Trade News

Auto dealers fear higher interest rates will affect consumer vehicle demand in 2023, and some expect the increased borrowing cost to erode finance and insurance product sales volume or force lower rate reserve margins.

Automotive News' 2023 Dealer Outlook Survey of 264 dealers and dealership managers in January found interest rates were overwhelmingly dealers' biggest concern for 2023, with 70 percent of respondents ranking higher rates among their top three worries for the year.

Dealers said higher interest rates would affect not just their ability to sell vehicles but their ability to stock them, with higher floorplan costs expected by many dealerships.

Thomas Castriota, dealer principal of Castriota Chevrolet in Hudson, Fla., said dealers are beginning to regain access to inventory and vehicles are not turning as quickly. So inventory expense is likely to grow in 2023, he said.

But he thought dealers also were concerned about interest rates "…

A week later, it's hard for me to understand how Elon Musk won his defense from a lawsuit by investors saying they were misled when he inaccurately tweeted that he had "funding secured" to take Tesla private.

It was a case of a CEO publicly stating something that was important, relevant and not true.

Musk had already settled a Securities and Exchange Commission suit over the tweets, with the automaker and him each paying fines of $20 million, which is a lot of money for most of us.

In May, a U.S. District Court judge said Musk's comments were inaccurate and irresponsible, as discussions over Saudi funding were "clearly at the preliminary stage."

Said Judge Edward Chen: "No reasonable jury could find that Mr. Musk did not act recklessly given his clear knowledge of the discussions."

He would leave it up to a jury to decide if the false comments led the stock to rise.

Seeing how the share price jumped dramatically, it seemed like a n…

Imagine a tiny army of software "robots" that perform mundane and repetitive data-entry tasks for dealership employees — actions such as inputting online sales leads or determining the value of trade-ins.

While that may sound far-fetched, it's a reality at the nine stores owned by Servco Pacific on the Hawaiian islands of Oahu, Maui and Kauai. (Servco also owns 19 stores in Australia.)

Since early 2022, the stores have been using an advanced technology called robotic process automation that automates the manual transfer of data, said Brandon Kamigaki, auto retail product manager at Servco.

"Our employees used to come to work in the morning and review and input leads and type vehicle information into valuation tools, then send a price back to the customer," Kamigaki said.

"But now the robots do all that work," he added. "And they can create a valuation and send it back to the customer in about 15 minutes, rather than having the customer wait unti…

Ford Motor Co. on Monday plans to announce details of a massive electric vehicle battery plant it has decided to build in Marshall, Mich., two people with knowledge of the company's plans told Crain's Detroit Business, an affiliate of Automotive News.

The automaker is scheduled to hold a news event at Ford Ion Park in Romulus on Monday, according to an advisory Ford sent Friday.

The event will be centered on how Ford "is working to scale EVs quickly and, ultimately, make them more accessible to customers," Ford said.

The announcement will include details about the $3.5 billion factory and 2,500 new jobs in Marshall, the two officials told Crain's.

The state has offered $1 billion in incentives, including cash and site development funds, from Michigan's Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve Fund, one of the sources said. The account has around $200 million that is not spoken for. Lawmakers will be asked to add $800 million in a supplemental s…

Ross Gerber, a vocal Tesla Inc. shareholder, said he will pursue a board seat at the electric-vehicle maker, with a goal of reining in Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk.

Gerber, co-founder and chief executive of investment firm Gerber Kawasaki, confirmed his intentions during a Twitter Spaces audio conference Bloomberg hosted Friday. He said he's formally announcing his plans next week.

"I think it is crucially important to take criticism and this is something that I have realized over the years with Elon, you know, he's very thin skinned," Gerber said. "I've kind of had enough."

Musk and Tesla representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Gerber did not say how he intended to secure the board seat. He said he had close relationships with some of Tesla's biggest institutional investors including Ark Investment Management LLC (0.15 percent) and Baillie Gifford & Co. (0.85 percent), but did not say if they specifically sup…

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Neal Dunn, R-Fla., reintroduced a bipartisan bill Thursday mandating that vehicle owners and independent repair shops have the same access to repair and maintenance tools and data as automakers and their franchised dealerships.

The bill — known as the Right to Equitable and Professional Auto Industry Repair Act — was previously introduced last year by Illinois Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush, who retired after his term ended Jan. 4.

The legislation would require all tools and equipment, wireless transmission of repair and diagnostic data and telematics systems needed for vehicle repairs be made available to the independent repair industry.

