• Anuj Guglani, CEO, World Auto Forum said, ”This year, over 10 hours of discussions across 2 Jury rounds, over three months of research, and over 75 emails have gone into selecting the winners.
• As each year, there are Observers during Jury Rounds, No Sponsor partners or Current Auto OEM Employees allowed on Jury and of course Ref Checks after Jury Rounds! This is what makes WAF Awards truly special & unique!” Click here to see Who Won! 

• Bookings will open in December, while price announcement and launch will take place in January 2020.
• As has been announced already, MG will initially only offer the electric SUV in five cities, namely Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad. Read Full Story

Toyota Motor Corp plans a $1.8 billion share buyback, Japan’s biggest automaker said on Thursday, after beating quarterly forecasts on higher global vehicle sales and an improved performance in North America. Read Full Story.

Mitsubishi Motors slashes full-year profit forecast by $550 million

Mitsubishi Motors slashed its annual profit and sales outlook, becoming the latest Japanese automaker hit by sputtering global demand and a stronger yen.

Operating profit for the fiscal year through March 2020 will be 30 billion yen ($275 million) instead of 90 billion yen, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Read Full Story

• Bengaluru headquartered ride-hailing startup Rapido, said that its prime focus in the national capital will be within central and south Delhi. Read Full Story

The deal has stirred concerns in Germany and Britain where plants making Opel and Vauxhall cars have seen jobs cut in recent year as part of a cost-cutting drive pushed by PSA CEO Carlos Tavares, who will also lead the merged company.

Securing support from Europe’s powerful trade unions will be critical for the merged company, which will employ more than 400,000 staff and operate hundreds of factories worldwide. Read Full Story.

Tesla’s 2,000th supercharger in mainland China installed in Shanghai

US electric car maker Tesla said on October 30 the 2,000th supercharger in mainland China was installed at a commercial area in Shanghai

Tesla has unveiled V3 supercharger by which a Model 3 long range operating at peak efficiency can recover up to 75 miles (120km) of charge in 5 minutes and charge at rates of up to 1,000 miles (1600km) per hour. Tesla says V3 supercharging shall reduce charging time by an average of 50% Read Full Story

Cyber Risk @ Automotive 

How to Protect All Stakeholders from Advanced Cyber Threats. Watch Video

Not Mahindra or Tata, Hyundai Kona is the EV of choice for Govt

• Preference for Kona is despite its price being almost double that of Tata Motors’ Tigor and M&M’s Verito EVs
• ‘Kona’s battery size is almost three times that of Tigor and Verito; running cost is just 40 paisa/km,’ says EESL MD Saurabh Kumar
• Kona can travel upto 452 Km on a Single Charge. Read Full Story

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is moving Democrats’ climate talk to where the rubber meets the road, proposing a $462 billion trade-in program to get millions of Americans out of climate-damaging gas vehicles and into electric or hybrid cars over the next decade.

Schumer’s rebate proposal late Thursday joins a mix of trillion- and multitrillion-dollar programs that Democratic presidential candidates have outlined to urgently cut oil, gas and coal emissions, as climate change weighs as an issue in the 2020 campaigns. Read Full Story.

Ford Motor Co this week cut its forecast for operating profit for the year after a disappointing third quarter that Chief Executive Jim Hackett blamed on higher warranty costs, bigger discounts and weaker than expected performance in China.

The No. 2 U.S. automaker still faces the prospect of negotiating a new four-year labor agreement with the United Auto Workers following the union’s more than month-long strike against General Motors Co, which cost GM about $2 billion according to analysts. Read Full Story

Simple Mantras for Effective IP Protection in Automotive – Stuti Dhyani, Saikrishna & Associates
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6 ways to reignite India’s auto industry

• The automotive ecosystem can use these six proactive actions to hasten that much-needed turnaround in growth
• Market forces should decide between an internal combustion engine vehicle, a hybrid electric vehicle and a battery-electric vehicle. Read Full Story

Automakers are taking the fast lane to an exciting tomorrow. Notably, in China, the world’s largest auto market where “China speed” has been highlighted numerous times,

As of September, 2019, Chinese auto market has faced year-on-year sales drop for 15 consecutive months, but the German auto giant still performed against the general cooling trend with its Jan.-Sept. China deliveries jumping 14.4% from a year ago. It is worth mentioning that the group (including Mini brand) hasn’t posted negative growth so far this year. Read Full Story.

PSA Group’s Citroen brand plans to reshuffle its leadership, with Mitsubishi’s former head of production, Vincent Cobee, replacing the brand’s current boss Linda Jackson, company sources said.

Cobee left Mitsubishi in April as part of a wider shuffle among the top ranks at Nissan and Mitsubishi in the wake of the arrest of Carlos Ghosn last November. Read Full Story

“India needs Battery Swapping to be a leading global EV Player even if it didn’t work much elsewhere”, says Chetan Maini, Vice Chairman Sun Mobility,

in conversation with Anuj Guglani CEO World Auto Forum. Watch Video

Mercedes-Benz India Delivers Over 200 Cars On Dussehra & Navratri

• The highest deliveries of over 125 vehicles were registered in Mumbai itself, while  74 car deliveries were registered in Gujarat, according to the carmaker.
• The customer profile comprised doctors, chartered accountants, lawyers and business professionals, said the company. Read Full Story

Arm Holdings, the British chip technology firm owned by Japan’s Softbank Group Corp, is joining with automakers General Motors Co and Toyota Motor Corp to establish common computing systems for self-driving cars, an effort the companies hope will speed development of the technology.

The group’s first task will be to establish a common computing architecture. That effort aims to make it easier for car companies to write software that will work on chips from different vendors, similar to how Microsoft Corp Windows-based software works on processors from Intel Corp or Advanced Micro Devices Inc.. Read Full Story.

Volkswagen Group has increased stockpiles of cars in Britain as politicians struggle to agree on the terms of the country’s departure from the European Union ahead of an Oct. 31 deadline.

The potential for a disorderly “no-deal” Brexit and concerns about future trading relations, are forcing companies to take measures to mitigate the impact of potential tariffs.

VW was the UK’s second best-selling brand in the first nine months with sales of 157,040, down 0.5 percent, behind Ford at No. 1 with 188,124 sales, down 9 percent, according to industry association SMMT. Total UK new-car registrations were down 2.5 percent to 1.86 million during the period. Read Full Story

Since 2018, BMW Motorrad India been hosting an annual two-day event in Goa for owners GS range of motorcycles.

The event acts as a qualifier for BMW’s prestigious GS Trophy where the competition as well as the event is as tough as its GS range of off-road motorcycles.

For 2020, the International GS Trophy is going to be held in New Zealand, and the trio of HK Naik, Shakeel Basha and V Sathyananth has been selected to represent Team India. Read Full Story

Tesla’s China factory aims to start production this month but it is unclear when it will meet year-end production targets due to uncertainties around orders, labor and suppliers, sources with knowledge of the matter said.

The U.S. electric vehicle maker aims to produce at least 1,000 Model 3s a week from the new factory by the end of this year, the centerpiece of its ambitions to boost sales in the world’s biggest auto market and avoid higher import tariffs imposed on U.S. cars. Read Full Story

The Big Three U.S. automakers on Wednesday reported a rise in sales of pick-up trucks for the third quarter as lower interest rates boosted demand in an otherwise sluggish auto market. Read Full Story