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  • GM self-driving car subsidiary withheld video of a crash, California DMV says | CNN Business

    GM self-driving car subsidiary withheld video of a crash, California DMV says | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The California Department of Motor Vehicles Tuesday revoked Cruise’s permits to test and operate fully driverless vehicles on the state’s roads. The California DMV said, in part, it was because Cruise, which is GM’s self-driving vehicle technology subsidiary, withheld video and information about a crash involving a pedestrian.

    The suspension applies only to vehicles with no “safety driver,” meaning there is no one in the driver’s seat ready to take over the controls if needed.

    The agency also indicated that Cruise had “misrepresented… information related to safety of the autonomous technology of its vehicles.”

    For those reasons, the California DMV wrote, it was necessary to revoke the company’s permits. The DMV notice did not specify exactly what incidents or communications from Cruise led to the suspensions.

    About three weeks ago, a Cruise vehicle hit a pedestrian in downtown San Francisco who had first been hit by another vehicle then and was propelled by this collision into the path of the Cruise driverless car. After striking the pedestrian a second time, the Cruise vehicle, attempting to pull off the road and out of the way of traffic, dragged the pedestrian along the road for 20 feet at a speed at about seven miles an hour, according to the DMV’s report.

    “Our thoughts continue to be with the victim as we hope for a rapid and complete recovery,” Cruise wrote in an emailed statement. A San Francisco Fire Department spokesperson said at the time that victim had multiple serious injuries.

    Cruise claims that it proactively reached out both state and federal safety regulators following that incident. Regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into the safety of Cruise autonomous vehicles around pedestrians.

    The DMV alleges that Cruise did not tell regulators that the car dragged the pedestrian across the roadway while attempting to pull over following the impact. Also, the DMV’s order of suspensions indicates that the video Cruise provided of the incident, taken by the self-driving car’s on-board cameras, stopped shortly after the car hit the pedestrian and did not show the dragging. Cruise did not provide a longer video showing the entire incident until 10 days later, after DMV had learned of the pedestrian being dragged “from another government agency.”

    A video of the incident shown to a CNN reporter shortly after it occurred also did not show the pedestrian being dragged.

    In a statement shared with CNN on Wednesday, Cruise denied that it had withheld any video from the DMV and said that it shared a full video with the agency when the incident was first reported.

    “The DMV has provided Cruise with the steps needed to apply to reinstate its suspended permits, which the DMV will not approve until the company has fulfilled the requirements to the department’s satisfaction,” the agency sad in the notice posted to its web site.

    This summer, Cruise and Waymo, the driverless car arm of Google-parent Alphabet received permission from San Francisco regulators to begin regular paid driverless taxi services in that city.

    Cruise will continue operations of its driverless fleets in Phoenix, Arizona and Austin, Texas.

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  • ‘Pony up’: In strategic shift, UAW says added strikes could come “at any time” | CNN Business

    ‘Pony up’: In strategic shift, UAW says added strikes could come “at any time” | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    UAW President Shawn Fain said the union would not expand its strike against the Big Three automakers on Friday, but that the UAW stood ready to add more workers to the picket lines at any time as its labor action enters a new phase.

    “We are prepared at any time to call on more locals to stand up and walk out,” Fain said in a livestream update on negotiations. He later added: “We changed the rules. Now there is only one rule – pony up.”

    The announcement marks a tactical shift, Fain said. Previously the UAW had announced strike expansions on Fain’s weekly Friday updates. But now, as part of the union’s strategy to keep the automakers off balance, Fain said strike expansions could come at any day of the week, at any time.

    This past Wednesday for the first time it announced an expansion midweek, and without warning, when 8,700 UAW members went on strike suddenly at Ford’s largest factory, the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville.

    “We’re entering a new phase of this strike, and it demands a new approach,” Fain said. “We’re done waiting until Fridays to escalate our strike.”

    Fain said that the companies had started to wait until Fridays to make progress in their bargaining positions, and that the union is changing it strategy in order to speed up progress in negotiations.

    “A negotiation requires both sides making movement. If they’re not ready to move, we’re going to give them a push in a language they understand – dollars and cents,” he said.

    This is the first time that the union has gone on strike against GM, Ford and Stellantis at the same time. But rather than shut down any of the companies’ US operations completely, the union has targeted its strike against specific facilities, and then expanded the strike gradually in order to increase pressure at the bargaining table.

    The Kentucky Truck Plant is a key money maker for Ford, assembling heavy duty pickup trucks and full-size SUVs and producing $25 billion in annual sales, or about one-sixth of its revenue. It also produced an estimated $150 million in profits a week, according to an estimate from Colin Langan, auto analyst at Wells Fargo.

    Ford officials told reporters Thursday that the company has gone as far as it can on the additional money it can offer members.

    “We have reached our limit. We’ve actually stretched ourselves to get to this point,” said Kumar Galhotra, president of Ford Blue, which is the unit that sells most of Ford’s gasoline-powered cars to consumers. “We are still working to get this done. We’re open to moving some money around within the deal that might fit the union’s needs better, but in terms of cost of deal, we’re there. We have been very clear, we’re at the limit. Going further will hurt our ability to invest in the business as we need to invest.”

    Fain mocked that statement from Ford, saying that while Ford has recovered well since the Great Recession, its workers have seen only modest pay increases, which were outweighed by rising prices.

    “I found a pathetic irony in that statement,” he said on Friday. “You know who stretched themselves? The Ford workers who didn’t get a single raise for a decade.”

    Fain said the union is in a strong bargaining position and has already achieved a lot in negotiations, but not enough to make up for past concessions by workers.

    “We’re at the point in this process where we’re looking for one thing only – a deal,” Fain said. “We’re not giving these companies an extra hour, or an extra day. They know what needs to happen, and they know how to get it done. Taking out Kentucky Truck sent a very clear message not only to Ford, but to GM and Stellantis as well. Don’t you dare slow walk us or low ball us. We will take out whatever plants you force us to.”

    The companies are on record as offering members an immediate 10% raise to union members and additional raises totaling 10 percentage points or more during the life of the contracts, which are likely to run through the spring of 2028.

    The companies are also agreeing to some kind of return of the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to union pay scales to protect workers from rising prices. The union gave up the COLA in 2007, as well as traditional pension plans and health care coverage for retirees for workers hired after the concession contracts reached that year.

    In addition, a week ago, Fain announced that GM had agreed to a major union demand to place workers at new and planned EV battery plants under the national master agreement at the company.

    GM, Ford and Stellatis have all announced plans to shift from traditional gasoline-powered vehicles to electric vehicles, or EVs. That would end the need for the jobs in their current plants that build engines and transmissions.

    All three are in the process of building at least three plants each, almost all in joint ventures with Asian battery makers, that will be used to power EVs. All are expected to pay significantly less than UAW members at those engine and transmission plants are now paid.

    Going into negotiations, the companies had insisted the battery plant workers would be employees of the joint ventures, not the companies themselves, and that their pay scale would not be included in this contract.

    Details of what GM has agreed upon in relation to workers battery plant workers is not yet known, as GM has not confirmed the tentative agreement on the issue. Ford officials have said they also have been negotiating with the union on the battery plant issue and that progress had been made, without giving details.

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  • GM settles strike at Canadian plants | CNN Business

    GM settles strike at Canadian plants | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    A strike at General Motors’ Canadian plants is over less than a day after it started, according Unifor, the union that represents more than 4,000 autoworkers at the company.

    The strike had begun 11:59 pm Monday when Unifor said GM had refused to agree to a deal similar to the one the union previously reached with Ford. That kind of deal is known as a pattern agreement.

    The union said the company quickly gave in to union demands once the strike started.

    “When faced with the shutdown of these key facilities General Motors had no choice but to get serious at the table and agree to the pattern,” said Unifor National President Lana Payne. “The solidarity of our members has led to a comprehensive tentative agreement that follows the pattern set at Ford to the letter.”

    The union said strike actions are on hold to allow the membership to vote on the tentative agreement. The strike could resume if the rank-and-file members fail to ratify the deal.

    But it’s uncertain whether it will win approval of membership. Only 54% of Unifor members at Ford voted in favor of the deal.

    The Unifor strike occurred while GM as well as rivals Ford and Stellantis were already dealing with strikes by the United Auto Workers union. That strike had started September 15 against targeted facilities of each company. More than 25,000 UAW members are now on strike at the three companies, with nearly 10,000 of those at GM.

    “This record agreement, subject to member ratification, recognizes the many contributions of our represented team members with significant increases in wages, benefits and job security while building on GM’s historic investments in Canadian manufacturing,” said GM’s statement.

    Details of the Unifor deal were not immediately available. But the deal with Ford included a wage increase of 10% in the first year of the agreement, followed by a 2% and 3% increase over the next two years of the contract. It also restored the cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) to protect workers from rising prices.

    The Ford agreement also returned to a pension plan — rather than just 401(k)-style retirement accounts — for Unifor members hired at Ford in recent years. And it converted temporary staff who work full-time shifts into permanent employees.

    Autoworkers in both Canada and the United States used to all have COLA clauses in their contracts as well as traditional pension plans that pay retirees a set amount every month as long as they live. But the automakers got unions on both sides of the border to give up the COLA for all members and traditional pensions for new hires when the companies were in financial distress in 2007 through 2009.

    Restoring those concessions have been a major negotiation demand of both Unifor and the UAW.

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  • Contract negotiations: UAW strike puts the four-day workweek back in focus | CNN Business

    Contract negotiations: UAW strike puts the four-day workweek back in focus | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    When the United Auto Workers called a strike last week against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, one of their demands focused on an idea circulating on the periphery of labor reform circles.

    In addition to calling for a 36% pay raise and increased job security, union members want a 32-hour, four-day workweek with no pay cuts.

    Proposals to shorten the workweek have gained traction in recent years, with the flexibility of pandemic-era remote work fueling many of these calls. The accelerating use of artificial intelligence in the workplace has also pushed some workers to question the necessity of a 40-hour week.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders has long been a vocal proponent of a shortened workweek.

