Hyundai Motor Co. said Sunday that its combined sales in the United States surpassed the 9 million unit mark at the end of June, 28 years after it started selling cars in the country. Between 1986 and June this year, South Korea’s largest carmaker had sold a total of 9,028,420 vehicles in the U.S., the company said. It said it expects to reach the 10 million mark in the second half of next year. Hyundai Motor’s best-selling car in the U.S. was the Sonata midsize sedan, whose sales reached 2,221,

GM Korea, the local unit of U.S. automaker General Motors, offered to count regular bonuses paid to its employees as part of their ordinary wages, company officials said Friday, becoming the first in the car industry to settle one of the most contentious issues in management-union negotiations this year.The proposal, made Thursday during wage talks, was welcomed by the union, company officials said.The new wage system is expected to go into force from Aug. 1, although the company union wants it

Italian automaker Fiat and its main shareholder denied on Thursday a media report that the company is in merger talks with rival Volkswagen. The German carmaker also said it had no plans for mergers or acquisitions.Shares in Fiat briefly rose 5 percent, before closing up 1 percent at 7.70 euros ($10.40), after Manager Magazin in Germany reported that the main shareholders in Fiat SpA and Volkswagen AG have had a series of talks about Volkswagen taking over all or part of Fiat, which controls Chr

Ssangyong Motor Co., the local unit of Indian SUV carmaker Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., said Monday it has launched the Nomad SUV in Kazakhstan, the first significant move by the automaker, which is looking to make a big splash in Central Asia.The car will be shipped as a complete knock-down kit and assembled at a plant that can churn out 10,000 cars annually, the company said. The Nomad is a modified version of the Actyon compact SUV that has been specially tailored to meet the driving conditions

South Korean carmakers are facing the prospect of renewed labor strife as they deal with unfavorable market conditions, industry sources said Monday.Renault Samsung Motors Co. and GM Korea Co. said their union workers are planning walkouts and work disruptions after initial union-management talks failed to find middle ground on regular wages, bonuses and fringe benefits.Renault Samsung, the local unit of French automaker Renault S.A., said its workers at the company’s Busan plant will halt work

South Korea has expressed concerns over Chile’s ongoing consideration to impose an environment tax on diesel cars, a move that could hurt the nation’s vehicle exports to the Latin American country, a government official in Seoul said Friday.South Korea’s concerns were conveyed in a recent letter to the Chilean government, according to the official from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, who spoke on condition of anonymity. It also noted such a tax may violate the countries’ bilateral fr

Kia Motors Corp., South Korea’s No. 2 automaker, said Thursday that U.S. sales of its iconic Soul boxy compact topped the half-million mark a little over five years after its debut in early 2009.As of last month, 509,854 Souls were sold in the North American country, the company said, stressing that the popularity of the entry-level crossover played a key part in the carmaker’s record-high sales figure reached in the first half of the year.Kia’s U.S. sales were up 7 percent on-year to 297,413 un

South Korea launched testing to verify the effectiveness of its new vehicle-crash avoidance technology, the government said Tuesday, in a step toward building accident-free highways.The accident avoidance system uses the so-called wireless access in vehicular environment technology that enables vehicle-to-vehicle as well as vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, allowing checks for any changes to the driving environment such as road conditions, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure