As Volkswagen plans to expand in Chattanooga and Puebla, the Canadian government is loaning €400 million ($433.8 million USD) to the German automaker in exchange for possible future supplier business.

Suppliers are integral to new technology in the auto industry to an extent not true since the early years of the 20th century, when ventures such as Ford began as mere assemblers, not manufacturers. That will be highlighted on Monday at the 21st PACE “academy awards” for supplier innovation. (For those not in the know, Monday’s the opening night of the SAE [Society of Automotive Engineers] in Detroit.)

Hyundai is planning on building a factory in Mexico, but only after annual domestic sales in the country rise to appropriate levels.

What does a diesel shop in Michigan have in common with a Washingtonian florist and a Hoosier pizza hut? An owner who refuses to serve openly gay customers.

Coming soon to an Audi near you is Valeo’s electric supercharger, which will help boost engine acceleration while improving fuel economy.

The fate of Toledo, Ohio holding onto the Jeep factory may be decided not on incentives or land acquisition, but by what happens with the supplier park.

Elio Motors, the startup automaker hoping to produce and sell a low cost, high mileage reverse trike announced yesterday that the prototype of the IAV designed 0.9 liter, three cylinder single overhead cam engine to be used in their vehicle has successfully started dynamometer testing. A short video of the engine running in a test cell has also been released. While it remains to be seen if Elio will be able to raise the $200 million or so they say they need to start production in 2016 (pushed back from this year), the engine test is one of the more important steps on the journey to reach that goal.

Amid the glitz and glamour of the 2015 Geneva Auto Show, European auto supplier group CLEPA proclaimed its members would have a part to play in the autonomous game.

Whether or not Apple is actually building a car, German tire manufacturer Continental AG wants in.

Digging further into the auto-parts game, Samsung SDI announced it would buy Magna International’s battery-pack business.

Apple may or may not be building a car to battle Tesla, but the tech giant is in trouble with A123 Systems for poaching the latter’s employees.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is seeking whistleblowers who have knowledge “of possible defects or any wrongdoing” about Takata.

When the next-gen Honda Accord arrives in U.S. showrooms in August 2017, no Takata airbags will be used in the sedan’s safety system.

Takata’s North American unit has brought aboard attorney Bruce Angiolillo of New York-based Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett LLP as its new general counsel effective January 1.

Consumers looking to file a lawsuit against Takata over its defective airbags may be waiting a little while longer to do so.

Takata and those associated with its airbag recall crisis are heading back into the fire this week, one that could grow into a firestorm soon enough.

Due to its narrow interpretation of the TREAD Act, Honda admitted to underreporting the number of claims linked to injuries and/or deaths caused by safety issues in its products since 2003.

Even if the federal government compels every automaker that uses Takata’s airbags to enter into a nationwide recall order, and even if Honda got its wish by having the government mandate every owner affected to bring their vehicles in for repair, fixing the mess created by the supplier could take as long as two years or more.

Worried that the airbag in your Honda may shred your face instead of saving it? Complain loud enough, and the automaker will replace the unit in question.

Since being dismissed from General Motors in June of 2014, the engineer cited by the Valukas report as the main culprit behind what would lead to the February 2014 ignition switch recall crisis had been in seclusion. Until now.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is demanding more satisfaction from Honda in as many days over the automaker’s role in the ongoing Takata airbag recall crisis, asking for more documents in a second request.

Takata may not being doing so hot amid its airbag crisis, but it is providing an opportunity for at least two other airbag suppliers.

NFC — near-field communication — technology not only can allow you to buy a My Little Pony: Equestria Girls doll from Walmart (or will, once Walmart et al decide Apple Pay and Google Pay are better than CurrentC), but it may soon allow you to start your car by simply tapping the ignition.

Ford’s move to make the upcoming F-150 out of aluminum, along with GM’s plans to do the same with its trucks down the road, isn’t sitting well with the steel industry, to say the least.

While some OPEC nations are panicking over oil prices not being above $100/barrel, Saudi Arabia says it wouldn’t mind accepting barrels worth $90 or $80 for the next year or two, so long as it slows down production elsewhere.

As Ford prepares to stake its future on an aluminum F-150, Toyota is looking to do the same for at least a single part on its best-selling vehicle.

Last weekend, 760 UAW workers at the Lear facility in Hammond, Ind. — where Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant receives its seats — went on strike against two-tier wages, winning a tentative contract that eliminates the system. This, in turn, may be a sign of more such actions to come as the union seeks to end the two-tier system throughout the industry.

Until the overlords at Google bestow their technocratic utopia of automation to every new vehicle leaving the factory, distracted driving will remain a problem in need of a solution, such as the one General Motors has in mind.

If you’re Justin Bieber, Carlos Santana or Bob Lutz — and even if you’re not — you’ll be happy to know that your Fisker Karma will be more fixable in the event of a fender-bender or two, all thanks to parent company Wanxiang.

Remember when Saab’s new parent company was close to being taken to court and forced to declare bankruptcy by one of its suppliers? New information may have helped changed course.

