Trade News

I have little doubt that Koji Sato, the next CEO of Toyota Motor Corp., will move the automaker in a different direction — or at the very least, at a slightly different pace — than his predecessor, Akio Toyoda, when it comes to battery electric vehicles.

The question is: Should he? The investor community and EV promoters (whom some call EVangelists, which is a fabulously rich descriptor) certainly believe so. I'm not so sure, however — let me tell you why.

During a conversation onstage at the J.D. Power Auto Summit at the NADA Show in Dallas last month, Toyota sales head Jack Hollis leaned forward, cupped his outstretched hands together as though he were capturing rainwater and explained his company's somewhat controversial EV strategy in a different way.

"Imagine," the former professional baseball player said softly, that his hands contained enough lithium to build one battery for one BEV. With this amount of the mineral, "I can build one $68,000 EV. …

DETROIT — Jim Farley has grand ambitions to transform Ford Motor Co., but the third-year CEO finds himself hampered by a problem that has vexed Ford leaders for decades: managing a massive company with a notoriously siloed — and sometimes dysfunctional — culture.

Next week marks one year since Farley split the automaker into separate divisions to accelerate what he calls a “dual transformation” of its traditional internal combustion business and its development of connected electric vehicles. 

A year in, some parts of his plan are progressing faster than others. 

“These huge transformations are not linear, perfectly predictable things,” Farley said last week.

He said he’s pleased by the reception to Ford’s first wave of EVs and connected-vehicle software but frustrated by long-standing cost and quality issues weighing down its business. He recently blamed dismal earnings in 2022 on poor operational execution. 

Executive Chai…

Not even a 27-foot-long hot dog is safe from the spate of catalytic converter thefts plaguing many dealerships and city streets across the country.

The Oscar Mayer Weinermobile was victimized by thieves in Las Vegas this month. The giant frankfurter was parked outside a hotel just off the Strip when someone cut the catalytic converter out from under its bun, TV station KLAS reported.

After driver "Corn Dog Clara" and copilot "Chad'der Cheese" couldn't get the vehicle to start the next morning, they had it towed to a Penske Truck Rental. Mechanics found a replacement part that fit well enough to be used temporarily and got the wheeled weenie on its way.

"A hot dog truck, no way," said Joseph Rodriguez, parts administrator for the Penske shop. "Imagine like a huge hot dog in the middle of your bay. There's all these other trucks and you got to work on this."

Catalytic converters, which filter pollutants from a vehicle's emissions, are sought by thie…

At a time when automakers are expressing confidence about nearing the end of the global microchip shortage, factories worldwide just cut another 35,000 vehicles from their production schedules this week for lack of chips.

Nearly 13,000 are being dropped from North American factory plans, according to the latest update from AutoForecast Solutions. Another 4,400 cuts are coming out of European plants. Factories in China have been modestly impaired by chip shortages this year, but the new forecast says 8,853 vehicles will be eliminated this week.

Source: AutoForecast Solutions Inc. autoforecastsolutions.com

Cooper-Standard Holdings Inc. posted an $88.1 million loss during the fourth quarter compared with a loss of $102.2 million during the same quarter last year. Revenue increased 8 percent to $649.3 million. For the year, the company lost $215.4 million compared with a net loss of $322.8 million in 2021. Revenue improved 8 percent to $2.5 billion.

Lithia Motors Inc., once the smallest publicly traded dealership group before embarking on a multiyear dealership buying spree, surpassed longtime No. 1 AutoNation Inc. in new vehicles sold in 2022.

Lithia retailed 271,596 new vehicles last year, up 4.2 percent, and more than 40,000 vehicles more than AutoNation, which retailed 229,971 new vehicles, a 12 percent drop, in 2022.

Lithia retailed 68,159 new vehicles in the fourth quarter, up 5.2 percent. AutoNation also saw a fourth quarter increase with retail sales of 60,074 new vehicles, up 4.3 percent.

Lithia’s figures include a small but undisclosed number of vehicles sold in Canada, including those from a Harley-Davidson store, as well as recreational vehicles sold at RV stores in the Western U.S. that were acquired by Lithia in October.

Lithia’s toppling of AutoNation, which had held the top spot since 1997, was expected as the once-smaller Lithia continued buying up dealerships at a rate far…

After a protracted inventory shortage, supplies of new vehicles at U.S. public dealership groups finally showed solid signs of improvement at the end of 2022. But there's a catch.

The public groups reported meaningful gains in inventory, particularly for domestic-brand vehicles, but they also noted in fourth-quarter earnings calls over the last few weeks that luxury- and import-brand vehicles continued to be in dramatically short supply.

While retailers, automakers and industry analysts predict continued supply chain improvements and a broader return to normalcy in the coming months, new-vehicle inventory levels still have a long way to go to reach pre-pandemic numbers. Penske Automotive Group Inc. CEO Roger Penske, for example, noted this month that Penske's inventory remains "way below our historical levels" despite the company's recent gains in supply.

Here's where the six major public dealership groups stood on supply at year-end.

New-vehicl…

Magna International Inc. deepened its investment into its declared new market for electric vehicle battery enclosures, raising its commitment to nearly $700 million at two plants in Michigan and Ontario to supply major electric truck programs.

Battery enclosures are part of North America's largest parts supplier's plan to establish itself as a crucial producer EV parts and technologies.

Last week, Magna announced a round of new spending on its Ontario manufacturing footprint, including a $198 million investment in a new battery enclosures plant in Brampton, near Toronto. That plant will initially build enclosures for the Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup before ramping up to also produce enclosures for electric versions of the Ford Explorer and Lincoln Aviator crossovers slated to be built in nearby Oakville, Ontario, in 2024, John O'Hara, president of Magna's body and chassis group, told sibling publication Automotive News Canada.

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As the importance of automotive software grows, the industry will need to do more to attract top talent in the field amid stiff competition from Silicon Valley — and quickly, experts and industry executives said.

"It's not like there aren't a lot of great people working in this space, but compared to the density you might find in Silicon Valley or other more tech-focused industries, it's been a challenge for the auto industry," said Jeff Peters, a partner in mobility early-stage venture capital at Ibex Investors in Denver.

Automotive spending on software is increasing at a rapid clip. S&P Global Mobility expects annual spending on in-vehicle infotainment software development alone to grow 44 percent to $356.1 million by 2027 from $247.1 million in 2022. McKinsey & Co., meanwhile, projects the global market for automotive software to rise 163 percent to $50 billion annually in 2030 from $19 billion in 2019. While the auto industry is an …

Diana Kennedy dropped out of high school at age 18. She admits she was never the best student, often cutting class and struggling to stay engaged.

When Kennedy later took a vocational automotive class, she discovered she enjoyed being around cars and ultimately found a sales position at a dealership.

"Automotive became the outlet for me that got me focused on something," Kennedy said. "Otherwise, I really don't know what direction my life would have headed in. But I feel like automotive came to me at the right time in my life."

Kennedy was naive to the high ratio of men to women in the automotive industry until she joined Price Simms Family Dealerships in 2021 as general manager of Volvo Cars Marin, she said. She quickly realized she was the only woman in the room during meetings. Knowing what the industry had done for her, Kennedy set out to change this.

When she started at the store in San Rafael, Calif., women were 16 percent of the staff. No…