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Former Volkswagen Group executive Oliver Schmidt, whose 2017 arrest at the Miami airport made global headlines, was released from prison after serving about half his sentence on charges related to the diesel-emissions scandal. A ruling, issued by a court in the German city of Lueneburg, allowed Schmidt to be released on parole, his lawyer Alexander

Aurora has made no secret its first foray into autonomous driving will come aboard big rigs. The self-driving tech company underpinned that strategy in a big way Tuesday, unveiling a partnership with truck manufacturer PACCAR. The two companies plan to collaborate on integrating Aurora’s virtual driver onto Kenworth and Peterbilt trucks. While there’s not yet

Electric vehicle startup Rivian has raised $2.65 billion in a new round of financing. The cash injection comes at a time when the company’s expenditures are increasing in the run-up to the start of production. Not only is Rivian working to deliver its first vehicle, the R1T electric pickup, to customers by early June, but

WILMINGTON, Del. — President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Federal Trade Commission member Rohit Chopra to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Chopra, whose consumer advocacy views align with Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, had been considered a top candidate for the job running the agency created after the 2008-09 financial crisis. Separately, former Commodity Futures Trading

Unifor members ratified a three-year contract with General Motors that includes a $787 million (C$1 billion) investment commitment at CAMI Assembly in Ingersoll, Ontario, to begin building all-electric delivery vans later this year. According to a post on Unifor Local 88’s website, 91 per cent of CAMI workers who voted cast a ballot in favor

DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. notched victories last week in the North American Car, Utility and Truck of the Year awards for two vehicles that represent its old and new business models. The redesigned F-150 pickup was named Truck of the Year, while the Mustang Mach-E electric crossover was the winning utility vehicle. It was

Unifor said it had to make “hard decisions” to secure the future of General Motors’ CAMI Assembly plant, which would begin building all-electric delivery vans later this year under the terms of a surprise, three-year tentative contract. “The stakes going in to these negotiations were incredibly high,” reads a joint message to union members by

Stellantis is here, and that means some of the seven brands that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is bringing to the table might not be around for much longer. The high points of the post-merger blueprint in North America are no secret: Churn out as many Ram pickups as possible and push Jeep into higher price points

DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. on Saturday will begin running new 30- and 60-second ads that stress unity following riots this month at the U.S. Capitol that left 5 dead. Called “Builders,” the spots focus on the ability of Americans to come together and create, featuring images of construction workers, nurses, firefighters and other volunteers.

LOS ANGELES — Fans of the beloved rotary engine, rejoice. While it won’t be slotted in a nifty sports car, Mazda plans to bring its first electric vehicle, the MX-30 crossover, to the U.S. with a rotary engine as a range-extending option. Prior to Mazda’s confirmation of the plans this month, the MX-30 was expected

WASHINGTON — Tesla Inc. filed a petition with U.S. auto safety regulators saying that 612,000 vehicles produced since 2012 do not fully comply with federal safety standards because displays can be switched from miles per hour to only metric measurements, documents released on Friday show. The automaker asked NHTSA to declare the noncompliance issue inconsequential

TOKYO — Kia is dumping “Motors” from its corporate name as part of a global brand relaunch meant to position the South Korea automaker as a mover in electric vehicles and new mobility. In changing its name to Kia Corp., from Kia Motors Corp., the company is reaching for a new identity that better reflects

WASHINGTON — Toyota Motor Corp. has settled a lengthy Justice Department civil probe into its delayed filing of emissions-related defect reports for $180 million, the government said in a court filing. Reuters first reported the expected settlement on Thursday to resolve the violations of the Clean Air Act. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan is

WASHINGTON — U.S. traffic deaths jumped dramatically after coronavirus lockdowns ended in 2020, rising 13.1 percent in the three months ending Sept. 30 to the highest rate since 2005 despite a decline in driving, auto safety regulators said on Wednesday. In total, 11,260 people died on U.S. roads in the third quarter of 2020, up

WASHINGTON — The National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday urged automakers to address inadequate vehicle manufacturers’ emergency response guides to address EV fires. The recommendations follow a series of NTSB investigations into four Tesla EV battery fires since 2017, including three high-speed crashes in which the lithium-ion battery reignited after firefighters extinguished the vehicle fires.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration agreed on Tuesday to an auto industry request to delay the start of dramatically higher penalties for companies that fail to meet fuel efficiency requirements, a move that could save the industry hundreds of millions of dollars or more.  The decision — announced eight days before President-elect Joe Biden takes

