The fact that GM creates 6,000 jobs in China and will invest $11 billion in China until 2016 (and $16 billion in America)  gets all the headlines.  What falls under the table is the fact that someone else invests $76 billion each year straight into more than a million Americans.  It’s the Japanese auto industry. Read More >

Ford is adding a week of production at most of its North American factories this year for an additional 40,000 vehicles, Reuters says. Plants will be idled for just one week this summer instead of the traditional two. Read More >

Hyundai’s top man shot down rumors of his company building a new factory in the U.S.  ”We have no plan for a new U.S. factory for now,” Hyundai’s Chairman Chung Mong-koo told Reuters at Seoul’s Gimpo airport before leaving for the United States.

Rumors started flying when South Korea’s Financial News said that Kia is talking to Georgia state officials about constructing a new plant. These rumors were denied. Last week, Chung rekindled the flames by saying that Hyundai “will look into whether there are opportunities” to expand production overseas.

Chung is expected to visit Hyundai and Kia’s U.S. plants in Alabama and Georgia during his visit, which coincides with South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s U.S. trip.

South Korean LG Chem will finally begin commercial battery production at its Holland , Michigan, in July, Reuters says.  The batteries will initially help power GM’s Volt.

Three years ago, at a groundbreaking ceremony for an LG Chem Battery plant in Holland, Michigan, President Obama promised that this and other pants will be “a boost to the economy in the entire region.” The plant made headlines for doing nothing. Read More >

The mantra before, during, and after the bailout was (and still is) that without the bailout, gadzillions of jobs would have vanished, the American car industry would have been wiped out, wheels would have come off the arsenal of democracy, and the sky would have fallen into Lake St. Clair.  Of course, that’s nonsense. There are more than enough other carmakers in America. They would have received the sales, and added the jobs.  They would have been mostly non-union jobs though.

The truth is, without the bailout, the UAW would have vanished, and with it millions of Democratic votes.  Read More >

Lower gas prices and a turn-around in the housing market rekindled America’s love for the pickup, resulting in 2,000 new jobs at Ford’s Kansas City Assembly Plant. Read More >

Chevrolet’s Celta, Prisma and Onix models  will be in short supply when workers General Motors’ Gravataí plant in southern Brazil go on strike for higher pay and shorter hours. Workers of the plant’s first and third shifts already approved the strike, Reuters says, the second shift is expected to follow suit today. Read More >

Unions reached a last minute deal with Opel:  Plant closures and layoffs are off the table through 2016. This according to information given by works council chief Walter Einenkel to the usually reliable Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. Read More >

Down to the wire, and nothing: German unions had set Opel a deadline until today to come to an agreement about the future of Opel. The unions had offered to forgo a 4.3 percent pay hike and waive future pay raises if Opel extends a moratorium on plant closures through 2016. Today’s deadline passed without an agreement, Reuters says. Read More >

As expected, Ford is closing an UK plant. Unexpectedly, Ford is closing another one right with it, bringing EU plant closings to three in two days. Ford is closing its Ford Transit plant in Southampton, and it is closing the stamping plant in Dagenham with it, says Automobilwoche [sub]. Read More >

Ford is expected to announce the closure of its van factory in Southampton, England, Reuters says. British shop stewards have been summoned to an emergency meeting at Ford’s European headquarters in Basildon, Essex, today. Read More >

Europe’s car crisis found 4,300 new victims: As expected, union representatives at Ford’s Genk plant in Belgium were told this morning that the plant will be closed. 4,300 workers will be out of a job. Read More >

GM is not the only U.S. automaker that wants to close a plant in Europe, and Ford is thinking about more than the end of the road for Alan Mulally. German press, from the industry magazine Automobil Produktion to the German edition of the Wall Street Journal are talking about Ford shuttering its plant in Genk, Belgium. Read More >

New panic at GM’s European Opel dependence: Opel needs to shed 30 percent of its workers. This is the supposed target of a “secret strategy” that has been agreed between Opel and GM, says BILD, Europe’s largest circulation newspaper under the headline “One out of three jobs imperiled!”

Based on an anonymous inside source, BILD writes about a three-step phased plan:
Read More >

GM’s troubled German daughter will close its main factory in Rüsselsheim and its component plant in Kaiserslautern for a total of four weeks in response to a drop in demand for cars in Europe. Read More >