Trade News

Stellantis may stop manufacturing cars in China as geopolitical tensions escalate and western manufacturers cede market share to domestic players.

The producer of Peugeot and Citroën cars may implement an “asset-light” strategy for those brands in the world’s largest auto market, CEO Carlos Tavares said Monday. Earlier this year, he used the same phrase to describe Stellantis’ decision to pull out from the company’s only Jeep plant in the country.

“If we push ahead with this strategy -- which is our strategy right now -- then we don’t need plants in China,” Tavares told reporters at the Paris auto show, adding that the company could instead import vehicles made in Europe or the US. “I am not sure they are indispensable.”

Stellantis is mulling the potential exit as more established foreign auto brands have struggled to maintain their position in China’s market, raising questions about their long-term future in the country.

Business for the likes of…

American Honda Motor Co. has tapped longtime associate Lance Woelfer to head up the Honda brand sales division amidst a robust product rollout and efforts to ready itself for electric vehicles.

Woelfer's promotion comes as Honda battles to build back lost momentum after suffering one of the industry's tightest inventory supplies. He fills the spot left by Mike Kistemaker following his departure to Ken Garff Automotive.

"Lance is essentially a pure Honda 'product,'" Mamadou Diallo, vice president of auto sales for American Honda Motor Co., told Automotive News. "He is 26 years in and everything he's done so far has prepared him for this moment.

"His entire career has been on the sales side, with a couple of stints in the back office, and we are super excited to have him on board," Diallo added.

After a more than 10-year run managing sales in Honda's mid-Atlantic region out of Maryland, Woelfer returned to California in 2020 to oversee the Honda and…

Lyft Inc. is increasing the service fee its U.S. riders pay directly to the company to cover higher insurance costs, the ride-hailing firm said.

The increase averages less than 50 cents per trip nationally, a Lyft spokesperson said. The company pays for drivers' insurance when they are working on its platform.

"Lyft is facing insurance inflation pressures and we've nominally increased service fees to help offset these costs," the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

New data from YipitData showed Lyft increased its published service fee for rides in virtually all U.S. markets in the first week of October, including around 150 markets expect for New York.

The service fee went up by an average of about 60 cents, implying a 3 percent increase in the cost of an average ride, and an 18 percent increase in the service fee, according to YipitData.

The service fee, which goes directly to Lyft, is an additional fee added on a per-ride basis th…

Telva McGruder says as General Motors’ first chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer, she is focused on people — part of CEO Mary Barra’s mission to make GM the most inclusive company in the world.  But for McGruder that’s really nothing new — it’s been her approach during her entire career. “A lot of my growth and my ultimate success has been based on my approach to people — my interest in listening and learning from them and helping them know they brought value to the company,” she says. And that, in turn, may stem from her dad. “My father worked in the auto industry, at a powertrain component factory in the Dayton area, where I grew up,” says McGruder. “He was a hard worker, and really focused on contributing to a quality product. I remember that he was consistently frustrated by people not listening to his ideas. ‘I run this machine, but they don’t ask my opinion,’ he’d say.” After McGruder earned electrical engineering bachelor’s and maste…

PARIS -- The Jeep Avenger 4x4 Concept previewed an all-wheel-drive version of the brand's new full-electric Avenger small crossover.

The concept points to how a future awd version will look, Jeep CEO Christian Meunier said at the unveiling of the car at the Paris auto show on Monday.

The Avenger 4x4 Concept differs from the standard Avenger by toughening up its appearance to indicate off-road capability.

Changes include a revised front bumper, a metallic surround to the lower grille, tow hooks, a wider track with beefier tires and thicker body cladding.

The car also features a light-weight rooftop luggage attachment system using straps rather than roofbars.

The production version of the Avenger 4x4 will mark the first time engineers have applied an electric motor to the rear axle as well the front to create all-wheel-drive capability. Jeep has not given an official launch date.