Former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler, on trial over charges related to Volkswagen Group’s diesel scandal, blamed engineers for his failure to uncover widespread cheating on emissions tests. Stadler, testifying for the first time, told a Munich court on Tuesday that engineers gave the management board at the VW Group’s luxury-car unit insufficient information to detect

Industry groups including the National Automobile Dealers Association and American Bankers Association say they are evaluating their political contributions after last week’s invasion of the U.S. Capitol, described by NADA as “shocking, tragic and condemnable.” The assessments come after a growing list of major corporations such as Ford Motor Co. said they would temporarily suspend

The all-new Ford Mustang Mach-E, an electric vehicle, was named 2021 North American Utility of the Year while the redesigned Ford F-150 pickup was named truck of the year and the Hyundai Elantra took top car honors. The winners, announced Monday, were selected through a three-part voting process by a jury of 50 automotive journalists

SEOUL — Hyundai Motor Co. and Apple Inc. plan to sign a partnership deal on autonomous EVs by March and start production around 2024 in the U.S., a Korean newspaper reported on Sunday. The report by Korea IT News follows a statement on Friday from Hyundai Motor that it was in early talks with Apple after

For the past several years, the first week of January has been especially important for automakers, suppliers and new industry entrants. It’s typically when the Las Vegas Convention Center and the surrounding area are reconfigured to accommodate the test drives, demonstrations and displays that are synonymous with the annual CES. Hotels up and down the

Volkswagen of America is launching its first set of TV commercials for its upcoming ID4 battery-electric compact crossover that aims to drive home the company’s message of delivering electric mobility to the millions, instead of just the millionaires. The spot, which uses a line of zoetropes — a 19th century invention that uses a spinning

CHENGDU, China/SHANGHAI — Chinese EV maker Nio Inc. on Saturday launched its first sedan model, eyeing a greater share of the world’s largest car market. The launch of the ET7, at an event in China’s western city of Chengdu, comes as rival Tesla started selling its China-made Model Y crossover. Nio is aiming to expand

LOS ANGELES — One week after starting a new position as chief operating officer and executive vice president at Kia Motors America, Bill Peffer has resigned “in conjunction with his pursuit of a new opportunity in the automotive industry,” the company said Friday. Peffer, 50, had been promoted from vice president of sales operations in

Cruise, the self-driving firm majority owned by General Motors, said Friday it is hiring a former Delta Air Lines senior executive as its COO. Gil West was previously senior executive vice president and COO at Delta. “There will be no bigger shift in the transportation industry in my lifetime than the move to self-driving. I’ve

Apple Inc. will take at least half a decade to launch an autonomous, electric vehicle because development work is still at an early stage, according to people with knowledge of the efforts. The Cupertino, Calif.,-based technology giant has a small team of hardware engineers developing drive systems, vehicle interior and external car body designs with

Tactile Mobility announced two new investor relationships Thursday, bringing the company’s total funding to more than $20 million. The Israeli company’s sensing technology allows smart and connected vehicles to “feel” the road beneath the tires and react to surface conditions such as potholes, black ice and cracks. The company has gained financial support from Nexteer

Industry executives and groups representing the nation’s manufacturers and union workers spoke out against the violent actions of a mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol Building on Wednesday, temporarily halting the certification of president-elect Joe Biden’s victory. President Donald Trump has repeatedly told his supporters that the election was “rigged,” despite the U.S. Justice Department

BEIJING — General Motors’ vehicle sales in China fell 6.2 percent in 2020, as the automaker suffered a prolonged sales slowdown in the world’s biggest auto market. GM, China’s second-biggest foreign automaker, delivered 2.9 million vehicles in the country last year, the company said Wednesday, for a third straight decline in annual sales. But sales

Shirley Young, an executive who played an instrumental role in General Motors’ expansion in China during the 1990s, died Dec. 26. She was 85. Young helped steer GM’s billion-dollar investment in China through a joint venture with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. She died of complications from breast cancer, David Hsieh, one of her sons, told