Trade News

As recently as August, Ouster Inc. founder and CEO Angus Pacala predicted a wave of consolidation throughout the lidar business. Now, Ouster is leading that charge.

On Tuesday, the San Francisco-based company said it had reached an agreement in principle to acquire Sense Photonics, a Silicon Valley upstart which has, like Ouster, focused on developing digital lidar.

Ouster will purchase Sense Photonics in exchange for 9.5 million shares of Ouster's common stock. Based on Monday's closing price of $7.16, the deal is valued at about $68 million.

The acquisition, if completed, would bolster Ouster's automotive offerings. The company would establish Ouster Automotive as a new division that intends to develop and promote lidar for mass-market consumer and commercial vehicles. Current Sense Phonotics CEO and former Ford Motor Co. executive Shauna McIntyre will lead the automotive division.

Pacala called the acquisition "an ideal pairing" of Ouster's dig…

As Ford reversed its previous position on batteries by announcing a major investment, industry leaders should be prepared to pivot on strategy as EVs become more widely adopted.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Tesla Inc. lost a case against a Black former elevator operator and must pay an unprecedented $137 million in damages for having turned a blind eye to racial taunts and offensive graffiti the man endured at the EV maker's plant in Fremont, Calif.

Owen Diaz, a former contract worker who was hired in 2015 via a staffing agency, was subjected to a racially hostile work environment, a federal jury in San Francisco decided Monday. The award is among the most significant verdicts of its kind.

“I believe that’s the largest verdict in an individual race discrimination in employment case,” said David Oppenheimer, a clinical professor of law at Berkeley Law. “Class actions are of course in a different category.”

Tesla’s vice president of people, Valerie Capers Workman, sent an internal email late Monday that the company subsequently published in a blog post on its website titled “Regarding Today’s Jury Verdict.”

Workman wrote she was “at t…

STOCKHOLM -- Swedish automotive technology group Veoneer said on Monday chipmaker Qualcomm Inc and SSW Partners, a New York-based investment partnership, had reached a definite agreement to buy it.

Veoneer said in a statement the two would buy it for $37 per share in an all-cash transaction, representing a total equity value for Veoneer of $4.5 billion.

Shares in Veoneer 3.7 percent to $35.84 in early trading in New York. 

Magna International Inc., which had a previous offer to buy Veoneer accepted by the Swedish company, on Monday confirmed the news. It said Veoneer's board determined that the previously announced proposal by Qualcomm to acquire Veoneer for $37 per share is a superior proposal under the terms of the previously announced merger agreement between Magna and Veoneer.

As a result, Magna has waived the four-day matching period to make a counterproposal. Accordingly, Veoneer has terminated its merger agreement…

DETROIT — As General Motors engineers develop the automaker's next generation of vehicles, they'll look to the upcoming GMC Hummer EV to guide them.

The development timeline for the electric pickup, scheduled to go on sale this quarter, was just two years, compared with three to four years for most vehicle programs, said Al Oppenheiser, the Hummer's chief engineer.

The speedy timeline, enabled by computer-aided engineering, helped BrightDrop, GM's electric delivery van business, set a company record of only 20 months to develop its first product, the EV600.

The Hummer assignment for Oppenheimer and his team was 117 weeks shorter than a typical GM program, he said. But instead of cutting corners, he wanted to work smarter.

Despite challenges related to the coronavirus pandemic, the global microchip shortage and other supply chain disruptions, the Hummer team hit the mark.

Engineers often wait up to 11 mont…

STOCKHOLM -- Volvo Cars intends to launch an initial public offering and list on the Nasdaq Stockholm stock exchange, in what would be one of Europe's biggest initial public offerings this year, the automaker said in a statement.

In 2018, Volvo and Geely postponed earlier plans to float shares in the Swedish automaker, due to trade tensions and a downturn in automotive stocks.

"The proposed IPO is expected to consist of the issuance of new shares by Volvo Cars to raise gross proceeds of approximately SEK 25 billion ($2.9 billion) and a potential partial sale of shares by Volvo Cars' main shareholder," the Sweden-based automaker said on Monday.

The offering will be divided into two parts:

It added that the first day of trading was expected to be in 2021 and that Geely would remain it biggest shareholder.

"The decision to proceed with …

TOKYO — Toyota Motor Corp. is ready for takeoff in the brand-new world of electric air mobility.

But for now, it is skipping further investment in a Japanese startup founded partly by its own engineers in favor of an American aerospace company focused on fast, quiet flying machines.

The Japanese startup, an initiative now operating under the name SkyDrive, received ¥42.5 million ($387,700) of seed money from Toyota over a three-year period that ended in 2020.

Meanwhile, in January of that year, Toyota announced a $394 million investment into the U.S. rival, Joby Aviation, which develops electrical vertical take-off and landing aircraft, or eVTOL.

The investments highlight Toyota's evolving approach to the wild world of venture capital.

In SkyDrive's case, the funding was pitched as a helping hand for young, enthusiastic engineers. "It has nothing to do with Toyota's business," Toyota spokeswoman Shiori Hashimoto said.

For Joby, the…

When Ford Motor Co. needed a big chunk of land to build electric vehicle batteries near its truck plant in Louisville, Ky., the Commonwealth of Kentucky quickly rose to the occasion.

Ford and its battery supplier SK Innovation will spend $5.8 billion to construct an EV battery complex on a 1,500-acre site near Glendale, Ky., a gentle landscape of low rolling hills and not much else.

But look back nearly 20 years and you'll see that handing over an industrial megasite isn't always simple.

In 2002, Kentucky officials were one whisker away from landing a Hyundai vehicle assembly plant at the very same spot.

It was a big project — Hyundai's first U.S. plant at the time — and company officials were liking what they saw in those 1,500 acres.

Just short of 1,500 acres, actually. A Kentucky family didn't want to sell their 111-acre farm, which sat in the future plant site, no matter how hard the governor pushed and pressured.

It got testy.…

Significant shifts are taking place in the auto services industry as electric vehicles, new customer attitudes and the adoption of digital retail evolve from the pandemic.

As a result, leaders across the industry are revisiting assumptions and challenging standard operating procedures to ensure that they align with the rapidly evolving needs of customers interested in new ownership — and service — experiences.

The J.D. Power 2021 Aftermarket Study and Customer Service Index Study reveal several important insights into how customers are reprioritizing their needs around:

While we are still in the very early stages of tracking the experience EV owners have with automotive services, the early results are not promising. Owners are generally less satisfied with general maintenance and service. This could be an early warning…

There's a new James Bond movie in theaters, and naturally that means there's fresh Aston Martin news — this time by way of German transmission supplier ZF.

The 25 Goldfinger DB5 continuation cars being hand-built by Aston Martin craftsmen — at an eye-popping $3.4 million each — don't just look like the originals used in the 1965 movie, they drive exactly the same.

Aston could have easily installed a modern five- or six-speed gearbox from Getrag or Tremec, but instead the company placed an order with ZF for 25 S5-325 transmissions, the same one used on the original DB5.

ZF accepted the order, even though the gearbox has been out of production for decades.

ZF engineers 3D-printed some of the transmission's 280 individual parts, including the gearshift knob with a flap. It even has a button that simulates an ejector seat.

The DB5 makes an appearance in No Time To Die, Daniel Craig's last turn as 007.