Jeep says the concept improves the Avenger's off-road a…

The current economic environment has made affordability one of the hottest topics in the automotive sector. Most headlines have focused on the pain felt by consumers, who between January 2021 and January 2022 saw new-vehicle prices increase 12.8% and used-vehicle prices jump 40.5%. Remarkably, manufacturers have borne an even greater burden. From March 2020 to May 2022, raw-material costs for ICE vehicles rose 106%, while EV costs skyrocketed 144% during the same period. While the supply chain issues are now slowly coming to an end and showrooms are filling with new models, interest rates have raced to more than 7 percent for new-car financing and more than 11 percent for used cars, bringing the average US car payment in Q3 to $700+, an unprecedented level.

Whether viewing this data through a consumer or manufacturer lens, these increases have far exceeded the pace of income growth. Creating vehicles in affordable segments has always been critical. Many global OEMs ha…

An expanding Swickard Auto Group entered Southern California via a majority stake purchase of John Elway's Crown Toyota in Ontario, one of the Japanese automaker's highest-volume U.S. dealerships.

And the dealership's price tag also fetched near-record blue sky value, according to the broker who facilitated the sale. Blue sky is the intangible value of a dealership, including goodwill.

Swickard Auto on Aug. 22 bought a 90 percent stake in the dealership just east of Los Angeles from Elway, Mitch Pierce, Dan Grubb and Paxton Gagnet, said Swickard's Greg Gates, vice president of business transformation. The four Elway partners collectively kept a 10 percent stake in the dealership, Gates said.

Gagnet will stay on as the store's general manager and the dealership's name will not change, Gates said.

"Crown Toyota was an opportunity to really get a foothold in Southern California," Gates told Automotive News. "What we've learned over time is it makes…

Swickard Auto Group's first 2022 acquisition was in a familiar, yet far-flung market: Alaska.

Swickard Auto of Las Vegas bought Porsche Anchorage-Audi Anchorage-Kendall Volkswagen of Anchorage from Kendall Automotive Group on July 11, according to Greg Gates, Swickard Auto's vice president of business transformation.

The dealership was renamed Porsche Anchorage-Audi Anchorage-Swickard Volkswagen of Anchorage. Anchorage is the state's most populous city.

The dealership was Swickard Auto's first acquisition since it bought two General Motors dealerships, in Anchorage and Palmer, Alaska, in December 2021, Gates confirmed.

"It was an opportunity to expand the footprint in Alaska, which we liked," Gates told Automotive News.

It marks the second Porsche and Volkswagen locations for Swickard Auto and the fourth for Audi, Gates noted.

"We obviously like all those brands and think that they've all got bright futures and it made sense geogra…

EV battery boom: Is Congress' gambit working?

Causality can be a very difficult concept to prove: We see a thing happen, and then we witness another action later that looks to be a direct result of the first thing. Yet we can never really be sure that there were no other outside forces that acted independently of the first action to influence what happened later.

Fans of "The West Wing" know that in legal terms this is known as the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy — Latin for "after this, therefore because of this."

So what, then, to make of the panoply of recent automaker announcements involving new battery and EV manufacturing plants across much of the United States and North American partners Canada and Mexico? Is this flurry the direct result of Congress — driven in no small part by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. — passing the Inflation Reduction Act in August? Have automakers so quickly committed tens of billions of dollars to build new battery plants…

Mercedes-Benz is gunning for the heart of the U.S. auto market with a battery-powered version of its workhorse GLE crossover.

The midsize EQE goes on sale early next year and fleshes out Mercedes' electric crossover lineup that is now bookended by the compact EQB and full-size EQS.

The EQE crossover "for us, is yet another puzzle piece to transform into an electric car company in this market," Mercedes-Benz USA sales chief Senol Bayrak told Automotive News. "It will open even more opportunities to amp up our EQ game and to grow our EQ volume here in the U.S."

Last year, the GLE was Mercedes' bestseller in the truck-obsessed U.S. — sales hit 65,074. Halfway into 2022, the GLE ranked third in the midsize premium crossover segment, behind the Lexus RX and BMW X5.

Dealership executive Marty Focht described the high-volume EQE crossover as a "pillar" of the Mercedes EQ subbrand.

"It'll be a good conquest vehicl…