Ford recalls 215,00 pickups for brake leak
Ford is recalling nearly 215,000 pickup trucks and large SUVs in the U.S. and Canada because brake fluid can leak, causing longer stopping distances.
The recall covers the F-150 pickup from 2016 through 2018, as well as Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator SUVs from 2016 and 2017. All have 3.5-liter turbocharged six-cylinder engines.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says in documents released Tuesday that fluid can leak from the brake master cylinder. That can increase brake pedal travel, requiring greater effort and longer stopping distances.
Documents say dealers will replace the master cylinder and front brake booster if needed. Owners are to be notified by letter starting April 25.
The recall is Ford’s third for the same issue. The company recalled F-150s in 2016 and 2020.
Ford says in documents that it knows of four low speed crashes, but no injuries.
Tesla opens EV plant near Berlin
Tesla officially began making cars in Europe on Tuesday, opening an assembly plant in a critical market where Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, plans to build 500,000 electric vehicles a year.
Musk escorted Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and other officials on a tour of the huge, low-slung $7 billion plant just outside Berlin. It was constructed in little more than two years, a speed that amazed German officials and commentators.
“Electromobility will shape the mobility of the future,” Scholz said after the tour.
Robert Habeck, a German vice chancellor and the country’s economy minister, said it was “a special day for the region, a special day also for Germany and a special day for the mobility transformation in Germany.”
Musk, for his part, wrote on Twitter, “Danke Deutschland!!” He celebrated the day by handing over the first 30 European-built Teslas to customers who had ordered them and been invited to the event. Tesla will build its Model Y SUV at the plant.
Dallas Fed warns recession likely without Russian oil
The global economy likely won’t be able to avoid a recession without a resumption of Russian energy exports this year, according to a study by Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas economists.
“If the bulk of Russian energy exports is off the market for the remainder of 2022, a global economic downturn seems unavoidable,” economists Lutz Kilian and Michael Plante wrote in an article posted by the Dallas Fed Tuesday. “This slowdown could be more protracted than that in 1991.”
The authors drew a parallel to the 1991 global recession, set off by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in the year prior that caused an oil-supply shock. Back then, Saudi Arabia partly reduced the impact by pledging to ramp up production, helping ensure what the researchers called “only a brief U.S. recession,” which lasted less than a year.
The refusal of financial institutions to support Russian energy exports has been the main development putting those shipments at risk, the Dallas Fed economists wrote. “This outcome was largely unanticipated, as U.S. and European Union sanctions originally deliberately excluded Russian energy exports.”
Replacing that supply may be challenging, given that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have signaled they won’t provide relief, the researchers said.
Houthi rebels hit oil storage tanks
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels this week struck the same oil storage tank in the Saudi Arabian city of Jiddah they had previously hit a year and a half ago, satellite photos showed Tuesday.
Satellite photos by Planet Labs PBC, analyzed by The Associated Press, show the damage on Sunday to the North Jiddah Bulk Plant, which sits just southeast of the city’s international airport, a crucial hub for Muslim pilgrims heading to Mecca.
That same storage tank – owned by the state oil behemoth Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Saudi Aramco – was hit by what the Houthis described as a cruise missile in a November 2020 attack.
Sunday’s attack has renewed questions about the kingdom’s ability to defend itself from Houthi fire as a yearslong war in the Arab world’s poorest country rages on with no end in sight. It also comes as Saudi Arabia issued an unusually stark warning that it is unable to guarantee its oil production won’t be affected by further attacks – which could push global energy prices even higher amid Russia’s war on Ukraine.
“There is little to suggest that the attack will have an immediate impact on oil supply,” said Torbjorn Soltvedt, an analyst with risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft. “But there is no doubt Saudi Arabia is using it as an opportunity to put pressure on the U.S. at a testing time for U.S.-Saudi relations.”
– Compiled by Dave Flessner