    “We are looking at an explosion in this country of artificial intelligence and robotics. And that means that the average worker is going to be much more productive,” the Vermont Independent told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “The question as a nation that we have to ask ourselves is: Who is going to benefit from this productivity? We should begin a serious discussion — and the UAW is doing that — about substantially lowering the workweek.”

    Several countries have conducted trials of four-day workweeks, with the largest held in the United Kingdom last year. The trial lasted six months and encompassed about 2,900 workers across 61 companies. Participants reported better sleep, more time spent with their children and lower levels of burnout.

    “It would be an extraordinary thing to see people have more time to spend with their kids, with their families, to be able to do more cultural activities, get a better education,” said Sanders. “People in America are stressed out for a dozen different reasons, and that’s one of the reasons why life expectancy in our country is actually in decline.”

    A separate study conducted in Iceland between 2015 and 2019 found reducing the number of work days a week did not lower productivity. A similar program in the United States and Canada, composed of dozens of businesses, found none of the companies planned to return to the five-day standard after the trial ended.

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  • Autoworkers strike deadline nears as negotiators rush to avoid historic walkout | CNN Business

    Autoworkers strike deadline nears as negotiators rush to avoid historic walkout | CNN Business

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    Detroit
    CNN
     — 

    With just hours to go before labor contracts expire at America’s three unionized automakers, thousands of autoworkers could walk off the job.

    Those limited, targeted strikes could be enough to grind production to a halt at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, which builds vehicles under the Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler brands for North America.

    But the uncertainty and confusion underscore the high stakes, with a possible historic strike at all three major automakers, disruptions to the local and national economies, and, perhaps more than anything, a hint at the future of manufacturing jobs in America.

    The union and the automakers continued to negotiate down to the wire on Thursday. GM made a new offer on Thursday afternoon, including a 20% raise, matching Ford’s offer.

    “We don’t want there to be a strike. We’re ready to work until the deadline,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told CNN. “We’d like to make history by making a historic deal, not having a historic strike,” he said.

    And President Joe Biden himself spoke to leaders of the union and the automakers, as a strike could be politically costly for him, as well.

    UAW President Shawn Fain on Wednesday evening announced plans for those targeted strikes at any company that fails to reach a labor deal with the union before contracts expire at 11:59 pm Thursday. Fain suggested the strategy, including the possibility of ramping up strikes as negotiating continues, would give the UAW more leverage. “We have the power to keep escalating and keep taking plants out,” he said.

    But Farley said on CNN Thursday that striking plants that make critical parts could affect workers at downstream assembly plants.

    “We can’t make a vehicle without an engine or transmission or stamping. So those people will, you know, basically be furloughed,” Farley said.

    Slowing or stopping the production of a few engine or transmission plants at each company could be as effective at stopping operations as a full strike at all plants, according to industry experts.

    One engine or transmission location per company might be enough to shut down nearly three-quarters of the US assembly plants, said Jeff Schuster, global head of automotive for GlobalData, an industry consultant.

    “Two plants per company, you can pretty much idle North America,” he said.

    Halting the companies’ assembly lines would likely happen in less than a week that way, Schuster said.

    One advantage for the union of a targeted strike is the potential to save resources and extend a possible walkout. Striking union members are eligible for $500 a week from the union’s strike fund.

    If all 145,000 UAW members among the three automakers were to strike at the same time, it could cost the fund more than $70 million a week, draining the $825 million fund.

    If the companies shut down operations and lay off members who are not technically on strike, those workers could be eligible to receive state unemployment benefits rather than strike benefits, which could preserve the union’s resources.

    Strikers are not eligible for unemployment benefits, but workers on temporary layoff can receive the benefits, which differ by state but would be less than the union’s $500 strike pay. There also are legal questions in different states about qualifying for unemployment.

    An official with Ford told reporters Thursday that under state law, workers in Michigan and Ohio were not eligible to receive unemployment benefits if they were laid off due to lack of parts at their plant caused by a strike. There are some other states, such as Kentucky and Tennessee, where they would be able to receive unemployment benefits, according to the officials.

    But they said none of the Ford UAW members would be eligible for so-called “sub-pay,” which they typically receive during temporary layoffs. Sub pay is far more lucrative, covering most of the gap between unemployment benefits, typically less than $300 a week, and normal company pay, which can be close to $1,300 a week.

    GM CEO Mary Barra sent a letter to employees Thursday saying the company’s latest offer now includes a 20% raise, with an immediate 10% pay hike. The lower paid temporary employees would get $20 an hour, which represents a 20% raise from the current $16.67 an hour they receive. She called the offer “historic.”

    “We are working with urgency and have proposed yet another increasingly strong offer with the goal of reaching an agreement tonight. Remember: we had a strike in 2019 and nobody won,” she said in the letter.

    Farley told CNN the offer from Ford of a 20% raise over the life of the contract is the most lucrative offer the company has made to the union in the 80 years it has been there. But he said meeting the union’s demands of close to a 40% raise, along with a four-day work week and other benefit improvements, would have been unaffordable.

    Farley blamed the union for the lack of progress in negotiations. But the union has blamed the companies for waiting until the end of August or early September to make their first counteroffers.

    The union came up with the 40% raise request based on the increase in the pay of CEOs at the three automakers over the last four years. Ford CEO pay rose 21%, from $17 million for Farley’s predecessor Jim Hackett in 2019, to $21 million for Farley last year. (Farley is the lowest compensated of the three CEOs.)

    Asked why the union workers shouldn’t get the same increases, Farley responded, “We’re really open to huge increases.” As to the 40% increases for CEOs, Farley responded, “I wasn’t CEO four years ago, but we have put on the table huge increases, double digit increases.”

    Ford has not had a strike since 1978; it has more UAW workers than the other two automakers.

    President Joe Biden spoke with Fain and leaders of the major auto companies “to discuss the status of ongoing negotiations,” the White House said Thursday.

    The White House declined to say Wednesday that Biden would support UAW workers if they chose to strike.

    “I’m gonna leave it at, [Biden] believes the auto workers deserve a contract that sustains middle class jobs and wants the parties to stay at the table, to work round the clock to get a win-win agreement,” Council of Economic Advisors Chair Jared Bernstein told reporters during Wednesday’s White House press briefing.

    Biden became directly involved in 11th hour negotiations a year ago to stop engineers and conductors at the nation’s major freight railroad from going on strike and was credited by both sides with a deal being reached at that time. But Biden and Congress had power under a different labor law to keep workers on the job by imposing a contract, a power he used later in the year when rank-and-file rail workers rejected the deal he brokered and again threatened to strike

    The autoworkers fall under a different labor law, one that leaves Biden with no power to stop a walkout. And he has limited influence with the UAW, which has been critical of his push to have the industry convert to electric vehicles, a move that could cost members jobs in the long run.

    In a statement midday Thursday, GM said it remains in “good faith negotiations” with the UAW but cautioned that a strike would be disruptive to its business.

    “Any disruption would negatively impact our employees and customers, and would have an immediate ripple effect across our communities,” a company spokesperson said.

    One sticking point in negotiations is that wages are only part of the gap between the two sides. In some ways it might be the least difficult problem to solve, said Patrick Anderson, CEO of Anderson Economic Group, a Michigan research firm.

    “The difference between the automakers and the unions on wages is a gap that could be closed,” said Anderson. “The differences involving non-wage demands are a gulf, not a gap.”

    The union is attempting to reverse deep concessions that go back as far as 2007. At the time, years of losses had left Ford nearly out of cash, and GM and Chrysler were on their way to bankruptcy and federal bailouts.

    The number one concession the union wants to end is a lower tier of wages and benefits for workers hired since 2007. While top pay for those newer hires, who today make up a majority of membership, is the same as the $32.32 paid to more senior members, it takes many more years to reach that level.

    The union also wants to restore traditional pension plans for those hired since 2007, as the more senior workers now receive, as well as the same retiree health care coverage. And to protect members from rising prices, it wants a return of the cost-of-living adjustments to pay that all employees lost in 2007.

    Even Fain calls those demands “ambitious,” but he said they’re driven by record or near record profits at the automakers.

    Pandemic supply chain disruptions and shortages of some parts, particularly computer chips, have led to record car prices. The average purchase price of a new car in August was nearly $48,000, according to Edmunds. That’s up 30% from August of 2019.

    Automakers have used their limited supply of parts to build vehicles loaded with options to maximize profits. That’s produced a strong bottom line. General Motors reported record profits in 2022, and Ford posted near-record profits as well. Stellantis, a European-based automaker formed in 2021 by the merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA Group, had 2022 profits up 26% compared to its first year of combined operations.

    A strike that halts production nationwide could also be costly for the automakers at a time of strong demand by car buyers and strong competition from nonunion automakers such as Tesla and foreign brands. GM said it lost $2.9 billion during its 2019 strike.

    While the automakers have done their best to build up inventory at dealerships, car buyers could have trouble finding some of the models they want and could have to wait longer for their choice of colors and options. And limited supplies could put upward pressure on some vehicle prices.

    – CNN’s DJ Judd contributed to this report

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  • Autoworkers strike: What to watch for as the clock ticks down | CNN Business

    Autoworkers strike: What to watch for as the clock ticks down | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Time is running out to avert a strike that could shut down America’s unionized auto assembly plants and other manufacturing facilities.

    The United Auto Workers contracts with General Motors, Ford and Stellantis expire at 11:59 pm Thursday. The contracts cover 145,000 UAW members at the three companies.

    If there’s no new deal by the contract expiration, the union has said it will start targeted strikes against a undisclosed number of facilities at each company.

    Here’s what to watch as the clock ticks down:

    It might not take much to virtually shut down the output from all the companies.

    The companies operate a complex network of plants that depend on getting parts from different facilities.

    Slowing or stopping the production of a few engine or transmission plants at each company could be as effective at stopping operations as a full strike at all plants, according to industry experts.

    One engine or transmission location per company might be enough to shut down nearly three-quarters of the US assembly plants, said Jeff Schuster, global head of automotive for GlobalData, an industry consultant.

