Trade News

Another public retailer sees a big drop in net income. Lithia cuts a thousand jobs. GM joins an effort to develop shared software. Plus, a conversation with Vehicles for Change CEO Martin Schwartz about the organization's effort to train people who were formerly incarcerated to become service drive techs.

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Freightliner owner Daimler Truck is launching a new brand of electric class 4 and 5 trucks, the company announced Thursday.

The new brand, Rizon, will sell and service the zero-emission vehicles exclusively through the commercial vehicle outlet Velocity Vehicle Group in the U.S., starting with deliveries in California and New York in the fourth quarter of 2023.

"Our Rizon trucks do everything a diesel truck does without the diesel," said Karl Deppen, a member of Daimler Truck's supervisory board, during Thursday's presentation.

Also on Thursday, Daimler's U.S. division along with NextEra Energy Resources and BlackRock Alternatives said Greenlane will be the name of their joint venture that will build and operate a public charging and hydrogen fueling network for medium- and heavy-duty battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. The partners are starting with $650 million in funding for the network. The first sites will be in Southern California. …

Three dealership groups expanded in three first-quarter transactions, while an auto retailer and partner added a pair of stores in a third-quarter 2022 deal.

Here's a look at the transactions involving domestic and import dealerships in Massachusetts, Virginia, Wisconsin and Indiana.

Village Automotive adds Stellantis dealershipRay Ciccolo, the 85-year-old president of Village Automotive Group, continues to grow his Boston-area enterprise, most recently with the February acquisition of Brigham-Gill Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge-Ram in Natick, Mass.

He plans to pursue more dealership purchases in the months ahead despite a competitive market.

"We're continuing to talk to people," Ciccolo told Automotive News. "So many people are also trying to acquire dealerships."

Ciccolo bought the Stellantis store on Feb. 14 with Village Automotive COO and son-in-law Anthony Bartolotti. The sale allowed Brigham-Gill owner Richard Gill to retire, according to Carri…

General Motors will invest more than $100 million in its largest parts processing center to add technology, create a more modern warehouse operation and improve worker safety.

The automaker said its Davison Road Processing Center outside Flint, Mich., part of the Customer Care and Aftersales division, will be updated with automated storage and retrieval and mini-load systems, as well as a conveyor system to move parts to employee workstations. Work to install the systems will begin in November, with operations up and running by April 2025.

The facility, which opened in 2019 and employs about 1,460 people, ships roughly 15,000 parts orders daily. It's the primary distribution site for GM Genuine and ACDelco parts.

GM said the technology updates are intended to help alleviate repetitive strain and improve ergonomics for employees. They come during a growth stage for Customer Care and Aftersales, which has seen double-digit business increases annually since…

WASHINGTON - UAW President Shawn Fain and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Thursday criticized a General Motors joint venture battery plant for paying workers much less than assembly plant employees even though it benefits from hefty U.S. government tax credits.

Workers at the Warren, Ohio, joint venture Ultium Cells LLC plant start at $16.50 an hour rising to $20 an hour after seven years while union workers at a nearby Ohio GM assembly plant that closed in 2019 made $32 an hour or more.

"That is to say the least going in absolutely the wrong direction," Sanders said in a video posted Thursday after meeting with Fain in Washington. "The government is putting a lot of money into transitioning our economy to a non-fossil fuel economy... We want to see workers get a fair shake, not just the CEOs of the companies."

Fain met with more than a dozen lawmakers during his Washington trip as well as White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients. He criticized the de…

Despite electric vehicle tax credits and significant efforts to expand public charging, the share of new-vehicle shoppers who will avoid EVs has grown over the past three months, according to J.D. Power.

In March, 21 percent of new-vehicle shoppers surveyed said they are very unlikely to consider an EV, up from 19 percent in February and 18 percent in January. The percentage of shoppers who said they are very likely to consider an EV has remained relatively flat over the past three months, landing at 27 percent in March. About 34 percent of shoppers said they are somewhat likely to consider an EV, and 18 percent said they are somewhat unlikely.

Resistance to an EV reflects concerns about lack of public charging infrastructure and high prices, J.D. Power said in its March E-Vision Intelligence Report, based on responses from about 2,000 new-vehicle shoppers.

