Trade News

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. convinced an Ohio federal judge on Friday to throw out a $64 million jury verdict over its alleged theft of trade secrets related to self-inflating tires.

U.S. District Judge Sara Lioi said most of the trade secrets that Czech company Coda Development accused Goodyear of stealing were too vague to be legally protected.

A spokesperson for Goodyear said Monday that the company agrees with the decision and "respects the intellectual property rights of others." Attorneys for Coda did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

Coda sued Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear in 2015, and said in an amended 2019 complaint that Goodyear copied Coda CEO Frantisek Hrabal's technology to keep tires inflated with an internal tube, after discussing a potential collaboration in 2009 for General Motors Co.'s Chevy Volt.

A jury decided last year that Goodyear misappropriated five of the 12 trade secrets Coda accused it of misus…

Transportation and logistics company Ryder System Inc. on Monday said it was buying 4,000 electric delivery vans from General Motors' BrightDrop commercial vehicle unit over the next three years for use in its lease and rental fleets.

As a result of that and other deals, BrightDrop said it has now sold out of its Zevo 600 van for the 2023 model year. It did not disclose the number of vans it will produce for 2023 but said it was now taking reservations for 2024 vehicles, with deliveries expected to begin in the middle of this year.

Ryder said it planned to add the Zevo 600 and smaller Zevo 400 to its lease and rental operations through 2025. The first 200 vans will be ordered this year, the company said. Ryder said 2023 Zevo 600 vans will be rented to customers in California, New York City and the Dallas area this year, while 2024 Zevo 600 and Zevo 400 vans will be available as soon as this summer.

"Electrifying lease and rental vehicles can have a signi…

Kia America posted its best quarter ever and a near 20 percent increase in U.S. sales in March thanks to recovering inventory and healthy demand for crossovers as well as availability of "green" vehicles.

In the first three months, Kia logged U.S. sales of 184,136, an increase of 21 percent over the same period last year, and a 15 percent boost over its previous high set in 2021. March also marks Kia's eighth consecutive month of record-breaking sales.

Eric Watson, Kia America's sales chief, also attributed the strong growth to efforts the company has made over the past few years to launch quality products, improve residual values and attract a more affluent customer.

"We're now starting to pull away and see much better performance than the industry and our competitive segments," Watson said.

Dealers also are selling deeper into their stock than ever before.

"We've been able to keep our turn rate high," said Watson. "Prior to the pandemic, …

Subaru of America's sales rose for an eighth-straight month in March, up 23 percent to 53,213, including a March record for the Crosstrek, the brand's top-selling nameplate. For the quarter, the Japanese brand's sales were up 8.3 percent to 143,376.

Brand: Up 23% in March, 8.3% for the first quarter

Notable nameplates: Crosstrek, up 4.3%; Outback, down 4.1%; Forester, up 56%

Incentives: $859 per vehicle in the first quarter, down 4.7% from a year earlier, TrueCar says.

Average transaction price: $34,704 for the first quarter, up 0.1% from a year earlier, according to TrueCar.

Quote: "Enthusiasm for Subaru vehicles remained high in March, and we anticipate continued excitement as the weather warms up and car buyers begin planning spring and summer adventures," Troy Poston, Subaru's newly appointed senior vice president of sales, said in a written statement.

Did you know? After having its launch stymied last year by the stop-sale that …

General Motors' U.S. light-vehicle sales rose 18 percent in the first quarter to 599,187 vehicles as all four of its brands achieved increases, the automaker said Monday.

Buick led GM's sales growth, with sales nearly doubling. Cadillac and Chevrolet reported double-digit increases, while GMC sales rose 7.6 percent.

"GM is off to a great start in 2023," GM North America President Steve Carlisle said in a statement. "We gained significant market share in the first quarter, pricing was strong, inventories are in very good shape and we sold more than 20,000 EVs in a quarter for the first time."

Duncan Aldred, vice president of global Buick and GMC, told Automotive News in January that 2023 represents a rebound year for Buick after the brand was "severely impacted" by microchip shortages in 2022. First-quarter sales of the Buick Encore GX subcompact crossover more than doubled, and sales of the Envision compact crossover more than tripled.

GM said its…

This year’s annual dealership group ranking chock-full of change

It won't take long for readers of Automotive News' latest ranking of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S. to notice changes in the lineup.

Starting at the top, for the first time, is auto retail giant Lithia Motors Inc.

Lithia, once the smallest publicly traded dealership group before embarking on a multiyear dealership buying spree, passed longtime No. 1 AutoNation Inc. in new vehicles sold in 2022. The toppling of AutoNation, which had held the top spot since 1997, was expected as Lithia purchased dealerships at a rate far outpacing its rival.

It's fitting that Lithia, which has helped drive the dealership buy-sell market to new heights with its acquisition strategy, is now No. 1 on a list that strongly reflects the impact of consolidation in auto retail.

After seeing megadeals completed in 2021, new buyers entered the market, including dealers who hadn't previo…

It won't take long for readers of Automotive News' latest ranking of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S. to notice changes in the lineup.

Starting at the top, for the first time, is auto retail giant Lithia Motors Inc.

Lithia, once the smallest publicly traded dealership group before embarking on a multiyear dealership buying spree, passed longtime No. 1 AutoNation Inc. in new vehicles sold in 2022. The toppling of AutoNation, which had held the top spot since 1997, was expected as Lithia purchased dealerships at a rate far outpacing its rival.

It's fitting that Lithia, which has helped drive the dealership buy-sell market to new heights with its acquisition strategy, is now No. 1 on a list that strongly reflects the impact of consolidation in auto retail.

After seeing megadeals completed in 2021, new buyers entered the market, including dealers who hadn't previously explored growth through the acquisition space, said George Karolis, p…

As accelerated dealership consolidation reshapes the auto retail landscape, Automotive News' annual ranking of the top 150 dealership groups based in the U.S. is changing, too.

The groups on the list commanded a bigger percentage of the U.S. industry's new light-vehicle sales in 2022 and held a growing share of the U.S. dealership count, according to the Automotive News Research & Data Center, which compiles the list. As those groups got larger, they also performed better than the industry as a whole in a year that saw overall new-car sales decline. The top 150 recorded a collective new-vehicle sales decline far narrower than the decline in overall U.S. light-vehicle sales.

This annual list usually has no surprise at the top — AutoNation Inc. has been No. 1 since 1997. But that's different this year as deal-making juggernaut Lithia Motors blew past rival AutoNation to sit at the top of the ranking.

The senior director of transparency and insights for the Center of Sustainable Energy discusses challenges around installing EV charging infrastructure and educating mass-market consumers on charging.

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GMC has been pushing prices and content for its premium trucks and SUVs into luxury vehicle territory — and that upward climb may not yet have peaked.

The brand's average transaction price last year was $59,031, according to GM Financial data that GMC provided to Automotive News. It rose to $62,367 in the first quarter of this year, the data show.

GMC's average pricing in 2022 was $60,069, compared with average luxury pricing of $66,242, according to data from third-party auto research site Edmunds. GMC's average price has continued to rise, to $63,731, this year through February.

Data from auto research site Kelley Blue Book shows similar trends.

And GMC will stretch even higher as the brand anticipates two newer top trims — Denali Ultimate and AT4X — will come to market in greater numbers this year after supply constraints limited their availability in 2022, said Duncan Aldred, vice president of global Buick and GMC.…