BERLIN (Reuters) – The auto battery parts joint venture between Volkswagen’s PowerCo and Belgian materials firm Umicore has chosen Poland as the site for its first factory, PowerCo said on Saturday.

Through the $2.9 billion joint venture, dubbed Ionway, first flagged in December 2021, the companies are joining a number of European automakers that have brought battery supplies closer to home in the shift towards electric vehicles.

The Polish government is providing 350 million euros ($371 million) in cash grants for the investment in the southwestern town of Nysa that would create around 900 jobs, it said.

Ionway wants to build up its annual production capacity by the end of the decade to around 160 gigawatt hours (GWh) per year – enough for 2.2 million electric vehicles.

PowerCo – whose Poland initiative comes after VW in April set out plans to invest up to C$7 billion to build a car battery plant in Ontario, Canada – said it had decided on Poland because the location was strategically favorable, plus there was sufficient skilled labour and renewable energy sources for production.

Construction work will begin as soon as the permitting process is completed, it said.

Ionway is intended to supply PowerCo’s European battery cell factories with key battery materials and to cover a large portion of PowerCo’s needs in the European Union. In return, Umicore receives secured access to an important part of Europe’s demand for cathode materials for electric vehicles.

($1 = 0.9446 euros)

(Reporting by Sabine Wollrab and Sarah Marsh; Editing by David Holmes)

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Tesla has signed a leasing contract with Shanghai Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone Group to open a massive sales and service centre in an industrial park in the city, its biggest one in China, the government-owned company said.

The Tesla store, with a size of 8,000 square metres, or 861,000 square feet, will open in mid-2024 in Xin Park, under development in Shanghai’s Pudong district, according to a statement on the Chinese company’s official Wechat account on Saturday.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company, the world’s biggest electric car manufacturer, has nearly 300 stores across China. Reuters reported last year that it was considering closing some showrooms in flashy malls in cities like Beijing.

It also plans to put more emphasis on stores in less-costly suburban locations that can also provide repairs as the company works to meet Chief Executive Elon Musk’s goal of improving service for customers, the Reuters report said.

(Reporting by Zhang Yan and Brenda Goh; editing by Clelia Oziel)

By Stephen Nellis and Max A. Cherney

(Reuters) – In a new front in the U.S.-China tech war, President Joe Biden’s administration is facing pressure from some lawmakers to restrict American companies from working on a freely available chip technology widely used in China – a move that could upend how the global technology industry collaborates across borders.

At issue is RISC-V, pronounced “risk five,” an open-source technology that competes with costly proprietary technology from British semiconductor and software design company Arm Holdings. RISC-V can be used as a key ingredient for anything from a smartphone chip to advanced processors for artificial intelligence.

Some lawmakers – including two Republican House of Representatives committee chairmen, Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic Senator Mark Warner – are urging Biden’s administration to take action regarding RISC-V, citing national security grounds.

The lawmakers expressed concerns that Beijing is exploiting a culture of open collaboration among American companies to advance its own semiconductor industry, which could erode the current U.S. lead in the chip field and help China modernize its military. Their comments represent the first major effort to put constraints on work by U.S. companies on RISC-V.

Representative Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House select committee on China, said in a statement to Reuters that the Commerce Department needs to “require any American person or company to receive an export license prior to engaging with PRC (People’s Republic of China) entities on RISC-V technology.”

Such calls to regulate RISC-V are the latest in the U.S.-China battle over chip technology that escalated last year with sweeping export restrictions that the Biden administration has told China it will update this month.

“The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is abusing RISC-V to get around U.S. dominance of the intellectual property needed to design chips. U.S. persons should not be supporting a PRC tech transfer strategy that serves to degrade U.S. export control laws,” Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement to Reuters.

McCaul said he wants action from the Bureau of Industry and Security, the part of the Commerce Department that oversees export-control regulations, and would pursue legislation if that does not materialize.

The bureau “is constantly reviewing the technology landscape and threat environment, and continually assessing how best to apply our export control policies to protect national security and safeguard core technologies,” a Commerce Department spokesperson said in a statement.

“Communist China is developing open-source chip architecture to dodge our sanctions and grow its chip industry,” Rubio said in a statement to Reuters. “If we don’t broaden our export controls to include this threat, China will one day surpass us as the global leader in chip design.”

