Europe

Manufacturers from Tesla to Volkswagen are pursuing self-driving cars. Ferrari is having none of it. The Italian supercar maker recently hosted a couple of artificial intelligence experts who wanted to pitch why Ferrari should embrace autonomous driving. CEO Benedetto Vigna instead invited them to take a spin in a Ferrari on the company’s Fiorano racetrack.

BERLIN — Audi has filed a lawsuit in a Munich court against Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio over an alleged infringement of the Volkswagen Group subsidiary’s trademark rights, German newspaper Handelsblatt reported on Thursday. Audi believes that Nio’s decision to name two of its models ES6 and ES8 infringes on Audi’s trademark for its S6

Volkswagen Group and its Porsche unit have agreed to a class-action settlement worth at least $80 million to resolve claims it skewed emissions and fuel economy data on 500,000 Porsche vehicles in the U.S., court documents show. The settlement, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, must be approved by a federal judge and

Nineteen young and talented automotive executives have been honored as Rising Stars within the automotive industry by Automotive News Europe. A gala awards dinner to celebrate the 2022 Rising Stars winners will take place July 13 in Prague. Since the program was started in 2011, Automotive News Europe has awarded more than 220 Rising Stars.

PARIS — The software-defined, connected car will fundamentally alter the relationship between automakers and their customers, Renault CEO Luca de Meo said, with opportunities to make the car better at the end of its life cycle than at the beginning. “I believe it will really change the experience of owning a vehicle,” de Meo said

Striking truckers in South Korea reached an agreement with the government, ending a weeklong strike that added to the strain on global supply chains. The truck drivers will immediately resume their duties after agreeing to extend a freight rate system guaranteeing minimum wages, according to a statement from the Cargo Truckers Solidarity division of the

PARIS — Valeo will supply Stellantis with its third-generation Scala lidar to enable SAE Level 3 autonomous driving in the automaker’s models, starting in 2024. Valeo and Stellantis did not offer financial details of the contract or on which cars will get the system, but said it would appear on “multiple models” across Stellantis’ brands. 

Russia will spend 30 billion rubles ($526 million) this year to boost domestic production of car parts and replace imports, Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov told RBC TV on Monday. His comments to RBC were reported by Interfax. Russia’s top automaker AvtoVAZ resumed production of its best-selling Lada Granta model on June 8, after partially

The digital revolution is transforming every aspect of auto industry, and as one of the world’s biggest tech players, Google is among the companies that is driving this transition. Google’s automotive products include cloud services, Android operating systems, maps and advertising, among others. A key member of Google’s team in Europe is Christian Richter, the

SEOUL — Production at Hyundai’s biggest factory complex fell by half on Thursday because of component shortages caused by a truckers’ strike in South Korea, a union official at the automaker said. The automaker’s Ulsan plants operated at about 50 percent to 60 percent of capacity due to parts procurement issues caused by the strike.

Russia’s Industry Ministry expects car sales to halve in 2022 as the country’s automobile industry grapples with supply issues, a senior official said. “We saw a sharp fall (in car sales) in April and May,” Tigran Parsadanyan, deputy head of the ministry’s automotive and railway engineering department, said on Thursday. “We expect that some 750,000

Ferrari plans to significantly expand its factory in northern Italy as part of the electrification strategy it will unveil during a highly anticipated briefing next week, according to people familiar with the matter. The automaker has snapped up space near its Maranello plant and started clearing the way for a third production line that will

Volkswagen Group will sell its first electric car, the ID4 SUV, in India in limited quantities next year as the South Asian nation pushes for faster adoption of cleaner vehicles. The automaker will begin testing the ID4 around September for its technical capabilities and if any adaptations are needed for local weather conditions, Ashish Gupta,

LONDON — Jaguar has denied a report that it is ending production of the XE and XF in the UK, saying it intends to resume building the sedans at an unspecified date in the future. French auto analyst Inovev said Jaguar had ceased production of the sedans at its factory in Castle Bromwich, England, in

BERLIN — Volkswagen Group and Mercedes-Benz signaled that they consider the European Union’s plan to enforce a 100 percent reduction in passenger-car CO2 emissions by 2035 to be achievable. The regulation will have the effect of outlawing sales of new cars with internal-combustion engines in the bloc after that date. The European Parliament backed the

