Trade News

WASHINGTON - The U.S. new vehicle automotive fleet's fuel efficiency was flat in the 2021 model year as automakers sold more sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks compared to cars, while the Detroit Three lagged behind foreign competitors.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Monday the fleetwide real-world average was 25.4 miles per gallon in the 2021 model year, the same as in 2020. The EPA estimates the 2022 fleetwide efficiency average will rise to 26.4 mpg.

Automakers are meeting rising vehicle emissions requirements in part through using credits earned in prior years or by buying excess credits from rivals.

Chrysler-parent Stellantis had the lowest fuel economy among all automakers at 21.3 mpg in 2021, while General Motors was 21.6 mpg and Ford Motor at 22.9 mpg.

The three U.S. automakers had the lowest fleet wide fuel economy of 14 major car companies.

The report showed Stellantis led all automakers in buying emissions cr…

Despite widespread electric vehicle buzz, studies show most Americans have never been EV passengers, let alone drivers.

Their most likely first experience? A rental car, said Gregory Scott, spokesperson for the American Car Rental Association.

Car rental companies are committing to sustainable mobility, Scott said. It's an important statement, as the American Car Rental Association's members purchase 1 in 10 new light vehicles sold in the U.S. each year. Car rental companies' overall commitment signals the future of mobility and provides demand for automakers as they ramp up EV efforts, Scott said.

Hertz Corp. has committed to EVs in a big way and boasts the largest rental EV fleet in North America. The rental car company has agreed to buy 175,000 EVs from General Motors over the next five years, 100,000 from Tesla and 65,000 from Polestar. Hertz has also joined oil giant BP to build a network of U.S. charging stations. It expects the effort to build ou…

The Center for Automotive Diversity, Inclusion and Advancement held its second annual CADIA Impact Awards in suburban Detroit last month. The ceremony recognized individuals and companies making noteworthy contributions to DE&I efforts in the industry. There were nine winners within five categories.

CHAMPION FOR DIVERSE TALENT

Individual: Mae Smitherman-Smith, controller, global manufacturing, material planning and logistics, and warranty, Ford Motor Co.

Mae Smitherman-Smith has led several initiatives to improve diversity recruiting and talent development within Ford's finance organization, including a three-year program that connects ethnically diverse employees with senior management, a deep-dive talent review of Black employees and a focus on increasing the diversity of the finance internship program. She is the first Black woman in the finance organization to rise from entry level to senior management in the history of Ford, opening the door for …

Eric Loughmiller will wrap up his tenure of nearly 16 years as KAR Global's CFO when he retires from the wholesale auctions provider at the end of the month.

Since joining KAR in April 2007, the company's finance chief has been witness to two industry-shaping events — the Great Recession in 2008-09 and, a decade later, a global pandemic that forced wholesale auction players to further consider technologies enabling operations to continue at a safe distance.

In the late 2010s, it became clear to KAR that zeroing in on offering digital and hybrid wholesale auction tools was the way of the future. COVID-19 provided further evidence for that, Loughmiller said. In 2022, his final year with KAR, the company took the pivot to digital even further, shedding ADESA U.S., its physical auction network, in a $2.2 billion sale to Carvana Co.

Loughmiller, 63, spoke with Staff Reporter C.J. Moore about his time at KAR Global, the company's journey in evolving to majori…

The 2022 Ferrari F8 Spider reaches 60 mph from a stop in just 2.9 seconds — no surprise for a storied sports car. Still, the more than $300,000 Ferrari would barely beat the 9,000-pound GMC Hummer EV pickup in a drag race.

The massive electric truck hits the same speed only a couple tenths of a second later thanks to its electric architecture. It is about a third of the price, and other electric vehicles about half the Hummer's price can match that pace.

Generally, electric vehicles democratize acceleration by pricing supercar speed at a fraction of the cost. Automakers find that a great sales tool, but it brings up safety questions. How many average drivers can handle a supercar?

The would-be Ferrari vs. Hummer highlights an advantage electric vehicles have over internal combustion power counterparts. Electricity provides instant torque and acceleration. There's no need to move pistons, spool turbochargers or shift gears.

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Can average drivers handle the supercar acceleration of many EVs?

Who would have thought the massive GMC Hummer can nearly match a Ferrari F8 Spider in a drag race?

It would be unthinkable in the old gasoline Hummer. But the latest electric iteration has the speed to compete with a Ferrari and other supercars.

Rapid acceleration is an advantage electric vehicles have over internal combustion power counterparts. Electricity provides instant torque and acceleration. There's no need to move pistons, spool turbochargers or shift gears.

"It all comes down to physics. You have an electric motor that's all torque, you can get to peak power in a tenth of a second, and there are no dips for transmission shifts," said Tim Grewe, General Motors' director of electric strategy.

Electric vehicles democratize acceleration by pricing supercar speed at a fraction of the cost. The Hummer sells for about a third of the Ferrari. Some versions of a $56,000 Te…

The vice president of service delivery for self-driving tech company Aurora Innovation explains how autonomy can help double the utilization rates in trucking and what it takes behind the scenes to run a self-driving operation.

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U.S. vehicle inventory continued to recover from historic lows, rising another 150,000 vehicles to 1.61 million, according to data from Cox Automotive and the Automotive News Research & Data Center.

The increase mirrored the rise from the previous month and extended the run of slight inventory gains that began in June, when automakers and dealers had an estimated 500,000 fewer vehicles in their stocks. Levels are up 78 percent from where they were a year earlier, Cox said, but still are down substantially compared with where they were at the same point in 2019 and 2020.

Cox noted that high-performance cars, compact cars and minivans were the segments with the tightest supplies, while full-size pickups, full-size cars and high-end luxury cars had the largest days' supply. Notably, electric vehicles had nearly a 50-day supply, Cox said, just under the national average for all segments.

All seven of the automakers that continue to …

A desire to attend his children's activities during the workday led Zeigler Auto Group CEO Aaron Zeigler to extend the same courtesy to his employees.

"I would kind of bounce out to [an event] and come back," Zeigler told Automotive News.

He concluded if he could do so and lead a company, the rest of the staff should be allowed to take such temporary absences as well.

This decision about 15 years ago, when his eldest son was about 5, was the start of Zeigler Auto's regard for work-life balance. It has helped foster both employee retention and customer satisfaction, according to Zeigler, who added that he thought it helped improve productivity as well.

Customer satisfaction improved once the company started to accommodate work-life balance, Zeigler said. Now, those consumer scores are so consistently good Zeigler Auto doesn't even watch that variable closely, he said.

"It became something we didn't have to focus on," he said. "It was just …

DETROIT — Even as Ford Motor Co. faces litigation over its electric-vehicle certification program for dealers, roughly two-thirds of its U.S. retail network has bought in to the plans, and some are finding that costs could be lower than advertised.

Ford CEO Jim Farley, speaking last week at the Automotive News Congress here, said 1,920 dealers had agreed to follow the rigorous new sales standards and invest heavily in EV chargers and training. He said 1,659 dealers chose the Certified Elite track, which requires investing as much as $1.2 million, while 261 chose the Certified status, which requires up to a $500,000 investment but caps their EV sales at 25 a year.

The automaker, which has about 3,000 dealers in the U.S., views the upgrades as critical to challenging Tesla's leadership in EV sales. Ford is the nation's second-largest EV brand this year, according to Experian registration data.

"The future of the franchise system hangs in the balance here…