Europe

FRANKFURT — Volkswagen said it has fulfilled its obligations under a civil settlement over its diesel emissions scandal reached three years ago with the U.S. Department of Justice. Larry Thompson, the former U.S. deputy attorney general appointed by the department to monitor VW, has concluded in his third and final report that the automaker has

MADRID — Patricia Notario’s life started unraveling when she first heard rumors that Nissan would shutter its car factories in Barcelona. It was during Spain’s state of emergency to contain the coronavirus, and the 36-year-old and her partner, also a Nissan employee, were confined to their home like millions of others. The couple had put

ISTANBUL — A Turkish jet executive on trial over Carlos Ghosn’s dramatic escape from Japan told a court on Friday that the former Nissan boss spoke about Hollywood making a movie of his getaway as he flew in a private jet to Beirut. Ghosn, once a leading light of the global car industry, was arrested

FRANKFURT — Daimler will seek to sell its factory in Hambach, France, as the automaker pursues deeper-than-expected restructuring to overcome the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. Daimler, which owns the Mercedes-Benz and Smart brands, had used the Hambach factory to produce electric and combustion-engined variants of its two-seater Smart vehicles, making more than 80,000 cars

Volvo Cars and Swedish supplier Veoneer have completed the split of their automotive software joint venture Zenuity, the companies said Thursday. Under the agreement, Volvo will set up a new wholly owned company to take over Zenuity’s current development and commercialization of unsupervised autonomous driving software. As part of the agreement, Zenuity’s operations and people

BERLIN — Tesla is scaling back plans for its first European car factory, which will no longer assemble batteries, according to revised planning documents for the site near Berlin. The changes include eliminating facilities for battery-pack production and plastic components, local authorities said Wednesday, citing documents filed by the U.S. maker of electric cars to

LONDON — Bentley has spent big to upgrade its top-selling model, the Bentayga, in a bid to hold off new competition such as the Aston Martin DBX. The British ultraluxury automaker has redesigned the SUV to give it a higher positioning, further away from the competition, CEO Adrian Hallmark said in a news release on

The Geneva auto show will not be held in 2021, the organizers have announced. The reasons for the cancellation were lack of interest from automakers as well as the uncertain situation over the control of the coronavirus, the Geneva International Motor Show (GIMS) Foundation said in a statement on Monday. The Geneva event is Europe’s

MILAN — A merger between Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Peugeot maker PSA Group is the best way for the two companies to weather the coronavirus crisis, FCA Chairman John Elkann said. The coronavirus crisis had not delayed plans to finalize the tie-up by the first quarter of next year, Elkann told shareholders at FCA’s annual

PARIS — France’s auto industry group is expecting June car sales to approach normal levels in a strong sign government incentives are helping the sector claw back from a deep slump. La Plateforme Automobile’s data shows vehicle registrations are on pace to be within striking distance of June 2019 results, according to Marc Mortureux, the

Carbon dioxide emissions from new cars in Europe rose for a third year running in 2019, provisional data from the European Union’s environment agency (EEA) showed on Friday, with automakers further lagging the bloc’s upcoming climate goals. The European Commission said car companies must significantly reduce their emissions or risk missing tougher EU targets coming

To say that Luca de Meo starts his tenure as Renault CEO with high expectations might be an understatement. It’s been a rough few years at Renault, which once seemed poised to lead the world’s largest automaker by volume (with alliance partners Nissan and Mitsubishi) but is now struggling just to return to profitability amid

PARIS — PSA Group says that 5 percent of its small van sales next year will be battery-electric versions, a figure that will rise to 15 percent by 2025.  Xavier Peugeot, the head of PSA’s light-commercial vehicle unit, said that the expected growth is a result of stricter emissions regulations, especially in urban areas, where small

FRANKFURT — Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz and U.S. tech company Nvidia said they will jointly develop a powerful new computing platform for vehicles capable of supporting everything from over-the-air software updates to driverless car technology. The cooperation is the latest step by an established automaker to compete with Tesla, Google and Apple, which all aim to transform

BEIJING — China could temporarily ease quotas designed to boost production of electric cars in an attempt to help automakers to revive sales badly bruised by the coronavirus pandemic. China has some of the world’s strictest rules regarding the production of fossil-fuel vehicles, as it battles unhealthy levels of air pollution in its crowded cities.

