Europe

Porsche has joined a group of investors making a $260 million equity bet on a startup that aims to harness wind power to make a gasoline substitute. Porsche is investing $75 million for a 12.5 percent stake in electricity-based fuel developer HIF Global, the company said Wednesday in a statement. HIF is building a plant

MILAN — Vehicle production from sites owned in Italy by Stellantis and previously its predecessor Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is set to fall for a fifth consecutive year in 2022 due to the microchip supply crunch, the FIM CISL union said. FCA and PSA Group merged at the start of last year to form Stellantis. At

BERLIN — Germany’s Sono Motors has signed up a new partner for its partly solar-powered cars and is sticking to its goal of commercial production in 2023, after abandoning talks with the electric carmaking arm of indebted Chinese property developer Evergrande. Sono said on Tuesday it will produce its first vehicles in Finland with supplier

Spain plans to invest 11 billion euros ($12.4 billion) to develop microchips and semiconductors in a bid to modernize its tourism-dependent economy. “We want our country to be at the vanguard of industrial and technological progress,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Monday in Madrid, without giving more details. He said the project will be approved

TURIN – Alfa Romeo‘s next flagship model will be a full-electric SUV larger than the current midsize Stelvio and will be launched in 2026 or 2027, CEO Jean-Philippe Imparato told journalists. Speaking last week during a visit to Stellantis’ Pomigliano factory in southern Italy, which builds the Tonale compact SUV, Imparato said the new flagship

Production of the Ford Fiesta at the automaker’s factory in Cologne, Germany, could be halted until April 25. The move is in response to supply chain disruption, a Ford spokeswoman told Automobilwoche, a sister publication of Automotive News Europe. Workers at the factory were on short-time work last week. This will continue until Easter, Ford

Toyota reaffirmed its commitment to the UK after a newspaper reported it may halt making cars in the country because of government plans to shift more rapidly to fully electric vehicles. The Japanese automaker said it’s ready to sell only zero-emission cars and reiterated its view that hybrids have a role to play in the

Toyota may stop manufacturing in the UK because of a government policy that mandates a rapid switch to full-electric vehicles, The Times newspaper reported. The company told Transport Secretary Grant Shapps about its concerns for the plan’s transition phase, which bans new gasoline and diesel cars starting in 2030. Toyota’s UK arm makes the Corolla

German automakers lost about 150,000 vehicles from their March production plans because of supply shortages stemming from the war in Ukraine, according to an LMC Automotive estimate. The German operations of Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW have been among the manufacturers most heavily impacted by the war, which has sent shock waves through the European supply

Skoda will reveal a new design language called Modern Solid as part of a new positioning that executives say will be the brand’s biggest strategy shift since the Czech automaker became part of Volkswagen Group more than 20 years ago. Skoda sales and marketing chief Martin Jahn said the brand is redefining its positioning and

BERLIN — Former Porsche executive Klaus Zellmer will be the next CEO of Skoda, press reports said. Zellmer, who is currently VW brand’s sales chief, will take up the role on July 1, according to the reports. Zellmer became VW brand’s head of sales and marketing in 2020 after a 23-year career at Porsche including

We are witnessing an exciting time in the automotive industry. As innovation is reaching new heights with connected and autonomous vehicles, the auto insurance industry is also experiencing its own evolution, using technology to enhance the way road accidents and damages are handled, saving people time and money and improving the often stressful experiences of

TURIN – Stellantis will engineer its coming STLA Small and Medium electric-vehicle platforms in Europe, CEO Carlos Tavares said.  The new platforms are defined by Stellantis as “BEV by design,” meaning that they are being developed mainly for battery-powered vehicles but could also support internal combustion variants where there is a demand for them. Tavares,

TURIN – Stellantis will have to soon close its van factory in Russia because it is running out of parts, CEO Carlos Tavares said. Stellantis had previously said it was suspending imports and exports of vehicles with Russia, following the invasion of Ukraine last month. It operates a factory in Kaluga, 150 km (93 miles)

SHANGHAI — Volkswagen asked staff at its Shanghai plant to prepare sleeping bags and yoga mats so they can deploy a system that allows the automaker to continue to operate despite parts of the Chinese city being under a strict COVID-19 lockdown. The arrangement will enable the plant, which VW runs with local partner SAIC

TOKYO — Parts supply disruptions continued to affect Japanese automakers’ global production for February, but the results released on Wednesday showed a clear contrast among them, with Toyota and Honda out in front. Toyota said its group, including Daihatsu and Hino Motors, produced 884,528 vehicles globally for the month, an increase of almost 11 percent

LONDON — Lotus applied its sports-car design and performance ethos to develop the Eletre full-electric SUV. The Eletre, which was revealed in London on Tuesday, will become the flagship model for the automaker’s new range of ‘lifestyle’ electric vehicles that will be built in Wuhan, China, for global markets. The high-performance SUV is the automaker’s

TURIN – The successor to the Fiat New 500 small electric car will continue to be built at the Mirafiori factory complex in Turin, Stellantis confirmed, in announcing new model allocations.  In addition, the factory — the group’s oldest in Italy, dating to 1939 — will also get two new Maserati models, Stellantis Chairman John