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Departing President Donald Trump pardoned Anthony Levandowski, saving the engineer from more than a year in prison for stealing trade secrets from his former employer, Alphabet’s Waymo. The pardon was supported by venture capitalist and Trump supporter Peter Thiel, virtual-reality developer Palmer Luckey and former Walt Disney executive Michael Ovitz, among others, according to a

Aurora has made no secret its first foray into autonomous driving will come aboard big rigs. The self-driving tech company underpinned that strategy in a big way Tuesday, unveiling a partnership with truck manufacturer PACCAR. The two companies plan to collaborate on integrating Aurora’s virtual driver onto Kenworth and Peterbilt trucks. While there’s not yet

Nissan Motor Co. is moving to promote all contract workers in Japan to full-time positions as the automaker’s push to cut fixed costs gives it more room to invest in its talent pool. About 800 contract employees will become full-time employees from April, Azusa Momose, a spokeswoman for the company said, confirming an earlier Bloomberg

Unifor members ratified a three-year contract with General Motors that includes a $787 million (C$1 billion) investment commitment at CAMI Assembly in Ingersoll, Ontario, to begin building all-electric delivery vans later this year. According to a post on Unifor Local 88’s website, 91 per cent of CAMI workers who voted cast a ballot in favor

Shares in Stellantis rose as much as 7.5 percent on their first trading day on Monday after the company was created on Saturday with the completion of the merger between Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Peugeot maker PSA Group. “We have the scale, the resources, the diversity and the knowhow to successfully capture the opportunities of this

Unifor said it had to make “hard decisions” to secure the future of General Motors’ CAMI Assembly plant, which would begin building all-electric delivery vans later this year under the terms of a surprise, three-year tentative contract. “The stakes going in to these negotiations were incredibly high,” reads a joint message to union members by

Stellantis is here, and that means some of the seven brands that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is bringing to the table might not be around for much longer. The high points of the post-merger blueprint in North America are no secret: Churn out as many Ram pickups as possible and push Jeep into higher price points

DETROIT — An unidentified quality issue is affecting the launch of one of Ford Motor Co.’s most anticipated new vehicles. The company said it is holding onto “several hundred” Mustang Mach-E crossovers to perform extra inspections and engineering analysis that could delay delivery to customers in the U.S. and Canada by up to 8 weeks.

MILAN — Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Group completed their $52 billion tie-up and formally merged into Stellantis on Saturday. The merger will create an auto group with combined annual sales of around 8.1 million vehicles and deep enough pockets to fund the shift to electric driving and take on bigger rivals Toyota and Volkswagen

DETROIT — Matt VanDyke, Ford Motor Co.’s director of marketing, will soon become the CEO of the company’s FordDirect joint venture with dealers. VanDyke, 48, will take the reins of the digital lead-generating company Feb. 1. He replaces Diane Craig, who became president of Ford’s International Markets Group this month. “Matt VanDyke has been an

TOKYO — Kia is dumping “Motors” from its corporate name as part of a global brand relaunch meant to position the South Korea automaker as a mover in electric vehicles and new mobility. In changing its name to Kia Corp., from Kia Motors Corp., the company is reaching for a new identity that better reflects

General Motors is working on a strategy to build at least one new electric vehicle inspired by its Corvette sports car, potentially expanding the brand from a single performance model into a family of vehicles, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. If the plan is approved, the most likely model to emerge later this

WASHINGTON — U.S. traffic deaths jumped dramatically after coronavirus lockdowns ended in 2020, rising 13.1 percent in the three months ending Sept. 30 to the highest rate since 2005 despite a decline in driving, auto safety regulators said on Wednesday. In total, 11,260 people died on U.S. roads in the third quarter of 2020, up

Supplier Denso Corp. announced Seiji Maeda as its new CEO of North American operations, a move effective Jan. 1. Maeda, 55 who also serves as a senior director for Denso, replaced Kenichiro Ito in the role. Ito, 58, who served as the North American CEO since 2016, is now Denso’s chief human resources officer in

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles plans to help Archer, a California startup, try to reduce production costs on a proposed electric aircraft designed to reduce traffic congestion and pollution. The automaker’s low-cost supply chain and expertise in advanced materials and engineering will help to make Archer’s vehicle more affordable, the companies said in statement Tuesday. Archer said

