Industry

With summer heat frizzling already frazzled power grids, the California Independent System Operator, which handles the state’s grid and wholesale energy market, took a drastic step last month: It asked electric vehicle owners to charge before 5 p.m. or after 10 p.m. Battery-driven cars and trucks, tools to fight climate change, are ironically exacerbating heat-wave

TOKYO — It seemed like sure- fire marketing magic when Toyota became a top sponsor of the Olympics after the home country was tapped to host the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo. But then the pandemic pushed the global athletic competition into 2021. And then, a new COVID- 19 state of emergency was declared in

WASHINGTON — Getaround Inc. will pay $950,000 to Washington, D.C., and revise its business practices after allegedly misrepresenting the benefits and nature of its car sharing services and failed to pay city sales taxes, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine said Friday. The San Francisco-based company had operated without a license in DC, Racine

Automakers have been elbowing each other out of the way to draw attention to their electrified product plans, but the bold prognostications of Volkswagen Group’s future might top them all. CEO Herbert Diess — who this month secured a contract extension until 2025 — laid out a vision of a much different automotive world than

MILAN — Italian supplier Brembo said it will open its first high tech lab in California’s Silicon Valley to accelerate the company’s digitization, one of the key objectives of a plan announced in September. Brembo’s “Inspiration Lab” will focus on strengthening the company’s expertise in software development, data science and artificial intelligence, the premium brake

Intel Corp.’s Mobileye said Tuesday it was testing self-driving vehicles in New York City, including the bustling Manhattan borough, in an effort to prove its technology can handle jaywalkers, construction zones and even horse carriages. Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua said at a news briefing the company has begun testing camera-only vehicles in the city in

Sensor supplier Velodyne Lidar Inc. said CEO Anand Gopalan would step down at the end of July, a little over a year after taking the role. San Jose, Calif.-based Velodyne said on Monday that it will be led by several members of the senior leadership team while it searches for a successor. The company did

BERKELEY, Calif. — Tesla Inc. has introduced an option for some customers to subscribe to its advanced driver assistance software, dubbed “Full Self-Driving capability,” for $199 per month, instead of paying $10,000 upfront. “FSD capability subscriptions are currently available to eligible vehicles in the United States. Check your Tesla app for updates on availability in

Reuben Sarkar sees the future again at Willow Run, where he launched his career 20 years ago. Sarkar, 45, of Saginaw got his start as a materials engineer at General Motors Powertrain Transmission in west of Detroit before working his way up to lead design release engineer for the Chevy Volt electric drive unit. Shortly

A groundbreaking pilot project underway in Santa Monica, Calif., could help spur the wider and faster adoption of electric delivery vehicles around the U.S. The initiative, called the Santa Monica Zero Emissions Delivery Zone, offers curbside loading areas designated exclusively for zero-emissions delivery vehicles. The project — launched in March — is being spearheaded by

BERLIN – Volkswagen brand is accelerating its ambition to be seen as a mobility provider that can compete with industry disruptors such as Tesla and Uber. The brand has created a new business unit with responsibility for strengthening its customer focus as digital features become increasingly important to buyers. “As a result of the increasing digitalization

Electric Last Mile Solutions Inc. has signed a supply deal with Chinese electric vehicle maker Wuling Motors as the Michigan-based startup looks to roll out its first fleet of delivery vans. Financial terms of the master purchase agreement with Liuzhou Wuling Automobile Industry Co. were not disclosed. It gives Electric Last Mile long-term access to

DETROIT — General Motors is turning to a German parts supplier to make the initial, small production run of its new electric commercial van in a move to get the vehicle quickly into the hands of customer FedEx, three people familiar with the matter said. The decision to use Kuka AG to build the EV600

The University of Washington and its Urban Freight Lab have collaborated with the Seattle Department of Transportation to launch a neighborhood “microhub,” a central spot where consumers can pick up goods and companies can make zero-emissions last-mile deliveries. The Seattle Neighborhood Delivery Hub is operating as a pilot project in a parking lot in the

Getty Images Vauxhall owner Stellantis has said it will invest more than €30bn (£26bn) in electric vehicles between now and the end of 2021 It aims to make the total cost of owning an electric vehicle equal to that of a petrol-driven model by 2026. Stellantis said it would build at least five battery plants

