Trade News

AutoNation Inc. is partnering with Alpine to compete in Formula One, the companies said Tuesday.

The retailer will sponsor the BWT Alpine Formula One team in the Miami Grand Prix in Florida, AutoNation said in a statement.

"AutoNation and Alpine are connected in our love for cars, speed, and drive to win," Mike Manley, AutoNation CEO, said in the statement.

The racing partnership comes as the French sports-car maker prepares to expand into North America. The two companies are engaged in talks about U.S. retail opportunities, the statement said.

"AutoNation is a tremendous retailer with an industry-leading customer experience and is also an experienced partner in motorsports," Laurent Rossi, Alpine CEO, said. "This makes for a fantastic partnership in one of the most exciting markets in the world."

AutoNation, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., ranks No. 2 on Automotive News' list of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S., with retail sale…

Gentex Corp., supplier of high-tech rearview mirrors, dimmable glass and automotive electronics, is investing in and collaborating with an Israeli company that has created a small thermal camera.

Such a device can be used to improve the safety of self-driving cars and to help reduce accidents involving pedestrians.

Adasky was founded in Israel in 2016. Its mission: bring to market affordable thermal cameras that fill in gaps left by the sensors in automated driving systems. One camera Adasky offers is less than 2 inches in length but can "see" as far ahead of a vehicle as 984 feet and classify living beings at more than 650 feet, according to the company.

The camera is shutterless and does not need to recalibrate when weather, light and road conditions change.

"Over the last few years, we've been investing heavily into our sensing capabilities, and the ADASKY technology was a great fit to complement our existing suite of sensing products," Gentex …

Bert Boeckmann, a pioneering California dealer who made customizing vehicles popular at his Galpin Motors group, died Friday, April 28. He was 92.

Boeckmann joined Galpin Ford in 1953 as a salesman and worked his way up to ownership. He grew the group's Ford store into the brand's top-selling dealership by 1989, a distinction the store held for nearly three decades.

He was featured as a "legend of retail" in Automotive News in 2016, although Boeckmann downplayed the term.

"If I hear somebody use the word 'legend,' I tell them, 'I'm still breathing,' " Boeckmann said at the time.

Born Aug. 21, 1930, in South Gate, Calif., Boeckmann did not initially plan to become a car dealer. He attended the Reserve Officers' Training Corps in college and thought about serving as a military officer. He told Automotive News in 2013 that he joined Galpin Ford at the urging of a friend and ultimately wound up staying longer than his friend.

He was promoted …

A federal judge in Detroit on Monday threw out a jury verdict ordering Ford Motor Co. to pay Versata Software Inc $104.6 million for breaching a 2004 licensing contract and misappropriating trade secrets.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Leitman said that while Versata Software, which licensed software to Ford from 1998 to 2015, offered sufficient evidence of a contract breach, it did not offer evidence to let jurors calculate damages accurately.

He also said jurors had no basis to determine how long Ford would have needed to develop three trade secrets it allegedly stole, and that this also required voiding the damages award.

Leitman ordered Ford to pay Versata $3 for breach of contract.

Versata sued Ford after accusing the automaker of copying its software because it was tired of paying licensing fees, and after Ford rejected an offer in 2014 to license its major software for $17 million a year.

"Overturning a jury verdict is difficult by desi…

AutoNation Inc. executive Marc Cannon plans to leave his position as chief customer experience officer, shift to a short-term philanthropic role for the auto retailer and then retire at year-end.

Richard Lennox, a former department store, toy company and jewelry store marketing executive, was named AutoNation's CMO, effective May 15, the retailer also announced.

"It was just a perfect time for me to decide to finish up," Cannon, 61, a 27-year AutoNation veteran, told Automotive News.

AutoNation disclosed the news on Monday. In an email to employees shared with Automotive News, CEO Mike Manley credited Cannon with being a key player in AutoNation's development.

"It goes without saying that after many years at AutoNation, [Cannon] has been instrumental in the company's growth," Manley wrote.

Going back to at least 2017, Cannon served as CMO of AutoNation, before being named to the newly created position of chief customer experience officer i…

Lordstown Motors might be in trouble. Carvana might also be in trouble. Supplies finally get close to normal for public retailers. Plus, Automotive News editor Lindsay Chappell talks about a new series on the industry’s tectonic shift toward carbon neutrality.

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Mike Manley was the highest-paid Detroit 3 executive in 2022, even though he no longer worked for an automaker.