    “Two plants per company, you can pretty much idle North America,” he said.

    Halting the companies’ assembly lines would likely happen in less than a week that way, Schuster said.

    One advantage of a targeted strike for the union is the potential to save resources and extend a possible walkout. Striking union members are eligible for $500 a week from the union’s strike fund.

    If all 145,000 UAW members among the three automakers were to strike at the same time, it could cost the fund more than $70 million a week, draining the $825 million fund.

    With targeted strikes, it’s possible that the companies will shut down operations and lay off members who are not technically on strike. That could make them eligible to receive state unemployment benefits rather than strike benefits, which could preserve the union’s resources. But there are legal questions about qualifying for unemployment.

    UAW President Shawn Fain told his members in a Facebook Live appearance Wednesday evening that if they are not in one of the plants that the union picks to go on strike, they should stay on the job. He said in that case they would be working under an expired contract, rather than on an extended contract.

    Fain said he would announce at 10 pm Thursday which plants have been selected to go on strike. Among the likely targets, Schuster said, are a Stellantis transmission plant in Kokomo, Indiana, a GM transmission plant in Toledo, Ohio, and a Ford transmission plant in Livonia, Michigan. Those three plants have just over 6,000 UAW members on staff, according to figures available from the companies’ websites.

    But there is still a chance no plants will go on strike and no operations will be disrupted. While Fain warned members that a strike appeared likely – “We’re likely going to have to take action,” he said during his remarks Wednesday – he also said there had been movement at the bargaining tables.

    Fain said that all the automakers had boosted the amount they were offering to raise wages, with Ford now offering a 20% raise during the life of the contract, GM is offering 18% and Stellantis is offering 17.5%, although Fain cautioned that still did not meet the union members’ needs, which had started with a demand for an immediate 20%, and four additional raises of 5% each over the course of a four-year deal.

    And all the automakers issued statements saying they want to reach tentative labor deals before the deadline that would avoid a strike. Despite the difference, there is a chance for an 11th hour settlement or settlements.

    There are separate union contracts at each of the traditional Big Three. That means there could be a tentative labor deal reached at Ford and GM that keeps those workers on the job, while the employees at Stellantis could go out on strike.

    Ford has not had a national strike since 1976 and has not had a strike of any kind at its US plants since 1978.

    In contrast, experts say Stellantis, which builds vehicles under the Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler brands, could see workers walk off.

    “I think there’s a 99% chance of a strike at Stellantis,” said Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations school in Buffalo.

    If the two sides are close to a deal at the deadline, they could agree to a temporary contract extension for hours or even days. That extension could even go on for months, as with the West Coast ports during negotiations with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union last year and earlier this year.

    Fain has repeatedly said that the 11:59 pm contract expiration is a “deadline, not a reference point.” In past negotiations, the union has sometimes chosen only one automaker to strike, while staying on the job at the other two. Once a deal was reached, the union moved to get the other automakers to accept that “pattern” as the basis for their own contract.

    But Fain insists the union will not follow that playbook this time.

    Sometimes one or both sides will walk away before the final minute before a contract expiration. Although the strike might not start until after the deadline, a breakdown of talks could kill the chance for an 11th-hour deal.

    That’s what happened in bargaining in May between the Writers Guild of America, which represents 11,000 writers, and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents major studios and streaming services in the contract negotiations. While the contract was due to end at midnight PDT, the talks ended about three hours earlier.

    Sometimes after talks break down, the parties can return to the table and reach a deal without a strike. That happened in July at UPS, as talks between the company and the Teamsters union ended after a marathon negotiating session in the early hours of July 5. Official talks did not resume for nearly three weeks. But when the two sides met again on July 25, they quickly reached a deal that averted an August 1 strike.

    But a break in talks at any of the automakers at this late date would not be a good sign.

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  • Tesla cuts Model S and X prices by over 6% in China | CNN Business

    Tesla cuts Model S and X prices by over 6% in China | CNN Business

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    Beijing
    Reuters
     — 

    Tesla has cut prices for its existing inventories of its premium Model S and Model X cars in China by as much as 6.9%, it said on Wednesday.

    A post from the carmaker on social media platform Weibo showed the price of the Model S cut by 6.7% to 754,900 yuan ($103,477.58) from 808,900 yuan earlier.

    The Model X now starts from 836,900 yuan, down 6.9% from 898,900 yuan earlier.

    Tesla

    (TSLA)     on Monday said it cut prices in China for its Model Y’s long-range and performance versions starting on August 14, which triggered concerns around its profit margins.

    The moves come after sales of Tesla’s China-made vehicles fell 31% in July from June, their first month-on-month decline since December, as the automaker idled some production to prepare for a revamped Model 3 launch.

    By contrast, China’s BYD

    (BYDDF)    increased sales from June.

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  • Biden urges UAW and Big Three automakers to reach deal to avoid strike | CNN Business

    Biden urges UAW and Big Three automakers to reach deal to avoid strike | CNN Business

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    Washington DC
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden sought to ramp up pressure on the United Auto Workers union and the nation’s three unionized automakers – Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, known as the “Big Three” – one month ahead of a critical deadline for labor talks.

    “As the Big Three auto companies and the United Auto Workers come together — one month before the expiration of their contract — to negotiate a new agreement, I want to be clear about where I stand. I’m asking all sides to work together to forge a fair agreement,” Biden said in a new statement Monday.

    The White House has been closely monitoring the talks as the two sides appear far apart. The union is demanding significant pay raises of 40% or more for members to match increases in CEO pay at the companies over the last four years and a reversal of past concessions by the union.

    Negotiations could put the White House at odds with the union. While the AFL-CIO, which is made up of multiple independent unions, has already endorsed Biden’s reelection bid, calling him the “most pro-union president in our lifetimes,” the UAW itself has yet to join in that endorsement. A strike could have massive economic – and political – consequences. Biden and UAW President Shawn Fain met briefly in the West Wing last month while UAW leadership was at the White House briefing senior staff on their positions.

    The three contracts between the UAW and General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, which sells cars and trucks under the Dodge, Ram and Chrysler brands, are due to expire September 14. Fain last week denounced the most recent offer from Stellantis, throwing a copy of the offer in the trash during a video for members. Plans for strike authorization votes at all three companies is expected to be announced soon, the union said Monday.

    Traditionally the UAW will select one of the three companies to go first and have the other two put on hold while it concentrates on reaching a deal, then the union will push for similar from the other two automakers as part of a “pattern.”

    The UAW is pushing for an aggressive set of demands at the negotiating table, and has been critical of the Biden administration’s financial support for the transition to electric vehicles, arguing that the Biden administration has been overly supportive of automakers’ plans for EV battery plants that are expected to pay far less than union wages. Fain has publicly warned that UAW is prepared to strike, saying nearly 150,000 members will strike if the three automakers do not meet their demands.

    CNN has previously reported that while Biden enjoys hefty support from leadership of many unions, he has also faced lingering mistrust and concern among some of the rank-and-file of the UAW, according to people familiar with the dynamics, a perception fueled in part by the president’s intervention to avert a freight rail strike in December.

    In a nod to the UAW’s demands, Biden used the union’s “fair transition” to clean energy language.

    “I support a fair transition to a clean energy future. That means ensuring that Big Three auto jobs are good jobs that can support a family; that auto companies should honor the right to organize; take every possible step to avoid painful plant closings; and ensure that when transitions are needed, the transitions are fair and look to retool, reboot, and rehire in the same factories and communities at comparable wages, while giving existing workers the first shot to fill those jobs,” Biden said in the statement.

    The UAW said it saw the White House statement as an endorsement of it bargaining position.

    “We appreciate President Biden’s support for strong contracts that ensure good paying union jobs now and pave the way for a just transition to an EV future,” Fain said in a statement. “We agree with the president that the Big Three’s joint venture battery plants should have the same strong pay and safety standards that generations of UAW members have fought for.”

    The three automakers said they, too, want to reach deals that would avoid a strike.

    Ford pointed out that it employs more UAW members and builds more cars and trucks at US plants than any other automaker.

    “We look forward to working with the UAW on creative solutions during this time when our dramatically changing industry needs a skilled and competitive workforce more than ever,” it said.

    “Stellantis remains committed to working constructively and collaboratively with the UAW to negotiate a new agreement that balances the concerns of our 43,000 employees with our vision for the future,” said that company.

    “We will continue to bargain in good faith with the UAW to maintain our momentum and to provide opportunities for all in our EV future,” GM said in a statement.

    The union is concerned about the plans by all three automakers to convert from traditional gasoline powered vehicles to EVs in the coming decades. it takes an estimated one third less hours of work to assemble an EV than a car with an internal combustion engine, since that engine and the transmission that goes with it has so many moving parts missing from an EV.

    The Biden administration has been active in supporting the switch to EVs, providing tax credits for EV buyers and loans to build plants necessary for EVs, such as those that make batteries.

    There are about a dozen EV battery plants now under construction nationwide. For the most part, those plants are joint ventures between automakers and battery makers, and thus will not be covered under the UAW contracts with the Big Three. Workers at the one battery plant for one of the Big Three to open so far, a Warren, Ohio, plant for the joint venture between GM and LG, voted 98% in favor of joining the UAW. But the union has yet to reach a deal with plant management on a contract, and workers there are paid about half of what UAW members are paid at the Big Three.

    – CNN’s Vanessa Yurkevich contributed to this story

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  • Inflation may be cooling — but drivers can’t seem to catch a break | CNN Business

    Inflation may be cooling — but drivers can’t seem to catch a break | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    If you’re sitting in rush-hour traffic in Arlington, Virginia, there’s a good chance you’ll spot Hunter Scott in his helmet and elbow pads scooting right past you on an adjacent path.

    For the past year, Scott, a 38-year-old Navy pilot doing work for the government until his next deployment, has been commuting 12 miles from his home in Washington, DC, via motorized scooter. When it’s raining or snowing, he throws on his Navy-issued high-tech weather gear, if necessary.