“I fear that our export-control laws are not equipped to deal with the challenge of open-source software – whether in advanced semiconductor designs like RISC-V or in the area of AI – and a dramatic paradigm shift is needed,” Warner said in a statement to Reuters.

RISC-V is overseen by a Swiss-based nonprofit foundation that coordinates efforts among for-profit companies to develop the technology.

The RISC-V technology came from labs at the University of California, Berkeley, and later benefited from funding by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Its creators have compared it to Ethernet, USB and even the internet, which are freely available and draw on contributions from around the world to make innovation faster and cheaper.

HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES

Executives from China’s Huawei Technologies have embraced RISC-V as a pillar of that nation’s progress in developing its own chips. But the United States and its allies also have jumped on the technology, with chip giant Qualcomm working with a group of European automotive firms on RISC-V chips and Alphabet’s Google saying it will make Android, the world’s most popular mobile operating system, work on RISC-V chips.

Qualcomm declined to comment. Its executives said in August they believe RISC-V will speed up chip innovation and transform the tech industry.

Google did not respond to a request for comment.

If Biden’s administration were to regulate U.S. companies’ participation in the Swiss-based foundation in the manner lawmakers are seeking, the move could complicate how American and Chinese companies work together on open technical standards. It also could create hurdles for China’s pursuit of chip self-sufficiency, as well as for U.S. and European efforts to create cheaper and more versatile chips.

Jack Kang, vice president of business development at SiFive, a Santa Clara, California-based startup using RISC-V, said potential U.S. government restrictions on American companies regarding RISC-V would be a “tremendous tragedy.”

“It would be like banning us from working on the internet,” Kang said. “It would be a huge mistake in terms of technology, leadership, innovation and companies and jobs that are being created.”

Regulating the open discussion of technologies is rarer than regulating physical products, but not impossible, said Kevin Wolf, an export-control attorney at law firm Akin Gump who served in the Commerce Department under former President Barack Obama. Existing rules on chip exports could help provide a legal framework for such a proposal, Wolf said.

(Reporting by Max A. Cherney and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Will Dunham and Kenneth Li)

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday issued new guidance on how a $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit can be used as a point-of-sale rebate starting in January.

Currently, consumers can only take advantage of the $7,500 new EV credit or $4,000 used EV credit when they file their tax returns the following year.

Starting Jan. 1, consumers can transfer the credits to a car dealer, effectively lowering the vehicle’s purchase price, a change that may help boost EV sales.

Under the guidance issued Friday, consumers will need to attest they meet income limits to qualify for the tax credit or they will need to repay the government when filing their taxes.

For new vehicles, the adjusted gross income limit is $300,000 for married couples and $150,000 for individuals.

Congress approved a sweeping reform of the EV tax credits in August 2022 as part of the $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

Treasury is also releasing more details on registration requirements and the mechanics of the transfer for car dealers.

Dealers will need to register via a new IRS website to offer the credits. Beginning in January, dealers can submit vehicle sales to the IRS and receive payment for tax credits within 72 hours.

Under proposed rules released Friday, credit transfers and advance payments would typically not affect dealers’ tax liability and dealer payments would not be part of a consumer’s gross income.

The 2022 IRA law required vehicles to be assembled in North America to qualify for any tax credits, eliminating nearly 70% of eligible models at the time. On Jan. 1, new price caps on qualifying EVs and the limits on buyers income took effect.

In April, Treasury implemented new rules setting sourcing battery components and critical minerals to qualify.

The Biden administration must still issue rules later this year detailing what constitutes a “Foreign Entity of Concern” that will later disqualify EVs for credits if they have any battery components or if batteries contain critical minerals from a foreign entity of concern.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed rules it forecasts will result in 67% of new vehicles being EVs by 2032.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

By Caroline Valetkevitch

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stocks rallied on Friday, led by technology shares to a sharply higher close as investors assessed a jobs report that showed U.S. hiring rose broadly in September with slowing wage growth.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq registered their biggest daily percentage gains since late August, and the S&P 500 rose for the week, snapping a four-week losing streak.

Information technology was up the most of any S&P 500 sector, followed by communication services.

Stocks initially fell after the jobs data, which showed U.S. employment increased by the most in eight months in September, but began to rebound by late morning.

“You have an economy that’s slowing, but not faltering, and you have a Federal Reserve on the sidelines,” said Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth in Fairfield, Connecticut.

