Trade News

LAS VEGAS — McLaren Automotive's retail operations in the U.S. are relatively young, with the first vehicle sales here starting in 2011. With only 25 stores, McLaren's dealership footprint is the smallest amongst major exotic and ultraluxury brands.

Now, as it enters a new vehicle cycle with the launch of the Artura plug-in hybrid, McLaren's U.S. retailers are reaching new levels of profitability while also investing in new or freshened dealerships, according to Nicolas Brown, president of the company's Americas region.

2022 will go down as the most profitable year for McLaren dealers in North America, Brown said at a media event here in December. The rise has been driven by a shift in more customers ordering bespoke vehicles and growing margins on pre-owned vehicles.

"It's been pretty consistent, going back to, let's say, 2018," Brown said, speaking with Automotive News for the first time in his current role. "Especially when you…

Audi Dominion in San Antonio is one of the top-performing Audi dealerships in the country, averaging more than 100 new vehicles and 170 used vehicles sold a month.

Martin Silva, the dealership's general manager, attributes that success to building a staff that reflects the Alamo City's diverse population and cultural backgrounds.

"When you live in a community like that and decide to go into any kind of retail business, the easiest decision is to provide opportunities to anyone who wants to put their head down and hustle and grind in an industry that's competitive — but also to make sure that our customer has someone they can relate to at the dealership level when it comes to sales, technicians and service advisers."

San Antonio is one of the fastest growing areas in the U.S., and Latino residents account for much of it.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, two-thirds of San Antonio's 1.45 million residents in 2021 were Latino or Hispanic, and ab…

Baidu Inc. and Toyota Motor Corp.-backed startup Pony. ai said on Friday they been granted the first licences to test fully autonomous vehicles without safety operators as a backup in Beijing.

Baidu and Pony.ai said they would begin testing 10 driverless vehicles each in a technology park developed by the Beijing government as a step toward commercial robotaxi services in China’s capital.

Beijing-headquartered Baidu, which generates most of its revenue from its internet search engine, has focused on self-driving technologies over the last five years as it looks to diversify.

It started to charge fees for its robotaxi service Apollo Go last year. It has predicted a robotaxi ride would eventually cost about half as much as one in a commercial car with a driver. The company said it would add another 200 robotaxis to its network across China in the coming year.

Apollo Go, which operates in Wuhan and Chongqing without a safety driver, delivered a tota…

China Evergrande Group's electric vehicle unit said on Friday it was laying off workers and cutting the salaries of some employees as a part of cost-reduction measures.

The unit, China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group, also said it was arranging for some employees to take a break from work.

The statement comes after Reuters reported that the unit was planning to lay off 10 percent of its workers and suspend salary payments to 25 percent of workers for between one and three months. 

The unit also said that it is continuing mass production of the Hengchi 5 electric crossover and has delivered 324 units to customers.

Reuters reported earlier this month that the company had suspended mass production of the model because of a lack of new orders.

The EV unit is key for the transformation plans of Evergrande, once China's top-selling property developer and now at the center of a deepening debt crisis.

A year-end conversation about the biggest stories in 2022 for auto dealers with Automotive News director of retail coverage Amy Wilson.

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Lidar company Cepton is headed to CES in Las Vegas to demonstrate it's not just a speculative Silicon Valley play but rather a company with technology and contracts that offer sustainable value.

Cepton's value proposition comes from the fact General Motors is a customer and will put lidar sensors in nine of the automaker's vehicles starting in 2023. The GM contract prompted the San Jose, Calif., company to open an office in suburban Detroit to serve as its automotive business hub.

Lidar, which stands for "light detection and ranging," is a sensor technology that creates a map of the environment around it. The technology is considered an important component for automated driving and fully autonomous vehicles.

Over the past two years, when the cost of capital was cheap, Cepton and other lidar companies went public through a special purpose acquisition company. But the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes and geopolitical tensions hav…