LONDON — Spanish metal parts supplier Gestamp is closing two of its five plants in the UK as slower vehicle sales impact its production in the country, the company said. Gestamp closed its factory in Fareham, southern England, in early March and will shut its plant in Washington, near Sunderland, northeast England, in 2021, the

Tesla will postpone its annual shareholder meeting because large gatherings won’t be allowed due to COVID-19 restrictions, Elon Musk said in a tweet. The electric car maker’s CEO said in response to questions on Twitter that he’s not sure of a new date, but guessed it may be “a month or so later,” he tweeted.

PARIS — Renault’s incoming CEO Luca de Meo said he was conscious that the automaker faced many problems, but he is confident the group could end up becoming a positive turnaround story. De Meo, addressing investors at the firm’s annual shareholder meeting on Friday before taking up his new job on July 1, said he

The vehicle that started the luxury-SUV segment in 1970, the Range Rover, is getting a special 50th-anniversary edition this year. Land Rover said Tuesday it will build just 1,970 Range Rover Fifty models for all of its global markets. The Range Rover Fifty will be available in standard or long wheelbase and with a 5.0-liter

BEIJING/SHANGHAI — Geely Automobile Holdings said on Wednesday its board had approved a preliminary proposal for the possible issue of renminbi shares and a listing on mainland China’s Nasdaq-like STAR board. The Zhejiang-based automaker, whose parent is Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, is currently listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange with a market capitalization of

FRANKFURT — Volkswagen Group will pay a 48 percent premium to buy out the minority shareholders of premium division Audi, Audi said on Tuesday. VW Group, which already holds 99.64 percent of Audi, announced the squeeze-out plans in February. “Volkswagen AG announced and specified that it has set the cash settlement to be paid to

PARIS — Government-backed trade-in bonuses in France will favor smaller cars, with emissions limits for internal combustion vehicles set at 137 grams per kilometer of carbon dioxide on the Worldwide harmonized Light vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP) scale. The program could boost sales in the minicar and small car segments, which have been losing ground to

FRANKFURT — Volkswagen Group’s global vehicle sales fell 34 percent to 609,400 last month as the automaker continued to suffer fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. The crisis has triggered plant closures and demand declines across the industry as consumers were forced to remain at home under lockdown measures around the world. May sales were down

PARIS — There are early signs that substantial incentives and trade-in bonuses could help cushion the blow to European auto sales from the coronavirus crisis, officials, dealers and analysts say. Some industry experts, however, question the effectiveness of the government-backed subsidies. France, which has introduced some of the most incentives ever to encourage buyers to

NEW DELHI — Mahindra & Mahindra plans to give up control of struggling South Korean unit SsangYong Motor, the Indian automaker’s managing director said on Friday, as it looks to exit money-losing ventures amid the coronavirus pandemic. “SsangYong needs a new investor. We are working with the company to see if we can secure investment,”

DETROIT — Simon Sproule, FCA’s global chief communications officer since February, is leaving the company. Sproule, 51, told Automotive News Europe sister publication Automotive News his last day is Friday. He decided he wanted to do something different with his life and pursue other interests. “Simon Sproule has made the personal decision to leave FCA,”

Russia’s new car and light commercial vehicle sales fell 52 percent to 63,033 in May as the coronavirus outbreak forced dealerships throughout the country to remain closed. The only brands to report sales gains in May were Fiat, Isuzu, Havel, Changan and FAW, data from the Association of European Businesses (AEB) showed. One bright spot

FRANKFURT — Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess apologized to the company’s supervisory board for having made “inappropriate and wrong” statements at an internal event, VW said. The public acknowledgment that Diess had been forced to apologize to the board amounts to a severe admonishment of the chief executive, who was stripped of his leadership of

FRANKFURT — Volkswagen Group named Ralf Brandstaetter as VW brand CEO, promoting him from his current role as the brand’s chief operating officer. The change means that VW Group CEO Herbert Diess gives up his role as VW brand CEO. The change will give Diess, 61, more time to focus on his tasks as group

How do you put a car company on a diet? Renault and its 180,000 employees are about to find out. Under former CEO Carlos Ghosn, the mantra of Renault was growth, with a target of 5 million vehicles by 2022, a 33 percent increase from 2017’s 3.76 million. But a stagnant global automotive market, a