Trade News

Electric-vehicle technology advances and growing consumer acceptance has sparked unprecedented investment in EV startups.

While the race to become the next Tesla is on, these fledgling automakers face steep challenges getting products to market.

This Automotive News Intelligence Report tracks the progress of EV startups furthest along their journey, giving you a comprehensive picture of the landscape  from product plans to financial health.

Automotive News subscribers will also get access to more Intelligence Reports in the coming weeks that focus on lidar, digital retail and vehicle inventory.

Read the report

Intelligence Reports

A Dutch startup is putting car-sharing in a new light.

The company, Squad Mobility, plans to roll out small battery-electric vehicles that it believes are well suited to car-sharing fleets and mobility as a service. The vehicles are equipped with rooftop solar panels to extend their range. The company says its goal is safe and accessible urban mobility.

The Squad Solar City car is a two-seater that runs on swappable batteries. The name Squad is short for solar quadricycle.

The company plans to launch the cars in Europe, then expand to the U.S. A prototype is expected to be unveiled in September 2022. Production is slated to begin in the last quarter of 2022.

The vehicle is about 4 feet wide, 5 feet tall and 6.7 feet long. Its small size allows for easy navigation and parking in cities. The company says three of the cars can fit comfortably in one pa…

Mechanics at 56 Chicago-area car dealerships are on strike for a second week as their union and the Chicago New Car Dealer Committee, which represents the stores, spar over work contract details and who should make the next move in negotiating a new four-year contract.

The employees are members of Local 701, which is part of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers trade union. The Chicago Automobile Trade Association — which says it is not part of these specific negotiations — supports its members that are part of the car dealer committee, known as the NCDC.

Local 701 posted a negotiation update to its website, in which it said the NCDC is prolonging the strike by ignoring the union's rejection of its contract proposal.

The union is asking the NCDC to pay certain contributions set by the union's Health and Welfare Fund; to not make it easier to reduce weekly guaranteed pay if a skilled worker is not meeting work expectations be…

DETROIT — General Motors said it will restart production at its full-size pickup plants Monday, as scheduled, after downtime this week due to the global microchip shortage.

Throughout the chip crisis, GM aimed to keep production of high-demand pickups running, opting to idle crossover production instead. But in late July, the automaker began intermittently pausing production at its three pickup plants, in Flint, Mich.; Silao, Mexico; and Fort Wayne, Ind.

Flint builds the heavy-duty Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups. Silao builds the Cheyenne for Mexico, along with the Silverado 1500 and Sierra 1500 light-duty pickups. Fort Wayne builds the Silverado 1500 and Sierra 1500.

"Although the situation remains complex and very fluid, our global purchasing and supply chain, engineering and manufacturing teams continue to find creative solutions and make strides working with the supply base to minimize the impact to our highest-demand and capacity-constr…

MUNICH -- The owners of Hella will pick a buyer for their majority stake this weekend, the German automotive lighting group said on Thursday.

A person familiar with the matter said Hella had received binding offers from three bidders -- French suppliers Faurecia and Plastic Omnium, and Germany's Mahle.

All three offers are at the expected level of around 60 euros ($70) per share, the person said.

That price, based on the three-month average of Hella's share price, values the group at about 7 billion euros ($8.2 billion). The stock closed at 64.50 euros on Wednesday and fell 2.6 percent to 62.86 euros on Thursday's news of the offers.

Hella's founding family, which is seeking a buyer for its 60 percent stake, is working with investment bank Rothschild on the transaction, sources told Reuters earlier this week.

Under German takeover rules, buying a 60 percent stake in Hella would trigger a takeover bid for the remaining shares.

Hella s…

Vroom reported strong revenue and vehicle sales growth in the second quarter along with a higher net loss as the online used-vehicle retailer continued to expand in the U.S.

The net loss widened 4.1 percent to $65.8 million. The loss included $22.6 million in one-time, IPO-related costs. Vroom went public in June 2020.

Shares of Vroom fell 19 percent to $30.66 in afternoon trading Thursday in New York.

Vroom was able to grow its salable inventory throughout the period, going from 11,280 vehicles listed at the end of the first quarter to 13,676 at the end of the second, the company said on a conference call Wednesday after releasing its report.

CEO Paul Hennessy said the company was able to grow those units in a "very constrained market" while improving unit economics, and he pointed to the firm's acquisition of data analytics firm CarStory as having played a role in the operational improvements. "Our now combined data-driven team is buying the rig…

McKinsey & Co. Senior Partner Hans-Werner Kaas discusses how the auto industry can boost productivity through manufacturing and software innovation.

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DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. is preparing to inform Mustang Mach-E customers that the global semiconductor shortage will delay some vehicle deliveries by a minimum of six weeks.

An early version of a letter to customers leaked this week on a Mach-E forum. A Ford spokeswoman on Wednesday said the letter is not yet final and will go out in the coming days, but she did confirm the delay time frame.

Mach-E production at Ford's Cuautitlan, Mexico, assembly plant will continue; the delay concerns vehicles that have already been built and are awaiting chips.

"The global semiconductor shortage continues to affect global automakers and other industries in all parts of the world," Ford said in a statement. "We are working closely with all of our key suppliers to address production constraints tied to this global semiconductor shortage so we can continue to build Mach-E vehicles, and get them to our customers as quickly as we can."

The automaker has been plagued…