inc. said Wednesday it will introduce an American-built, pod-like electric pickup truck in 2023, following in the footsteps of several rivals also entering the most popular segment of the U.S. automotive market.

Canoo Executive Chairman Tony Aquila revealed the timing for the truck ahead of an Automobility LA event on Thursday. He said the Los Angeles-based company would begin taking pre-orders in the second quarter of 2021.

Aquila told Reuters he was aiming to launch the rounded, snub-nosed truck in the first quarter of 2023, and Canoo will build the vehicle in a U.S. microfactory it intends to open.

"This is like no truck you've ever seen," he said in an interview. "It's the size of a Ford Ranger, can take the payload of a full-sized pickup and (has) the turning radius of a Prius."

Aquila told Reuters in December that Canoo, which subsequently went public through a reverse merger with a special-purpose a…

The U.S. Senate Wednesday voted to confirm Michael Regan as the next administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, which will play a central role in the Biden administration's plans to slash greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, vehicles and oil and gas facilities.

The bipartisan tally in the Democratic-led Senate was 66-34 to confirm Regan, who will be the first Black man to lead the EPA.

Regan will take the helm of the agency as it rebuilds after the Trump era, which had been focused on undoing Obama era regulations on industry, slashing the agency's budget and staff and upending independent scientific panels.

He will need to quickly ramp up the work of EPA staff as the new administration races to carry out President Joe Biden's executive orders, which set goals to zero out emissions from power plants by 2035, revamp vehicle efficiency standards, accelerate the deployment of electric vehicles and crack down on methane emissions from oil a…

Customers in the highest credit tiers opted for new vehicles in larger numbers in the fourth quarter, credit bureau Experian said last week. The shift from used vehicles was driven in part by past and upcoming stimulus checks, residual incentive activity from the third quarter and tight inventory, though the credit bureau said the exact reasons for the shift were unclear.

The trend of higher-credit consumers opting for used vehicles was disrupted last year when strong automaker incentives enticed those buyers to the new-vehicle market. Residual incentives and forthcoming stimulus checks may account for why prime customer share of new-vehicle originations rose in the fourth quarter, said Melinda Zabritski, Experian's senior director of automotive financial solutions.

The fourth-quarter report drops the curtain on a dramatic year in auto finance, she said, when many trend lines were reversed amid the unparalleled industry and government response to the pandemic's…

Darwin Automotive's finance platform has integrated with Fetch, an electronic auto insurance comparison and purchase platform. The online marketplace allows auto customers to search for and compare insurance rates as part of an in-store or digital retailing process.

The integration is the latest example in a growing trend of U.S. dealerships incorporating auto insurance into their offerings in the hopes of helping customers cut costs associated with vehicle ownership.

RK Auto Group in Virginia Beach, Va., went live with the Fetch integration in February. The program will continue rolling out, state by state, across Darwin's footprint, CEO Phil Battista told Automotive News. Dealerships can opt in to the auto insurance add-on at no additional cost, he said.

Fetch generates a limited number of offers to streamline the process and keep shoppers from getting bogged down at the insurance stage. The platform allows customers to purchase …

Nissan's top North America executive will take a broader role as the Japanese automaker realigns its regional focus.

Jérémie Papin, 47, has been promoted to the new role of chairman of the Americas, giving him responsibility for Nissan's operations across North and South America. He starts the role on April 1.

It is a regional management structure that Nissan previously adopted in 2007, when it hoped to use a centralized U.S. executive team to coordinate sales and manufacturing strategies across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and other markets. But Nissan dropped the hemispheric approach in 2014 when it turned its focus to bearing down on U.S. sales growth.

Papin currently is vice chairman of North America, where he oversees the U.S., Canada and Mexico. He assumed that role last June.

As part of Nissan's four-year transformation plan, the automaker is consolidating seven business regions down to four key reg…

Car shoppers want more finance information sooner in the process, confirming industry beliefs that placing more emphasis on finance and insurance in digital retailing is critical for some consumers, a recent CarGurus survey found.

Vehicle affordability is an ongoing concern in the automotive retail industry, with average transaction prices steadily increasing every month. Inventory constraints restricting new- and used-vehicle options for consumers is an additional hurdle for consumers pursuing a specific price point.

In the survey of 754 consumers conducted in November 2020, 93 percent of car shoppers agree that pre-qualifying for a loan prior to visiting the dealership would be useful. Just two in three respondents, however, even knew this was an option, CarGurus said.

All respondents either intended to buy a car within the next 12 months or had purchased one in the last two years, CarGurus said. Respondents also needed to have f…