    Even though the second-hand scooter he bought from Craigslist for $500 can only go up to 20 miles an hour, he said it’s saving him a lot of time compared to when he drove to work. Now he doesn’t have to walk a mile from the nearest parking lot to his office or wait for the Metro, which can often be unreliable, Scott said. And it means he can spend more time with his one-year-old daughter.

    It is also saving him a lot of money at a time when just about every car-related cost is more expensive.

    Scott said he got the idea to scoot to work last year when gas prices were near record highs and inflation rose to a 40-year record high. “The cost of living was just getting more expensive,” Scott told CNN. “We weren’t willing to make sacrifices on the quality of food that we buy.”

    Scott estimates he and his wife, who also commutes via scooter, are saving $4,500 this year from not driving to work. That’s according to calculations he made on an Excel spreadsheet that factors in savings from not having to repair their cars as much, the auto insurance reductions they get from driving less and the reduced fuel use.

    Even though gas prices have been rising lately, they’re still significantly lower than a year ago. But other costs associated with car ownership are continuing to skyrocket. In fact, if Scott and his wife switched back to driving today they’d likely find that they’re saving well above the $4,500 he calculated.

    It will cost you 19.5% more to repair your car now than it did a year ago, according to July’s Consumer Price Index report, released Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another hefty expense is car insurance, up 17.8% from a year ago. Car repairs and car insurance were the second- and third-largest annual price increases, respectively, tracked by the CPI.

    On top of that, car maintenance and servicing, body work, tires, parts and equipment and even state registration and licensing fees are all costing drivers more.

    Pam Franks, a retired Louisiana state Medicaid analyst, balked when she got a notice from State Farm informing her that her six-month policy for her 2017 Toyota Camry would increase by 41% to $408 this August.

    “It’s aggravating when I haven’t had any wrecks or tickets,” Franks, who lives in Pineville, Louisiana, told CNN.

    Pam Franks, a resident of Pineville, Louisiana, said her car insurance policy rate increased by 41%, despite the fact that she has not had any recent collisions or tickets.

    She said she tried shopping around for better rates, but couldn’t find anything cheaper since she bundles her auto insurance with her home insurance. Switching to another auto insurance policy would have pushed up the cost of her home insurance, she said.

    She’s one of many Louisiana drivers seeing their rates increase after the state’s Department of Insurance signed off on State Farm’s 17% average rate hike across all policies earlier this month.

    “Inflationary pressures and supply chain issues, along with higher claim costs continue to drive our rate changes in Louisiana and beyond,” Roszell Gadson, a State Farm spokesperson, told CNN. “We continue to adjust to these trends to make sure we are matching price to risk.”

    One of the reasons car repair costs are up is that Americans aren’t replacing their older vehicles, said Kristin Brocoff, a spokeswoman spokesperson for CarMD, a vehicle diagnostics provider.

    The average age of cars in use in the United States hit an all-time high of 12.5 years last year, according to an analysis from S&P Global Mobility of 284 million cars.

    That’s partly because car production still hasn’t caught up with pent-up demand from the pandemic, resulting in more expensive new cars.

    But trying to extend your car’s life span can add up.

    Model year 2007 cars were the most likely to need a repair related to the “check engine light” message in the past year, according to CarMD’s April Vehicle Health Index report that analyzed 17.7 million check-engine light readings from model year 1996 to 2022 vehicles driven last year. Some of the most common check-engine light repair issues include replacing catalytic converters, oxygen sensors and ignition coil and spark plugs, according to CarMD’s report.

    The average car repair cost $403.71 last year, a 2.8% uptick from 2021 and a record high since CarMD began reporting on this in 2009. CarMD estimates average repair costs using annual industry data on the cost of car parts, labor rates and the average amount of time required to complete a repair.

    On the labor side, rates were down by 0.5% from last year. Car parts were up 5% from a year ago, which pushed up overall repair costs.

    Paul Baxter, a mechanic who owns Bullet Proof Off-Road & Auto, a car repair shop in Mesa, Arizona, said he’s paying 30% more for car parts compared to before the pandemic. That’s a result of persistent supply chain issues and higher shipping costs, he said.

    He said he has no bargaining power and has to accept the price manufacturers are charging for parts. To keep the lights on, he marks up car parts he sells to customers by 20% to 30%, he told CNN.

    Baxter hasn’t had an issue finding and retaining qualified mechanics. Still, he raised his three workers’ wages by $5 an hour to $25 an hour over the past few years to keep up with the higher cost of living.

    Paul Baxter, who opened his auto shop in 2016, has had to raise prices due to the rising cost of car parts.

    Baxter said the industry publications he subscribes to that are critical for him to learn how to repair the newest car models raised their prices. Even the company from which he purchases water coolers so customers can have a drink in the waiting room now charges more.

    That’s why he recently charged $2,300 to replace a customer’s air conditioning. A few years ago he said he would have charged $1,500 for the same exact job.

    Customers constantly tell him he’s charging too much, said Baxter, who’s been repairing cars professionally since 2008 before opening his shop in 2016. “People don’t understand the back end of running an auto shop and the expenses I take on to keep it open,” he told CNN.

    When he explains how he arrives at an estimate, customers are more sympathetic, he said.

    Ted Canty, a 67-year-old retired FedEx operations manager living in Wimauma, Florida, said he is at his wits end with car repairs. A year ago, he paid $1,950 to replace the water pump in his 2017 Volkswagen Golf. That’s around what his monthly Social Security check is, he said.

    That meant Canty and his wife, who is also retired, had to cut back on dining out and seeing movies so they could save more money for future car repairs.

    Ted Canty, a retired resident of Wimauma, Florida, tries to avoid driving after paying almost $2,000 for a car repair and seeing his car insurance rates increase.

    When his anti-lock braking system recently went out, though, he knew he couldn’t push it off for too long. In the past, he’s almost always gone to Volkswagen service centers for repairs because he says he doesn’t feel comfortable getting it done at shops that aren’t as familiar with his car. But the Volkswagen service center wanted to charge him $525 to repair it, he said, leading him to shop around for better rates at other places. In the end, he paid a quarter of what Volkswagen was charging.

    Canty is worried about the next car repair he’ll inevitably need, especially because he and his wife have limited sources of income outside of their Social Security checks and his pension.

    “We could be driving more because we’re retired and want to go places. But we cut it back to keep the miles off the car,” he told CNN.

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  • Takeaways from the second Republican presidential debate | CNN Politics

    Takeaways from the second Republican presidential debate | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The second 2024 Republican presidential primary debate ended just as it began: with former President Donald Trump – who hasn’t yet appeared alongside his rivals onstage – as the party’s dominant front-runner.

    The seven GOP contenders in Wednesday night’s showdown at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California provided a handful of memorable moments, including former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley unloading what often seemed like the entire field’s pent-up frustration with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

    “Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say,” she said to him at one point.

    Two candidates criticized Trump’s absence, as well. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he was “missing in action.” Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called the former president “Donald Duck” and said he “hides behind his golf clubs” rather than defending his record on stage.

    Chris Christie takes up debate time to send Trump a clear message

    The GOP field also took early shots at President Joe Biden. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said Biden, rather than joining the striking auto workers’ union on the picket line Tuesday in Michigan, should be on the southern border. Former Vice President Mike Pence said Biden should be “on the unemployment line.” North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said Biden was interfering with “free markets.”

    However, what played out in the debate, hosted by Fox Business Network and Univision, is unlikely to change the trajectory of a GOP race in which Trump has remained dominant in national and early-state polling.

    And the frequently messy, hard-to-track crosstalk could have led many viewers to tune out entirely.

    Here are takeaways from the second GOP primary debate:

    Trump might have played it safe by skipping the debates and taking a running-as-an-incumbent approach to the 2024 GOP primary.

    It’s hard to see, though, how he would pay a significant price in the eyes of the party’s voters for missing Wednesday night’s messy engagement.

    Trump’s rivals took a few shots at him. DeSantis knocked him for deficit spending. Christie mocked him during the night’s early moments, calling him “Donald Duck” for skipping the debate and then in his final comments said he would vote Trump off the GOP island.

    “This guy has not only divided our party – he’s divided families all over this country. He’s divided friends all over this country,” Christie said. “He needs to be voted off the island and he needs to be taken out of this process.”

    However, Trump largely escaped serious scrutiny of his four years in the Oval Office from a field of rivals courting voters who have largely positive views of his presidency.

    “Tonight’s GOP debate was as boring and inconsequential as the first debate, and nothing that was said will change the dynamics of the primary contest,” Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita said in a statement.

    The second GOP primary debate was beset by interruptions, crosstalk and protracted squabbles between the candidates and moderators over speaking time.

    That’s tough for viewers trying to make sense of it all but even worse for these candidates as they attempted to stand out as viable alternatives to the absentee Trump.

    Further complicating the matter, some of the highest polling candidates after Trump – DeSantis and Haley – were among those least willing to dive into the muck, especially during the crucial first hour. The moderators repeatedly tried to clear the road for the Florida governor, at least in the beginning. But he was all but absent from the proceedings for the first 15 minutes.

    Ramaswamy fared somewhat better, speaking louder – and faster – than most of his rivals. But he was bogged down repeatedly when caught between his own talking points and cross-volleys of criticisms from frustrated candidates like Scott.

    The moderator group will likely get criticism for losing control of the room within the first half-hour, but even a messy debate tells voters something about the people taking part.

    All night, Scott seemed like he was looking for a fight with somebody and he finally got that when he set his sights on fellow South Carolinian Haley.

    He began his line of attack – which Haley interjected with a “Bring it” – by accusing her of spending $50,000 on curtains in a $15 million subsidized location during her time as the US ambassador to the United Nations.

    What ensued was the two Republicans going back and forth about the curtains. “Do your homework, Tim, because Obama bought those curtains,” Haley said, while Scott repeated, “Did you send them back? Did you send them back?” Haley then responded: “Did you send them back? You’re the one who works in Congress.”

