Europe

NaaS Technology, a NASDAQ-listed Chinese company providing battery charging for electric vehicles, has signed a deal to acquire its Swedish counterpart Charge Amps for 724 million SEK ($66.4 million).  The deal represents a major step forward in its global expansion, NasS said this week.  Charge Amps, incorporated in Stockholm in 2012. It is Sweden’s second

LONDON — Britain is working on a battery strategy that calls for views from companies, investors and battery designers, as it seeks to attract more investment into an industry that is key to its net zero goals. The Department for Business and Trade said in a statement that its strategy will be published in the

Electric-first automakers such as Tesla and Nio outshined established brands such as Jaguar Land Rover and Toyota in a new ranking that grades companies on their software skills. The Digital Automaker Index was created by consultancy Gartner to assess automakers in eight software-centric-areas. Those scores are tabulated to come up with an overall ranking, which

At 9 p.m. on Sept. 22 last year, a group of City of London police officers waited outside room M15 at the Travelodge Bicester, a one-star budget hotel in Oxfordshire, England, for the right moment to bust in. On the other side of the door was someone they believed to be behind two serious data

Chinese HiPhi luxury EV brand will continue its push for exposure in Europe with a display at the Munich IAA Mobility auto show.  The company, which was founded in 2019 as part of a startup, Human Horizons, has already started sales of two models, the X large SUV and Z GT sedan, in Germany and

Volvo Cars says its first full-electric minivan will be like a Scandinavian living room on wheels. The EM90, which Volvo is calling an MPV, short for multipurpose vehicle, is a new twist for the Swedish brand that is better known for SUVs and wagons. Volvo has never offered an MPV or minivan during its 96-year

Synopsys, a U.S. company that makes software for designing semiconductors, said it has completed its acquisition of closely held German software company PikeTec, strengthening its autonomous driving operations. PikeTec is valued in the transaction at more than $200 million, Bloomberg News reported before Synopsys announced the deal Wednesday. Without disclosing the terms, Synopsys said in

BERLIN — Volkswagen Group has begun purchasing strategically important chips it believes will be in short supply globally directly from 10 manufacturers including NXP Semiconductors, Infineon Technologies and Renesas Electronics.. VW previously relied on its component suppliers to purchase chips. The automaker began striking direct deals with chipmakers last October to ensure its supply was

BERLIN — Tesla lowered the production target of its German plant to 4,350 a week in July and August after hitting 5,000 a week in March, and plans to reduce it further, according to a Business Insider report citing internal documents and anonymous sources. The U.S. automaker had posted on X, the social media platform

STOCKHOLM/LONDON — Swedish lithium ion battery producer Northvolt has raised $1.2 billion from investors including BlackRock and several Canadian pension plans as it prepares to build new factories in Europe and North America, its finance chief told Reuters. The fresh funding, through a convertible note, comes as investor demand for companies set to benefit from

Tata Sons is in discussions with multiple startups as the conglomerate seeks technical know-how for its 4 billion pound ($5.1 billion) U.K. battery plant, where it aims to start mass production in 2026. “If you look at the startups that are working in this space, they are at the forefront of technology,” Tata Motors Group

Tesla’s May data breach impacted more than 75,000 people, included employee-related records and was a result of “insider wrongdoing,” according to a notice posted by the office of the Maine Attorney General Friday. A total of 75,735 people were affected by the data breach, including nine residents of Maine. The people appear to be current

BERLIN — German auto supplier Continental is considering the sale of the car division currently bundled within ContiTech, Manager Magazin reported on Monday, citing company sources. The possible sale would be part of a wider reorganization of the company being planned by Supervisory Board Chairman Wolfgang Reitzle and the executive board around CEO Nikolai Setzer,

Stellantis is investing more than $100 million in a California geothermal lithium project that aims to create a more environmentally friendly electric vehicle supply chain. The investment will help make the automaker’s EVs eligible for consumer incentives under the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act. The Hell’s Kitchen project being undertaken near the heavily polluted Salton Sea

TROY, Michigan — Stellantis seeks a larger supply base for green components and will lean on supplier innovations to meet its sustainability targets, the head of the automaker’s circular economy business unit said here. “We want to increase our supplier footprint,” said Alison Jones, head of global circular economy at Stellantis, during a sustainability summit

