Trade News

DETROIT — The Ford Bronco was billed as a thorn in the side of the Jeep Wrangler that would challenge the venerable model for off-road bragging rights ahead of its release a year ago.

It's still early, but the Bronco's long- awaited return appears to have expanded the segment instead of just eating into the Wrangler's base. There looks to be room for more than one trail cruiser in the SUV market.

Even as the Bronco steadily carves out its own space, the Wrangler has been able to maintain its market share in the face of its first direct competition in years, according to an S&P Global Mobility report. The Bronco's share has climbed to as high as 6 percent at times, S&P said, while the Wrangler continues to account for 7 to 9 percent of the compact SUV segment as defined by S&P.

The Wrangler was the Bronco's most conquested vehicle during the nine-month period the study examined, from July 2021 through March 2022. In February, the Wrangler ma…

"Someday" has a funny way of becoming "now" a lot faster than you expect.

Like a number of car shoppers who are on the fence about electric vehicles, I've been thinking: "Someday, I'll take the EV plunge."

I figured I would get one more traditional ICE car — maybe something as silly and/or fun as my current BMW 230i convertible — after the lease runs out next month. That would give me some time to pick and choose from the flood of EVs coming in the future product pipeline over the next few years. Surely EV prices will come down, ranges will go up, Washington will finally get its act together on longer-term federal EV subsidies and the charging network will be more robust.

Someday.

The last three weeks have changed my mind. I'm in the market for an EV. Now.

As evidenced by the ongoing rise in EV registrations, I bet there are a lot of consumers like me.

The week of Memorial Day, I and dozens of o…

TrueCar CEO Mike Darrow said the company hopes to expand its TrueCar+ digital sales tool into additional markets by the third quarter, with used vehicles likely expanding faster than new vehicles.

Darrow told Automotive News on Friday that the goal is to have used vehicles available nationwide through TrueCar+ early in 2023 and new vehicles available in three to four more markets outside of Florida along the East Coast by the end of this year.

And TrueCar's acquisition this month of digital retailing provider Digital Motors already has produced new features for TrueCar's own online sales platform.

The integration of Digital Motors' technology comes as TrueCar, of Santa Monica, Calif., aims to expand the reach of its TrueCar+ tool, which allows consumers to choose a vehicle, set up financing, add protection products, arrange delivery and complete a transaction all primarily within TrueCar's platform. It started as a pilot in Tampa, Fl…

VW's Scott Keogh says automakers and dealers are ready for bumps in the economy. Kia hopes to stir up more buyers with new EV models. Volvo shuffles its executive ranks. Tesla's Elon Musk is hit with a lawsuit. Plus, a conversation with Shawn Butler of Bristol Honda in Tennessee.

How do I subscribe?

Can't wait to hear the next episode of "Daily Drive"? Subscribe through a podcast app to receive episodes days in advance. If you don't have a podcast app already, here are some options. 

iPhone / iPad

“Daily Drive” is available on the iTunes Store and through the ‘Podcast’ app pre-installed on all iOS devices. Click here to subscribe to "Daily Drive"

Android

“Daily Drive” is available on the Google Play store. Click here to subscribe to "Daily Drive"

Spotify

"Daily Drive" is available on Spotify. Click here to subscribe to "Daily Drive"

Indexes from J.D. Power and Black Book both show that wholesale used-vehicle prices grew in May, as is typical in the spring selling season. But the growth was muted, another indication that prices are not surging on the scale they did in 2021.

J.D. Power's Used Vehicle Price Index stood at 218.2 in May, up nearly 2.1 percent from April.

Last year was a different story: The index showed wholesale prices rose 6.9 percent in May 2021 from April 2021.

Prices remain up 20.4 percent year over year, according to J.D. Power's index.

Black Book index

Black Book's Used Vehicle Retention Index rose 1.8 percent from April to May, its first tick up since January.

The index reached 188.8 points in May, 3.4 points higher than its April level, Black Book said June 9. The May index number is up 18.3 percent from May 2021 and up a whopping 78.1 percent from May 2020.

Wholesale prices were in a bit of a cooldown in February, March and April, ac…

Volvo Cars broke ground Friday on a new technical center specifically for electric vehicles at its headquarters in Mahwah, N.J.

The 12,800-square-foot facility is expected to open next March and will be used to train dealership technicians from the U.S., Canada and South America.

Anders Gustafsson, Volvo's senior vice president of the Americas and president of Volvo Car USA, declined to say how much the automaker is investing in the new training center, but indicated it is a major project. The center will be located on a 20-acre parcel of land and have 50 charging stations. Some of those charging stations could eventually be made available to the public.

Gustafsson, speaking via video with Automotive News, said the training center is vital to Volvo's plans to transition to an all-EV future.

The company's 280 U.S. dealerships, he said, are short roughly 200 technicians.

