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U.S. trailer orders in August bounced along below 11,000 units for the fourth consecutive month and were 72% lower than a year earlier, according to ACT Research, amid near-record factory inventories of undelivered trailers, plus plentiful cancellations.

China’s top maker of electric-vehicle batteries plans to spend $1.4 billion (10 billion yuan) building its first factory in the southwest of the country, adding to ambitious plans for the next decade even as the short-term EV outlook gets buffeted by subsidy cuts and demand uncertainties.

German prosecutors fined Daimler AG 870 million euros for “negligent violation” in a probe into selling rigged diesel cars.

LISLE, Ill. — Navistar International Corp. announced it is pushing into 2020 with plans for a new truck plant, electric trucks and a Class 8 with a Level 2 option, and it will place greater reliance on a single vehicle platform to optimize R&D, parts and tooling.

Auctioneer Ritchie Bros. announced PriorityBid, a feature that enables buyers to make proxy bids online for items in its live auctions up to a week before the sale.

Truckers looking to autogenerate written reports from their databases now have a raft of choices available, thanks to the emergence of artificial intelligence-enabled ­writing software. Essentially, these AI-generated writing solutions can drill down into company databases and autoproduce easy-to-understand, written reports.

No discussion of the future of the trucking industry is complete without considering the advance of automated driving technology, and how it might support the movement of freight in the years and decades ahead.

CENTREVILLE, Va. —While some self-driving truck developers are focused on building a future when heavy-duty vehicles will operate autonomously on the highway, another startup has already begun to commercialize an automated driving system that it believes is market-ready today.

LONG BEACH, Calif. — Rail and intermodal providers said they are increasing speed and efficiency to become more competitive, and technology is helping them improve operations.

RALEIGH, N.C. — As trucks become more complex and high-tech, so, too, do the repairs and maintenance systems, experts said Sept. 18 at the fall meeting of American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council.