    It wasn’t the most acrimonious moment of the night, but it was up there. The feuding between the two South Carolina natives seemed deep, but it’s worth remembering that about a decade ago, when Haley was governor, she appointed Scott to the Senate seat he currently holds after Republican Jim DeMint stepped down. That confidence in Scott seems to have dissolved in this presidential race.

    Confronted by his Republican competitors for the first time in earnest, DeSantis delivered an uneven performance from the center of the stage – a spot that is considerably less secure than it was heading into the first debate in Milwaukee.

    Despite rules that allowed candidates to respond if they were invoked, DeSantis let Fox slip to commercial break when Pence seemed to blame the governor for a jury decision to award a life sentence, not the death penalty, to the mass murderer in the Parkland high school shooting. (DeSantis opposed the decision and championed a law that made Florida the state with the lowest threshold to put someone on death row going forward.) Nor did he respond when Pence accused DeSantis of inflating Florida’s budget by 30% during his tenure.

    He later let Scott get the last word on Florida’s Black history curriculum standards and struggled to defend himself when Haley – accurately – pointed out that he took steps to block fracking in Florida on his second day in office.

    Before the first debate in Milwaukee, a top strategist for a pro-DeSantis super PAC told donors that “79% of the people tonight are going to watch the debate and turn it off after 19 minutes.”

    By that measure, the Florida governor managed to first speak Wednesday night just in the nick of time – 16 minutes into the debate. And when he finally spoke, he continued the sharper attacks on the GOP front-runner that he has previewed in recent weeks.

    DeSantis equated Trump’s absence in California to Biden, who DeSantis said was “completely missing in action for leadership” on the economy, blaming him for inflation and the autoworkers strike.

    “And you know who else is missing in action? Donald Trump is missing in action,” DeSantis said. “He should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record.”

    But DeSantis then largely pulled back from further targeting Trump – until a post-debate Fox News appearance when he challenged the former president to a one-on-one face-off.

    DeSantis ended the debate on a strong note. He took charge by rejecting moderator Dana Perino’s attempts to get the candidates to vote one of their competitors “off the island.” He ended his night forcefully dismissing a suggestion that Trump’s lead in the polls held meaning in September.

    “Polls don’t elect presidents, voters elect presidents,” he said, before pointing a finger at Trump for Republicans’ electoral underperformance in the last three elections.

    But as the super PAC strategist previously pointed out: By then, who was watching?

    In the final minutes of the debate, co-host Ilia Calderón of Univision asked Pence how he would reach out to those Latino voters who felt the Republican Party was hostile or didn’t care about them.

    “I’m incredibly proud of the tax cut and tax reform bill,” he said, referring to Republicans’ sweeping 2017 tax law. He also cited low unemployment rates for Hispanic Americans recorded during the Trump-Pence administration.

    Scott, faced with the same question, said it was important to lead by example. “My chief of staff is the only Hispanic female chief of staff in the Senate,” he said. “I hired her because she was the best, highest-qualified person we have.”

    Calderón focused much of her time on a series of policy questions that highlighted the candidates’ records on immigration and gun violence. At times, some of them struggled to respond directly.

    She asked Pence if he would work with Congress to find a permanent solution for people who were brought to the country illegally as children. The Trump-Pence administration ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which gave those young people protected status. She repeated the question after Pence focused his answer on his work securing the border. He then talked about his time in Congress.

    “Let me tell you, I served in Congress for 12 years, although it seemed longer,” he said. “But you know, something I’ve done different than everybody on this stage is I’ve actually secured reform in Congress.”

    The candidates – and moderators – shy away from abortion talk

    It took more than a 100 minutes on Wednesday night for the first question on abortion to be asked.

    About five minutes later, the conversation had moved on. What is potentially the most potent driver (or flipper) of votes in the coming election was afforded less time than TikTok.

    Tellingly, no one onstage seemed to mind.

    Perino introduced the subject by asking DeSantis whether some Republicans were right to worry that the electoral backlash to abortion bans – or the prospect of their passage – would handicap the eventual GOP nominee.

    DeSantis, who signed a six-week ban in April, dismissed those concerns, pointing to his success in traditionally liberal parts of Florida on his way to winning a second term in 2022. Then he swiped at Trump for calling the new laws “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.”

    Christie took a similar path, arguing that his two terms as governor of New Jersey, a traditionally blue state, showed it was possible for anti-abortion leaders to win in a environments supportive of abortion rights.

    And with that, the abortion “debate” in Simi Valley ended abruptly. No more questions and no attempts by the rest of the candidates to interject or otherwise join the chat.

    Candidates pile on Ramaswamy

    Some of the candidates onstage didn’t want to have a repeat of the first debate, in which Ramaswamy managed to stand out as a formidable debater and showman.

    Early in Wednesday’s debate, Scott went after the tech entrepreneur, saying his business record included ties to the Chinese Communist Party and money going to Hunter Biden. The visibly annoyed Ramaswamy shifted gears from praising all the other candidates onstage to defending his business record. But Scott and Ramaswamy ended up talking over each other.

    A little later on Pence began an answer with a knock on Ramaswamy, saying, “I’m glad Vivek pulled out of his business deal in China.” At another point after Ramaswamy had responded to a question about his use of TikTok, Haley jumped in, saying, “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber from what you say” and then going on to say, “We can’t trust you. We can’t trust you.” As Ramaswamy tried to readopt his unity tone, Scott could be heard trying to interrupt him.

    Despite the efforts of moderators to pin them down, DeSantis and Pence struggled to respond when challenged on their respective records on health care.

    Asked about the Trump administration’s failure to end the Affordable Care Act as promised, Pence opted instead to answer a previous question about mass gun violence. When Perino pushed Pence one more time to explain why Obamacare remains not just intact but popular, the former vice president once again demurred.

    Fox’s Stuart Varney similarly pressed DeSantis to explain why 2.5 million Floridians don’t have health insurance.

    DeSantis found a familiar foil for Republicans in California: inflation. Varney, though, said it didn’t explain why Florida has one of the highest uninsurance rates in the country, to which DeSantis had little response.

    “Our state’s a dynamic state,” DeSantis said, before pointing to Florida’s population boom and the low level of welfare benefits offered there.

    Haley, though, appeared ready to debate health care, arguing for transparency in prices to lessen the power of insurance companies and providers and overhauling lawsuit rules to make it harder to sue doctors.

    “How can we be the best country in the world and have the most expensive health care in the world?” Haley said.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Dubai to start robotaxi trials next month in major autonomous push | CNN Business

    Dubai to start robotaxi trials next month in major autonomous push | CNN Business

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.


    Abu Dhabi, UAE
    CNN
     — 

    Dubai is rolling out its first round of robotaxis next month, as a part of a plan to alleviate congestion and accidents.

    Five fully autonomous electric taxis, operated by a General Motors subsidiary called Cruise, will begin test driving on an 8km (5 mile) stretch in the upscale Jumeirah district of the United Arab Emirates city, according to Ahmed Bahrozyan, the CEO of Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).

    Dubai hopes to become the first Middle Eastern city to introduce driverless taxis, Bahrozyan said. Autonomous taxis currently operate in several cities around the world, mostly in the US and China.

    Cruise operates commercial robotaxis in US cities like San Francisco, but Dubai would be the first launch of the cars outside the US, Bahrozyan said.

    “We are doing our own set of tests and trials in Dubai… every city has its own characteristics,” Bahrozyan said in an interview with CNN. “We have weather conditions that are certainly different than the US.”

    RTA plans to roll out 4,000 self-driving taxis by 2030, adding to the fleet of 12,000 traditional taxis in the city. Rides are expected to be slightly more expensive than an ordinary taxi but in the same price range as a private car like Uber.

    Cruise entered a contract with the RTA for 15 years, and after this period the taxi market may open up to competitors. Bahroyzyan said he foresees autonomous vehicles eventually making up the majority of the Middle East tourist hub’s taxi fleet.

    A year after GM’s Cruise robotaxis were launched in California, the company was forced to cut its fleet in half in the state following a series of collisions. The collisions outlined the potential challenges of driverless cars.

    Bahroyzyan said there will be “zero compromise on safety.”

    Dubai issued a law in April to regulate autonomous vehicles, setting benchmarks for technical, operational and safety aspects of cars. Selling and buying autonomous cars was also regulated.

    WeRide, a Chinese autonomous car technology company began trialing robotaxis in the UAE’s capital, Abu Dhabi, in 2022.

    In July, the UAE granted WeRide a license to trial all its vehicles, from robobuses to robosweepers, but the company began testing certain routes a year prior.

    The Middle East is a “key focus area” for driverless cars and WeRide said it hopes to deepen its presence in the region. WeRide also has a collaboration with the Saudi Artificial Intelligence Company to develop a robobus route.

    Saudi’s Transport General Authority introduced self-driving buses during the 2023 Hajj season in July, shuttling pilgrims in Mecca, according to local media.

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  • Stellantis to put second battery plant in town where EVs threaten current jobs | CNN Business

    Stellantis to put second battery plant in town where EVs threaten current jobs | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Stellantis and Samsung plan to build a second EV battery plant in Kokomo, Indiana, a town where many current Stellantis workers see such plants as a threat to their current jobs.

    EV battery plants are a critical part of the plans of traditional automakers to transition from gasoline-powered cars to electric vehicles in coming decades. But they could be a threat to existing jobs building engines and transmissions, which are not needed in an EV. Stellantis has four plants in Kokomo alone building engines and transmissions, employing more than 5,000 hourly workers between them.

    Stellantis, which builds cars under the Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler brands, along with unionized rivals General Motors and Ford, are now in the fourth week of a strike by the United Auto Workers union, and the future of jobs building EVs are a central issue in the strike.

    While the four Kokomo plants are not on strike, the union is on strike at Stellantis’ assembly complex in Toledo, Ohio, as well as at 20 parts and distribution centers spread across 14 states.

    All the automakers are in the process of building EV battery plants, and all of them are using joint ventures with battery manufacturers such as Samsung to build and run the plants. They have all insisted that will make the employees of the plants employees of the joint ventures, not the automakers themselves. And the pay at US EV battery plants that have opened so far is a fraction of what UAW members get when working for the automakers.

