Europe

PARIS — Renault’s decision to have only a single gasoline engine family for Europe by 2025 reflects the increasing costs of emissions regulations and the need to shift resources toward electrification, CEO Luca de Meo says.  The automaker now has eight core engine families, including four gasoline engines, three diesel engines and an electric motor.   Under

Jaguar Land Rover will slash its manufacturing capacity by 25 percent over five years and write off investment in products it’s decided to scrap under new CEO Thierry Bollore. The British carmaker will take a non-cash charge of about 1 billion pounds ($1.4 billion) in the quarter ending in March related to higher previous spending

PARIS — Peugeot will show the next-generation 308 compact on March 18, executives said at the unveiling of the brand’s new logo. Peugeot has not released any details about the coming 308, but it is expected to be built on the EMP2 platform developed by PSA Group for compact and midsize cars. That would allow

Joby Aviation, the 12-year-old electric air taxi startup partnered with Toyota and Uber Technologies, will go public in a $6.6 billion reverse merger with blank check company Reinvent Technology Partners, the companies said. California-based Joby aims to begin a commercial passenger service in 2024, using its electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. Potential air

Renault could build cars for Mitsubishi in France under a plan that would see the Japanese automaker reverse its decision to stop selling its vehicles in Europe, the Financial Times reported. Mitsubishi will consider the plan at a board meeting on Thursday, the paper said, citing sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Mitsubishi said

LONDON — Plans announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday to keep car showrooms in England closed to the public during the key selling month of March as part of COVID-19 measures are “deeply disappointing,” a trade industry body said. Johnson earlier set out how the government plans to lift lockdown measures, including the

Daimler CEO Ola Kallenius said the success of the latest Denza crossover will determine the future prospects of the Chinese electric-car brand with partner BYD, following years of lackluster sales. “The cash investment is behind us” for the model, Kallenius told reporters on Thursday. “Now we look how Denza develops and then we will make

Volkswagen’s biggest plant in Wolfsburg, Germany, is struggling to meet strong demand for the Golf model due to shortages of battery cells for hybrid versions and semiconductor components, the company’s labor leader told a German newspaper. VW has orders for 93,000 of the Golf hatchback, which translates into production volume of more than four months,

German auto supplier Continental will not propose any dividend for 2020 because it had chalked up a net loss for the year, it said Friday. The company, which is due to release preliminary full-year results on March 9, added that it remained committed to a mid-term dividend policy of paying out 15-30 percent of net

PRAGUE — Czech car production fell 12 percent year-on-year in January to its lowest result for the first month of the year since 2014, at 104,576 vehicles, the country’s Automotive Industry Association (AutoSAP) said on Thursday. The car sector, which makes up almost a tenth of the export-reliant economy, has been hit by sagging European

Jaguar Land Rover expects to reduce its global salaried workforce by about 2,000 people in the next financial year as the UK automaker cuts costs under a new CEO Thierry Bollore. The Tata Motors -owned company has started briefing employees about plans for a reorganization, it said in an emailed statement Wednesday. JLR announced a

HEADLEY DOWN, England — There is nothing quite like the roar of a revving McLaren engine to set a car fan’s pulse pounding, or the full-throated scream as it tears across the tarmac. Yet new gasoline-fueled engines like McLaren’s could be illegal in many countries by 2030. The supercar maker, like all automakers, has to

MILAN — A production freeze has been extended at a Stellantis factory in Italy that builds Jeep and Fiat models. Stellantis said in a statement it had decided to completely suspend activity at the plant in Melfi on Monday and Tuesday and on Feb. 22-23. The factory produces the Jeep Renegade and Compass and Fiat’s

Apple’s plan to enter the auto industry is “a very logical step” as the iPhone maker combines its expertise in software, batteries and design with enormous resources, according to Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess. “Despite that, we are not scared,” Diess said in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. The car sector is different from

WASHINGTON — Volkswagen called itself an “unintended victim” in a battle between two battery suppliers and urged the U.S. government to extend a reprieve to buy batteries key to its planned U.S. electric vehicle production. The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on Wednesday sided with LG Chem in a trade secrets case, but permitted SK

