Automobile

Bloomberg BMW AG outsold Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz in the US for the first time in four years after blowing out its rival in the final month of 2019. BMW sold 35,746 cars and sport utility vehicles (SUV) in December and finished the year ahead by more than 8,700 units. The Munich-based manufacturer staged a revival this year by filling out ...

Big red bows and the “December to Remember” tagline of year-end Lexus ads have become as much a part of the holiday season as lawn ornaments and tacky sweaters. But the upscale brand has less to celebrate this year in the US, with sales flat and few new vehicles to showcase. Thirty years after its debut shocked established German automakers, ...

Bloomberg NIO Inc surged in US trading after the Chinese electric-car maker paired better-than-expected quarterly results with a warning that it’s still running low on cash. NIO’s adjusted net loss was $342.9 million for the quarter ended in September, a smaller deficit than the prior three months and what analysts were estimating. While the Shanghai-based company doesn’t have enough money ...

Bloomberg Daimler AG’s Mercedes Benz has agreed to pay as much as $20 million in penalties for violations of how it operated its vehicle recall programme. Mercedes Benz’s US arm must pay $13 million immediately while the remainder is deferred in case there are additional violations. The penalty was announced by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The company had ...

Bloomberg Hyundai Motor Co will spend 20 trillion won ($17 billion) over the next six years on new technology to help make the switch to electric and autonomous vehicles. Announcing its strategic plan to 2025, the South Korean company pledged to spend almost half the new money on electrification. Autonomous driving will soak up 1.6 trillion won of the total, ...

Bloomberg The future is electric, at least for Porsche. “We are in the beginning of a transition phase in the car industry, and to Porsche, to switch over to battery electric fully,” said Klaus Zellmer, president and chief executive officer of the luxury automaker’s North American division. “Luxury consumers expect, with a brand’s purpose, for sustainability to play a major ...

Bloomberg Japan’s Panasonic Corp, which makes electric-car batteries for Tesla Inc, said it boosted sales of the product “significantly” last quarter after expanding production in North America. Sales of prismatic battery cells advanced after a production increase in Dalian, China, while investments in North America led to gains in revenue for cylindrical batteries in the quarter through September, Panasonic said. ...

Bloomberg Yandex NV, Russia’s largest internet firm, said its self-driving cars have passed 1 million miles in fully autonomous driving since it started testing the technology in December 2017, joining an elite group in the emerging robotaxi industry. The milestone matters for Yandex’s quest to compete with the likes of Alphabet Inc’s Waymo for a share of the market, which ...

Bloomberg Tesla Inc’s Smart Summon, the semi-autonomous feature some owners can use to fetch their cars, doesn’t live up to the Model 3 maker’s marketing hype, Consumer Reports magazine said. The magazine spent several days testing the feature, which allows Tesla owners to tap their smartphone and remotely call for their car to pick them up. Tesla customers have flooded ...

Bloomberg Drivers in the US may one day no longer have to crane their necks to check their blind spots if regulators agree to let high-tech cameras and screens replace the humble side-view mirror. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said in a notice that is seeking public and industry input on whether to allow so-called camera monitoring systems ...