Trade News

Carlos Ghosn wants to correct the record in his own memoir being re-released this week: He’s no longer a Nissan Motor Co. shareholder and is eager to exit Renault SA.

The executive-turned-international fugitive has grown even more pessimistic about the automakers’ prospects in the 11 months since his book was first published in French. In a chapter devoted to defending his compensation, Ghosn says he demonstrated loyalty and faith in the companies by hanging onto their stock after his November 2018 arrest.

“I am not any more a shareholder of Nissan, thank God,” Ghosn said Wednesday in a video interview from Beirut. He’s lived there since fleeing Japan in late 2019 to avoid trial over various charges of financial impropriety.

The Renault-Nissan alliance — forged when Ghosn was dispatched in 1999 to save the then-nearly bankrupt Japanese carmaker — is “doomed” due to lingering power struggles, its former chairman said. He still has claim to a stake in Rena…

WASHINGTON -- The Biden administration is considering invoking a Cold War-era national security law to force companies in the semiconductor supply chain to provide information on inventory and sales of chips, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Thursday.

The goal is to alleviate bottlenecks that have idled U.S. car production and caused shortages of consumer electronics and to identify possible hoarding, she said in an interview.

Her team for months has sought clarity into how companies allocate their semiconductor supply. But previous meetings that convened firms from different industrial sectors haven’t led to increased transparency and many companies have refused to hand over business data to the government.

The Commerce Department is now asking companies to fill out questionnaires within 45 days providing supply chain information. The request is voluntary but Raimondo said she warned industry representatives that she might invoke the Defense Produ…

LONDON -- Ford is close to choosing one of its two transmission plants in Europe to produce electric drivetrains, sources close to the automaker say.

The two plants in contention are Ford's two former joint venture facilities with Getrag, now fully Ford owned. One is in Halewood, England,  and the other is in Cologne, Germany.

Ford will announce its decision "within weeks," according to UK broadcaster Sky News, which first reported the story.

The winning plant would build "e-drive" units that include an electric motor, a transmission and and inverter for electric vehicles, a source said.

No details were available as to whether the plant would build the three major components from the ground up or assemble units from suppliers.

Moving from building transmissions for internal combustion engine vehicles to e-drives for electric vehicles would secure the future of either plant as Ford moves to selling only full-electric passenger cars…

BERLIN -- Daimler's Mercedes-Benz will take a 33 percent stake in battery cell manufacturer Automotive Cells Company (ACC), alongside the project's original founders Stellantis and TotalEnergies.

The purpose of the partnership is to develop cells and battery modules and "help ensure that Europe remains at the heart of the auto industry -- even in an electric era," Daimler CEO Ola Kaellenius said in a statement on Friday.

ACC will supply Mercedes-Benz with battery technology from the middle of the decade, Daimler said.

As part of the deal, Daimler will invest a mid-three-digit million euro sum in the project next year. The automaker said its overall investment was expected to stay below 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion).

ACC, which has also received 1.3 billion euros in French and German funding, is budgeted to require seven billion euros in equity, debt and subsidies to reach its desired capacity of 120 Gigawatt hours (GWh) by the end of the dec…

Electric vehicle producer Rivian plans to hire 100 workers and invest $4.6 million into a new customer service center near Detroit in Plymouth, Mich., following the launch of its first electric pickup.

The 12-year-old startup, backed by Amazon, Ford Motor Co. and others, established its Service Support Operations Center to provide "around-the-clock" business-to-business and customer service, according to a Thursday statement from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

The project is being backed by a $750,000 performance-based grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corp., which said the state outcompeted other states to land the investment and jobs promise.

"This investment by Rivian will create 100 high-skill jobs as we work to grow Michigan's economy, create good-paying jobs, and build the industries of the future," Whitmer said in the statement.

The service center begins operating this week, Rivian spokesman Zach Dietmeier said in an email. The…

General Motors is set to invest $300 million in Momenta to accelerate the application of the young Chinese company’s autonomous driving technologies in future products in China. 

The move is part of a plan the Detroit automaker announced in June to invest $35 billion globally from 2020 to 2025 to develop electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles.

Momenta, established in 2016 in Beijing, is developing mass-production L4 autonomous driving systems.

As of March 2021, Momenta had raised $700 million from strategic automotive partners such as SAIC Motor Corp., Mercedes-Benz, Toyota Motor Corp. and Bosch, as well as a group of financial investors.

GM is expanding its design and engineering facilities in China for the development of EVs and self-driving vehicles. In July, it completed an expansion and upgrade of an advanced design center in Shanghai, doubling the facility’s design capacity.

“Customers in China are embracing electrification an…

Chinese retail sales of new passenger vehicles -- sedans, crossovers, SUVs and multipurpose vehicles -- are expected to contract for the fourth straight month, slipping 17 percent to 1.58 million in September, the China Passenger Car Association said this week. 

The latest decline is steeper than the 15 percent drop in August, as well as a 6.1 percent decrease in July and June’s 4.8 percent dip.

The China Passenger Car Association blames the extended downturn on the severe auto chip shortage and lockdowns by some cities to contain local coronavirus outbreaks.

A California mayor said Tesla Inc. broke ground in his city on what it calls a new “Megafactory,” praising the planned facility in a Facebook post that was deleted and is now visible again.

“We are proud to be the home of the Megafactory, Tesla’s most recent expansion here,” Lathrop Mayor Sonny Dhaliwal wrote in the post. “The future of green energy will be produced right here in our community.”

The plan is for a factory expansion to make Megapacks, the energy-storage product Tesla sells to utilities. Lathrop, in San Joaquin County, has long been home to the company’s warehouses and logistical operations. Tesla’s flagship U.S. auto plant is in Fremont in neighboring Alameda County. The company is based in Palo Alto.

Tesla, which currently manufactures battery packs at a plant in Nevada, didn’t respond to a request for comment, and the mayor’s office didn’t respond to questions about why the original post was taken down.

An expansion in Lathrop, a…

WASHINGTON -- The Biden administration is pressuring companies involved in the semiconductor supply chain to be more transparent as the global chips shortage continues to wreak havoc across many industries, officials said.  

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and National Economic Council Director Brian Deese will convene several companies Thursday to discuss how to respond more rapidly to shutdowns around the world, brought about by the spread of the coronavirus, and what comes next for legislation to finance domestic manufacturing that’s lingered on Capitol Hill for months.

Representatives of companies including the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Samsung Electronics Co., Apple Inc., Intel Corp., General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis are to attend, according to people familiar with the planning.

The shortages have frozen production and dampened sales in a variety of businesses, from cars to laptops.

This is the third such meeting…

WASHINGTON -- A U.S. labor complaint under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact over a General Motors plant union vote in Mexico has been successfully concluded, lifting the threat of U.S. tariffs on the factory's pickup trucks, the U.S. Trade Representative's office said on Wednesday.

The U.S. opened the case in May after complaints that workers' rights at a GM pickup-truck plant in Silao in central Mexico were being violated in a vote on whether to keep or scrap their collective union contract.

The result was suspended after Mexico's labor ministry found irregularities in the process and workers voted in a repeat ballot in August to scrap the contract, opening the door for them to oust one of Mexico's largest labor groups as their union.

The vote, with safeguards agreed upon by Mexico and the U.S. to ensure a fair vote, was the first test of labor rules under the USMCA accord that replaced the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.

"We will con…