Europe

Volkswagen Group has ordered dealers in the U.S. and Canada to stop selling its ID4 electric compact crossover because its doors might open while in motion, and the German carmaker doesn’t yet have a fix for the problem. Nearly 18,000 vehicles built at VW’s Chattanooga assembly plant in Tennessee may have door handles that are

New-car registrations in the UK rose for the eighth consecutive month in March, recording 18 percent growth from a year earlier, and also marked the best month ever for full-electric car sales, the UK’s auto industry body, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), said New-car registrations jumped to 287,825 units as supply chain

Stellantis and BMW are in talks with Panasonic Holdings about teaming up to build electric vehicle battery plants in North America, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the talks. Global automakers are investing billions of dollars to set up battery plants for electric vehicles, as demand surges for less polluting transport

Legacy automakers have been sounding optimistic lately about vehicle sales in China heading higher following the great reopening. Volkswagen Group CEO Oliver Blume seemed to come away bullish from his visit in February, and others such as BMW have offered similarly positive sentiment. That near-term swagger hides an uncomfortable point for established automakers: Many of

As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sat in the Oval Office last month she gushed before the cameras about the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act. “It’s great that there is such a massive investment in wind and clean technologies now,” she said of America’s green awakening. It was not until the press shuffled out

PARIS — Sales of new cars in France surged 23 percent in March compared with the 2022, extending a streak of sales gains to eight months as shortages of components that constrained production continue to ease. There were 182,713 passenger vehicles sold in March, according to the trade group PFA. For the year, the market

Audi will reveal more details about its Formula One project at the Shanghai auto show next month. The automaker brand is entering the series in 2026, when it will provide engines for the Sauber team, which will become the Audi works team. Audi, owned by Volkswagen Group, announced in August that it would enter Formula

Volkswagen will not develop a new generation Golf with a combustion engine after the current model reaches the end of its lifecycle. The current, eighth-generation Golf will get a comprehensive update next year. “That puts it in a great position until the end of the decade. Then we will have to see how the segment

Europe’s biggest automakers posted record profits in 2022 despite largely flat sales and supply chain and logistics problems.  Net profits rose 22 percent to a record total of 67.8 billion euros ($73.6 billion) at the six largest Europe-based automakers: BMW Group, Mercedes-Benz, Renault Group, Stellantis, Volkswagen Group and Volvo Car (see table, below), plus the

PARIS — Renault’s new CMF-B EV platform, which will underpin the coming Renault 5 small full-electric car due in 2024, will share 70 percent of components with the CMF-B internal-combustion-engine platform and be 30 percent cheaper to manufacture than existing EV platforms, the automaker said. The architecture and a new EV powertrain are undergoing prototype

LONDON — Chinese luxury electric-vehicle maker Human Horizons will launch its premium HiPhi brand in some European markets later this year as the company looks to expand overseas, the automaker’s co-founder, Mark Stanton, said. Stanton told Reuters the automaker would announce which European countries it would enter at the Shanghai auto show in April but

TOKYO — Nissan and Renault are working well together to sign a final agreement about the reshaping of their alliance and are confident that a deal will be reached soon, Nissan said in a statement on Friday. The automaker was responding to an earlier report by Japanese news agency Jiji which said that the final

KG Mobility, the South Korean automaker formerly known as SsangYong Motor before going through bankruptcy, is seeking to revive its fortunes with a $30,000 full-electric SUV. The carmaker Thursday unveiled four new vehicles at the Seoul Mobility Show, including the Torres EVX, its first electric car since conglomerate KG Group bought a majority stake in the

SANT’AGATA BOLOGNESE, Italy — Lamborghini is adopting a cautious stance toward e-fuels, in contrast to its competitors Ferrari and Porsche, who see them as a way to continue to market internal-combustion engine cars in Europe after 2035, when the EU will allow only zero-emission vehicles to be sold. Stephan Winkelmann, the chairman and CEO of

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said that e-fuels, which have received an exemption from policymakers in Brussels to the EU’s 2035 zero-emissions target for new cars, will not “significantly” change the trajectory of the auto industry.  “We are well on our way to deliver the electrification that is expected from the EU,” Tavares said at Stellantis’ first

Geely will include eight powertrain plants in China and one in Sweden in its future combustion engine joint venture with Renault and Saudi Aramco, two sources close to the matter said. Code-named “Horse” by Renault and “Rubik” by China’s Geely, the JV was signed in November last year to develop more efficient gasoline engines and

BARCELONA — Spain plans to launch two tenders simultaneously around July to pick the recipients of 2 billion euros ($2.16 billion) of EU funds for electric vehicle and battery production it had failed to allocate last year, a senior government official said. Jose Maria Lopez, the commissioner in charge of the aid program known as

MUNICH — Former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler is likely to become the first top executive to be convicted in parent Volkswagen Group’s diesel emissions scandal. A Munich court gave a preliminary assessment on Tuesday that an accusation of fraud had been substantiated. Stadler, and three other defendants who were engineers, were charged in 2020 over