    UAW President Shawn Fain announced Friday that GM had agreed to a key union demand that employees at its EV battery plants will be part of the company’s national master labor agreement with the UAW. GM has not confirmed that agreement, and details of how much those workers would be paid and if they’ll be considered GM employees or covered in the agreement as employees of separate companies is not yet known.

    But Fain hailed that agreement as a major win for the union and said it would now press Ford and Stellantis to agree to similar terms if they want to end the strike.

    Samsung and Stellantis announced plans for its latest battery plant in the wake of that announcement.

    The two companies announced Wednesday that they are investing more than $3.2 billion to build the new plant, which will open in early 2027 and have an annual capacity of 34 gigawatt hours. Its opening will bring about 1,400 new jobs to Kokomo, located an hour north of Indianapolis.

    StarPlus Energy, the joint venture formed by Samsung and Stellantis, previously chose Kokomo for its first gigafactory that’s currently under construction and scheduled to open in 2025.

    In total, the two factories will produce 67 gigawatt hours annually. “Indiana’s economy is on a roll,” said Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb in a press release, adding that the second plant means the companies are doubling their capital investment and the amount of new jobs being created.

    The factories will help Stellantis meet its goal for battery electric passenger cars to make up 100% of its sales in Europe, and 50% of its sales in the US, by 2030. Stellantis announced in 2021 an “aggressive” investment of $35 billion for electric vehicle production and needs 400 gigawatt hours annually to meet its 2030 goal.

    Stellantis was created in 2021 through the merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA Group, maker of Peugeot, Citroën, Opel and Vauxhall cars in Europe. Shares rose nearly 2% in premarket trading.

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  • Taiwan’s Foxconn to build ‘AI factories’ with Nvidia | CNN Business

    Taiwan’s Foxconn to build ‘AI factories’ with Nvidia | CNN Business

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    Taipei
    CNN
     — 

    Taiwan’s Foxconn says it plans to build artificial intelligence (AI) data factories with technology from American chip giant Nvidia, as the electronics maker ramps up efforts to become a major global player in electric car manufacturing.

    Foxconn Chairman Young Liu and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang jointly announced the plans on Wednesday in Taipei. The duo said the new facilities using Nvidia’s chips and software will enable Foxconn to better utilize AI in its electric vehicles (EV).

    “We are at the beginning of a new computing revolution,” Huang said. “This is the beginning of a brand new way of doing software — using computers to write software that no humans can.”

    Large computing systems powered by advanced chips will be able to develop software platforms for the next generation of EVs by learning from everyday interactions, they said.

    “Foxconn is turning from a manufacturing service company into a platform solution company,” Liu said. “In three short years, Foxconn has displayed a remarkable range of high-end sedan, passenger crossover, SUV, compact pick-up, commercial bus and commercial van.”

    Best known as the assembler of Apple’s iPhones, Foxconn envisages a similar business model for EVs. It doesn’t sell the vehicles under its own brand. Instead, it will build them for clients in Taiwan and globally.

    In 2021, Foxconn unveiled three EV models, including two passenger cars and a bus, for the first time. They were followed by additional models last year and two new ones — Model N, a cargo van, and Model B, a compact SUV — during Foxconn’s tech day on Wednesday.

    Its electric buses started running in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung last year, while its first electric car, sold under the N7 brand by Taiwanese automaker Luxgen, is expected to begin deliveries on the island from January 2024.

    Foxconn has entered a competitive industry.

    Global sales of EVs, including purely battery powered vehicles and hybrids, exceeded 10 million units last year, up 55% from 2021, according to the International Energy Agency. Nearly 14 million electric cars will be sold in 2023, it projected.

    Foxconn, which is officially known as the Hon Hai Technology Group, has been expanding its business by entering new industries such as EVs, digital health and robotics.

    Analysts say its entry into the EV space is a “logical diversification.”

    Smartphones are “a very saturated market already, and the room to grow in the … industry is getting [smaller],” said Kylie Huang, a Taipei-based analyst at Daiwa. “If they can really tap into the EV business, I do think that [they] could become influential in the next couple of years.”

    During last year’s tech day, Liu told reporters that the company hoped to build 5% of the world’s electric cars by 2025. It aims to eventually produce up to 40% to 45% of EVs around the world.

    But its foray into the industry hasn’t been entirely smooth.

    Last year, Foxconn bought a factory from Lordstown Motors in Ohio that used to make small cars for General Motors. That partnership ended in June, with the American car company filing for bankruptcy protection and announcing a lawsuit against Foxconn.

    Lordstown Motors accused Foxconn of “fraud” and failing to follow through on investment promises, while Foxconn dismissed the suit as “meritless” and criticized the company for making “false comments and malicious attacks.”

    Still, it’s clear Foxconn is leaning into its expanded ambitions, including hiring two new chief strategy officers for its EV and chips businesses.

    Chiang Shang-yi is a Taiwanese semiconductor industry veteran who helped TSMC become a global foundry powerhouse, while Jun Seki, a former vice chief operating officer at Nissan Motor, leads the EV unit.

    In May, Foxconn announced a new partnership with Infineon Technologies, a German company that specializes in automotive semiconductor chips, to establish a new research center in Taiwan.

    Bill Russo, founder of Shanghai-based consulting firm Automobility, said Foxconn has the advantage of coming from a consumer electronics background, which could allow it to come up with more innovative EV products compared with traditional automakers.

    “The biggest problem with legacy automakers is that they have so much sunk investment in a carryover platform, that they typically want to start not with a clean sheet of paper, but with a highly constrained set of requirements,” he said. “Those carryover technologies bring constraints to how you think about vehicles.”

    “When Tesla started, it started by saying, ‘I’m going to challenge all of that, I’m going to blow up the basic architecture of a car and simplify it greatly,’” he added.

    “I think that’s the advantage that a technology company has … And I think that’s the way Foxconn will come at this.”

    Hanna Ziady contributed to this report.

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  • Regulators give green light to driverless taxis in San Francisco | CNN Business

    Regulators give green light to driverless taxis in San Francisco | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    California regulators gave approval Thursday to two rival robotaxi companies, Cruise and Waymo, to operate their driverless cars 24/7 across all of San Francisco and charge passengers for their services.

    The much-anticipated vote, which followed roughly six hours of public comment both for and against driverless taxis, came amid clashes between the robotaxi companies and some residents of the hilly city. San Francisco first responders, city transportation leaders and local activists are among those who shared concerns about the technology.

    The California Public Utilities Commission regulates self-driving cars in the state and voted 3-to-1 in favor of Waymo and Cruise expanding their operations.

    That means residents and visitors to San Francisco will be able to pay a fare to ride in a driverless taxi, ushering in new automated competition to cab and ridehail drivers.

    “Today’s permit marks the true beginning of our commercial operations in San Francisco,” said Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO of Waymo, in a press release.

    Cruise spokesperson Drew Pusateri said in a statement to CNN that the 24/7 driverless service is a “historic industry milestone” that puts Cruise “in a position to compete with traditional ridehail, and challenge an unsafe, inaccessible transportation status quo.”

    Until Thursday’s vote, Cruise and Waymo could offer only limited service to San Francisco residents.

    Cruise – a subsidiary of General Motors – could charge a fare only for overnight rides occurring between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. in select parts of the city. Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, could charge a fare only for rides with a human driver in the vehicle.

    Now, Cruise and Waymo can charge a fare for their driverless rides and 24/7 access to San Francisco streets as they do so.

    Cruise officials told state commissioners at a recent public hearing that it deploys about 300 vehicles at night and 100 during the day, while Waymo officials said that around 100 of its 250 vehicles are on the road at any given time.

    The autonomous ride-hailing service offered by Cruise and Waymo allows users to request a ride similar to Uber or Lyft. There is a difference, of course: The car has no driver.

    Members of the public packed the commission’s San Francisco headquarters to share their thoughts with state commissioners in one-minute increments during the meeting. Critics pointed to driverless cars freezing in traffic and blocking first responders, while advocates said they felt the cars drove more defensively than human drivers.

    Although the decision ultimately laid in the hands of state regulators, who delayed the vote twice, local officials also expressed their dissent.

    The San Francisco Police Officers Association, San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Association and the San Francisco Fire Fighters Local 798 all wrote letters to the CPUC in the week leading up to the originally scheduled vote on June 29. Each expressed concerns that autonomous vehicles could impede emergency responders.

    “The time that it takes for an officer or any other public safety employee to try and interact with an autonomous vehicle is frustrating in the best-case scenario, but when they can not comprehend our demands to move to the side of the roadway and are stopped in the middle of the roadway blocking emergency response units, then it rises to another level of danger,” wrote Tracy McCray, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association in June, “and that is unacceptable.”

    The San Francisco Fire Department has recorded 55 incidents of driverless vehicles interfering with their emergency responses in 2023 as of Wednesday, the department confirmed to CNN.

    In one incident reported by the department on Saturday, a Waymo car pulled up between a car on fire and the fire truck aiming to put it out.

    Other instances include robotaxis driving through yellow tape into the scene of a shooting, blocking firehouse driveways such that a fire truck farther away had to respond to the scene, and requiring firefighters to reroute, according to Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson.

    “It should not be up to my people to have to move their vehicle out of the way when we’re responding to one of our 160,000 calls,” Nicholson told CNN in June.

    Robotaxi companies have often touted their safety records. Out of 3 million driverless miles, a Cruise car has not been involved in a single fatality or life-threatening injury, according to the company. In a February review of its first million driverless miles, Waymo said their cars caused no reported injuries and that 55% of all contact events were the result of a human driver hitting a stationary Waymo vehicle.

    2022 was the worst year on record for traffic fatalities in San Francisco since 2014, according to city data. Cruise said that when benchmarked against human drivers in comparable driving environments, its vehicles were involved in 54% fewer collisions overall.

    The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said in a California Public Utilities Commission meeting on Monday that it had logged almost 600 incidents involving autonomous vehicles since the technology first launched in San Francisco. The agency said they believe this is “a fraction” of actual incidents due to what they allege is a lack of data transparency.