Ford is putting a $300,000, 800-hp halo atop its Mustang lineup that’s taking aim at European supercars both on the track and in the streets. The 2025 Mustang GTD is billed as the most powerful street-legal pony car ever and is based on the Mustang GT3 race car that will return to Le Mans next

BERLIN — China’s electric-vehicle makers, which have raced past foreign rivals to top sales rankings at home, are arriving in Europe – and facing a new set of challenges. Stereotypes of Chinese manufacturing, import costs, and a less developed EV market are just some of the issues Chinese brands such as BYD, Nio and SAIC’s

LONDON — Lotus Group has promoted Ben Payne to head of design following the death of Peter Horbury at age 73 in June. Payne was formerly chief creative officer at Lotus Technology responsible for the brand’s Chinese-built SUVs and sedans. Based in Coventry, central England, he most recently led the design development team for the

BRUSSELS — The European Commission will carry out a regulatory assessment of Qualcomm’s planned takeover of Israel’s Autotalks. “The Commission has asked Qualcomm to notify the transaction. Qualcomm cannot implement the transaction before notifying and obtaining clearance from the Commission,” the European Commission said. Qualcomm announced the planned takeover in May as the U.S. company

LONDON — Aston Martin said its DB12 Volante high-performance convertible will match the driving abilities of the recently launched DB12 coupe. The DB12 Volante has a fabric roof with a two-stage folding mechanism that Aston Martin says packs away compactly to maximize luggage capacity. It uses the same reworked version of the 4.0-liter, twin-turbo AMG-Mercedes

LONDON — JLR is hiring 300 new employees in the U.K. to help increase testing and production as part of a wider staffing increase amid its shift to electric cars. Among the new positions, 100 technicians will help maintain the company’s body shop at its Solihull plant in central England, following a 70-million-pound ($89 million)

HANOI — Vietnam’s EV champion VinFast has managed to sell Wall Street on a Nasdaq listing that values the loss-making startup at more than $85 billion, almost twice as much as Ford or General Motors. Now comes the hard part: moving overseas growth out of the slow lane. VinFast needs to deliver more than twice

BEIJING — Chinese battery giant CATL has launched a fast-charging lithium iron phosphate or LFP battery capable of running 400 km (248 miles) on a 10-minute charge. Mass production of the new battery called Shenxing is expected by the end of the year while electric vehicles equipped with Shenxing batteries will hit the market in

Tesla reduced U.S. starting prices by $10,000 on its flagship models, the Model S sedan and Model X crossover, by introducing new versions with less battery range and slower acceleration, according to the company’s website. The surprise move is the latest tactic by Tesla CEO Elon Musk to stimulate demand for the automaker’s aging lineup

Electric vehicle startup Fisker said on Tuesday it signed a deal with Tesla to adopt its North American Charging Standard (NACS), giving Fisker customers access to the automaker’s Supercharger network by 2025. A plethora of automakers, including Ford Motor and General Motors are moving away from the standard Combined Charging System (CCS) connector to Tesla’s

Japan is preparing for its second typhoon in a week as Typhoon Lan is forecast to make landfall Tuesday in central Japan near Osaka, the country’s second largest metropolitan area. It’s expected to take a path across the center of the country’s main island — a heavy industrial region with major automobile factories — before

PARIS — Renault‘s Banque division has agreed the sale of its Russian leasing subsidiary to Insight Investment Group, as major Western companies depart in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. “This divestment represents the final step in the withdrawal of RCI Banque SA from the Russian Federation, in line with the decision made by

Hyundai’s fifth-generation Santa Fe will offer a more spacious interior, updated convenience and safety technology and a new boxy styling. The Santa Fe has been completely recast from a family hauler to a “adventuremobile.” The decision, Hyundai says, derived from “big data” that revealed strong consumer interest in lifestyle trends such as “camping and gear-intensive

BERLIN — Semiconductorshortages that have created bottlenecks for Germany’s car industry will take years to resolve despite chipmakers’ plans to build factories in the country, Renate Vachenauer, Audi’s head of procurement, was quoted as saying by a German newspaper. German automakers and electronics producers have been hit hard by manufacturing delays, caused by a global

A patriotic call by BYD, China’s bestselling automaker, to band the industry together and “demolish the old legends” of the global market has gone viral, drawing both raves and a rebuke from a rival. BYD used an event this week to mark a production milestone to celebrate a bigger purpose: the emergence of China as