Manley, who has been CEO of AutoNation since November 2021, earned $56.2 million (€51.2 million) from Stellantis last year. The payment stemmed from an agreement with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles prior to the January 2021 merger with PSA Group that formed Stellantis, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing from February.

Manley was Fiat Chrysler Automobiles' CEO before the merger and stayed on as head of Americas for Stellantis until succeeding Mike Jackson at AutoNation.

For his work last year at AutoNation, Manley earned $13.5 million in total compensation, including salary, bonuses, incentives and stock awards, according to AutoNation's proxy statement released March 9. That brought Manley's total compensation from the two companies to nearly $70 million.

General Motors' CEO Mary Barra ranked second with a pay pac…

New regulations governing cybersecurity for software-defined vehicles will start in July 2024, but the automotive industry may not be prepared, according to Israel's Argus Cyber Security.

Argus, a subsidiary of Germany's Continental AG, found that 58 percent of small automakers and automotive suppliers are not prepared to create a management system focusing on vehicle cybersecurity that complies with Regulation 155 from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.

Additionally, the commission's Regulation 156 governs cybersecurity protocols for software updates in new vehicles and will start that same month.

"No one's prepared and to be honest, the complete automotive chain is not prepared," Gulroz Singh, an executive at NXP Semiconductors, in Austin, Texas, told Automotive News.

The regulations provide standards for vehicle software and system security, personal data protection and cybersecurity incident management. They also spell out cyb…

General Motors Co. on Monday said it had cut several hundred full-time contract workers over the weekend including at its engineering hub in suburban Detroit, the latest effort by the U.S. automaker to streamline operations.

The contractors losing their jobs were within global product development at locations such as the company's Warren Tech Center. The Wall Street Journal reported the job cuts earlier.

GM shares were up 2 percent to $33.73.

GM said in April that about 5,000 salaried workers had opted for buyouts to leave the company. Reuters in February reported that GM cut hundreds of executive-level and salaried jobs.

CEO Mary Barra said in a memo to employees last month that the February job cuts and 5,000 buyouts "have provided approximately $1 billion towards" the $2 billion target.

Price hikes and demand for vehicles have helped automakers counter inflationary headwinds. GM posted higher-than-expected first-quarter earnings last w…

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Global supplier Bosch and trucking technology company Plus are working together to develop and deploy advanced driver-assistance features, the companies said Monday at the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo.

The new system combines Plus' predictive 360-degree sensors and assisted driving tools such as merge handling and suggested lane change with Bosch's hardware and steering system.

New mobility solutions require enhanced collaboration, said Paul Thomas, executive vice president of mobility solutions, Americas for Bosch. "Our agreement with Plus complements existing Bosch portfolio elements and is one of multiple ways we can work together to support our customers," he said.

This marks the second formalized collaboration between an automated technology provider and a major global supplier in as many weeks. Last week, Continental and Aurora detailed a new tie-up involving the industrialization of Aurora's self-driving systems.

Wh…

Group 1 Automotive Inc. is calling out some dealership sellers who it believes are pricing their businesses unrealistically high.

"There is a certain portion of sellers that have unrealistic expectations," Group 1 Automotive CEO Daryl Kenningham said during the company's first-quarter earnings call last week. "I always like to tell people, we will never win a bidding war, but we try to stick to discipline with what we will pay for a group of stores."

Group 1, of Houston, is pursuing acquisitions as a big part of its growth strategy. It's also using capital for share buybacks and investment in growth areas such as service and technology.

Its latest acquisition of Estero Bay Chevrolet in Estero, Fla.,  in the first quarter is expected to add an estimated $150 million in annual revenue.

More acquisitions are likely in the months ahead, but Group 1 is avoiding transactions in which sellers are asking exorbitant prices, Kenningham said. They're n…

Responsible citizens of the world have been talking for years now about reducing greenhouse gases and "decarbonizing."

But this week, we tell you that the global auto industry has leaped into that discussion — it has declared a kind of war on carbon, flipping over every rock to find ways to get carbon out of the equation of automaking.

In a lineup of stories from around the world, we point out that automakers and their supply chains are now reconsidering everything that might help them cut their output of greenhouse gas.

Hans Greimel tells us about the complexity of the attack on carbon now underway in Japan. The industry there is understandably anxious about the potential loss of millions of jobs and the economic hit Japan might take if automakers there suddenly switched wholesale to electric vehicles. And so companies are thinking as broadly as possible of solutions. A big one? Getting Japan's power plants off of coal.

Peter Sigal, from our sibl…