    Genevieve Shiroma, the dissenting commissioner in the 3-1 vote, recommended the commission delay the vote until they received a “better understanding of the safety impacts” of the vehicles.

    “First responders should not be prevented from doing their job. The fact that an injury or fatality has not occurred yet is not the end of the inquiry,” Shiroma said. “The commission needs a better explanation regarding why these events occur.”

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  • GM’s Cruise slashed fleet of robotaxis by 50% in San Francisco after collisions | CNN Business

    GM’s Cruise slashed fleet of robotaxis by 50% in San Francisco after collisions | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    California authorities have asked General Motors to “immediately” take some of its Cruse robotaxis off the road after autonomous vehicles were involved in two collisions – including one with an active fire truck – last week in San Francisco.

    California’s Department of Motor Vehicles confirmed to CNN that it is investigating “recent concerning incidents involving Cruise vehicles in San Francisco.”

    “The DMV is in contact with Cruise and law enforcement officials to determine the facts and requested Cruise to immediately reduce its active fleet of operating vehicles by 50% until the investigation is complete and Cruise takes appropriate corrective actions to improve road safety,” the department said in a statement.

    That means Cruise, which is the self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, can have no more than 50 driverless cars in operation during the day, and 150 in operation at night, according to the department.

    The California DMV said that Cruise has agreed to the request, and a spokesperson from Cruise told CNN that the company is investigating the firetruck crash as well.

    The accidents come less than two weeks after California regulators officially gave the green light for Cruise and competitor Waymo to charge money for robotaxi trips around San Francisco at any time of day. Prior to the approval, Cruise was only authorized to offer fared passenger service from driverless cars overnight from 10 pm to 6 am, when there are fewer pedestrians or traffic that could confuse the autonomous vehicle’s software.

    The collisions, which both occurred on Thursday, reveal potential risks of driverless technology.

    In a blog post, Cruise’s general manager for San Francisco said the firetruck crash occurred when an emergency vehicle that appeared to be en route to an emergency scene moved into an oncoming lane of traffic to bypass a red light. Cruise’s driverless car identified the risk, the blog post said, but it “was ultimately unable to avoid the collision.”

    That crash resulted in one passenger being taken to the hospital via ambulance for seemingly minor injuries, according to the company.

    Cruise told CNN the other crash on Thursday took place when another car ran a red light “at a high rate of speed.”

    “The AV detected the vehicle and braked but the other vehicle made contact with our AV. There were no passengers in our AV and the driver of the other vehicle was treated and released at the scene,” Hannah Lindow, a Cruise spokesperson, told CNN.

    It is unclear whether the two accidents would have been avoided had there been a human driver rather than an autonomous vehicle (AV) involved – but the crashes were not the only two incidents involving Cruise’s driverless cars in San Francisco last week.

    On Tuesday, Cruise confirmed on X, formerly known as Twitter, that one of its driverless taxis drove into a construction area and stopped in wet concrete.

    “This vehicle has already been recovered and we’re in communication with the city about this,” the company said.

    The recent events underscore the challenges of creating safe, fully driverless passenger vehicles.

    General Motors acquired Cruise Automation in 2016 for $1 billion, solidifying its place in the autonomous vehicles race, but many companies have since scaled back, or abandoned their driverless car ambitions. The endeavor has proven costly, and mastering all situations that humans might face behind the wheel is difficult and time-consuming.

    Ridesharing giants Uber and Lyft have both sold autonomous vehicle units in recent years. Even Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has been optimistic about autonomous vehicle technology, has yet to fully deliver on his promise.

    Tesla vehicles now come with the option to add a “full self-driving” feature in beta-testing for $15,000, but drivers must agree to “stay alert, keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times and maintain control of your car.”

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  • OpenAI launches a version of ChatGPT for businesses | CNN Business

    OpenAI launches a version of ChatGPT for businesses | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    OpenAI is releasing a version of its buzzy ChatGPT tool specifically for businesses, the company announced Monday, as an AI arms race continues to ramp up throughout corporate America.

    OpenAI unveiled the new service, dubbed “ChatGPT Enterprise,” in a company blog post and said it will be available to business clients for purchase as of Monday. The new offering promises to provide “enterprise-grade security and privacy” combined with “the most powerful version of ChatGPT yet” for businesses looking to jump on the generative AI bandwagon.

    “We believe AI can assist and elevate every aspect of our working lives and make teams more creative and productive,” the blog post said. “Today marks another step towards an AI assistant for work that helps with any task, is customized for your organization, and that protects your company data.”

    Some of the early customers of ChatGPT Enterprise include fintech startup Block, cosmetics giant Estee Lauder Companies and the professional services firm PwC.

    The highly-anticipated announcement from OpenAI comes as the company says employees from over 80% of Fortune 500 companies have already begun using ChatGPT since it launched publicly late last year, according to its analysis of accounts associated with corporate email domains.

    Before the launch of ChatGPT Enterprise, a number of prominent companies including JPMorgan Chase had implemented temporary restrictions on workplace use of ChatGPT.

    ChatGPT Enterprise, however, addresses one of the core issues that led to the workplace clampdowns: privacy and security concerns. Formerly, some business leaders had expressed worries about employees dropping proprietary information into ChatGPT and having that sensitive information potentially emerge as an output by the tool elsewhere. OpenAI’s announcement blog post for ChatGPT Enterprise, meanwhile, states that it does “not train on your business data or conversations, and our models don’t learn from your usage.”

    OpenAI did not publicly disclose the pricing levels for ChatGPT Enterprise, instead asking potential business clients to contact its sales team.

    “We look forward to sharing an even more detailed roadmap with prospective customers and continuing to evolve ChatGPT Enterprise based on your feedback,” the company said. “We’re onboarding as many enterprises as we can over the next few weeks.”

    In July, Microsoft unveiled a business-specific version of its AI-powered Bing tool, dubbed Bing Chat Enterprise, and promised much of the same security assurances that ChatGPT Enterprise is now touting – namely, that users’ chat data will not be used to train AI models.

    Microsoft also previously disclosed a multi-billion dollar investment into OpenAI. It’s not immediately clear how the dueling new AI tools for business will end up competing with each other.

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  • Tesla shares jump after Morgan Stanley predicts Dojo supercomputer could add $500 billion in market value | CNN Business

    Tesla shares jump after Morgan Stanley predicts Dojo supercomputer could add $500 billion in market value | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer could fuel a $500 billion jump in the electric vehicle maker’s market value, analysts at Morgan Stanley said in a note Monday.

    Shares of Tesla jumped more than 6% during early trading Monday morning, on the heels of the rosy prediction from Morgan Stanley’s team about the automaker’s supercomputing efforts. The Morgan Stanley team, lead by longtime Tesla analyst Adam Jonas, predicted that the massive drive in value could come from Dojo potentially unlocking new revenue streams through the wider adoption of robotaxis and software services.

    The analysts compared the potential of Dojo at Tesla to the “same forces that have driven” Amazon Web Services to propel Amazon’s profitability to new heights.

    “Investors have long debated whether Tesla is an auto company or a tech company. We believe it’s both, but see the biggest value driver from here being software and services revenue,” the note stated.

    Dojo, an in-house supercomputer that has been in the works at Tesla for some five years, is designed to train AI systems to complete complex tasks like assisting Tesla’s driver-assistance system Autopilot as well as help propel its “Full Self-Driving” efforts.

    The Morgan Stanley analysts see Dojo as being able to open up “new addressable markets that extend well beyond selling vehicles at a fixed price.”

    The analysts added that the latest version of Tesla’s full self-driving system (expected to be unveiled at the end of the year) and Tesla’s next AI day (expected in early 2024, but yet to be announced) will be “worth watching.”

    Shares of Tesla have doubled since the beginning of the year, but are still far off from the all-time intraday high of $414.50 hit in November 2021. The world’s most valuable carmaker had a market cap of some $788.74 billion as of the market close on Friday.

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  • Lost in translation: How New Zealand’s plan for bilingual road signs took an unexpected turn | CNN

    Lost in translation: How New Zealand’s plan for bilingual road signs took an unexpected turn | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    It was meant to be an inclusive gesture to New Zealand’s indigenous Maori community. But plans to introduce bilingual road signs featuring both the English and te reo Maori languages have sparked a divisive, racially charged debate ahead of the country’s looming general election.

    New Zealand – or Aotearoa as it is known to the Maori – recently hosted a public consultation on whether to include te reo Maori on 94 types of road signs, including for place names, speed limits, warnings and expressway advisories.

    The idea, according to the national Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency (whose name means “traveling together as one”), is to promote “cultural understanding and social cohesion” with the Maori community, which makes up almost a fifth of New Zealand’s population of 5.15 million.

    But the idea hasn’t gone down well with right-wing opposition parties, who have attacked the signs claiming they will jeopardize road safety. An extra language will mean less space for the English words, the theory goes, and smaller type will be harder for motorists to read.

    “Signs need to be clear. We all speak English, and they should be in English,” the main opposition National Party’s spokesman Simeon Brown told reporters, insisting the signs could confuse people “traveling at speed.”

    That claim prompted criticism from the ruling Labour Party government, with Prime Minister Chris Hipkins accusing the opposition of thinly disguised racial politics. “I’m not entirely sure where they are going with this unless it’s just an outright dog whistle,” he said.

    While the National Party has since insisted it is not opposed to bilingual signs “per se” – rather, it says, it wants the government to prioritize other things like fixing potholes and improving traffic networks – the issues has sparked heated debate in the run up to the vote in October where Labour are facing a tough fight to hold onto power.

    For many in the Maori community, the plan is as much about signposting and preserving their cultural heritage as it is about understanding road directions.

    Slightly less than a quarter of New Zealand’s 892,200 Maori speak te reo Maori as one of their first languages, according to the latest government data.

    While opponents use this as an argument against the signs – pointing out that 95% of New Zealanders speak English according to the most recent census in 2018 – supporters use the same data as an argument in favor.

