Trade News

A federal jury has found two Napleton Automotive Group employees guilty of warranty fraud in a yearslong lawsuit between Hyundai Motor America and the dealership group's West Palm Beach Hyundai store.

But Hyundai will not be awarded damages because it engaged in wrongdoing that gives the automaker “unclean hands,” the jury ruled Thursday.

The case goes back to November 2020 when Hyundai Motor America sued Napleton Automotive Group and some of its employees in federal court, alleging that they fraudulently collected warranty payments for unnecessary engine repairs. The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Napleton Automotive Group was later dismissed as a defendant, but the group’s West Palm Beach Hyundai store — EFN West Palm Motor Sales — and employees remained defendants.  

The jury found Gene Khaytin, former general manager of that store and Ernie Revuelta, the store's current service director, gui…

Elon Musk, Tesla Inc.'s chief executive, took the stand on Friday in a jury trial over his 2018 Twitter post that he had "funding secured" to take the electric carmaker private, which shareholders allege cost them millions in trading losses.

Musk's testimony began with questions about his use of Twitter, the social media platform he bought in October. He called it the most democratic way to communicate but said his tweets did not always affect Tesla stock the way he expected.

"Just because I tweet something does not mean people believe it or will act accordingly," Musk told the jury in San Francisco federal court.

Musk, known for combative testimony, is expected to address why he has insisted he had Saudi investor backing to take Tesla private, which never occurred, and whether he knowingly made a materially misleading statement with his tweet.

The case is a …

Lawyers who’ve taken Elon Musk to trial for securities fraud are worried he’ll go rogue when he takes the witness stand, by straying from court orders finding that his 2018 tweets about taking Tesla Inc. private were false.

The Tesla CEO is scheduled to testify as early as Friday at the trial in San Francisco. In a pretrial ruling the judge handling the case determined Musk’s tweets were false and reckless – and instructed jurors to “assume” the same.

But lawyers representing investors are urging the judge to go further, by issuing a “cautionary instruction” before Musk takes the stand. They said that in an earlier interview with the attorneys and at a TED Talk, Musk has said he was “quite excited” to “clear the record” about his intentions to take Tesla private.

In a court filing Thursday, they asked US District Judge Edward Chen to tell jurors to disregard any of his testimony suggesting that the tweets were true. They also want the judge to remind j…

Auto retail technology giant Reynolds and Reynolds is the lead investor in Sheeva.AI's $9.25 million series A funding round announced Thursday.

Sheeva.AI is building an in-car payments software system that works off a vehicle's location.

The Tysons Corner, Va., company says its geolocation technology will allow drivers to seamlessly pay for fueling, electric vehicle charging, parking, curbside pickup and drive-through services from their car. The technology can detect a vehicle at a specific gas pump, parking spot, battery charging space or drive-through lane. It then enables payment via an in-vehicle infotainment screen or in an automaker's mobile application.

"Like the Sheeva.AI team, we're big believers in the in-vehicle commerce space," said Sidney Haider, senior vice president at Reynolds and Reynolds. "Our dealer and automotive OEM network sees the car as a new digital platform that will be as revolutionary as the smartphone was in e-commerce."

…

Wyoming State Senator Jim Anderson sponsored a bill last week that, if enacted, would phase out new electric vehicle sales in the state by 2035. However, Anderson told Automotive News on Wednesday, he doesn't intend for it to pass, and he doesn't begrudge anybody buying EVs.

The bill comes as a number of other states are moving in the opposite direction, eyeing the end of gasoline-powered vehicle sales in favor of electrics and plug-in hybrids. A California executive order and new rules issued by the California Air Resources Board are a prominent example of efforts to push zero-emission vehicles by 2035 with the aim of reducing emissions and thwarting climate change.

The Wyoming bill was written in the same manner as California's, Anderson said, but aims to preserve customer choice.

"It's not good to dictate to the citizens what kind of vehicles they're gonna buy, because of all the problems with (electric vehicles)," he said. The bill, which currently s…

One of the country's largest privately owned auto retailers sold a store, two groups added dealerships to their portfolios and a minority dealer development program candidate bought his own store in deals from the second and third quarters of 2022 and first quarter of 2023.

Here's a look at the deals involving domestic, luxury and import dealerships and stores in Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Texas.

One transaction involved a dealership ranked on Automotive News' top 150 dealership groups list.

