Europe

Mercedes-Benz and Volvo Cars are suspending operations at U.S. plants in South Carolina ahead of the arrival of a storm that has already caused massive destruction as well as least seven deaths in Florida. Volvo’s plant, which employs 1,500 people, stopped building the S60 at about 11 a.m. local time (5 p.m. CEST) on Thursday.

Toyota’s global output rose for the first time in five months in August, led by gains in overseas markets — in particular Southeast Asia, where a COVID surge disrupted supply chains a year ago. The automaker made 766,683 vehicles in August, up 44 percent from a year earlier, according to a statement Thursday. Global sales

MILAN — Renault CEO Luca de Meo has resigned as a director at Italy’s biggest phone company, Telecom Italia, to focus on the automaker’s turnaround plan, the telecoms company said. De Meo’s resignation will be effective after Telecom Italia’s board of directors meeting scheduled on Thursday, TIM said, adding the company’s nomination committee will start

MILAN — Renault CEO Luca de Meo has resigned as a director at Italy’s biggest phone company, Telecom Italia, to focus on the automaker’s turnaround plan, the telecoms company said. De Meo’s resignation will be effective after Telecom Italia’s board of directors meeting scheduled on Thursday, TIM said, adding the company’s nomination committee will start

Volvo Cars says its new EX90 electric flagship SUV will feature a world-first interior radar system designed to ensure that no one is unknowingly left behind in the car. One aim is to stop hot car deaths, which government statistics show have taken the lives of more than 900 children in the U.S. since 1998.

Local residents are demanding that production is stopped at Tesla’s plant in Gruenheide, near Berlin, after a fire broke out on the factory grounds. Firefighters on Monday took five hours to extinguish the fire, with no injuries reported. The firefighters were called when 800 cubic meters (1,046 cubic yards) of cardboard, paper and wood scraps

BERLIN — BMW expects to reach the higher end of its 7-9 percent margin target for the cars business and sees slight sales growth in 2023, Chief Financial Officer Nicolas Peter said. Demand was recovering in China in the third quarter after lockdowns plagued the first half, Peter said, describing it as a “roller coaster”

Pendragon has received an unsolicited preliminary proposal from its largest shareholder, Hedin Mobility Group, offering to buy the dealership group for about 406 million pounds ($429.67 million). The cash offer, made on Sept. 21, valued London-listed Pendragon at 29 pence per share, nearly 28 percent higher than the company’s closing price of 22.7 pence on

The world’s biggest maker of electric-vehicle batteries, China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., is considering a third factory in Europe, the company’s president in the region, Matthias Zentgraf, said. “We are thinking about this, but currently there is no clear decision or activity,” Zentgraf told Bloomberg News in an interview, saying internal discussions are already

TOKYO — Mazda is discussing ending production of its vehicles at a joint venture plant in Vladivostok, eastern Russia, the Nikkei newspaper reported. The Japanese automaker sold 30,000 cars in Russia last year. Mazda said in March that exports of parts to the plant were going to end and production would cease when stocks ran

Volkswagen Group could shift production out of Germany and eastern Europe if a shortage of natural gas persists, the latest sign that the energy crisis unleashed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens to shake up Europe’s industrial landscape. VW said Thursday that moving production was one of the options available for it in the medium-term

Toyota will close its plant in St. Petersburg, Russia, and may sell it, amid shortages of key components and materials following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The automaker suspended production at the factory in March following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It also stopped vehicle imports into Russia. Toyota said on Friday that over the last six

Mercedes-Benz is stockpiling parts it makes using natural gas in a move to keep production going for several weeks even if Germany introduces drastic fuel rationing. The automaker has produced extra parts made at its foundries in Untertuerkheim, which go into gearboxes, axles and transmission components to build up stockpiles at plants in the U.S.

PARIS — Renault has offered over 1,000 euros ($977) in one-off payments to a majority of its workers to help them cope with inflation, union sources told Reuters. The sources said the automaker proposed a bundle of exceptional measures to support the purchasing power of its employees in France. The measures will have a combined

Ford Motor is reorganizing its executive ranks as it adds new talent and gives a handful of leaders expanded roles in conjunction with the previously announced retirement of Hau Thai-Tang, the longtime product and purchasing chief. CFO John Lawler will temporarily oversee a makeover of Ford’s global supply chain operations as the company looks for

TOKYO — Honda said on Thursday it would reduce car output by up to 40 percent at two Japanese plants in early October because of ongoing supply chain and logistical problems. The cutback provides further evidence of problems automakers likely face in trying to increase production volumes in the second half of the financial year

The biggest all-new product debut for Volvo Cars in half a decade will have standard safety equipment that goes “beyond that of any Volvo before it,” the automaker’s CEO, Jim Rowan, said. The EX90 full-electric premium large SUV will replace the XC90 as Volvo’s flagship. It will have an “invisible shield of safety” that can

Renault, Stellantis and Toyota are the latest automakers to join a platform for patent licenses from tech companies, aiming to simplify access to wireless technology and avoid costly legal battles. Conflicts have stemmed in part from different views among automakers, suppliers and tech companies over who should shoulder the cost of licensing. Through independent licensing