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration agreed on Tuesday to an auto industry request to delay the start of dramatically higher penalties for companies that fail to meet fuel efficiency requirements, a move that could save the industry hundreds of millions of dollars or more.  The decision — announced eight days before President-elect Joe Biden takes

Industry groups including the National Automobile Dealers Association and American Bankers Association say they are evaluating their political contributions after last week’s invasion of the U.S. Capitol, described by NADA as “shocking, tragic and condemnable.” The assessments come after a growing list of major corporations such as Ford Motor Co. said they would temporarily suspend

Electric vehicle maker Lucid Motors Inc. is in talks to go public through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition companies run by former Citigroup rainmaker Michael Klein, according to people familiar with the matter. A transaction could be valued at up to $15 billion, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter

DETROIT — In April 2018, Richard Bazzy, who owns Ford and Lincoln stores in the Pittsburgh area, placed a frantic call to Mark LaNeve, Ford Motor Co.’s head of U.S. marketing, sales and service. The automaker had just announced it would cut all of its sedans, including the Fusion, which was Ford’s fourth most popular

SEOUL — Hyundai Motor Co. and Apple Inc. plan to sign a partnership deal on autonomous EVs by March and start production around 2024 in the U.S., a Korean newspaper reported on Sunday. The report by Korea IT News follows a statement on Friday from Hyundai Motor that it was in early talks with Apple after

For the past several years, the first week of January has been especially important for automakers, suppliers and new industry entrants. It’s typically when the Las Vegas Convention Center and the surrounding area are reconfigured to accommodate the test drives, demonstrations and displays that are synonymous with the annual CES. Hotels up and down the

Volkswagen of America is launching its first set of TV commercials for its upcoming ID4 battery-electric compact crossover that aims to drive home the company’s message of delivering electric mobility to the millions, instead of just the millionaires. The spot, which uses a line of zoetropes — a 19th century invention that uses a spinning

Watching a glimpse of the Bell Nexus flying-taxi concept remains a prominent CES memory, but not for reasons you might expect. With its six tilting fans, the vertical-takeoff-and-landing craft was an undeniable showstopper at the 2019 CES. Whether air taxis are a figment of science fiction or a viable mode of travel, for a moment,

NHTSA is creating an initiative for EVs to coordinate research, conduct investigations and develop safety standards related to battery safety. As part of the initiative, the agency on Friday said it will collect and analyze data, conduct special investigations of EV crashes and noncrash events, conduct research on battery diagnostics and prognostics and explore risks

TOKYO — Honda could production in Japan due to a global shortage of automotive microchips. The automaker plans to reduce domestic output by 4,000 units in January, a slowdown mainly affecting the Fit small hatchback at Honda’s Suzuka plant, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Friday. The bottleneck might result in the loss of tens of

Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz complied with Europe’s tighter emissions limits last year as a late surge in plug-in vehicle sales spared the world’s largest luxury-car maker from fines. Mercedes shipped just under 160,000 plug-in hybrid and fully-electric cars in 2020, with the fourth quarter accounting for about half of those deliveries, Daimler CEO Ola Kallenius told reporters

DETROIT — Jeep’s Grand Cherokee will offer a third-row option by midyear, broadening the SUV’s reach into a competitive segment. The three-row model, scheduled to be revealed Thursday, will be known as the Grand Cherokee L. Jeep said production will start this quarter and that the vehicles will begin reaching dealerships in the second quarter.

Much like the phrase “horseless carriage” fell from favor in describing motorized vehicles, might “self-driving” someday be replaced with a better way to delineate cars controlled by computers? Waymo would like to leave “self-driving” for the history books. Starting Wednesday, the Google subsidiary said it will leave the term in its rearview mirror. Instead, Waymo

Rivian Automotive Inc., the electric-truck startup backed by Amazon.com Inc. and Ford Motor Co., is close to raising a new round of funding valuing it at about $25 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Several existing Rivian investors are participating in the round, which will raise several billion dollars, the people added, asking

Shirley Young, an executive who played an instrumental role in General Motors’ expansion in China during the 1990s, died Dec. 26. She was 85. Young helped steer GM’s billion-dollar investment in China through a joint venture with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. She died of complications from breast cancer, David Hsieh, one of her sons, told