A cross-section of a steering wheel showing the airbag.Handout / Mercedes-Benz Takata, the parts supplier behind the largest auto recall ever, told U.S. safety regulators another 1.4 million vehicles need to be repaired over a defect linked to the death of a BMW driver and two other injuries in overseas markets.Components Takata supplied to five of the worlds biggest car manufacturers may absorb moisture that could either cause air bags to rupture or under-inflate, according to a notice on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administrations website.The recall involves parts produced from 1995 through 1999 and sold to BMW, Audi, Toyota, Honda and Mitsubishi.BMW issued three recalls covering roughly 116,000 U.S. vehicles containing the parts and recommended roughly 8,000 of those should not be driven until theyre fixed, the NHTSA said in a statement. The luxury-car maker is aware of one fatality and one injury in Australia linked to the faulty air-bag inflators, plus another injury in Cyprus, according to filings with the agency. The company told the NHTSA in November it hadnt received reports of similar incidents in the U.S. The callbacks and fatality disclosed Wednesday are the latest twist in a years-long saga that landed Takata in bankruptcy two years ago. The Japanese manufacturer supplied tens of millions of defective air-bag inflators for years that were prone to exploding in a crash and injuring or killing car occupants by spraying metal shards. Takata pleaded guilty as part of a US$1-billion settlement with the U.S. Justice Department over its handling of the issue.Takata was purchased in April 2018 by a unit of Chinas Ningbo Joyson Electronic Corp., and the combined unit was renamed Joyson Safety Systems.Past Takata recalls were blamed on its use of ammonium nitrate as a propellant to inflate air bags in the event of a crash. For its latest safety campaign, the company is citing a manufacturing issue that affected inflators containing a non-azide propellant.The parts maker said it produced and sold 4.45 million of the inflators globally during the time period covered by the recall. According to Takatas safety recall report to the NHTSA, the number of inflators it produced for vehicles sold in the U.S. was substantially smaller but is not precisely known at this time. Because of the age of the potentially affected vehicles, only a portion remain in service, the company said.BMW is the only carmaker to have issued vehicle recalls in the U.S. over the inflators so far.Honda is trying to understand which models are affected and cant say how many vehicles are impacted, a spokeswoman for the company said. A Mitsubishi spokesman said the company is identifying the models and countries involved, though the NHTSA said only the Mitsubishi Montero is affected in the U.S.Toyota is investigating the issue and working with the NHTSA and Joyson, a spokeswoman for the automaker said. Joyson representatives couldnt immediately be reached for comment. Audis U.S. unit is cooperating with NHTSA and investigating whether some its U.S. vehicles from model years 1997 through 1999 are affected, a spokeswoman said by
Origin: BMW driver death sees Takata recall another 1.4 million airbags
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BMW expects to build diesel engines for another 20 years
Diesel power, in the guise of the new 2014 328d, returns to BMWs 3 Series lineup. BMW may be heavily investing in electric vehicles, but it expects to continue building petroleum-fueled engines, with diesel lasting at least 20 years and gasoline another decade after that.Speaking with Automotive News Europe, Klaus Frhlich, BMW Group board member of development, said even with battery-electric and plug-in hybrids, he expects at least 80 per cent of the companys vehicles will still have an internal combustion engine by 2025.A best assumption would be just 30 per cent electrified sales by 2025, Frhlich added.We see areas without a recharging infrastructure, such as Russia, the Middle East, and the western internal part of China, so they will rely on gasoline engines for another 10 to 15 years, Frhlich told the magazine. He said the coastal part of China, and cities like Beijing and Shanghai, will be battery-electric in about ten years, while Europe is more likely to embrace plug-in hybrids. In the U.S., he expects battery-electrics to sell mainly on the west coast and in parts of the east coast, but they will not become mainstream vehicles. In order to create emissions credits for environmental regulations, the company will most likely offer sportier, more powerful BMW M plug-in hybrids to American (and no doubt Canadian) customers.Frhlich told Automotive News Europe that the shift to electrification is overhyped, and that battery-electric vehicles cost more in terms of raw materials for batteries. This will continue and could eventually worsen, as demand for these raw materials increases.BMW will abandon a 1.5-L three-cylinder diesel it sells in Europe because its too costly to engineer it to comply with tightening emissions standards. Frhlich also said the company wont design a successor to the six-cylinder, 400-horsepower diesel in the 750d, since its too pricey and complicated to build due to its four turbochargers.The automaker will continue to engineer four- and six-cylinder diesels, but with no more than three turbochargers. Its working on a business case to continue its eight-cylinder gasoline engines, but will eventually drop its V12, which only sells about 5,000 copies per year globally including at Rolls-Royce and which has to be regularly updated to meet new emissions standards, especially in
Origin: BMW expects to build diesel engines for another 20 years
Jordan takes another BTCC double at Croft