Saab’s newest parent company may soon be declared bankrupt by a Swedish court, once again bringing the make toward the grave.

It’s almost official: Panasonic and Tesla will enter into a basic agreement where the former will supply the latter with battery-production machines for the automaker’s up-and-coming Gigafactory.

A day after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asked what was taking so long for a supplier to make enough hitches to cover 2.5 million recalled vehicles, Chrysler Group ordered its supplier to boost production.

Though under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service over abode issues, Delphi says it is not under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice over its part of the February 2014 General Motors ignition recall.

A number of U.S. and multinational corporations met with President Barack Obama Friday to shine a light upon their pledge to pay their suppliers within 15 days as part of an initiative to help small businesses expand and bring on more employees.

With 2.6 million vehicles needing new ignition switches fueling service bay backlogs, General Motors is offering its dealership network incentives to speed up the process.

Automotive News reports the United Auto Workers has elected secretary-treasurer Dennis Williams, who served in the role under now-retired president Bob King, as the union’s new president in a 3215 to 49 vote during the 36th UAW Constitutional Convention in Detroit. Williams, who came from the agricultural wing of the union, is the first union president not to have worked in the automotive industry.

Honda’s Honda Performance Development announced this week that it will provide the power for the upcoming Formula Lites series, an open-wheel series sanctioned by SCCA Pro Racing with the goal of developing young professional drivers on their way up the competitive ladder.

On the success of a first-year sell-out of the i8 and high demand for the i3, BMW is making an additional investment into its joint venture with SGL Group, with the intention of introducing carbon fiber into models beyond the i and M collections.

Already dealing with a perception-is-reality problem over its ongoing product recall crisis, General Motors now has a new perception problem: Tier 1 suppliers find the automaker to be the worst automaker in the United States when it comes to their relationships with the company.

Tesla’s deal with Toyota to supply the automaker with battery packs and motors for the latter’s RAV4 EV will come to a close by the end of 2014 at the same time the electric crossover is expected to cease production.

With the mandate that all vehicles post-2018 possess backup cameras set to begin its ramp up in 2016, suppliers will be the biggest beneficiaries of a growing safety market.

Established in the waning days of the Bush Administration, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program lent a total of $8.3 billion (out of the budgeted $25 billion) to Nissan, Tesla, Ford and Fisker, yet has not been able to make new loans for a number of reasons since 2011.

That status, however, is about to change.

In a statement made by Delphi Automotive this week, the supplier announced that they had more than doubled their net income in Q4 2013 to $298 million in comparison to $136 million in Q4 2012.

Bottlenecks are bad things to experience. Around 70,000 years ago, the Toba supervolcano eruption reduced humanity to anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 breeding pairs — thus creating a genetic bottleneck — alongside a global cooling event concurrent with the Last Glacial Period.

For automakers in the United States and their North American supply chain, their Toba event is coming.

For the third consecutive year, consumers around the world prefer to paint their world in white when they shop for their chariot of choice.

Source: United States Department of Justice

Nine Japanese auto suppliers and two executives have agreed to plead guilty and pay more than $740 million in fines for participating in a price fixing conspiracy, the U.S. Department of Justice said yesterday. The two executives, one an American citizen, the other Japanese, will have to serve prison terms. According to the DoJ, thirty different components were involved and they were sold to all three domestic automakers as well as the U.S. operations of Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Toyota and Fuji Heavy Industries, which owns the Subaru brand. The automakers have cooperated with the investigation. More than 25 million vehicles sold in the U.S. were affected by the conspiracy, raising costs to automakers and consumers alike, U.S. Attorney General Eric holder told a press conference in Washington yesterday.

Denso, the automotive electronics supplier with close ties to Toyota, has signed an agreement to buy $25.4 million worth of stock in the Sharp consumer electronics company. According to Automotive News, Denso says that the goal is to create new technologies that “improve the comfort, safety and convenience of vehicles by integrating vehicle technologies with home electronic technologies.”

Visteon, the large automotive supplier, continues to reshape itself from a vendor of interior trim to one that focuses on electronics. Visteon announced that it is selling its half of Yanfeng Visteon Automotive Trim Systems to it’s Chinese joint venture partner Huayu Automotive Systems, for ~$1.2 billion. At the same time, Visteon will be buying majority ownership of the JV’s electronics unit, Yanfeng Visteon Automotive Electronics Co., for $68 million.

Carmaking is a cyclical business. In crisis times, it’s “we are all in this together.” When business improves, relations between automakers and their suppliers revert to the old arrogance, to hurry up, make more for less. It’s that time again.

Ford and GM co-signed a $6.5 million loan in an effort to pull a key Australian parts supplier from the brink, Reuters says.

The demise of a large Australian auto parts supplier threatens to bring Australian units of Ford and GM to their knees as early as next week. Management is working feverishly on keeping the doors open, while complaining about “lack of support from key players in the industry,” Reuters says.

