Europe

Sales of AvtoVAZ’s Lada cars rose sharply in August as the industry continues to grapple with the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The brand said it sold 18,087 passenger cars during the month – up 75 percent on July. While sales were down 7 percent compared with August 2021, it was the best monthly

Volkswagen Group, Bosch and Foxconn are keeping their workers on-site in their factories in Chengdu after the Chinese metropolis locked down its 21 million residents to contain a COVID-19 outbreak. The automaker’s factory, jointly operated with its local partner FAW, entered a so-called “closed loop system” Thursday evening to maintain production, a company representative said

The Federal Court of Australia has ordered Mercedes-Benz to pay a A$12.5 million ($8.49 million) fine for failing to communicate to customers the urgency in recalling its “potentially deadly” airbags, the country’s competition regulator said. The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) said in a statement that the automaker admitted it had breached the country’s

Porsche is planning a big new hire in the lead up to its probable initial public offering. The Volkswagen Group-owned sports-car maker intends to appoint Sajjad Khan to its executive board, according to an emailed statement. Khan was chief technology officer at rival Mercedes-Benz until a year ago, when he left to start a venture

Herbert Diess’s master plan for beating Tesla hinged on replacing factory workers with 10,000 software workers who would transform Volkswagen Group into a tech player. Instead, after two years of VW electric car customers angrily stabbing at screens and board members at the world’s second-largest automaker pointing fingers, Diess has been forced out. Porsche boss

BMW has started producing the fuel-cell systems for its hydrogen-powered iX5 crossover, moving forward with a climate-friendly alternative fuel that its German rivals don’t expect to be viable in passenger cars. “Hydrogen will become more relevant in individual mobility due to its advantages,” CEO Oliver Zipse said Wednesday at an opening event for the production

PARIS — China’s Geely Automobile Holdings and an oil group are in talks about taking stakes in the fossil-fuel engine unit that Renault plans to separate from its electric vehicle business, two sources close to the French automaker said. But Renault’s alliance partner, Nissan, does not plan to take a stake in the combustion engine

PRAGUE — Skoda’s Vision 7S concept previews the biggest of three all-electric cars the brand plans to launch by 2026. The seven-seat crossover features a fresh design language and a new brand identity that Skoda said will better help differentiate it from rivals and other Volkswagen Group brands. Unveiling the Vision 7S here on Tuesday, Skoda

Talga Group has waited for more than a decade to go ahead with a graphite mine in Sweden that could supply enough battery material to power two million electric cars a year and reduce the continent’s dependence on China. Yet after some signs of progress, the Australian company is back in administrative limbo on its

STAVANGER, Norway — Tesla CEO Elon Musk aims to get the automaker’s self-driving technology ready by year-end and hopes it could be in wide release in the United States and possibly in Europe, depending on regulatory approval. Musk said his attention was currently focused on his SpaceX Starship spacecraft and self-driving Tesla cars. “The two

TOKYO — Honda will slash production plans by up to 40 percent in Japan early in September due to persistent supply chain and logistical issues. The news comes even Japanese automakers have been cautiously optimistic that chips shortage that caused repeated production cutback is easing. Honda‘s assembly plant in Saitama prefecture, north of Tokyo, will

California moved to require all new vehicles sold in the state by 2035 to be either all-electric or plug-in electric hybrids, a landmark move that could speed the end of gasoline-powered vehicles. The California Air Resources Board voted unanimously on Thursday to adopt Advanced Clean Cars II, a statewide plan that mandates 100 percent zero-emission

Audi will join Formula One starting in 2026 as the Volkswagen Group brand bets it can bolster its business by competing in the popular racing circuit. F1 racing intends to switch to cars running on synthetic fuel from 2026 as part of a plan to become carbon neutral by the end of the decade. The

THE HAGUE — The Chinese automaker BYD, the world’s biggest seller of full-electric cars, will expand in Europe starting this year with three models: the Atto 3 compact crossover, the Tang large SUV and the Han large sedan, executives said. BYD began selling the Tang on a pilot basis in Norway in August 2021. In

Japan’s three biggest automakers are facing the greatest risk from climate change among global auto companies because much of their manufacturing remains concentrated in the island nation, according to a study by Greenpeace. Toyota, Honda and Nissan will face major challenges ranging from hurricanes and flooding to high temperatures and water shortages, in the coming