Tata Motors Ltd. has appointed former Daimler manager Marc Llistosella to become its next CEO after Guenter Butschek asked to step down due to personal reasons. Llistosella, who previously headed Daimler Trucks in Asia, will take charge in July, Tata Motors said Friday. Butschek, a former Airbus SE executive, has been CEO since 2016 and

The European Union is considering building an advanced semiconductor factory in Europe in an attempt to avoid relying on the U.S. and Asia for technology at the heart of some of its major industries. The EU is exploring how to produce semiconductors with features smaller than 10 nanometers, and eventually down to 2 nanometer chips,

TOKYO — Planning for the removal of Carlos Ghosn began as early as April 2018, well before the auto executive’s arrest on charges of financial crimes, according to court testimony by the Nissan insider who was instrumental in the downfall of the carmaker’s former chairman. Hari Nada, a senior vice president at the automaker, was

FRANKFURT — Volkswagen said Tuesday that it expects chip supplies to remain tight in first half of 2021 but that it would do everything to compensate for delays in production in the second half of the year. “Volkswagen is continuously working on minimizing the effects of the global semiconductor bottleneck on production,” the automaker said.

FRANKFURT — Germany faces a wave of dealership bankruptcies unless car showrooms are allowed to reopen soon, the ZDK industry association said. Showrooms have been shut since mid-December when the German government tightened measures to slow rising cases of the coronavirus. “The situation in automobile retail becomes more difficult with each passing week,” Thomas Peckruhn,

Volvo Cars’ top executive has set an even tougher 2021 sales target for the automaker’s Recharge line of electrified cars after the automaker narrowly missed his 2020 goal. “About a quarter of our sales globally should be Recharge this year,” CEO Hakan Samuelsson told Automotive News Europe. The Recharge family of plug-in hybrids and full-electric

Porsche is setting up an assembly plant in Malaysia as the German automaker looks to make the nation its Southeast Asia hub, a Malaysian weekly newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the matter it did not identify. Porsche will partner with Inokom, a unit of the Malaysian company Sime Darby, in the venture, which will be located in

PARIS – Renault Group and Stellantis are the latest automakers to suspend production because of a worldwide shortage of crucial semiconductors. Renault will pause production at one site in France and two in Morocco and Romania next week for several days, a company spokeswoman said on Friday, without giving details of the likely impact on

PARIS — The first jointly developed models for Stellantis’ three premium brands — Alfa Romeo, DS and Lancia — could appear by 2024, as the newly created group seeks to break through in the profitable segment. Marion David, the product director at DS, said this week that future models from the brands would share common premium

FRANKFURT — German new-car sales fell 31 percent to 169,754 in January, with only Tesla and Volvo bucking the trend to make gains. Honda, Mitsubishi, DS, and Citroen were among brands that had the biggest falls last month. Besides the economic slump caused by the coronavirus pandemic, registrations were hit by the end of a

HAMBURG — Volkswagen plans to develop most of the software needed for autonomous cars in-house, the head of the German carmaker’s luxury unit Audi said on Tuesday. The automaker is not rejecting collaborations in some areas outright, said Markus Duesmann, who as well as running Audi is also on Volkswagen’s management board, where he is

Ford Motor will install Google’s Android operating system on all new vehicles starting in 2023 as part of a six-year partnership with the technology giant. The deal announced Monday allows Ford to tap into Google’s cloud system and utilize its artificial intelligence systems in factories, dealerships and vehicles. The automaker said Google’s technology can help

TOKYO — A top Nissan executive indicated he made a plea deal to testify against ousted Chairman Carlos Ghosn because he was worried about possibly getting snared in the legal swoop. Hari Nada, a star government witness and the executive running Nissan’s legal office at the time of Ghosn’s arrest, said internal investigations into Ghosn’s

Jaguar Land Rover’s pretax profit was 439 million pounds ($603 million) in its latest quarter, 121 million pounds higher than the same quarter a year ago. A rebound in China and higher than expected sales of its new-generation Land Rover Defender, contributed to positive results for the quarter ending Dec. 31, JLR said in an earnings

LONDON — Urban-Air Port, a British-based start-up, has partnered with Hyundai Motor Group to develop the infrastructure required for when flying cars take to the skies to ferry around people and goods. The project, based in Coventry, in central England, will demonstrate how air taxis will work in urban centers. From November, visitors to Coventry