Europe

SEOUL — Hyundai Motor Group has committed to a spend of around 24 trillion won ($18.2 billion) by 2030 as it seeks to increase production of electric vehicles. The group, which also set itself a goal of becoming one of the world’s top three EV makers, plans to boost its annual output of electric cars

ROME — Ferrari will use Samsung Display’s organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display panels in future models. The South Korean company will develop “bespoke OLED technology display solutions” for the next generation of Ferrari cars, the automaker’s CEO Benedetto Vigna said in a statement on Tuesday. No financial details were disclosed. Vigna has previously said that

As Bruce Qvale crossed a street in downtown Paris last month, a vehicle with a familiar octagonal badge caught his eye as it passed by. Says Qvale: “It’s a normal-looking crossover, but it’s got MG badges on the front and back.” His reaction: “That’s an MG?” In the 43 years since the last MGB roadster

LOS ANGELES — Electric vehicle maker Polestar is witnessing the downside of the “asset-light” strategy that is key to its rapid growth plan. To operate fast and easy, Polestar is reliant on global partners to help produce its models. But when those partners can’t deliver according to plan, Polestar’s strategy can slow down its growth.

TOKYO – New Toyota Motor Corp. CEO Koji Sato, warning that the industry is in a “life or death situation,” plans to turbocharge the company’s EV sales to 1.5 million vehicles in 2026 with the help of a newly developed platform and local production of a three-row full-electric crossover in North America. The new dedicated EV

Jaguar Land Rover expects free cash flow of around 500 million pounds ($622 million) for the full financial year. While that’s half the forecast of more than 1 billion pounds it gave back in 2022, it significantly exceeds a more recent estimate as supply chain snarls that dented business in the second quarter eased. JLR,

Volkswagen Group believes that electric-vehicle incentives put in place by President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act will help the company more than double its share of the U.S. market. The German carmaker plans to sell 25 full-electric models in the U.S. by 2030, all of which should qualify for the maximum $7,500 in tax credits

SAN FRANCISCO — Tesla said it plans to expand the use of cheaper, iron-based batteries to a version of its Semi heavy electric trucks and an affordable electric vehicle. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has championed the lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery technology dominated by Chinese suppliers, saying in March, “the vast majority of the heavy

The Citroen C3, a small crossover built in India and Brazil, was the only model from a European automaker to win a category at the 2023 Word Car of the Year awards, in an edition dominated by Hyundai and Kia. The New C3, as it is known in India, a completely different model from the

Jaguar Land Rover expects free cash flow of over 800 million pounds (about $1 billion) for the quarter ending March 31, boosted by a 24 percent rise in wholesale volumes as chip and other supply constraints eased, the luxury carmaker said on Thursday. Tata Motors, which acquired the UK automaker in 2008, had set a

It sounds inconceivable that Europe’s plan to usher in the age of electric vehicles almost went awry because of a prohibitively expensive technology that is virtually unavailable, but that is exactly what happened. For several weeks last month, Germany refused to back the European Union’s effective ban of new combustion-engine cars from 2035, demanding that

New-car registrations in the UK rose for the eighth consecutive month in March, recording 18 percent growth from a year earlier, and also marked the best month ever for full-electric car sales, the UK’s auto industry body, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), said New-car registrations jumped to 287,825 units as supply chain

Chinese automakers have started making inroads into Germany after they targeted Europe’s biggest market to offset their tough domestic market. The Lynk & CO brand increased sales in Germany by 356 percent to 429 units in March, data from the KBA motor transport authority showed. SAIC-owned MG‘s volume grew by 271 percent to 2,010 vehicles.