Napleton Automotive sells Infiniti store in Georgia

The former CEO of AutoGravity has purchased an Infiniti dealership in Georgia.Alex Mallmann of AJM FL Corp on Oct. 3 purchased Napleton Infiniti of Macon from Napleton Automotive Group, according to Dave Cantin, CEO of the Dave Cantin Group whose buy-sell firm brokered the deal.

The store was renamed Infiniti of Macon.

Mallman told Automotive News that he has more than one dealer…

LAS VEGAS — To whatever degree one believes in cars as smartphones on wheels, CES showed plenty of evidence that video games are gaining important traction in the vehicles of today — and casting visions of a gaming-rich automotive experience in coming years.

Holoride began offering its in-cabin virtual reality gaming in the U.S. this year. Nvidia announced partnerships with automakers to expand its cloud-based gaming subscription. And Sony, maker of the wildly popular PlayStation console, said it had a partnership with the maker of Fortnite as it revealed the Afeela, an electric concept sedan crafted with partner Honda Motor Co.

On one level, the developments represent the expansion of the gaming industry, now estimated by market researcher Newzoo at 3.2 billion players globally and more than $180 billion in revenue. But it's also about anticipating changes in how people interact with their vehicles as they charge batteries and as machines tak…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ Data security gaps found at more automakers

A group of white hat hackers cracked customer and back-end operations of several automakers, including BMW, Ferrari, Ford, Jaguar-Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Rolls-Royce.

The findings are a followup to the group's discovery late last year of flaws in SiriusXM's telematics service that created breaches in Honda, Hyundai, Nissan and Toyota models.

The white hat hackers gained access to this latest round of vulnerabilities, including detailed customer information and internal administrative functions, which the group did not disclose until earlier this month because of a self-imposed 90-day moratorium, Sam Curry, an Omaha, Neb., security engineer, told Automotive News.

The moratorium, inspired by the policies of the Google Project Zero security research team, is designed to express intent to disclose, but also to allow time to work with vendors to plug the security gaps…

Elon Musk oversaw the creation of a 2016 video that exaggerated the abilities of Tesla Inc.'s driver-assistance system Autopilot, even dictating the opening text that claimed the company's car drove itself, according to internal emails viewed by Bloomberg.

Musk wrote to Tesla's Autopilot team after 2 a.m. California time in October 2016 to emphasize the importance of a demonstration drive to promote the system, which the chief executive officer made a splashy announcement about a week later. In an Oct. 19 call with reporters and blog post, Tesla said that all its cars from that day forward would ship with the hardware necessary for full self-driving capability.

"Just want to be absolutely clear that everyone's top priority is achieving an amazing Autopilot demo drive," Musk said in the email. "Since this is a demo, it is fine to hardcode some of it, since we will backfill with production code later in an OTA update," he wrote, referring to using temporary code …

DETROIT — General Motors could enter the baby pickup market with an electric entry smaller than the Ford Maverick and the Hyundai Santa Cruz.

The automaker is considering a two-door pickup with a 4- to 4.5-foot-long bed and low roofline. The vehicle would be part of GM's lineup of affordable EVs priced under $30,000.

The pickup, seen by Automotive News Wednesday at GM's affordable EV design studio in Warren, Mich., is futuristic and sporty. Marketing images behind the pickup showed consumers using it for recreational activities, such as surfing.

GM did not provide a name, brand, image or production timeline for the mini truck.

"We're creating these to get a reaction and then to try to modify it or move on. What does work? What doesn't work? What's expected?" Michael Pevovar, director of Chevrolet affordable EV and crossover design, told reporters. "Affordability is the key portion of this, and there's lots of different ways to approach it."

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Auto refinancier and digital auto retail platform provider Upstart will begin to expand its indirect auto lending business to dealerships nationwide starting next quarter, the company said this week.

The company also will give dealerships using its Upstart Auto Retail platform the opportunity to let their customers obtain a car loan and even complete a purchase entirely online. These new features on what was once the Prodigy auto retail platform also will begin to roll out during the second quarter, Upstart said.

Right now, only about 30 of Upstart's nearly 800 dealership customers have been able to use Upstart's artificial intelligence-based, highly automated indirect lending system to find loans for their customers. The capability has only been available in-store, not for online retail, according to Alex Rouse, vice president and general manager of Upstart Auto Retail.

Rouse called results from dealership testing of Upstart loans "really, really impre…

Doug Betts, president of the Automotive Division at J.D. Power, talks about the firm’s new EV index. Renault’s Alpine brand sees a big opportunity in the U.S. And some auto loan rates could grow almost a full percent this year.

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