    Part of the reason that te reo Maori is not so widely spoken is that back in New Zealand’s colonial era there were active efforts to stamp it out. The Native Schools Act 1867 required schools to teach in English where possible and children were often physically punished for speaking te reo Maori.

    That led to a decline in the language that the New Zealand government of today is trying to reverse. It wants to preserve the language as part of the country’s cultural heritage and sees bilingual signs as one way of encouraging its use.

    As Maori language expert Awanui Te Huia, from the Victoria University of Wellington, put it: “Having bicultural signage allows us to see our language as part of our daily surroundings and contributes to the development of a bilingual national identity.”

    To this end the government in 2018 launched a five-year plan aimed at revitalizing the language. Five years ago just 24% of New Zealanders were able to speak “more than a few words or phrases” of te reo Maori; by 2021 that had risen to 30%.

    Over the same period, support for bilingual signs rose from 51% to 56%.

    The longer term vision is that by 2040, 85% of New Zealanders will value te reo Maori as a key part of their nationality; 1 million people will be able to speak the basics, and that 150,000 Maori ages 15 or above will use it as much as English.

    For Professor Tania Ka’ai, director of The International Centre for Language Revitalisation at Auckland University of Technology, bilingual signs are at least a move in the right direction.

    “I would describe it as a ‘work in progress’ because the language is still at risk of dying and it does not deserve to die – no language does,” Ka’ai said.

    While the transport agency acknowledges some people have “safety concerns” over the plan, it points to the example of Wales in the United Kingdom, where it says signs featuring both English and Welsh have managed to “improve safety” by catering to speakers of the two most common local languages.

    It also says the parallel between New Zealand and Wales will be “particularly salient if te reo Maori becomes understood more widely in the future” – as the government is hoping.

    Several other experts have downplayed the suggestion bilingual signs pose a hazard. Even so, the issue is not entirely clear cut.

    Kasem Choocharukul, an engineering scholar who specializes in traffic behavior, told CNN there is no evidence that bilingual road signs in themselves negatively impact a driver’s comprehension.

    However, design and placement of road signs, as well as the languages and the context in which they are used, have to be treated with care, said Kasem, associate dean of the engineering faculty of Chulalongkorn University in Thailand.

    Research by the University of Leeds suggests road signs consisting of four lines, or more, are likely to slow drivers’ response time significantly.

    Kasem said that in cases where signs featured multiple languages all based on the same alphabet – for instance, both Welsh and English are based on the Latin alphabet – greater care was needed to differentiate them, such as by using different colors or font sizes.

    “The primary objective of these standards is to guarantee that all road signs are unambiguous, uniform, and legible to all,” he said.

    Essentially, poor design can be dangerous, not multiple languages, if done badly.

    A bilingual traffic sign on the A465 in Tredegar, Wales.

    The example of Wales – situated more than 10,000 miles away from New Zealand – isn’t as random as it may seem.

    Commentators say there are a host of uncomfortable parallels between the fortunes of te reo Maori and Welsh, which was also once in danger of dying out but has since witnessed a resurgence.

    At the same time as 19th century European settlers in New Zealand were punishing students for speaking te reo Maori, the British government was actively discouraging the use of the Welsh language, or Cymraeg, in the wake of widespread social unrest.

    In 1847 (20 years before New Zealand’s Native Schools Act) a British government report into Welsh linked the language to stupidity, sexual promiscuity and unruly behavior, prompting a drive to remove the language from local schools.

    This led to the notorious punishment known as the Welsh Nots. These were planks of wood with the initials W.N. on them that would be hung around the necks of students caught speaking the language in school.

    The turning point for Welsh came a century later, following a series of civil disobedience campaigns by the Welsh Language Society in the 1960s. One of these campaigns involved activists defacing and removing English-only signs on streets and roads. Bilingual road signs began to spring up.

    Three decades later, and the British Parliament was actively encouraging the use of Welsh.

    In 1993, it passed the Welsh Language Act to ensure the language shares the same status as English during day-to-day business in Wales. The language is now spoken by more than 900,000 people in Wales, out of a population of more than 3 million.

    James Griffiths, author of “Speak Not: Empire, Identity and the Politics of Language” and a former CNN journalist, said Wales was a prime example of how sound policies could revive a native language, but he noted that, as in New Zealand, there had been resistance from some quarters.

    “I think for a lot of people, if they speak the language of the majority, they don’t appreciate the type of recognition and representation of having it on road signs,” he said.

    Across the Irish Sea, bilingual signs bearing both Irish Gaelic and English have existed in the Republic of Ireland dating back to the start of the 20th century.

    Other commentators draw parallels to how the US state of Hawaii has used road signs to encourage use of Olelo Hawai’i which, like te reo Maori, is a Polynesian language.

    Before the passing of the Hawaii State Constitutional Convention in 1978, which made Hawaiian an official language of the the state, there had been concerns it might go extinct.

    In the 1980s, teaching of Hawaiian in schools began to pick up momentum and parents began making greater efforts to pass the language on to later generations, said Puakea Nogelmeier, professor emeritus of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaii.

    This momentum continues to build to this day, with Hawaii’s Department of Transportation last year moving to introduce diacritical markings such as the okina and kahako – dots and lines that indicate glottal stops or longer vowels – to its road signs to help non-native Hawaiian speakers grasp correct pronunciations.

    According to a local government survey in 2016, about 18,000 residents now speak Hawaiian at home in a state with a population of more than 1.4 million.

    But Nogelmeier says that while it has become more common to hear conversations conducted in Olelo Hawai’i, the battle to revive the language is far from over.

    Unlike in New Zealand, where the Maori people reached an agreement with the New Zealand government to preserve te reo Maori under the Maori Language Act 2016, he says the movement in Hawaii is driven primarily by the community, making the cause “more decorative than functional” and akin to “a bit of a hobby.”

    Nogelmeier also says that efforts in Hawaii are largely limited to using Olelo Hawai’i for place names, rather than more complicated linguistic uses.

    He should know: On Hawaiian buses, it is Nogelmeier’s voice that calls out the names of stops in the local language.

    Using indigenous place names also allows outsiders to have a better understanding of how to pronounce words and boost tourism.

    Both Wales and New Zealand have some famous tongue-twisters for those unfamiliar with the local language.

    Llanfairpwllgwyngyll – or to give it its full title Llanfair-pwllgwyngyll-gogery-chwyrn-drobwll-llan-tysilio-gogo-goch – is a little village on the Welsh island of Anglesey and lays claim to being the longest town name in Europe.

    That however it is dwarfed by New Zealand’s own Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu, a hill near Hawke’s Bay which prides itself as the world’s longest place name.

    With New Zealand having wrapped up its public consultation on the signs at the end of June, one other challenge remains should the plan go ahead: ensuring there aren’t any translation bloopers.

    One road sign in Wales made national headlines in 2008 when local council officials sought a translation for a road sign that was meant to say: “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.”

    Their mistake was to email the in-house translation service and not scrutinize its reply too closely.

    Officials requested a sign that read: “Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i’w gyfieithy.”

    Only later did they realize that is the Welsh for: “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.”

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  • 1 dead, more than 20 hurt after SUV driving the wrong way rams into a Chicago city bus | CNN

    1 dead, more than 20 hurt after SUV driving the wrong way rams into a Chicago city bus | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    One woman is dead and more than 20 others were injured in a fiery collision between a Chicago city bus and an SUV driving the wrong way down the road Sunday morning, police said.

    The woman was a passenger in a Dodge Journey SUV traveling the wrong way on South DuSable Lake Shore Drive, according to Chicago police. Two others were in the vehicle, authorities said.

    The SUV, which was driving south, hit the bus as it was heading north just before 6 a.m., according to the Chicago Transit Authority.

    When first responders got to the scene, they found a vehicle on fire and more than 20 people injured, officials said.

    The woman was taken to a hospital where she was pronounced dead, police said. A man driving the vehicle was hospitalized and is in critical condition. The third passenger, a woman, is also in critical condition at a local hospital.

    The wreckage of an SUV that crashed into the bus.

    More than 20 people were triaged at the scene of the crash, the Chicago Fire Department wrote on Twitter. The bus driver and 12 passengers were taken to a local hospital with unspecified injuries, officials said.

    CNN has reached out to the fire department and Chicago Transit Authority for more information.

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  • Billionaire killed in race car crash | CNN Business

    Billionaire killed in race car crash | CNN Business

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    Washington, DC
    CNN
     — 

    James Crown, a billionaire businessman who held several leadership roles including board member of JPMorgan Chase, died Sunday in a racing accident in Colorado.

    Crown, who also turned 70 on Sunday, died in the single-vehicle crash after colliding with an impact barrier at Aspen Motorsports Park in Woody Creek, Colorado, The Colorado Sun reported.

    Among his many roles, Crown was chairman and CEO of his family business, the investment firm Henry Crown and Company. In addition to serving on the JPMorgan board, he was also a board director at General Dynamics. Crown had served on JPMorgan’s board since the early 1990s.

    “We extend our deepest condolences to Jim’s family and loved ones during this incredibly difficult time,” Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, said in a statement. “Our thoughts are also with all of you who knew and loved Jim, as much as I did. He was an integral part of JPMorgan Chase and our lives, and his presence will be deeply missed.”

    “The Crown family is deeply saddened by the sudden passing of Jim Crown,” a family representative said in a statement to media. “The family requests that their privacy be respected at this difficult time.”

    Crown lived in Chicago but frequently traveled to Colorado, and he held additional positions at organizations in both states. He was a managing partner of Aspen Skiing Co., chair emeritus of the Aspen Institute and a trustee at three institutions: the Museum of Science and Industry, the Civic Committee and the University of Chicago. In 2014, President Barack Obama appointed Crown to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

    Local officials are currently investigating the crash.

    “The official cause of death is pending autopsy although multiple blunt force trauma is evident. The manner is accident,” the Pitkin County Coroner’s Office said in a news release.

    Forbes estimated the Crown family’s wealth at $10.2 billion in 2020.

    Crown is survived by his wife, four children and his parents.

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