Automotive Industry

If you're the owner of an Android phone and an Android Auto enabled vehicle, this summer there will be a big upgrade coming to the interface of both. The new design will allow you to do more with fewer taps, while also showing more information on the screen at a time.  As soon as you start your car,  Android Auto will pick up where you left off with your media and automatically show your navigation app of choice. Navigation will show a suggested list of places or the user can say "Hey Googl

The President has threatened to slap tariffs on the import of all cars in a year if Mexico does not completely halt the flow of illegal immigration, a near impossible task.  This is after he backtracked on his previous threat to completely close the US-Mexico border, a move his own advisers recommended against.  Such actions would have massive economic repercussions on both sides of the border, raising prices for many consumer goods.  Trump said, "Mexico understands that we're going to clos

The European car market as a whole has been in decline for six consecutive months as of March 2019 with 19 out of 27 markets posting declines.  March numbers were down 3.6 percent over the same month in 2018.  Looking at the first quarter of 2019 paints an even bleaker picture with only 6 countries recording growth. While overall demand is down, the demand for electric vehicles grows. The sales of EVs exceeded 100,000 units for the first time ever with a total of 125,400 EV and PHEVs sold. 

Jaguar Land Rover has announced a temporary halt in production in November as the threat of disruption from a No-Deal Brexit looms.  BMW and Toyota have already announced plans for temporary work stoppages at their UK factories. All four of JLR's UK factories are affected.  Although No-Deal Brexit is still not a certainty. Manufacturers like JLR have to plan for the worst.  JLR uses 20 million parts a day and needs to have those parts available at just the right time.  Toyota will be s

The Society of Automotive Engineers has announced today that they are joining with Ford, General Motors, and Toyota to form the Automatic Vehicle Safety Consortium (AVSC), a group that will work together to test the deployment and development of Level 4 and Level 5 automated vehicles.  The AVSC will provide a safety framework for the advancement of the technology in a safe and responsible manner. The group will use the expertise of its current members to establish a set of guiding principle

Protean Electric is proud to introduce their latest innovation to the auto world, the Protean 360+. A super-efficient, fully integrated in-wheel motor that brings 922lb-ft of torque or 1250Nm with 107hp or 80kW of power per wheel. This give the mobility solution a total of 428 hp or 320 kW of power with 3,688 lb-ft or 5,000 Nm of torque to move the auto. Urban mobility has never had a better option for ultimate maneuverability with the Protean 360+ delivering the following: Limitles

Truck owner loyalty is legendary.  Buyers typically pick one brand and stick with that brand for as long as they buy trucks. Indeed my own father has owned only one brand of pickup, the Ford F-series, since before I arrived on earth.  In 2018, Ford moved more than 900,000 copies of its F-series pickups out of a total segment of 2,944,395.  But have rising prices started to crack that loyalty?   CarGurus did a survey and found that 70% of truck owners would switch brands if their truck raise

Not content with a trade war just with China, Donald Trump has opened a second front in what is slowly turning into a trade world war.   Yesterday evening, Trump announced that beginning June 10th a 5% tariff would be slapped on all Mexican products coming into the country. That tariff would increase to 10% by July 1st and then go to its 25% maximum in October.  For automakers with razor thin margins, there is absolute certainty that the American consumer will end up paying these tariffs.