DETROIT — Longtime auto dealer Lou LaRiche died June 9 at age 90 in Northville, Mich. After working with his father and brothers at the family dealerships in Cleveland, LaRiche opened his first dealership in 1964, a Volkswagen franchise in Findlay, Ohio. In 1971, he opened Lou LaRiche Chevrolet in Plymouth, Mich. Over the years he acquired a Toyota-Subaru dealership, which was sold in 2021, and a Chevrolet-Cadillac dealership, both in Findlay.
BrightDrop’s Rachad Youssef: Why GM and BrightDrop are poised to succeed (Episode 153)
GM is trying to capture a sizable slice of the delivery market with BrightDrop electric vans. BrightDrop Chief Product Officer Rachad Youssef hints at BrightDrop's plans for the future and the opportunity within the delivery and logistics market.
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A digital window on Ford’s past
Ford Motor Co. celebrated its 119th anniversary last week by launching an online database that lets the public sift through the venerable archives documenting its first century.
The Ford Heritage Vault lets anyone view and download artifacts for their personal use, at no charge. The company described it as the U.S. auto industry's most comprehensive online database.
The collection features more than 5,000 photographs and product brochures from Ford and Lincoln vehicles, spanning from the automaker's founding in 1903 to its 2003 centennial.
"We're opening up in a way we've never done before," Ted Ryan, Ford archive and heritage brand manager, said in a statement. "Our archives were established 70 years ago, and for the first time, we're opening the vault for the public to see. This is just a first step for all that will come in the future."
Ford's archives team curated the material over the past two years, and it piloted the collection with the h…
SpaceX staffers allegedly fired for calling out Musk
A group of SpaceX employees was reportedly fired last week after writing an open letter decrying CEO Elon Musk as a frequent "embarrassment" to the company.
The letter to SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell says recent actions by Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla Inc., and allegations of sexual harassment against him are harming the rocketry company's reputation.
"Elon's behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks," the letter says, according to The Verge.
"As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX — every tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company. It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission or our values."
SpaceX fired "a number of employees involved" in writing the letter, according to an internal em…
Cybertruck, Lightning or first available?
Tesla, General Motors and Ford Motor Co. say they have enormous waiting lists for their electric pickups. But each list likely contains many of the same names, as consumers place multiple refundable reservations to keep their options open, according to a survey conducted by battery health analysis firm Recurrent.
The study, released last week, surveyed more than 200 consumers who had at least one pending EV reservation between April and May and found purchasers tended to over-order electric trucks because of concerns over whether the manufacturer would actually fulfill the purchase. Eighty-nine percent of Tesla Cybertruck reservations overlapped with another truck preorder, and all Ford F-150 Lightning and Chevrolet Silverado EV preorder customers also had reserved another vehicle, according to the results.
"There's just a ton of pent-up demand for an electric pickup truck," Recurrent CEO Scott Case told Automotive News. "The pickup is this ico…
Corvette art comes with a matching car
Chevrolet is auctioning off a unique piece of Corvette artwork that comes with a rather valuable bonus: an actual car painted to look like the image.
The "Own the Color" auction, which runs June 20-24, is for a non-fungible token of the upcoming 2023 Corvette Z06 created by the artist Xsullo. An NFT is a digital asset with a unique identifier so it cannot be copied.
The winning bidder will also get a Corvette Z06 custom-painted in the "Minted Green" color from the artwork. Chevy said it will be the only production 2023 Z06 offered in that color. The car will be equipped with the Z07 performance package, carbon-fiber wheels, a commemorative plaque and a VIN inspired by binary code.
Proceeds will go to DonorsChoose, which helps teachers collect donations toward public school classroom projects.
"Corvette is a halo at Chevrolet. It's the pinnacle of performance and staying cutting-edge means getting into new territories as a bit of a pioneer," Stev…
Congress: Don’t blindly reopen EV credit spigot
In a mildly rare show of automaker unity, the CEOs of General Motors, Toyota Motor North America, Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis jointly petitioned congressional leaders last week, asking that Congress effectively take the lid off the $7,500 tax credits automakers have used for more than a decade to lure consumers into electric vehicles.
The CEOs specifically asked that Congress do away with the 200,000-vehicle-per-automaker cap on the existing tax credits until "the EV market is more mature" and could conceivably stand on its own.