"We need to attract new technicians. Th…

Artificial intelligence company CarBeast launched a new app on Thursday that diagnoses automobile problems and warns users of future repair and maintenance costs for $.99 per vehicle per year.

CarBeast data scientist Kunal Joshi told Automotive News that the app uses hundreds of millions of vehicle service records and technology from Ubiquiti Inc. to analyze current needs and forecast future repair and maintenance issues. In a statement, CarBeast, of Ann Arbor, Mich., said the app is constantly being updated with new data to help predict defects.

The app includes two features according to the statement: CarBeast Insight and CarBeast Foresight. CarBeast Insight allows users to enter in the problem their vehicle is experiencing and the app will search for records of similar cases and recommend potential repairs. CarBeast Foresight uses records of vehicles of similar year, make and model to provide users with potential future costs and repairs that may need to be …

DETROIT -- GMC is hiking the price of the Hummer EV pickup and SUV by $6,250 for customers who place reservations after Friday.

The boost to the base sticker price is being driven by rising costs for commodities, parts, technology and logistics, GMC said Friday. Final pricing will be determined by options and packages a customer selects, along with the price customers and dealers agree to at the time of ordering.

The more than 77,500 reservations placed before June 18 will be unaffected by the change in base prices, GMC said.

New-vehicle transaction prices continue to rise industrywide as production bottlenecks severely undermine supply and consumer demand remains strong, allowing automakers and dealers to dial way back on incentives and raise sticker prices.

TrueCar estimates that the average transaction price rose 14 percent in May to more than $44,000 industrywide. At GM, the average transaction price for a new car or light truck last month w…

Toyota Motor Corp. is once again hinting that its major push into electric vehicles will include a new utility inspired by the Compact Cruiser EV concept shown in December. The company released a slew of new details and images of the latest iteration last week.

Toyota, a relative latecomer to the EV market, is committing $70 billion to electrify its lineup. The Compact Cruiser EV could be a potential successor to the much-loved FJ Cruiser that was discontinued in 2014.

The Compact Cruiser was designed by a team at Toyota's European design center near Nice, France. It features a ladder, LED lighting elements, flared wheels, beefy roof rack and two-tone paint. It won the 2022 Car Design Awards' Concept Cars section last week.

In addition to the blue shown in December, Toyota has added dark green, yellow and silver models, each with two-tone paint. Other new design elements include retro-style white five-spoke wheels, rally lights and…

Volvo CEO Jim Rowan has made sweeping changes to his leadership team, naming two deputy CEOs and moving four of the 11 executives off the automaker's highest management tier, as Volvo gears up to become an electric-only brand by 2030.

It is Rowan's biggest personnel move made thus far. The former Dyson Group executive succeeded longtime CEO Hakan Samuelsson in March.

The executives gaining promotions are Bjorn Annwall and Javier Varela.

Annwall, who is Volvo's chief financial officer, will become deputy CEO and chief commercial officer. In his second role Annwall succeeds Lex Kerssemakers, who will retire this year and move into an advisory role, joining a newly formed board below Volvo's top-level executive management team.

Annwall was named Volvo's chief financial officer last April and played a key role in the automaker's stock exchange listing last October.

Prior to serving as CFO Annwall was Volvo's head of the Europe, Middle East…

A Tesla Inc. investor accused the electric-vehicle maker's officers and directors in a lawsuit of allowing a "toxic workplace culture" to fester at the company.

According to the complaint filed Thursday by stockholder Solomon Chau in federal court in Austin, Texas, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk and others who run the EV maker breached their fiduciary duty by fostering an environment of discrimination and harassment, exposing Tesla to millions of dollars in potential liability.

"This toxic work environment has gestated internally for years, and only recently has the truth about Tesla's culture emerged, leading to legal action from government regulators and private parties alike," Chau said in the complaint. "Tesla's toxic workplace culture has caused financial harm and irreparable damage to the company's reputation."

Tesla is fighting a suit by California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing over racial discrimination and h…

Two sizable dealership groups, along with two smaller auto retailers, expanded their holdings with first- and second-quarter transactions.

Here's a look at the deals involving import and domestic dealerships and stores in New Jersey, California, Washington and Idaho. One of the transactions involved an auto retailer ranked on Automotive News' list of the top 150 dealership groups.

Ciocca Dealerships of Quakertown, Pa., has purchased a Subaru-Kia dealership in Ewing Township, N.J.

Ciocca on June 7 bought Scott Harvey Subaru-Kia from dealer Scott Harvey of the Scott Harvey Auto Group. The dealership, which features separate showrooms and a combined service department, was renamed Ciocca Subaru-Kia.

Ewing Township is just across the Pennsylvania state line, near Trenton.

These were Harvey's only dealerships, according to the Ciocca group.

With the acquisition, the Ciocca group said it now has 27…