Volkswagen Group is offering compensation to employees at a car assembly plant in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, if they agree to quit voluntarily. The offer of financial compensation and medical insurance until the end of 2022 is available to about 200 people working at the plant, a VW spokesperson said. The VW Taos compact crossover, along

The hydrogen revolution is coming. Or is it? The clean-burning fuel has the potential to revolutionize road transport, offering zero emissions with the ability to refuel in minutes. But a lack of infrastructure and high costs have been barriers to implementation. Suppliers, automakers and startups are working on all aspects of the hydrogen fuel cell

European Union lawmakers voted to uphold a ban on new combustion engine cars from 2035 despite attempts by industry groups and conservative politicians to weaken the proposal. The European Parliament on Wednesday rejected an amendment that would have eased a requirement on carmakers to cut emissions to a 90 percent reduction by 2035, instead of

Western European new car sales could dip below the 10 million mark this year because of continuing supply chain issues, forecaster LMC Automotive said this month. LMC’s forecast of 9.81 million passenger cars sold in the region would be only two-thirds of the pre-pandemic level of 14.29 million in 2019. That figure is 7.4 percent

TERRAMAR, Spain — Volkswagen Group’s Cupra brand has set a target of 500,000 sales a year by 2025 — more than the combined 2021 sales of Cupra and Seat, VW’s other Spanish brand. Cupra sold 79,327 cars in 2021, with the Formentor compact crossover the most popular model with 54,595 units sold. Cupra had said earlier

Solid Power, a developer of solid-state batteries for electric vehicles, aims to begin shipping pre-production battery cells by year-end for validation testing by partners BMW and Ford Motor, the company said. In an interview, Doug Campbell, Solid Power’s CEO and co-founder, said the Colorado company has set up a pilot production line to provide validation

New-car registrations in Britain tumbled nearly 21 percent last month, the second weakest May in three decades after lockdown-hit 2020, as persisting supply challenges hampered sales and deliveries despite robust demand, industry data showed. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said sales in the UK fell to 124,394 units last month, while full-electric

BERLIN — Ford plans to significantly cut production at its Focus compact car plant in Saarlouis, Germany, unions say. Output at the plant, whose long-term future is in doubt, will be reduced after August 29, Automotive News Europe’s sister publication Automobilwoche reported, citing works council boss Markus Thal. The latest production cut will further increase

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the electric vehicle maker’s total headcount will increase over the next 12 months, but the number of salaried staff should be little changed, backtracking from an email just two days ago saying that job cuts of 10 percent were needed. “Total headcount will increase, but salaried should be fairly flat,”

PARIS — France has put in place new rules that make it harder to profitably “flip” new electric cars bought with state incentives, including requiring owners to keep the car for a year before they can resell it. Under the new French rules, owners must keep their new EV for 12 months instead of six,

BERLIN — Elon Musk’s demand that Tesla staff stop “phoning it in” and get back to the office has received criticism from Germany’s largest trade union. The Tesla CEO waded into the future of work debate by telling staff at the automaker that they must return to the office for at least 40 hours a

SAN FRANCISCO — Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a “super bad feeling” about the economy and wants to cut about 10 percent of jobs worldwide at the automaker, he said in an email to executives seen by Reuters. The message, sent on Thursday and titled “pause all hiring worldwide,” came two days after the billionaire

AvtoVAZ said it will resume production of its best-selling Lada Granta model from June 8, after partially halting production in March due to a shortage of electronic parts because of Western sanctions on Moscow. Renault struck a deal in May to sell its majority stake in AvtoVAZ to a Russian science institute, reportedly for the

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK — The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday charged the U.S. business of Stellantis with criminal conspiracy in its multi-year emissions fraud probe surrounding vehicles with diesel engines. The government charges FCA US with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. to violate the Clean Air Act and to commit wire fraud. The automaker deceived U.S.

BERLIN – BMW is still working out how to make good on a promise to build the world’s first fossil-free plant in Hungary, from how much energy can be generated on-site to how much storage will be needed, the automaker’s production chief, Milan Nedeljkovic, said. BMW will build its next-generation full-electic cars underpinned by its