We believe strongly that Congress should reject this request as written. The choice for lawmakers is either to do nothing and let existing tax credits expire or, as we argued just last month, reconfigure any subsequent taxpayer EV subsidies to assist consumers of lesser means to make the leap to EVs, instead of underwriting the second or third vehicles of the wealthy.
We proposed some "standard equipment" on any expansion: A t…
Clarios shows 12-volt batteries have a big role to play in EV era
HOLLAND, Mich. — For good reason, much has been made of the new high-voltage battery systems automakers and suppliers have designed to power the next generation of electric vehicles.
But don't forget about the humble 12-volt battery.
Low-voltage batteries remain a fixture in battery-electric vehicles, helping to power everything from locks and lights to engine control units. As the name would suggest, the batteries make the vehicle's low-voltage systems run even as high-voltage battery packs propel the vehicle.
But like the rest of the industry, suppliers of low-voltage batteries have been innovating to keep up with the changing needs of their automaker customers. Look no further than Clarios, the world's largest supplier of low-voltage batteries and whose batteries are in about 1 in every 3 vehicles on global roadways today.
The company's factory in Holland, Mich., on the west side of the state, has become a hub of sorts for Clarios' emerging l…
The latest numbers on the microchip shortage: Cuts in Asia drive weekly chip losses
Automakers removed 27,700 more vehicles from their production plans worldwide because of the microchip shortage last week, largely driven by cuts in Asia, according to the latest estimate by AutoForecast Solutions.
That figure represents a sharp reduction from last week, when AFS added more than 200,000 vehicles to its running tally of the number of vehicles lost because of the semiconductor shortage. About 2.26 million vehicles have been eliminated so far this year.
About 25,500 vehicles at plants in Asia outside of China were added to the year-to-date total over the last week, with about 2,200 lost in North America.
No further microchip-related cuts were reported in Europe, China, South America, the Middle East or Africa during the last week. Still, vehicles continue to be axed for other reasons, particularly in China, where COVID-19 restrictions have hampered the industry in recent weeks and months.
“Lowered output in China has been larg…
BrightDrop out to show what EVs can do, and make money, too
A year and a half in, General Motors' new delivery and logistics entity, BrightDrop, has outlined plans for at least two electric delivery vans, logged more than 25,000 orders from e-commerce heavyweights including FedEx Express and Walmart, and recruited several executives from the advanced autonomous technology, software and robotics sectors.
"The demand for electric vehicles [is] only growing to replace and supplement the existing fleet that's out there," Rachad Youssef, BrightDrop's chief product officer, told Automotive News. "The key to our success is to not solve the problem by simply putting more vehicles on the road, but to really come up with more efficient systems. How would you redesign delivery if you were to dream it up today, knowing the impact and knowing the consumer demand that exists?"
BrightDrop is a key piece of GM's electrification strategy and of the automaker's goal to double its annual revenue to about $280 billion by …
Connected vehicles are a smart opportunity for mobility data
The Internet of Things revolution is powered by a combination of connectivity, sensing and intelligence, enabling formerly dumb "things" such as vehicles to understand and respond to their environment, driving improvements in efficiency and safety.
The widespread adoption of connectivity, sensing and intelligence in millions of vehicles not only helps to make them individually safer and more efficient, but it also has the secondary effect of generating huge volumes of connected-car datasets, providing insight on road and road-adjacent situations wherever connected cars are driven.
In the last few years, automakers have become wise to this largely untapped opportunity, and a range of companies that offer data ingestion platforms and marketplaces have emerged, including Otonomo, Here and Wejo. These platforms support automakers by normalizing datasets among brands, enriching them with location context and facilitating access to a wide range of c…
Kia partners with Affinitiv for digital service lane platform
Kia's dealership network will now have access to a more modern, tech-based service lane platform via a partnership with Affinitiv, a software firm specializing in automotive solutions.
The new digital platform, called Ultimate Service Lane, will help Kia dealers simplify the service lane process, prioritize efficiency and profitability as well as keep the customer connected throughout the service experience.
Service managers will be able to leverage the tool to assign the right technician to each job and keep tighter control over the time spent on individual appointments. It will also assist in standardizing the vehicle inspection process and allocating the proper billable hours to each repair order.
The digital solution also aligns the service side of the dealership with consumers' demand for more transparency during vehicle inspections and services as well as the desire to interact more in a digital environment.
Custo…