By Tajudeen Adebanjo

Porsche Hyundai Motor Group (the Group) has announced Euisun Chung, Executive Vice Chairman as its Chairman.

Chairman Mong-Koo Chung was inaugurated the Honorary Chairman.

Hyundai Motor Company, Kia Motors Corporation and Hyundai Mobis Co. each held extraordinary board meetings to discuss the inauguration.

All members of the boards  okayed Chung as the new Chairman of the Group.

Hyundai Motor Group will open a new chapter in its history under Chung’s leadership. Embracing the vision ‘Together for a better future,’ the Group will develop and acquire key technologies and capabilities to overcome market uncertainties, including COVID-19.

Chung presented the future direction of the group as one focused on ‘customers,’ ‘humanity,’ ‘future,’ and ‘social contribution.’

“All of our goals and efforts must be customer-centric. The first step to customer happiness is to enable them to focus on their own lives through perfect quality of our products and services,” Chung said.

Over the years, Chung has stressed the customer-centric approach and customer satisfaction, and applied the concept more broadly to all of humanity.

“For the free movement and prosperity of humanity, we will develop the world’s most innovative and reliable autonomous driving technology, offering entirely new mobility experiences,” he said.

Chung is spearheading the group’s transformation from an automaker into a future mobility solution provider.

The group will offer mobility solutions tailored to customer lifestyles and continue to grow its market leadership in various fields, including autonomous driving, electrification, hydrogen fuel cell, robotics and Urban Air Mobility (UAM).

The group recently formed a venture Motional Inc. with Aptiv to develop and deploy industry-leading full autonomous driving technology. It is collaborating with partners around the globe to provide mobility services that meet the varying needs of different regions.

Chung foresaw the powerful possibilities of hydrogen energy and championed the growth of hydrogen ecosystem, with broad implementation of fuel cell technology beyond automobiles.

He added: “Our world-class hydrogen fuel cell technology will be used not only in automobiles, but also in various fields, as an eco-friendly energy solution for the future of humanity. We will also realise the future of our imagination through Robotics, Urban Air Mobility (UAM), Smart City and other innovations. These ground-breaking advancements will offer a higher plane of life experiences for humanity.”

By Tajudeen Adebanjo

United States electric car manufacturer Tesla will recall almost 30,000 vehicles imported into China due to suspension defects, China’s market regulator said.

The recall applies to all Model S and Model X cars imported into China from September 2013 to January 2018.

Defects in the suspension found in both models could “increase the risk of accidents,” the State Administration for Market Regulation said in a statement.

In New York, shares in the fast-growing electric carmaker fell sharply on the Nasdaq following the announcement.

China is the world’s biggest auto market and the main growth driver for many car manufacturers — especially for Tesla, which intends to benefit from the country’s ambitious targets for reducing CO2 emissions.

Read Also: Toyota, Tesla recall various vehicles

Tesla’s Shanghai factory – its first outside the United States – produces its mid-price, mass-market offering Model 3, which it plans to begin exporting to Europe this month.

The firm said Wednesday that profits in the past quarter had more than doubled and forecast that deliveries would hit 500,000 this year.

The company reached out to the U.S. agency to notify it of the Chinese recall, stating that the matter was overblown.

According to a letter from Elizabeth Mykytiuk, Tesla’s managing counsel for regulatory affairs, obtained by Electrek, the automaker believes it was strong-armed into an unnecessary action. The EV firm told the NHTSA that the alleged suspension failures occurred in fewer than 0.05 percent of vehicles owned outside of China and only about 0.1 percent of all units sold in the PRC.

By Tajudeen Adebanjo

Ford is continuing to streamline and transform its global business, making changes in how the company is organised and operates to deliver executional excellence that benefits customers and delivers sustained profitable growth.

Jim Farley has succeeded Jim Hackett as Ford’s President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

He has outlined key goals and organisational changes during a virtual town hall meeting with the company’s global team.

Farley said Ford plans to move with urgency to turn around its automotive operations – improving quality, reducing costs and accelerating the restructuring of underperforming businesses.