He said also that the S&P 500 appeared to bounce after nearing its 200-day moving average, currently at around 4,208.

Market watchers have been weighing whether the Fed may be done hiking interest rates after a recent surge in long-term U.S. Treasury yields. Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yields hit 16-year highs on Friday.

The day’s data also showed a moderation in wages, which may have been because most of the jobs added last month were in lower-paying industries.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 288.01 points, or 0.87%, to 33,407.58, the S&P 500 gained 50.31 points, or 1.18%, to 4,308.5 and the Nasdaq Composite added 211.51 points, or 1.6%, to 13,431.34.

For the week, the S&P 500 was up 0.5%, the Dow fell 0.3% and the Nasdaq rose 1.6%.

The recent gains follow sharp losses for stocks for September and for the third quarter.

Investors await data on September consumer price inflation and producer price index readings, due next week.

Investors also are keen for the upcoming quarterly earnings season, with major banks including JPMorgan Chase due to report next week.

Shares of Exxon Mobil were down 1.7% after sources told Reuters that the U.S. oil producer was in advanced talks to acquire Pioneer Natural Resources. Pioneer’s stock jumped 10.4%.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 10.58 billion shares, compared with the 10.72 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.96-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.73-to-1 ratio favored advancers.

The S&P 500 posted six new 52-week highs and 52 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 27 new highs and 260 new lows.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; additional reporting by Sinead Carew in New York and Ankika Biswas and Shashwat Chauhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva, Shounak Dasgupta and David Gregorio)

By Caroline Valetkevitch

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stocks closed sharply higher on Friday with technology shares, as investors assessed Friday’s jobs report that showed U.S. hiring rose broadly in September but also that wage growth was slowing.

The S&P 500 rose for the week, snapping a four-week losing streak.

Information technology was up the most of any S&P 500 sector, followed by communication services.

Stocks initially fell early after the jobs data, which showed U.S. employment increased by the most in eight months in September but also that wage growth cooled.

Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth in Fairfield, Connecticut, said the S&P 500 appeared to bounce after nearing its 200-day moving average, currently at around 4,208.

Also, he said, “You have an economy that’s slowing, but not faltering, and you have a Federal Reserve on the sidelines.”

Market watchers have been weighing whether the Fed may be done hiking interest rates after a recent surge in long-term U.S. Treasury yields. Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yields hit 16-year highs on Friday.

According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 gained 50.32 points, or 1.18%, to end at 4,308.51 points, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 211.51 points, or 1.59%, to 13,431.34. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 280.84 points, or 0.85%, to 33,400.41.

For the month of September, stocks registered sharp losses.

Investors await data on September consumer price inflation and producer price index readings, due next week.

Investors also are keen for the upcoming quarterly earnings season, with major banks including JPMorgan Chase due to report next week.

Shares of Exxon Mobil were down after sources told Reuters that the U.S. oil producer was in advanced talks to acquire Pioneer Natural Resources. Pioneer’s stock jumped.

(Additional reporting by Sinead Carew in New York and Ankika Biswas and Shashwat Chauhan in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva, Shounak Dasgupta and David Gregorio)

By Joey Roulette

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Amazon’s first pair of prototype satellites for its planned Kuiper internet network were launched into space on Friday from Florida, the company’s first step before it deploys thousands more into orbit to beam internet service globally and compete with SpaceX’s Starlink.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket emblazoned with the Amazon logo lifted off from Cape Canaveral shortly after 2 p.m. Eastern time (1800 GMT), carrying the two Kuiper test satellites, a long-awaited mission Amazon initially had intended to launch using different rockets.

The mission aims to test Amazon’s first pieces of technology in space as the e-commerce and web services giant looks to deploy 3,236 more satellites in the next few years and offer broadband internet globally, a feat Elon Musk’s SpaceX is targeting with its nearly 5,000 Starlink satellites in orbit.

In the days leading up to the launch, Amazon divulged few specifics about the two satellites, which were built at its satellite plant in Redmond, Washington.

The launch live stream hosted by the United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture, ended shortly after the rocket’s liftoff without showing the deployment of the satellites.

Amazon has vowed to invest $10 billion into its Kuiper project, which was announced in 2019, the year SpaceX began deploying its first operational Starlink spacecraft.