Stellantis and BMW are in talks with Panasonic Holdings about teaming up to build electric vehicle battery plants in North America, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the talks. Global automakers are investing billions of dollars to set up battery plants for electric vehicles, as demand surges for less polluting transport

Legacy automakers have been sounding optimistic lately about vehicle sales in China heading higher following the great reopening. Volkswagen Group CEO Oliver Blume seemed to come away bullish from his visit in February, and others such as BMW have offered similarly positive sentiment. That near-term swagger hides an uncomfortable point for established automakers: Many of

As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sat in the Oval Office last month she gushed before the cameras about the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act. “It’s great that there is such a massive investment in wind and clean technologies now,” she said of America’s green awakening. It was not until the press shuffled out

PARIS — Sales of new cars in France surged 23 percent in March compared with the 2022, extending a streak of sales gains to eight months as shortages of components that constrained production continue to ease. There were 182,713 passenger vehicles sold in March, according to the trade group PFA. For the year, the market

LONDON — Chinese luxury electric-vehicle maker Human Horizons will launch its premium HiPhi brand in some European markets later this year as the company looks to expand overseas, the automaker’s co-founder, Mark Stanton, said. Stanton told Reuters the automaker would announce which European countries it would enter at the Shanghai auto show in April but

Volkswagen will not develop a new generation Golf with a combustion engine after the current model reaches the end of its lifecycle. The current, eighth-generation Golf will get a comprehensive update next year. “That puts it in a great position until the end of the decade. Then we will have to see how the segment

Europe’s biggest automakers posted record profits in 2022 despite largely flat sales and supply chain and logistics problems.  Net profits rose 22 percent to a record total of 67.8 billion euros ($73.6 billion) at the six largest Europe-based automakers: BMW Group, Mercedes-Benz, Renault Group, Stellantis, Volkswagen Group and Volvo Car (see table, below), plus the

PARIS — Renault’s new CMF-B EV platform, which will underpin the coming Renault 5 small full-electric car due in 2024, will share 70 percent of components with the CMF-B internal-combustion-engine platform and be 30 percent cheaper to manufacture than existing EV platforms, the automaker said. The architecture and a new EV powertrain are undergoing prototype

TOKYO — Nissan and Renault are working well together to sign a final agreement about the reshaping of their alliance and are confident that a deal will be reached soon, Nissan said in a statement on Friday. The automaker was responding to an earlier report by Japanese news agency Jiji which said that the final

MEXICO CITY — Faurecia opened a $147 million plant in Mexico to make car seats and interiors, the company said, the latest in a string of auto sector investments driving the country’s so-called “nearshoring” boom. Faurecia said it expects the plant in the northern border state of Nuevo Leon, serving clients such as Volvo and

SANT’AGATA BOLOGNESE, Italy — Lamborghini is adopting a cautious stance toward e-fuels, in contrast to its competitors Ferrari and Porsche, who see them as a way to continue to market internal-combustion engine cars in Europe after 2035, when the EU will allow only zero-emission vehicles to be sold. Stephan Winkelmann, the chairman and CEO of

KG Mobility, the South Korean automaker formerly known as SsangYong Motor before going through bankruptcy, is seeking to revive its fortunes with a $30,000 full-electric SUV. The carmaker Thursday unveiled four new vehicles at the Seoul Mobility Show, including the Torres EVX, its first electric car since conglomerate KG Group bought a majority stake in the

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said that e-fuels, which have received an exemption from policymakers in Brussels to the EU’s 2035 zero-emissions target for new cars, will not “significantly” change the trajectory of the auto industry.  “We are well on our way to deliver the electrification that is expected from the EU,” Tavares said at Stellantis’ first

FRANKFURT — Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund, Mercedes-Benz’s third-largest shareholder, is planning to reduce its stake in the automaker via the sale of 20 million shares, according to bookrunners. At price guidance of 69.27 euros apiece, this could earn 1.385 billion euros ($1.5 billion) for the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), which would reduce its stake to

MUNICH — Former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler is likely to become the first top executive to be convicted in parent Volkswagen Group’s diesel emissions scandal. A Munich court gave a preliminary assessment on Tuesday that an accusation of fraud had been substantiated. Stadler, and three other defendants who were engineers, were charged in 2020 over

European Union officials signed off on a deal that effectively ends the sale of most new combustion-engines from 2035 after Germany received provisions for how certain high-end vehicles such as Ferraris and Porsches may get a future exemption if they run solely on e-fuels. Energy ministers from the bloc’s 27 member states formally adopted rules

Ferrari and Porsche will benefit from plans to exempt cars that run on e-fuels from the European Union’s planned 2035 phase-out of combustion engine vehicles. “The good news for us as a company is that on top of electric cars, we will also be able to go on with our internal combustion engines ones,” CEO