To a lesser extent, EV reluctance could be driven by macroeconomic headwinds, such as rising inte…

BERLIN -- A technical project manager at Continental has admitted to involvement in the Volkswagen diesel scandal and incriminated other defendants, German prosecutors told Reuters.

The unidentified individual admitted to having knowledge of and involvement in the illegal use of so-called defeat devices in VW diesel vehicles, the prosecutor's office said, adding the person would be treated with leniency during sentencing as a result of the statements.

The defeat devices, disclosed in 2015, were used to cheat engine emissions test and triggered the biggest corporate scandal in VW's history.

Other accused individuals had contacted the prosecutor's office "to make confessional statements," the office added.

A total of 60 people are under investigation for aiding and abetting fraud, breach of trust and aiding and abetting breach of trust, prosecutors said.

Continental declined to comment.

In November 2021, the public prosecutor's office …

Lithia Motors Inc., now the largest seller of new vehicles in the U.S., appears to have eliminated around 1,000 unspecified positions this year.

The move comes amid lower gross profits on new and used vehicles and as the auto retailer's same-store new and used vehicle sales slipped in the first quarter compared to a year earlier.

Lithia COO Chris Holzshu, on the company's first-quarter earnings call last week, said the group has been focused on "right-sizing" in certain pockets that had increased its selling, general and administrative expenses "in a declining [gross profit per unit] environment and sales environment that we had to adapt to.

"Since we last spoke coming off of Q4's call, we've eliminated about 1,000 positions in the field and have right-sized a lot of pay plans, kind of getting folks ready for this new environment that helps us leverage the gross and the net. And so, [in] March actually, we saw a lot of that come through the bottom line …

Elon Musk slipped into Washington Wednesday for talks with lawmakers about artificial intelligence. The Tesla Inc. CEO later tweeted about the meetings, suggesting that regulating AI might be appropriate. 

“That which affects safety of the public has, over time, become regulated to ensure that companies do not cut corners,” he wrote. “AI has great power to do good and evil. Better the former.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has been considering legislation to regulate artificial intelligence. 

“We had a very good meeting. We talked about Buffalo, Tesla has a large plant in Buffalo,” Schumer told reporters after the meeting. “And we talked about AI.”

But Representative Thomas Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican, dismissed the idea of regulating the technology: “If AI is outlawed, only those outside of the law will have AI.”

Artificial intelligence has been a focus of research for years, from …

A look at how Japan’s two largest automakers are talking up their new-found focus on electric vehicles. Group 1 Automotive’s net income drops in the first quarter. And Toyota finally gets some good news on production.

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Can't wait to hear the next episode of "Daily Drive"? Subscribe through a podcast app to receive episodes days in advance. If you don't have a podcast app already, here are some options. 

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Hertz Global Holdings Inc. on Thursday reported that its overall revenue rose 13 percent to $2.05 billion for the quarter ended March 31. 

The company also posted an adjusted quarterly net income of 39 cents per share, compared with Refinitiv IBES estimates of 21 cents.

Demand for rentals remains strong as more companies mandate work from office and people resume their travel plans after a long pandemic-induced hiatus.

The company also benefited from price hikes on one-way rentals amid flight disruptions in the U.S. last year, as more people opted to hire vehicles and get to their destination on time.

"Hertz reported better-than-expected results as they continue to benefit from strong consumer demand for travel and the ongoing recovery in business travel," Ivan Feinseth, Tigress Financial Partners analyst, said.

Demand for Hertz's rental services was also helped by the company's EV fleet as consumers looking to purchase a car wi…

Despite a double-digit percentage rise in used-vehicle sales at Sonic Automotive Inc.'s EchoPark brand of used-only stores, the auto retailer's net income fell by half in the first quarter on lower sales and gross profits on new and used vehicles at its franchised dealerships.

Sonic, of Charlotte, N.C., said net income plunged 51 percent to $47.7 million, while revenue increased 1 percent to $3.49 billion, a first-quarter record, the company noted.

Among its franchised dealerships, average gross profit per retail new vehicle fell 19 percent to $5,463. The average gross profit per used vehicle at its franchised dealerships slipped 6.1 percent to $1,626.

EchoPark's first-quarter revenue rose 4.6 percent to $650.5 million, a first-quarter record. The used-vehicle-only business lost $46.8 million in the quarter, worse than its $35.3-million loss in the unit a year earlier.

"We are committed to EchoPark's long-term earnings potential and remain focused…