Andrew Jordan claimed his fourth and fifth race wins of 2019 in the latest MSA British Touring Car Championship round at Croft, as the new BMW 3 Series continued its stunning start to the season. Tom Chilton took the honours in the final race of the day in his Motorbase-run Ford Focus RS for his first win of the season. Team BMW driver Colin Turkington took three solid finishes at the Yorkshire circuit, including a second place in the second race, to strengthen his championship lead. BMW Pirtek Racing driver Jordan claimed his first pole position since 2014 in a qualifying session hit by five red flags, and delivered a faultless performance to dominate the opening race. Honda Civic Type R racer Chris Smiley kept the pressure on throughout. Chilton ran third, spending the final stages of the race holding off the BMWs of Turkington and Tom Oliphant. BTCC EXCLUSIVE | VIDEO: Round 10 in 120 seconds #BTCC Watch Live now on ITV4 pic.twitter.com/iNKKxmYZQT — BTCC (@BTCC) June 16, 2019 Jordan continued his hot streak in the second race of the day, once again leading from start to finish. Things didn’t go quite so smoothly for Smiley: struggling with success ballast he was eventually overhauled by Turkington for second, and was then passed by the works Civic Type Rs of Dan Cammish and Matt Neal. On the final lap, Smiley was attempting to defend his place from Ash Sutton (Subaru Levorg) when the two made contact, putting Smiley out of the race – and earning Sutton a grid penalty for the day’s final race. BTCC EXCLUSIVE | VIDEO: Round 11 in 90 secs #BTCC Watch Live now ITV4 pic.twitter.com/DMbuUBffD9 — BTCC (@BTCC) June 16, 2019 Chilton slipped back to ninth in the second race, but was then drawn on the pole for the day’s final event. With rain at Croft easing just before the start, the drivers faced a dilemma over tyre choice. Wets proved the right choice, and Chilton led all the way to take the win. But he didn’t have it easy, with Josh Cook (Civic Type R) and Jason Plato (Vauxhall Astra) pushing him throughout. BTCC EXCLUSIVE | VIDEO: Round 12 in 90 seconds #BTCC pic.twitter.com/lVAlPfdjcr — BTCC (@BTCC) June 16, 2019 Jordan claimed a solid eighth finish to build on his strong form in the first two races. While Jordan now has three more wins than any other driver, a heavy crash that prevented him from scoring in any of the races at Donington Park means he is fourth in the points, 26 behind Turkington, who leads the way with 143. Cook is second in the standings, 11 points off the lead, with Sutton third. The next round is at Oulton Park in Cheshire on June
Origin: Jordan takes another BTCC double at Croft
Uber shares steadily falling, marking the company another Wall Street flop
A person holds a mobile phone with the Uber app showing on it.Ryan Remiorz / The Canadian Press It was to usher in nothing less than a new era for Wall Street: UFAANG.’ That ungainly acronym meant to put ride-hailing company Uber in the same league as the titans of tech: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google. But by Friday’s closing bell, the most talked-about start-up of the decade and the biggest initial public offering (IPO) of the year qualified for a different club—of losers. Done in by a broad stock market selloff and a weak earnings report posted by its primary rival, Uber plunged immediately at the opening of trading May 10, falling as much as 8.8 per cent from its IPO price of US$45 per share, a level that was already at the low end of bankers’ expectations. The stock closed at US$41.57, and Uber joined a small group of major IPOs that ended their first day down. Day One doesn’t necessarily determine the fate of a stock, of course. But Uber’s rough opening startled investors counting on a more jubilant debut from Silicon Valley’s quintessential unicorn. Many venture capitalists who had piled into the company were saddled with losses as the market capitalization shrank to US$69.7 billion. It all cast a pall on 2019’s prospects as the hottest year for tech listings this decade—and potentially on the future of the ride-hailing industry. Lyft Inc. followed its bigger competitor to end Friday down 7.5 per cent, almost US$21 below where it sold the stock just six weeks ago. Uber could certainly still join the celebrated group of popular tech stocks, even with a tough ride out of the gate. Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s chief executive officer, said in an interview on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange that trade tensions between the U.S. and China played a role in the weak performance. President Donald Trump had moved overnight to slap fresh tariffs on Chinese goods. “You can’t pick when you go public,” Khosrowshahi said. Still, Uber shares extended losses into Monday, sinking below US$38 per share, even as U.S. equities stabilized on renewed optimism that an all-out trade war can be averted. Khosrowshahi said in the interview that while profitability was a priority for the company, public market investors should be judging Uber by a different measure once it starts reporting quarterly earnings. “The most important sort of statistic to look at is bookings, because that reflects essentially what people are paying for the service,” he said. Uber sold 180 million shares for US$45 each Thursday, after marketing them for US$44 to US$50 apiece. Even at the low end of the price range, Uber’s listing was the ninth-largest U.S. IPO of all time and the biggest on a U.S. exchange since Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s US$25 billion global record-holder in 2014, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. A market value of less than US$70 billion is a considerable climb down from earlier projections: Last year, bankers jockeying to lead the offering told Uber it could be valued at as much as US$120 billion in an IPO. The San Francisco-based company last raised private capital from Toyota in August at a valuation of about US$76
Origin: Uber shares steadily falling, marking the company another Wall Street flop
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