Car dealerships in Scandinavia, and perhaps beyond, have something against electric vehicles. That’s the conclusion of an investigation conducted by researchers in Nordic countries, where they visited car dealerships and found agents actively discouraging buying electric cars. To conduct the investigative study, the researchers visited 82 car dealerships in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and Finland. In two-thirds of their visits, agents steered the researchers toward gas-powered cars, sometimes dismissing electric vehicles outright. In three-fourths of the visits, ve...
When President Xi Jinping announced measures to further open up China’s auto industry to foreign automakers, the global industry initially cheered. Now the cheering has stopped. As details are emerging, foreign auto executives said that this initiative was too narrow and vague to change business on the ground. Central to Mr. Xi’s plan is that it will allow foreign automakers to own Chinese factories, instead of working through a 50-50 Chinese partner, as is currently required. But it turns out that auto executives were comfortable with the current system. Ford’s vi...
At its annual meeting, Audi announced an ambitious plan to make 20 new electric vehicles by 2025, most of them battery electrics. The car maker says that it will invest $47.6 billion into electrified cars, a new app platform for its cars, a new fleet of autonomous vehicles, and creating sustainable factories. The investment represents about two years of revenue for the company. As a first step, Audi announced that it will reveal the production version of its new e-Tron electric SUV on August 30. It should have 300-mile range and slots between the size of the current Q5 and Q7. It wi...
Electric automaker Tesla is the subject of a lawsuit filed by Nikola Motor Co, an automaker that makes hydrogen-powered semi trucks, alleging design patent infringements. Tesla’s Semi is the first electric heavy-duty truck and it’s similar to Nikola’s design.Utah-based Nikola says that it was issued six design patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for its fuselage, wrap windshield, mid-entry door, side cladding, and the overall design of the Nikola One. Nikola estimated the harm from Tesla’s alleged infringement to be more than $2 billion. Tesla’s spokes...
A new company is planning on opening a closed-course testing facility for autonomous vehicles, we’re talking about The Toyota Research Institute. The 60-acre site, will open in October at the Michigan Technical Resource Park. It will be used to reproduce scenarios that are too risky to execute on public roads. A TRI spokesman declined to comment on the details of the agreement with the resource park, including the cost of the arrangement and the length of the lease. TRI plans to lease the track, and the land in the inner ring, from the Michigan Technical Resource Park, or MITRP...
