Recent Posts

More new-plant announcements are possible for electric vehicles but expect consolidation in the existing North America manufacturing footprint that could include shift cuts, vehicle redeployment or closures

With expectations that higher inventory at the end of the month will lead June’s results to rebound from May’s sequential decline, the second quarter's annualized rate is pegged to rise to 14.3 million units from Q1's 14.1 million. Also, year-over-year gains are forecast to resume in the third quarter and entire-2022 is expected to finish at 15.2 million units.

Technological advances in both hardware and software components have increased their strategic value in automotive. Moving away from a purely mechanical industry, where the expertise and intellectual property of traditional OEMs reside, electronics and software are becoming key assets. Consistent with this, Wards Intelligence is observing an evident trend at various levels of the automotive supply chain: strategically increasing the value of goods developed in-house through vertical integration, hence increasing control and margins while also reducing costs.

The sensor used for the drive around Detroit did not include Doppler, but that feature will be there when Baraja lidars go to automakers for testing later this year. The technology measures object velocity and direction of travel.

There is a long way to go before the mass market will be ready for AVs, but according to recent surveys by AAA, Motional, Pew Research, Simon-Kucher, Zoox and others, consumer trust in AVs is improving, albeit slowly, as more people learn about, see or experience self-driving vehicles firsthand.  This is the first of three articles summarizing recent AV survey results.

New facilities in Arizona and Norway promise to take materials from lithium-ion vehicle batteries and return them to the supply chain.

Although supply-chain challenges still heavily crimp most automakers’ ability to build to capacity, April’s year-over-year production gain was the first in 11 months, and Q2’s expected increase will be the first for any quarter since the year-ago period.

The growth of electric vehicles and environmental concerns worldwide is creating demand for more sustainable interior materials and also unseen materials such as sound insulation.

The forward march of electrification continues, but there still are many unanswered questions. How quickly do BEVs need to recharge? What’s the optimal cost per kWh automakers need to achieve to make BEVs competitive with internal-combustion-engine vehicles? Is modular pack design the way forward, or will cell-to-pack take hold? Aluminum has been the most prevalent enclosure material up to now, but will that be the case in the future? Join us as we answer these questions and more by presenting the results of our 2021 Battery Electric Vehicle Future survey.

Geopolitics, inflation and never-ending global supply-chain challenges are heavily weighing on the North American market. In the wink of an eye, the outlook has reversed from upside bias to downside. The sales and production forecasts for 2022 have been significantly cut since the end of last year and are in danger of not showing growth from 2021. Haig Stoddard will detail the current outlook in North America for the second half of 2022 and touch on prospects for growth in 2023, highlighting signs and data indicators to watch for that point to more strength or weakness.

As the industry moves to software-defined vehicles there is a requirement for next-generation connectivity to keep vehicles updated and constantly protected against cybersecurity threats.

Contrary to the rest of the group, Class 6 sales soared 54.1%; Year-to-date, Canada medium- and heavy-duty truck sales slipped 10.2%.