Porsche has lined up investor interest for its initial public offering at a valuation of as much as $85 billion, signaling one of Europe’s biggest-ever listings is poised to go ahead despite market headwinds, according to people familiar with the matter. Volkswagen Group’s sports-car brand has secured pre-orders that exceed the shares on offer at

Mercedes-Benz has started production of the EQS SUV as it expands its all-electric lineup in its attempt to catch up to EV front-runner Tesla. The EQS SUV will be the brand’s flagship full-electric SUV and is being built for global markets including Europe at Mercedes’s U.S. plant in Vance, Alabama. It’s the third model based

MADRID — Stellantis has halted its Opel car factory in Zaragoza in northern Spain for five shifts due to a shortage of semiconductors, labor union CCOO said. The plant announced it would suspend production from Thursday evening and resume output on Monday, a union representative told Reuters. Opel declined to comment. A chip shortage has

NEW DELHI — Mercedes-Benz plans to take pole position in India’s luxury electric vehicle market, its country head told Reuters, helping to cement its title as the top-selling luxury car brand and keep ahead of rival Tesla. Mercedes will launch three electric cars in India this year and will be the first company to build

BARCELONA — Ford said it is delaying its production investments in Spain, citing a “revised outlook for Europe” but said it remained committed to its plant in Valencia. The automaker will not ask for a share of Spain’s EU pandemic relief funds to invest in the roll out of EVs by June 2025, Ford said

Mercedes and Nissan’s years-old vehicle and engine-sharing collaboration will move another step toward unraveling in March when production ends at a Tennessee engine plant built specifically to share. Nissan will “suspend operations at the powertrain facility in Decherd pending future product announcements,” Nissan North America spokesman Brian Brockman said of the East Tennessee plant that

TOKYO — A widening scandal at Hino Motors over falsification of engine data has become a headache that will not go away for parent Toyota, adding to a difficult year already complicated by multiple production halts. Hino, Toyota‘s truck and bus unit, said on Monday it would suspend shipments of small trucks after a transport

PARIS — Production at Renault and Stellantis car plants in France will resume in a more normal manner than at the end of August last year, when chip shortages led to a series of production halts, spokespersons for both companies said. A Renault spokeswoman said the automaker expects production to resume normally in September after

Orral Nadjari, the founder and CEO of UK battery startup Britishvolt, will step down from his leadership position, the company said.  Deputy CEO and president of global operations Graham Hoare, a longtime auto industry executive, will be interim CEO, Britishvolt said Friday in a news release.  Nadjari, a former investment banker based in Abu Dhabi,

STUTTGART — Porsche expects to build as many units of its full-electric Macan compact SUV as the combustion engine version. “We produce more than 80,000 units per year of the current generation. In the long term, we also plan to produce the all-electric Macan on this scale,” production boss Albrecht Reimold told Automotive News Europe

LONDON — The Mulliner Batur coupe gives an early preview of the design language that Bentley is developing for its first full-electric car. The Batur is restricted to just 18 examples and will cost just under 2 million pounds ($2.44 million) in its UK home market. The car has been developed by the Volkswagen Group

WASHINGTON — U.S. auto safety regulators will extend a deadline for public input on General Motors and Ford Motor petitions seeking to deploy a limited number of self-driving vehicles without human controls like steering wheels and brake pedals. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday made the 30-day extension of the public comment on

WASHINGTON — U.S. auto safety regulators on Thursday asked Tesla to answer questions about its cabin camera as part of a probe into 830,000 Tesla vehicles that employ the automaker’s advanced driver assistance system called Autopilot. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in June upgraded its probe opened in 2021 to assess the performance of

LONDON – The UK has set out its roadmap for the rollout of self-driving vehicles on its roads by 2025, announcing plans for new laws and 100 million pounds ($119 million) of funding. The government said on Friday in a statement that it wanted to take advantage of the emerging market for autonomous vehicles, which

ZURICH — The Geneva auto show scheduled to take place in February has been cancelled for the fourth year running. Organizers of the event are switching its traditionally chilly venue in alpine Europe to the balmy Middle East. They will focus on a complementary motor show, the Geneva International Motor Show Qatar, due to be