Trade News

Dealership inventory levels will remain at or near record lows for at least another year before they begin to make any recovery of their unsold vehicles on hand, and may never return to previous levels that required sales incentives, said Jack Hollis, Toyota Motor North America's newly minted head of sales.

Speaking Thursday during an Automotive Press Association event, Hollis — who succeeded Bob Carter in the top sales role in June — said demand is continuing to outstrip automakers' abilities to produce enough vehicles to fill dealership lots.

"We're going to be dealing with this for one more year," said Hollis. "I do not believe we're going to see growing dealer stock for one more year. I think we're going to be in a situation, speaking for Toyota and Lexus, where whatever we wholesaled is what we'll retail."

Hollis said dealer inventories are likely to remain tight — he noted that Toyota dealerships have been down to a 36-hour supply at certain points…

WASHINGTON -- U.S. auto safety regulators on Thursday asked Tesla Inc. to answer questions about its cabin camera as part of a probe into 830,000 Tesla vehicles that employ the carmaker's advanced driver assistance system called Autopilot.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in June upgraded its probe opened in 2021 to assess the performance of Autopilot after earlier identifying a dozen crashes in which Tesla vehicles struck stopped emergency vehicles.

NHTSA's nine-page letter demands Tesla answer questions by Oct. 12 about "the role that the Cabin Camera plays in the enforcement of driver engagement/attentiveness."

According to Tesla, the cabin camera can determine driver inattentiveness and provide audible alerts to remind the driver to keep their eyes on the road when Autopilot is engaged.

Tesla will once again get tax credits next year, but does it need them? A new study shows broken EV chargers are hampering adoption. Meanwhile, Volvo looks to lower costs with its Starbucks charging stations. Plus, a deeper look into the Inflation Reduction Act’s impact on the industry with Automotive News Washington D.C. reporter Audrey LaForest.

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WASHINGTON -- U.S. auto safety regulators will extend a deadline for public input on General Motors and Ford Motor Co. petitions seeking to deploy a limited number of self-driving vehicles without human controls like steering wheels and brake pedals.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday made the 30-day extension of the public comment on the automaker requests after cities like San Francisco and Oakland, California, state transportation agencies, the National Association of City Transportation Officials and others sought further time to analyze the exemption requests.

San Francisco said petitions raise "numerous complex technical and policy issues involving vehicle safety that necessitate significant analysis."

San Francisco noted it "is the location with the most intensive testing of automated vehicles to date... As such, we have valuable insights to offer and stand to be significantly affected by the outcome of the petition." Read more

With the right online tools, your dealership can get customers to the two-yard line. And your salespeople can get them into the end zone to finalize the deal.

At Temecula Valley Buick GMC, they have perfected this seamless online to in-store handoff. How exactly?

Providing customers with a detailed, human to human chat interaction. Expanding their full retail experience beyond the four walls. Using a single process, wherever the customer starts their journey. They’re competing against the Carvana’s of the world with an experience that allows them to turn chats into signatures; an approach that allows them to retail anywhere.

5 things to look for in an inverter for EV battery and e-axle testing Flexibility: supports a broad range of DC output voltages and currents Power: it can deliver on ever-increasing DC output current demands Precision: accurate control with less than 0.1 percent ripple Efficient cooling: liquid coolant for more effective, energy-efficient testing Safety: well-designed safety disconnects to protect workers and testing equipment

Accurately testing complex systems like electric vehicle (EV) batteries and e-axles in a high-output, mass-production environment takes a new level of speed, flexibility and precision. But high-performance industrial inverter drives are powering a new generation of end-of-line EV battery and e-axle testing systems to meet the challenge. Advanced inverters like IndraDrive ML from Bosch Rexroth offer more power and more options in a scalable, space-saving design to handle high-volume testing more efficiently. Learn how to start increasing your productivity in EV battery and e-axle testing.

Steve Pitt, the longtime organizer of the convention held annually by the National Automobile Dealers Association, died Saturday of a brain hemorrhage just days before his 76th birthday, an NADA spokeswoman confirmed to Automotive News.

Pitt joined NADA in 1974 and planned 48 conventions for the dealer association before retiring this year. As senior vice president of NADA's conventions and expositions group, he directed the annual NADA Show, where he booked and stage-managed speakers such as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former U.S. presidents including George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, among other famous celebrities, politicians and business executives.

Pitt was an Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam and then worked in the hotel industry. In 1974, while working at ITT Sheraton's national sales office in Washington, D.C., he received a job pitch from NADA. Pitt rejected the offer twice before ultimately deciding to go for it.

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General Motors is recalling 484,155 SUVs in the U.S. after the discovery of an improperly riveted seat belt assembly in the third row.

NHTSA said the recalls affect the following 2021-22 models:

Only vehicles with third-row seating are subject to the recall.

Improper forming in the third-row seat belt assembly could lead to the belt not properly restraining occupants and increasing the risk of injury, according to the NHTSA report.

The company was alerted to the defect after a customer report of a separated seat belt buckle assembly in May.

"Operators at the supplier's manufacturing plant may have not properly followed manufacturing processes and inadvertently missed the rivet forming operation," the report said.

GM's supplier added an optical scan of the rivet head formation to its manufacturing process in July to prevent further defects.

The defect has not resulted in any reported injuries or fatalities, a GM spokesman told …

Fast-growing Morgan Automotive Group further bolstered its Florida presence this week with the acquisition of three stores, including its first Lexus dealership.

The group on Tuesday bought Wilde Honda Sarasota, Wilde Lexus Sarasota and Wilde Jaguar-Land Rover Sarasota from Wilde Automotive Family, Morgan Automotive CEO Brett Morgan confirmed in an email to Automotive News.

The affiliated Wilde Automotive Group also has dealerships in Wisconsin, but those were not part of the sale, Morgan said.

The three dealerships will be renamed Honda of Sarasota, Lexus of Sarasota and Jaguar-Land Rover Sarasota. Sarasota is south of Tampa.

"We have been doing business in the Sarasota market now for over a decade with our BMW and Lamborghini stores," Brett Morgan said in a statement. "We are thrilled to add Lexus, Jaguar, Land Rover and Honda to that market offering. The Wilde family has a great reputation and we look forward to carrying their legacy forward."…

Annual vehicle exports by automakers producing in China are on track to jump 19 percent year on year to a record high of more than 2.4 million this year, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers predicted this week. 

The trade group made the forecast after data show China’s vehicle exports kept picking up in the first seven months. 

In July, vehicle shipments from China to other markets rallied 67 percent to top 290,000 vehicles, with year-to-date volume rising 51 percent to exceed 1.5 million, according to the trade group’s tally.

Last month, exports of light vehicles ranging from sedans, crossovers, SUVs, multi-purpose vehicles and minibuses spiked 73 percent to some 242,000.

In the same month, exports of commercial vehicles such as buses and trucks also advanced 42 percent to about 49,000.

For the first seven months, automakers shipped some 1.18 million light vehicles and 322,000 commercial vehicles overseas, surging 5…

Amy Sudik, senior director of marketing for Ally discuss methods of encouraging repeat business for sales and service offers, including ways dealers might employ targeted digital ads as part of their communications with customers.

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Jackie Charniga: Hi, everyone. This is Jackie Charniga with Automotive News and welcome to the All Ears podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Ally Financial and is produced by the Automotive News Content Studio. In each episode, we delve into topics important to executives in automotive retailing. We tap Ally's leaders to offer actionable solutions for dealers and others to successfully navigate transformational changes in the industry. Today, we catch up with Am…