Automobile

Bloomberg Facebook Inc. users asked a judge to approve a $550 million settlement in their class-action lawsuit that claimed the social-media giant illegally gathered biometric data through a photo-tagging tool. The class members will get from $150 to $300, or between 15% and 30% of the possible recovery on an individual claim, according to their lawyers. The settlement provides “excellent …

Bloomberg Automakers won’t have to recall roughly 56 million more air bag inflators made by the now-defunct Takata Corp., the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said, citing industry test data the agency said showed the parts won’t pose danger. The agency and an industry group will monitor safety of those Takata air bag inflators, which contain a moisture-absorbing …

Bloomberg Honda Motor Co. will resume operations at its vehicle and auto-parts factories in the US and Canada starting on May 11, joining a caravan of other carmakers restarting North American production this month for the first time since mid-March. The Japanese automaker said it will gradually ramp up output and stagger its reopening to allow workers to get used …

Bloomberg Gorden Wagener has spent a good amount of his coronavirus quarantine thinking about waffles. Daimler’s head of design, who created such iconic cars as the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren and Vision Mercedes concepts, wanted to bake bread during his pandemic free time, but soon found the bread maker he wanted was out of stock. So he ordered a waffle iron …

Bloomberg Ford Motor Co. is warning of significant damage wreaked by a tornado in South Carolina this week that knocked out a BorgWarner Inc. auto-parts plant supplying a key component for the automaker’s most profitable models. The Seneca, South Carolina, parts factory makes transfer cases, an important component of four-wheel-drive systems that Ford uses in its F-150 pickup, its biggest …

Bloomberg Tesla Inc’s new Model Y has what people have come to expect from Elon Musk’s cars: It’s lightning quick, handles nicely and has better electronic gadgetry than its competitors. Unlike past Tesla offerings, early versions are rolling off the assembly line looking more like you’d expect from a company with a handle on the finer points of car building, …

Bloomberg Volkswagen AG’s unprecedented move to halt output on both sides of the Atlantic costs the world’s largest automaker $2.2 billion per week, and CEO Herbert Diess said decisive action is critical to overcome the coronavirus pandemic. Sales outside China have effectively come to a standstill, while demand in the country, VW’s largest single market, has clawed back to about …

Bloomberg The electric vehicle revolution that by most accounts was ramping up in 2020 faces one of the biggest threats since EVs started to go mainstream in the last decade. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus in late December has paralysed key parts of the Chinese economy. By early March, the virus spread further across Europe and into the US. …

Bloomberg Do automakers investing billions in the self-driving cars of tomorrow risk repeating the same mistake they made with electric cars a decade ago? Cutting-edge robotic people-movers from the likes of General Motors Co, Toyota Motor Corp and Jaguar Land Rover all share similarly rectangular dimensions with more of an eye towards engineering practicality. Even Waymo, the self-driving arm of …

Bloomberg Sports-car maker Porsche AG intends to offer more green debt to support its 6 billion-euro ($6.6 billion) investment in electric vehicles. The Volkswagen AG unit will stick with green financing after selling a record 1 billion-euro green Schuldschein last year, according to Wolfgang Ratheiser, vice president for corporate finance and treasury. It has for now ruled out raising potentially …