U.S. regulators require Amazon to deploy half its planned satellite constellation by 2026.

The market for broadband internet service from low-Earth orbiting satellites is viewed as being worth up to tens of billions of dollars in the next decade.

With Starlink making SpaceX the world’s largest satellite operator, Amazon’s other rivals include Canada’s Telesat, which has not yet launched satellites, and French satellite firm Eutelsat’s OneWeb, which mainly offers its internet service to governments and businesses.

Like SpaceX, Amazon aims to target individual consumers and enterprise customers with Kuiper, pulling from its devices playbook to build consumer terminals at a company cost of $400 each – though it has not yet announced prices. SpaceX’s consumer Starlink terminals are priced at $599 each.

To deploy the rest of the Kuiper network, Amazon last year announced a bulk launch deal for 83 launches – the largest commercial rocket procurement ever – from various rocket companies, including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, ULA and Europe’s Arianespace.

Amazon and Bezos, its founder, are facing a shareholder lawsuit over that launch deal that accuses the company of failing to do proper due diligence and failing to consider potentially cheaper rockets from its rival SpaceX. SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rocket has been central to Starlink’s swift deployment.

(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Chris Reese and Will Dunham)

By Mike Stone

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Biden administration is expected to announce a new weapons package for Ukraine next week as the Pentagon continues to use up funds discovered due to a multi-billion dollar accounting error, U.S. officials said.

Those funds have allowed the Biden administration to send Kyiv arms, supplies and munitions despite the exclusion of new Ukraine aid from a stopgap spending bill passed by the House of Representatives last weekend to prevent a government shutdown.

Biden has been asking Congress to approve another $24 billion related to Ukraine, which the country’s supporters – Republicans as well as Democrats – had hoped could become law as part of a spending bill. The request is still pending.

But the Pentagon still has about $5.4 billion of congressionally granted presidential drawdown authority (PDA), after the Pentagon found in June it had overestimated the value of arms shipped to Ukraine by $6.2 billion due to an accounting error.

The composition of the next round of weapons aid is still being formulated and is set to be unveiled on Wednesday at the 16th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels where security assistance will be a key topic, the officials said.

It was expected to have a value of around $200 million and could include similar ammunition and ground vehicles that have been in recent aid packages.

Biden has vowed to replenish stocks of arms sent to Ukraine. The true cost of shipping weapons is measured when the replacement is purchased.

If Congress does not provide new funds to buy replacements, and the Pentagon runs out of funds it can reprogram to keep corporate contracts flowing, the U.S., Ukraine and arms makers may be forced to take other steps to backfill stocks.

Reprogramming, a tool used to shift funds within Department of Defense accounts to meet urgent needs, could be used to buy arms from weapons makers like Lockheed Martin, which makes the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS), and General Dynamics, which makes the 155 millimeter artillery ammunition. Both have been essential to Ukraine’s operations.

Congress could continue to increase the PDA, which authorizes the president to transfer articles and services from U.S. stocks without congressional approval during an emergency. Increasing the PDA would not require approval of new funds, though replacing the weapons would require new money.

The Biden administration is also considering using a State Department grant program to send Ukraine additional military aid, a U.S. official said.

U.S. aid to Ukraine may hinge in part on who takes over as House speaker after Republican Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the role this week. Some of his possible successors strongly support assisting Kyiv, with others staunchly opposed.

Democrats, who strongly support aid to Ukraine, insist that Congress will back continued assistance. Many Senate Republicans, including influential figures like Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, also say so.

(Reporting by Mike Stone; editing by Rami Ayyub)

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – A major U.S. law firm has changed its criteria for a fellowship aimed at promoting diversity in the legal profession, marking the second time a firm has done so in the face of a challenge to such a program by a prominent anti-affirmative action activist.

Perkins Coie, a more than 1,200-lawyer firm founded in Seattle, on Friday said it had expanded the applicant pool for its diversity fellowship program to all law students, not just members of “historically underrepresented” groups.

It did so after a group founded by affirmative action foe Edward Blum filed lawsuits against it and another large law firm, Morrison & Foerster, alleging their diversity fellowships unlawfully excluded certain people based on their race.

Morrison & Foerster recently similarly removed language specifying that its fellowship program is only open to Black, Hispanic, Native American or LGBT applicants.

Perkins Coie faces a Monday deadline to respond to Blum’s lawsuit in court.