To ensure cybersecurity, it would allow automakers to secure vehicle-generated data and require NHTSA to develop standards for how that data can be accessed securely.

The bill would create a stakeholder committee with the authority to provide recommendations to the Federal Trade Commission on …

The wholesale volume of new vehicles industrywide shrank 35 percent year on year to below 1.65 million last month, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said on Friday.

The trade group blames the market contraction on the removal of government subsidies for electrified vehicles and tax cut on gasoline cars, and fewer working days due to the timing of the Chinese New Year holiday.

In January, shipments of light vehicles including sedans, crossovers, SUVs, multi-purpose vehicles and minibuses fell 35 percent to fall short of 1.47 million. 

The volume for new commercial vehicles such as buses and trucks plunged 48 percent to around 180,000. 

At the end of 2022, the subsidy program Beijing rolled out in 2010 for full electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids was phased out. 

In 2022, EVs were eligible for up to 12,600 yuan ($1,850) in subsidies, while plug-in hybrids qualified for a flat subsidy of 4,800 yuan. 

North America’s largest parts supplier saw an 80 percent drop in fourth-quarter profits. Honda says the semiconductor shortage is bottoming out, while GM scores a key microchip deal. Plus, a look at the problem with storing customer information on a salesperson’s cell phone and other dealership compliance no-no’s.

How do I subscribe?

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. 

iPhone / iPad

Android

Spotify

Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk has often talked about opening his Supercharging network to competitors, but has never actually done so in the United States, where the company dominates the electric vehicle market.

Now, the brash CEO may have 7.5 billion reasons to accelerate those plans.

The U.S. Department of Transportation next week is expected to finalize a requirement that will pressure Tesla to expand beyond its proprietary charging equipment in the U.S. and add the charger used by its competitors, administration officials tell Reuters.

Otherwise, the carmaker will be left out of the $7.5 billion in subsidies flowing out of Washington, part of President Joe Biden’s plan to blanket the nation with 500,000 EV chargers in the coming years, up from 100,000 in 2021.

The network is a central part of Biden's plan to tackle climate change by converting 50 percent of all new U.S. vehicle sales to electric by 2030. A dearth of chargers on U.S. roads has slo…

Partners sold two luxury dealerships after one decided to retire, a Washington group made its first acquisition since 2020, a Chevrolet dealership changed hands after nearly 50 years under family ownership, and another auto retailer expanded its luxury portfolio in transactions that took place throughout 2022.

Here's a look at the deals involving domestic and luxury brand dealerships in Michigan, California, Washington and Illinois. One of the transactions involved a retailer ranked on Automotive News' top 150 dealership groups list.

Longtime Michigan Chevy dealership trades hands

A dealership in Saline, Mich., changed hands April 20, when Bill Crispin and Debbie Crispin sold Bill Crispin Chevrolet to Monte Perkins, Timothy Jones and Timothy Rinke, according to a Michigan Secretary of State spokeswoman.

The store was renamed Saline Chevrolet.

"Today we sold Bill Crispin Chevrolet after 46 years of being the heartbeat of America," said a Fa…

TOKYO — The rebalancing of the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi alliance opens a new chapter for the long-uneasy Franco-Japanese partnership in the wake of the arrest of its former chairman.

But one man still fighting its past, former Nissan executive Greg Kelly, says the carmakers missed a golden opportunity to better strengthen their position as a leading global auto group.

Under the plan envisioned by former Chairman Carlos Ghosn, the alliance partners would have achieved unprecedented scale and Nissan would have assumed the leading role, said Kelly, the American director charged in Ghosn's 2018 alleged financial misconduct case.

"Nissan would have been first among equals," Kelly told Automotive News on Feb. 6, shortly before the companies unveiled their restructured cross-holding framework.

"I do think it relates back to everything that happened in 2018, and different visions for the group," he said. "Clearly, the vision for the group here looks to …

BERLIN - Volkswagen's supervisory board will assemble on Friday for a planning round postponed from last November in which it will discuss plans for which models to produce at which plant, a source close to the company told Reuters on Friday.

The supervisory board will meet again in early March to conclude the plans and prepare to present them on March 14 in the carmaker's annual results conference, the source said.

The planning round, first reported by German business paper Handelsblatt, is the first since Volkswagen and Porsche Chief Executive Oliver Blume took over the company last autumn.

Among the topics on the agenda is whether to build a new factory for the Trinity model near its Wolfsburg headquarters, a plan conceived under former Chief Executive Herbert Diess but which was called into question at the end of last year.

The Volkswagen brand chief said in December that the carmaker would decide by early February whether to build the factory…