The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has received 380 reports alleging intermittent or complete loss of power steering assistance in 2013-2016 model year Ram 1500 pickup trucks, including reports of three crashes.

In March 2016, Fiat Chrysler Automotive, now known as Stellantis, recalled 440 vehicles to address a possible contamination of the electrical power steering unit. NHTSA said complaints indicated similar failures may be occurring in vehicles outside the recall scope.

NHTSA is opening a recall query “to determine if the scope of the recall mentioned above is correct or if another defect might exist.”

Stellantis said Tuesday the company is “fully cooperating with NHTSA on this investigation.”

Many complaints filed with NHTSA described expensive or serious safety issues or very long waits for repair parts. In January, one Florida driver said the steering wheel of a 2013 Ram 1500 locked and “would not turn left or right” and was quoted a price of more than $2,000 for parts.

Another driver was driving a 2014 Ram 1500 at 55 miles per hour (89 km/h) on a busy road in California in February when their steering wheel “seized and became immobile. Using tremendous force I was able to get the truck through traffic and to the side of the road.”

A complaint filed in March by a 2015 Ram 1500 driver said due to a power steering assist failure, “the contact drove into a ditch which caused minor damages to the front end of the vehicle.”

— David Shepardson is a Reuters correspondent covering U.S. auto sector and regulatory issues from Washington, D.C.

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The major Detroit pickup truck brands are sitting on growing inventories of unsold vehicles, according to Cox Automotive data provided to Reuters.

As supply-chain bottlenecks ease, the resolve among Detroit’s automakers to keep inventories tighter than before the pandemic will be tested. Automakers could have to choose between reducing output to avoid price cuts, or offering richer discounts to pump up sales volumes, dealers said.

GM dealers have over 100 days’ supply of Chevy Silverado pickups in stock, reflecting more vehicles on the ground and a seasonally slow pace of sales, according to Cox. Inventory levels are over 100 days’ supply for rival Stellantis’ Ram half-ton and heavy-duty pickups. Ford has 92 days’ worth of F-150s in stock, according to Cox data.

A GM spokesman said Cox’s numbers do not accurately reflect GM’s inventory situation. GM does not disclose detailed inventory figures. However, he said GM is acting to support its pricing strategy, which relies on keeping inventories leaner than in the past.

Stellantis said in a statement it had no downtime planned at any of its North American plants, but constantly reviewed its inventory levels and would make production adjustments as needed.

Industry consultants J.D. Power and LMC Automotive forecast on Friday that U.S. car and light truck sales for February would reach a 14.6 million-vehicle annualized pace. That is up from a year ago, but still well below pre-pandemic levels.

February sales growth was led by a 54 per cent increase in sales to fleet customers, Power and LMC said.

Overall inventories of unsold vehicles are still low, but “are still not sufficient to fulfill demand each month,” Thomas King, president of the data and analytics division at J.D. Power, said in a statement.

GM said its decision to idle the Fort Wayne, Indiana assembly plant that builds Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks for two weeks starting March 27 was done to maintain “optimal inventory levels with our dealerships.”

Who blinks first?

GM, Ford and Stellantis dominate the U.S. large pickup market, and for the past two years have been raising prices on their trucks to record levels as supply-chain snags limited production.

Dealers contacted by Reuters said that now, some customers are waiting for better deals, or are postponing purchases because the combination of high prices and higher interest rates put vehicles out of reach. The automakers face a choice between cutting prices using bigger rebates or subsidized loans, or keeping inventories tight.

“What they’re doing is playing what I call the blink game — whoever blinks first. Especially for trucks,” said Ohio dealer Rhett Ricart, whose Ricart Automotive Group sells Ford and GM trucks at different stores.

Brad Sowers, president of Jim Butler Auto Group in Missouri, said high prices are hitting demand. However, he wrote in an email, “manufacturers do not want to flood the market and be forced to quadruple incentive spending to drive demand that will reduce their margins.”

Some discounts are showing up in the large pickup segment. Ram is offering 2.9 per cent financing for 72-month loans on certain Ram 1500 trucks.

Power and LMC said fewer vehicles were sold in February above their manufacturer suggested prices, and that the average discount rose 4.7 per cent to US$1,335 a vehicle. That is still well below pre-pandemic levels, Power-LMC said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Joseph White and Ben Klayman in Detroit; additional reporting by Kannaki Deka in Bangalore.

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The maker of Ram, Dodge, Chrysler, Fiat and Jeep vehicles said its Automotive Cells Co. (ACC) joint venture with Mercedes-Benz and TotalEnergies would build a battery plant in Italy and boost its capacity in Europe.

Separately, South Korea’s LG Energy Solution (LGES) said it would invest about $1.9 billion to set up a joint venture with Stellantis to produce batteries in Canada.

The total investment will be more than $5 billion, which Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said was the largest ever in the Canadian auto sector. Officials did not immediately say how much the federal and provincial governments were contributing.

The Canadian plant, to be built just across the border from Detroit, aims for an annual production capacity in excess of 45 gigawatt hours (GWh) and will create an estimated 2,500 new jobs in the Windsor area, the companies said.

The moves are part of a plan by the world’s fourth largest carmaker to have five battery plants, two in North America and three in Europe, where it has already announced so-called ‘gigafactories’ in France and Germany, also being built via ACC.

They come as rivals also move forward with battery production plans and as the car industry struggles with chip shortages and other supply chain disruptions.

Volkswagen on Wednesday picked a site near Valencia for its planned battery cell plant in Spain, while Tesla on Tuesday launched a factory in Germany, its first European hub.

ACC said on Wednesday it would convert an existing Stellantis engine plant in the southern Italian town of Termoli into a battery facility as agreed Monday in a memorandum of understanding with Italian authorities.

The total investment for Termoli would amount to 2.3 billion euros (C$3.2 billion), including 370 million euros in public funds, Italy’s deputy industry minister said in a statement.

The plant in Canada comes as the country, rich in key materials for EV battery production, has been wooing battery makers to safeguard the future of its car manufacturing industry as the world seeks to cut emissions.

Ontario is geographically close to U.S. automakers in Michigan and Ohio, and General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis have all announced plans to make electric vehicles at factories in Ontario.

“This is going to make Windsor the home of Canada’s first EV battery manufacturing plant, a plant that will be manufacturing hundreds of thousands of batteries,” Champagne said. “It’s great news for the entire auto sector in Canada.”

Separately, ACC said it would increase its industrial capacity to at least 120 gigawatt hours (GWh) by 2030, versus an initial target of 48 GWh, and scale up the development and production of next-generation high-performance battery cells and modules.

The plan will involve an investment of more than seven billion euros, ACC said, and will include bringing production capacity at its French and German plants to 40 GWh each, from the 24 GWh initially planned.

This suggests the Termoli battery plan would also have a capacity of 40 GWh. Tesla’s Berlin plant is aiming for an eventual capacity of 50 GWh.

Presenting its first business plan earlier this month, Stellantis said it aimed to sell five million battery electric vehicles a year by 2030. It also increased its planned battery capacity by 140 GWh to approximately 400 GWh, through its five gigafactories and additional supply contracts.

— Reporting for Reuters by Giulio Piovaccari in Milan and Steve Scherer in Ottawa; additional reporting by Giuseppe Fonte and Giulia Segreti in Rome and Heekyong Yang and Joyce Lee in Seoul.

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