Blum did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The paid fellowships were designed in part to help support the recruitment of people of color, which major law firms have struggled for years to add to their partnership ranks.

A different group founded by Blum in June won a landmark ruling at the U.S. Supreme Court, when its 6-3 conservative majority rejected policies long used by American colleges and universities to increase the number of Black, Hispanic and other minority students on American campuses in cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

In addition to the lawsuits against the law firms, Blum on Saturday won a court order blocking a venture capital firm’s grant program for Black women-led businesses, and he is pursuing cases challenging race-conscious admissions policies in military academies.

In the lawsuit against Perkins Coie, Blum’s American Alliance for Equal Rights took aim at a diversity fellowship the firm created in 1991 to support law students from groups “historically underrepresented in the legal profession.”

Perkins Coie had said those groups included “students of color, students who identify as LGBTQ+, and students with disabilities,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed in August in federal court in Dallas, Texas.

The lawsuit alleged that by limiting eligibility based on race, the fellowships violated Section 1981 of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, a Civil War-era law that bars racial bias in contracting.

Under revised criteria announced on Friday, Perkins Coie said it will now accept applications for the 2024 program from all first-year law students, regardless of race or gender identity.

The firm said it will now also ask applicants to write about their life experiences and evaluate them based on their “efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion”.

Those accepted can receive stipends of $15,000 and paid positions as summer associates, a position that at major law firms can lead to full-time jobs. Fellows who return a second year receive $25,000 stipends.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Peter Graff)

By Gabriela Baczynska and Inti Landauro

GRANADA, Spain (Reuters) – Poland and Hungary blocked a symbolic European Union statement about migration on Friday but other leaders gathered at a summit in Spain said they were continuing overhauling the bloc’s rules for handling irregular arrivals anyway.

Some 250,000 people arrived so far this year beyond regular border crossings to the EU, home to 450 million.

Rome, Madrid and Berlin voiced concern about increasing irregular immigration, a politically sensitive matter ahead of regional elections in Germany on Oct. 8, a national vote in Poland a week later and a continent-wide parliamentary ballot next June.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki accused Germany and Poland’s opposition leader collaborating to push new EU laws fining countries if they refuse to host people arriving from the Middle East and Africa.

“Poland does not agree to have someone else furnishing our home,” said Morawiecki.

His ally and Hungary’s anti-immigration leader, Victor Orban, also accused the EU of forcing a new migration pact.

Out of the EU’s 27 member countries, 22 agreed this week on how to handle irregular immigration at times of exceptionally high arrivals, taking a step towards reforming the bloc’s inefficient asylum and migration rules.

The European Parliament must further negotiate the agreement, something the bloc’s chief executive said on Friday she was confident will produce a final deal.

“We can speak a lot about it, but its on its way now,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

“Migration was always there, it will always be there. The question is how we manage it as team Europe… We cannot accept what human traffickers do and we cannot let them decide who has access to the EU.”

DISUNITY

While Poland and Hungary cannot block the EU’s new migration pact and their opposition on Friday was largely symbolic, their harsh criticism raises questions about how effectively the union can implement a deal.

“Election after election, migration tops our citizens’ concerns,” said European Parliament head, Roberta Metsola, who was also present at the summit. “There is no silver bullet, but let’s not kill this pact before we adopt it.”

The EU has tightened its external borders and asylum laws since more than a million people – mostly fleeing the war in Syria – arrived across the Mediterranean in 2015.

That caught the bloc by surprise, overwhelmed security and reception capacity in southern member states, as well as rich destination countries like Germany, and triggered bitter rows between the 27 over how to share out those newly arrived.

Years of disagreements over migration have damaged the bloc’s unity and the feud on Friday suggests that was far from over – deal, or no deal.

Last month, Germany introduced checks on borders with its EU peers, saying they are needed to crack down on people smugglers amid irregular arrivals increasing again.

On Friday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said countries that push the staunchest anti-immigration lines cannot at the same time let refugees and migrants just cross into Germany without registering and hosting them properly on their soil first.

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska, Marine Strauss, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Inti Landauro, Andrey Khalip, Gianluca Semeraro, David Latona, Bart Meijer, Andreas Rinke, Andrew Gray, Belen Carreno; Writing by Charlie Devereux and Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Josie Kao)