At the same time, Ford, he said, will grow by “allocating more capital, resources and talent to its strongest businesses and vehicle franchises; expanding its leading commercial vehicle business with a suite of software services that drive loyalty and recurring revenue streams; offering compelling, uniquely Ford fully electric vehicles at scale around the world, including Transit, F-Series, Mustang, SUVs and Lincoln; adding more affordable vehicles to its global line up, including in North America and standing up new customer-facing businesses enabled by Argo AI’s world-class self-driving system.

“During the past three years, under Jim Hackett’s leadership, we have made meaningful progress and opened the door to becoming a vibrant, profitably growing company. Now it’s time to charge through that door.

“We are going to compete like a challenger – allocate capital to higher growth and return opportunities to create value – and earn customers for life through great products and a rewarding ownership experience.”

Ford also announced some key leadership changes.

John Lawler, 54, has been appointed as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), overseeing the Finance and Ford Motor Credit organisations.

Lawler succeeded Tim Stone, who has accepted a position as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer at ASAPP Inc., a research-driven, artificial-intelligence software company.

Stone will remain with Ford through October 15 to ensure a smooth transition.

By Tajudeen Adebanjo

Hyundai Motor Company plans to issue a voluntary recall on Korean-market Kona Electrics as it addresses potential manufacturing defects it’s worried might result in short-circuiting battery cells.

Roughly a dozen incidents of fire have been linked to the model, including isolated events in Australia and Canada, and the automaker is, particularly, keen to address them.

Asia has come down hard on battery fires, following a string of high profile examples where battery electric vehicles burnt themselves to the ground.

South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has issued a statement confirming Hyundai’s plan to recall 25,564 Kona EVs manufactured between September 2017 and March, this year. The units will be inspected for defects before being issued obligatory software updates and a battery replacement, according to the government agency.

While the suspect batteries are produced by LG Chem, the company has shrugged its shoulders and claimed its cells aren’t to be blamed. Experiments operated collaboratively with Hyundai failed to replicate the circumstances necessary for a fire, which it believes absolves it of responsibility. However, it has committed itself toward helping the automaker in further testing to determine what’s creating the issue.

Hyundai has called the recall “a proactive response to a suspected defective production of high-voltage batteries used in the vehicles, which may have contributed to the reported fires,” noting that it’s going to do everything within its power to get to the bottom of this.

Korea’s recall kicks off on Friday.

By Tajudeen Adebanjo

In the first nine months of the year, Mercedes-Benz has sold 1,792,744 cars and commercial vans worldwide.

Due to the positive development of customer demand in many markets, global passenger car sales of Mercedes-Benz from July to September increased by 3.9 per cent compared with the prior-year quarter.

China continued to be the main driver of passenger car sales in the third quarter.

According to Britta Seeger, a Member of the Boards of Management of Daimler AG and Mercedes-Benz AG responsible for Marketing and Sales, “Demand from our customers in the third quarter was significantly higher than we had assumed in March and April in view of the challenges posed by the pandemic. We are pleased with customers’ positive response to our models and the increasing demand in many markets. However, the third quarter also shows how regionally diverse the situation still is in the markets and for our dealerships. We will therefore monitor developments very closely in the fourth quarter, but the current level of demand is encouraging.”

Mercedes-Benz Vans delivered 95,933 vans for commercial use between July and September.

Global sales of 613,770 passenger cars from July to September were higher than in the previous-year quarter for the first time due to the positive development in China and rising customer demand in many other markets.

The attractive model portfolio and numerous measures taken by dealerships to respond best possible to customer inquiries and interest even during the COVID-19 pandemic provided additional sales support in the third quarter. In order to meet the high level of customer demand at short notice, dealerships’ inventories were reduced worldwide.

In Germany, the domestic market of Mercedes-Benz, sales in the past three months were higher than in the prior-year quarter for the first time this year.

“Rising orders received in particular for plug-in hybrids with the three-pointed star are a great customer feedback on our growing portfolio. From July to September, we had the first quarter so far with more than 10,000 xEVs delivered monthly by Mercedes-Benz Cars. The high demand for the electrified models has been sustained, especially in Europe,” Seeger said.