Selling overpriced “Original” parts can be like printing money. I know carmakers that generate 30 percent of their profits out of parts sales. How do you drive parts sales? By forcing customers to stay as long as possible with your dealer, a money pit the customer tries to flee as early and as quickly as possible. The golden fleece in the business are repairs only an authorized dealer can perform, using overpriced parts only the authorized dealer has. Countless attempts have been made to break this monopoly. Another attempt is on the way.

At the beginning of this year, the United Auto Workers pledged that it would launch a campaign to organize the foreign-owned, non-union “transplant” factories in the US, threatening to tar uncooperative automakers as “human right abusers.” The campaign initially lost steam, but the UAW stuck to its pledge, re-iterating on several occasions that it would organize “at least one” transplant factory by the end of 2011. With one month left to accomplish that goal and no signs of progress in sight, the UAW has officially called off that goal. In fact, the UAW now hopes to simply pick an automaker to target by the end of 2011. Spokeswoman Michelle Martin tells Bloomberg

At this point, our hope is to make a decision about who we’re going to target by the end of the year. But obviously, we won’t have the organizing campaign completed by the end of the year.

This is not too surprising, considering the UAW announced last week that it would be focusing on dealership pickets initially rather than factory organizing. And sure enough, the first dealership picket has begun, targeting Hyundai dealerships. And yet, says Martin

This has nothing to do with the domestic organizing campaign. Hyundai is not the target.

Huh? If the UAW is not committing to organizing Hyundai’s assembly workers, why picket Hyundai dealerships?

Germany’s Autobild continues to bang the drum about HFO-1234yf, an air-conditioning coolant sold by US supplier Honeywell as an “environmentally-friendly” alternative to other refrigerants. Problem is, C02 seems to be not only more environmentally safe, but safer for humans (notably rescue workers) as well…

Crains Cleveland reports that NASA will be offering some 38 technologies developed for its space program to the auto industry at a trade show next week at the Glenn Research Center. With 100 OEMs and suppliers attending, the event will bring materials and technologies chosen for their usefulness in automotive applications to an industry that is anxious to develop solutions for upcoming fuel economy standards. And hopefully bring some licensing fees to an agency that is anxious to find private sources of income. In the words of NASA’s Paul Bartolotta

NASA is open for business. We’re opening our safe, so to speak

So, what’s on offer?

Bloomberg [via the Financial Post] reports that “one of the five biggest European banks” is “close” to loaning Saab $157m so that it may pay workers and suppliers, in order to move towards restarting production. According to DI.se, the deal is predicated on Saab securitizing the loan with shares of Saab Great Britain or other “alternative assets.” But apparently whatever the banks ask for, Saab will try to give, as Theodoor Gilissen Bankiers analyst Tom Muller explains

They need the money immediately. I hope they solve it this week, otherwise I think it’s over for Saab. It’s a very dire situation.

He’s not kidding…

Saab has already warned its workers that paychecks due tomorrow could be delayed until “committed” funds from investors arrive, but Bloomberg reports that the warning may not be enough. According to the report

Any delay in the August payments will prompt the unions immediately to start a process aimed at ensuring state coverage of wages in the event of the carmaker’s failure, officials from the IF Metall and Unionen labor groups said. The unions, after gaining employees’ backing, would first file payment requests with Saab. If salaries remain unpaid in seven days, the unions may then ask a district court to declare Saab bankrupt.

That could put Saab into bankruptcy in as little as two weeks. Saab’s long nightmare seems to be drawing to a close.

Just three weeks after Saab narrowly avoided being pushed into bankruptcy by supplier SwePart, SvD.se reports that three other suppliers have now initiated the bankruptcy process by requesting that Sweden’s national debt bailiffs pursue their debts. One Spanish supplier is reported to be foreclosing on €2m ($2.8m in debt), while two of the rebelling German firms are said to be owed at least €5m each. And though Saab says it is meeting with the Spanish firm to try to hammer out a deal, SvD reports that four of the 14 outstanding claims against Saab have run out of time. Lars Holmqvist, head of the European Association of Automotive Suppliers argues that, by paying some suppliers and not others, Saab is de facto bankrupt, and that a trustee should be brought in to pay suppliers in order of priority, rather than order of Saab’s necessity. Meanwhile, Saab CEO Victor Muller has been in Brazil and the US, trying to bring new investors on board, as its Chinese funding won’t be approved for two-to-three months, if ever. Meanwhile, “taxes and fees” must be paid by Friday, August salaries are due in just two weeks, and Muller cut his latest money-raising trip short to reassure workers back in Trolhättan. But according to thelocal.se, even the most optimistic of union leaders hope Saab will have a new CEO soon. Do I hear the fat lady warming up her vocal cords?

With GM’s share price currently hovering below $25, well under its $33 IPO price, The General is holding its second annual Global Business Conference in hopes of encouraging investors the world over to buy into its turnaround. A webcast is currently streaming over at the GM Investor Relations website, but the key points are available in slides available in PDF here. The presentation involves nearly every level of GM’s business, so listening in and reading the entire PDF is going to be the best way to make sense of what GM is trying to communicate… but if you just want an overview, check out the gallery below for a few hand-picked slides, illustrating some of the more important points.