Work at the University of Guelph and nearby bio materials company Competitive Green Technologies turns coffee bean skins into resin used in headlight housings. McDonald's said it would donate "a significant portion" of its North American coffee-bean remnants to Ford in an effort to reduce waste.

New-vehicle sales were down 0.3 per cent in November. Honda and Nissan suffered losses while Toyota, Hyundai and Kia each posted gains. Automakers remain poised to sell about 1.91 million new vehicles in 2019.

In its grievance, Unifor insisted Nemak must keep the plant open until the current labour contract expires in 2022. Nemak wants to shutter the plant in mid-2020.

Nissan has sold 16,194 Qashqais through October, down 1.6 per cent over the same period last year. Only the Rogue outsells the Qashqai in Canada.

The Job Site Challenge invites municipalities, economic development agencies and industrial property owners in Ontario to propose mega sites for new investment. The province is looking for large tracts of land between 500 to 1,500 acres that are already zoned, or could be zoned, for heavy industrial use.

Electra Meccanica, the British Columbia-based electric-vehicle maker, will open a kiosk in a posh California neighbourhood where potential customers can view, drive and place pre-orders for the single-seat EV, set to be released in 2020.

Our Greg Layson has been writing about “the end” of the transcendent people mover since November 2016. Now, the “garageable van” might get its latest stay of execution from none other than U.S. President Donald Trump.

Record third-quarter ZEV sales of 16,091 represented a 25-per-cent increase year-over-year, according to a new report by Electric Mobility Canada. Provincially, B.C. and Quebec led the way with sales up 10 and seven per cent, respectively.

The automaker has changed the shift’s end date four times since it first announced its planned demise during the summer. After March 2020, FCA "will review the business case for maintaining the third shift on a month to month basis going forward," says Unifor, the union representing workers there.

Subaru and Honda saw their sales increase while Toyota and Nissan took hits. Overall, trucks accounted for more than 76 per cent of all new vehicles sold in October, spurring the head of the Global Automakers of Canada to warn the federal government that "focusing solely on the sale of ZEV vehicles" won't do enough to reduce greenhouse gases.

Magna will build dual-clutch transmissions, including hybrid variants, for BMW under a multi-year contract. Beyond that, a Magna spokesman said the company is very limited in what it can disclose at this point, at the request of the automaker.  

VW Canada recently convinced the German automaker to continue offering the base-model Golf in the country after the redesign, despite plans to cut base versions in the United States. At the same time, the all-electric e-Golf is slated to go away and be replaced with a vehicle under the automaker’s ID. badge.

Fears of a national levy on vehicles priced above $100,000 are especially high in British Columbia. Consumers there already pay a provincial luxury-vehicle tax of up to 20 per cent, in addition to HST. 

Under the new deal, which the Liberals will likely ratify, 40 per cent of a vehicle must be made in a plant where workers make at least US$16 an hour. Flavio Volpe, head of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, said the new trade deal is a win for his members, who stand to gain an additional $8 billion in annual parts orders.

Polestar, the electric vehicle startup brand from Volvo, has chosen Groupe Park Avenue of Montreal as its first retail partner in the Americas region. The store is set to open in 2020 in a province that saw its EV sales increase 93 per cent in the second quarter this year.