Tag Archives: automakers

CNBC reports: The United Auto Workers union plans to strike against General Motors following the two sides not reaching a tentative deal before a Saturday night deadline. The strike, depending on its length, could easily cost GM hundreds of millions of dollars. The last time the union declared a strike at GM was in 2007. The two-day work stoppage was …

The Verge reports: The federal government should rewrite the safety rules for automobile manufacturing so self-driving carmakers can deploy vehicles without traditional controls like steering wheels and pedals, according to public comments submitted by top car and tech companies. “We urge [the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration] to move ahead promptly to remove the regulatory barriers the agency has identified,” …

CNBC reports: Lido Anthony Iacocca, the automobile industry legend best known as “Lee,” died at the age of 94 on Tuesday morning, his family confirmed. A child of Italian immigrants who grow up in humble conditions, Iacocca became one of the most powerful — and best known — executives in Detroit. Iacocca rose to become president of Ford Motor in …

NBC News reports: A sprawling General Motors assembly plant near Youngstown was idled on Wednesday after more than 50 years producing cars and other vehicles, a move that will eliminate nearly 1,700 hourly positions by month’s end. GM announced late last year that Lordstown along with three plants in the U.S. and one in Canada would close by early next …

Bloomberg reports: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission asked a judge to hold Elon Musk in contempt for violating his Oct. 16 settlement with the agency requiring him to seek pre-approval from Tesla Inc. for social media posts and other written communication that would be material to the company or investors, Bloomberg News reports. CNBC reports: The SEC’s enforcement action …

Reuters reports: Volkswagen will develop its final generation of vehicles using combustion engine technology in 2026, the company’s strategy chief said today. VW made a strategy shift toward battery-driven vehicles in the wake of a damaging diesel-emissions cheating scandal in 2015, which forced the carmaker to pay billions of dollars in fines for hiding excessive pollution. “In the year 2026 …

ABC News reports: President Donald Trump, in a tweet early Thursday morning, downplayed General Motors’ announcement it was shuttering several U.S. factories and laying off thousands of American workers, claiming it was an anomaly among the broader “booming” U.S. economy. In doing so, though, the president repeated his frequent false claim that steel plants are opening all over the country. …

CNBC reports: President Donald Trump will consider cutting all subsidies to General Motors after the company announced plans to slash productions at several American plants, he said Tuesday. The automaker’s shares fell following the tweet and were down more than 2 percent on Tuesday afternoon. The tweet escalates the president’s public threats against GM as he pushes the company to …

The Chicago Tribune reports: General Motors will lay off 14,700 factory and white-collar workers in North America and put five plants up for possible closure as it restructures to cut costs and focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles. The reduction includes 8,100 white-collar workers, some of whom will take buyouts and others who will be laid off. Most of …

USA Today reports: Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co.’s influential chairman Carlos Ghosn was fired and arrested Monday after an internal probe found he underreported his salary and for other financial violations, including the personal use of company assets, the firm and Japanese state media said. Nissan said in a statement that Ghosn would be dismissed after an internal probe based …

Axios reports: Sale of the one millionth electric vehicle in the U.S. is likely to occur this month, according to an estimate by the group Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE) that’s based on data compiled by Inside EVs. It’s a symbolic threshold that signals growing adoption of the technology, even though it remains a small part of the overall U.S. …

Reuters reports: A federal appeals court on Monday upheld Volkswagen’s $10.03 billion settlement with the owners of nearly 500,000 polluting diesel vehicles announced in 2016. The three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said, in dismissing a number of objections to the settlement, that it “delivered tangible, substantial benefits to class members, seemingly the equivalent of — …

The Washington Post reports: For as long as Donald Trump has been president, he has been threatening to slap tariffs on foreign carmakers to stop flashy German vehicles from “flooding” American streets. On Friday, he repeated the threat and attached a specific number, tweeting about a 20 percent tariff on all automobile imports from Europe. Car tariffs are shaping up …

NPR reports: Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says his government “cannot accept” new U.S. tariffs on imported automobiles, as is reportedly being considered as a possible next move by the White House. President Trump last week launched an investigation into whether auto imports posed a national security risk to the U.S., a justification that might be used to raise the …

CNBC reports: President Donald Trump is preparing to impose a total ban on German luxury carmakers from the U.S. market, according to an exclusive report by German magazine WirtschaftsWoche. Citing several unnamed U.S. and European diplomats, the weekly business magazine reported that Trump told French President Emmanuel Macron last month he would maintain his trade policy with the aim of …

Bloomberg reports: Automakers urged the White House to cooperate with California officials in a coming rewrite of vehicle efficiency standards, saying “climate change is real.” The plea came in a letter to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the industry’s leading trade group. It said carmakers “strongly support” continued alignment between federal …

The BBC reports: Carmaker Volvo has said all new models will have an electric motor from 2019. The Chinese-owned firm, best known for its emphasis on driver safety, has become the first traditional carmaker to signal the end of the internal combustion engine. It plans to launch five fully electric models between 2019 and 2021 and a range of hybrid …

So much for “clean diesel.” NBC News reports: Volkswagen will pay a $4.3 billion penalty for diesel emissions rigging, the U.S. Justice Department and several other federal agencies announced on Wednesday. As a result of the criminal investigation into the diesel scandal, regulators also revealed that six executives have been indicted on charges ranging from wire fraud to conspiracy to …

Think Progress reports: On Sunday, FCA US, the parent company of Fiat and Chrysler, announced that it will spend $1 billion to expand plants in Michigan and Ohio and create 2,000 more jobs in the U.S. The move, as the company made clear in its press release, is simply the next phase in an expansion plan it announced last year …

CNBC reports: General Motors disputed the facts in Donald Trump’s Tuesday morning attack on the automaker, saying it makes most of its Chevy Cruze models in the United States. The company said in a statement that “all Chevrolet Cruze sedans sold in the U.S.” are made at an assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio. It clarified that it builds hatchback models …