Vauxhall The owner of Vauxhall could announce as early as next week plans to build electric vans at its Ellesmere Port plant in Cheshire, the BBC understands. The investment, said to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds, would safeguard about 1,000 factory jobs. The future of the plant had been in doubt after Vauxhall’s

Years ago, crash-test dummies were primarily built in traditional male figures. That is, female-figure dummies or those mirroring the size and physique of young children were often excluded from critical vehicle safety testing. “What ended up happening is that these safety settings, crash settings, airbag settings, were systematically suboptimally set for these other types of

Getty Images Sales of new vans in the UK came close to record levels during the first six months of 2021 due to a boom in home deliveries and the economy reopening. But registrations of new cars remained sluggish, with a shortage of computer chips limiting supplies of some models. The Society of Motor Manufacturers

PA Media Nissan has announced a major expansion of electric vehicle production at its car plant in Sunderland which will create 1,650 new jobs. The Japanese carmaker will build its new-generation all-electric model at the site as part of a £1bn investment that will also support thousands of jobs in the supply chain. And Nissan’s

Getty Images The UK needs to set a binding target for building battery factories and install millions more charging points for electric cars, the industry says. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) says ambitious policies over the next decade could create up to 40,000 high-skilled jobs. But it warns failure to take action

Automakers, suppliers, policymakers and traffic safety advocates are all proponents of autonomous vehicle technology as a key development to making roads safer. And self-driving vehicles have additional supporters: those working to fight drunken driving. A vehicle that could safely navigate itself without needing a human driver could have major implications for not only eliminating driver

PA Media Nissan is to announce a major expansion of battery production in Sunderland creating thousands of new jobs both directly and in the supply chain. The firm, which already makes the Leaf electric car in Sunderland, may also announce the launch of a brand new electric model. The government is contributing to the overall

BEIJING — WeRide, a China-based autonomous driving startup, said on Wednesday that it would deepen development with the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance on autonomous driving technology for the China market as it raised $310 million. The new investment values the entire company at $3.3 billion, Reuters reported. WeRide, led by founder Tony Han, said Alliance Ventures, the

On a Wednesday afternoon in May, an Uber driver in San Francisco was about to run out of charge on his Nissan Leaf. Normally this would mean finding a place to plug in and wait for a half hour, at least. But this Leaf was different. Instead of plugging in, the driver pulled into a

EV startup Electric Last Mile Inc. is one step closer to achieving public company status. Shareholders of Forum Merger III Corp., a Delray, Fla.-based special purpose acquisition corporation, or SPAC, on Thursday approved its merger with the EV company. It’s expected that Electric Last Mile will net about $345 million in fresh capital as part

Volvo Cars plans to make lidar sensors standard equipment in a new generation of its XC90 large crossover next year as part of a strategy to deploy more advanced safety and automated driving technology that relies on precise images of the world around the vehicle. The decision by Volvo to fold lidar sensors into the

Embark Trucks Inc. said on Wednesday it will merge with a blank-check firm, in a deal that will give the self-driving truck technology developer a market capitalization of $5.2 billion. The deal with Northern Genesis Acquisition Corp. II will get Embark about $614 million in cash proceeds, including a $200 million private investment from Mubadala

Motional said it will be launching nuPlan, an expanded public dataset created to help self-driving system efficiency and safety. In order to build safe performance in complex environments for self-driving systems, nuPlan contains a “virtual driving test” that measures the performance of a vehicle’s planning techniques. Motional, the autonomous-driving joint venture of Hyundai Motor Group

Reuters Aston Martin has begun legal action against a Swiss dealer, accusing it of withholding customer deposits for its £2.5m Valkyrie sports car. The carmaker says it will no longer work with the dealer, Nebula Project, and will now take deposits directly. Nebula signed a deal in 2016 to help finance the Valkyrie and took

Velodyne Lidar Inc., a supplier of sensors and self-driving technology, has a few developments underway that it says could transform city infrastructure and the automotive sensor space. The San Jose, Calif., company has been building out its Intelligent Infrastructure Solution, known as IIS, a hardware and software product that combines its lidar sensors with artificial