Trade News

General Motors said Monday it is extending a production halt at its Orion Assembly plant in Michigan, which makes the Chevrolet Bolt EV, through the end of February.

The largest U.S. automaker in August widened its recall of the Bolt to more than 140,000 vehicles to replace battery modules after a series of fires. Earlier this month it extended its production shutdown through late January. GM has also indefinitely halted retail sales of new Bolt vehicles.

The suburban Detroit plant halted production in August but conducted two weeks of limited production at Orion starting Nov. 1 to help provide courtesy transportation vehicles for customers during recall repairs.

GM President Mark Reuss said in October the company was addressing the recall before resuming production. The company said Monday it will continue to prioritize recall repairs and "focus on battery module replacements."

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has an ongoing inv…

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and CEO of Tesla Inc., said on Twitter that he’ll pay more than $11 billion in taxes this year, an amount that could constitute a record payment to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

The billionaire may face a tax bill of more than $10 billion for 2021 if he exercises all his options due to expire next year, calculations last week by Bloomberg News showed.

The unusually high levy comes after Musk exercised almost 15 million options and sold millions of shares to cover the taxes related to those transactions. That was following a Twitter poll last month when he asked followers whether he should sell 10% of his stake in the electric carmaker, whose shares have rocketed more than 2,300 percent over the past five years.

Since the unusual move to ask Twitter users about the plan, Tesla has declined nearly a quarter and the company’s market value has slid back below the $1 trillion mark to $937 billion. The shares were 2…

Chinese electric carmaker Nio Inc. unveiled its second sedan, which will compete more directly against Tesla Inc.'s most popular Model 3.

The all-electric ET5 was revealed by founder and CEO William Li at the annual Nio Day event in Suzhou on Saturday. With a starting price of 328,000 yuan ($51,450) before government subsidies, and 258,000 yuan ($40,463) with a leased battery, the most basic variant is designed to drive 550 kilometers (342 miles) on a single charge. The post-subsidy price for an entry-level Tesla Model 3 in China is 255,652 yuan ($40,095).

The ET5 will be available in September. Its launch follows that of Nio's first and more-expensive ET7 electric sedan -- which Li sees as a rival to Tesla's Model S -- and where deliveries are scheduled to start in March. Nio is also expected to unveil another electric vehicle in 2022.

"ET5 is a key product of us as Nio has long focused on sports utility vehicles," Li in an interview with Bloomberg on S…

DETROIT -- Cruise LLC CEO Dan Ammann had a slate of meetings on Dec. 16 when he got an early afternoon call from General Motors CEO Mary Barra. She told Ammann he was being dismissed from the robotaxi startup that GM controls through a majority stake, people familiar with the events told Bloomberg.

What seemed abrupt to outsiders and people working at Cruise had been building for months. The two executives didn’t agree on how to focus the breakthrough self-driving technology that the Silicon Valley unit is preparing to launch with a taxi service.

Barra and GM’s board were pushing a grand vision that included transferring that knowledge to create luxury Cadillacs, self-driving cars sold at retail or delivery vehicles for GM’s new electric-van business. The opportunities, and their potential value, were immense.

Ammann -- a star in his own right who once competed with Barra to run GM -- was open to all of those things eventually, but he disagreed on some …

NOTICE TO READERS

The Intersection newsletter is going on holiday hiatus and will resume Jan. 9.

Was this year nuts or what?

These 12 months have been a stream of improbable scenarios: the lingering pandemic, the microchip shortage, the inability of factories to build the vehicles they want to, the almost incomprehensible shortage of workers, logistics bottlenecks, the depletion of retail inventories, relentless consumer demand, roaring sales increases, booming profits and breathtaking market valuations of startup companies...

But through it all, the auto industry continues making forward progress.

In this week's issue we focus in on perhaps the most stunning evolution of the year, if not the past century — the rapid industry makeover to electric vehicles. Barely a month ago, we were quoting Toyota President Akio Toyoda urging the world to stay calm and slow down its mad rus…

Sen. Joe Manchin said Sunday he won't support the $2 trillion tax-and-spending plan that's the heart of President Joe Biden's economic agenda — which includes a controversial provision that would give consumers an extra incentive to buy union-made electric vehicles — effectively killing Democrats' plans to pass the legislation as they begin an election year.

"I can't get there," Manchin said on "Fox News Sunday."

The White House and Democratic congressional leaders were informed earlier Sunday that the West Virginia Democrat was a firm no on the legislation, according to a person familiar with the matter.

His decision caught White House officials by surprise after he had given Biden just days ago an outline of a $1.8 trillion plan he could support, according to another person, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Manchin was a crucial vote for the package in the 50-50 Senate, and getting his support was one of the last remaining hurdles for the p…

Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, which runs CES, explains what showgoers can expect in Las Vegas, notes transportation-related highlights and discusses U.S. global competitiveness in the technology realm.

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It's been a busy year for self-driving technology company Aurora Innovation Inc. and its CEO, Chris Urmson.

The company entered into partnerships with Volvo, FedEx and Paccar to load big rigs with its technology and received a $400 million investment from Uber — whose ATG autonomous vehicle division Aurora acquired. It's had to weather a once-in-a-century pandemic and a host of challenges that stemmed from it.

And, of course, Aurora went public in November, trading on the Nasdaq after a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company.

Now, with investor backing and a host of deals under his belt, Urmson, 45, is tasked with leading Aurora as it looks to roll out its technology on semitrucks and passenger vehicles. Urmson, who last month was named a 2021 Automotive News All-Star in the deal-maker category, spoke with Staff Reporter John Irwin. Here are edited excerpts.

Q: As Aurora moves forward after a year marked by major deals, what is it loo…

Open Road Capital, just more than a year after making its first auto dealership investments with Bain Capital Credit as a funding partner, has grown its store platform through three new partnerships.

Open Road, an auto-retail investment company which in September 2020 bought a majority stake in four Mississippi dealerships with Bain Capital Credit funding, has invested into three projects this year:

1. It bought a minority stake in Pritchard Cos., a family-run, commercial-fleet-focused dealership group in Iowa.

2. Last week, it bought a majority stake in a BMW dealership in Ridgefield, Conn., with Keeler Motor Car Co. of Latham, N.Y.

3. In November, it bought a majority stake in three Monrovia, Calif., dealerships with dealer partner Rinaldi Halim, and bought a majority stake in his two other Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram stores in California.

"Because of Open Road's investment, it gave me an opportunity to also become a landowner in the retail …

If auto factory investments were hobbled in 2020 by COVID-19-related fears and global business uncertainties, 2021 could be called the year when automakers made up for lost time. The auto industry came out of its pandemic doldrums, spending money with a vengeance to create new manufacturing capacity and jockeying for position in electric products.

The past few months have witnessed manufacturing projects on a bold scale, including the largest U.S. investment in electric vehicles at one time by Ford Motor Co.

"Electrification is driving a new wave of auto factory investment," said Terni Fiorelli, assistant director of the Automotive Communities Partnership at the Center for Automotive Research, an organization in Ann Arbor, Mich., that tracks industry investment through its Book of Deals.

"Last year, half of the 10 biggest automaker projects in North America were related to electric vehicles," she said. "This year, all 10 of the top…