Trade News

Gotion Inc. is gearing up to make its first hires around Big Rapids, Mich., for a $2.4 billion electric vehicle battery parts plant that executives hope will remain non-unionized.

The project is moving forward following the Chinese company's acquisition of 270 acres of land for the factory in Green Township and approval from company Chairman Li Zhen, who toured the site a few weeks ago with board members and expressed concerns over pushback to the plant.

"Certainly they had some questions," said Chuck Thelen, executive at Gotion tasked with moving the plant in Michigan forward. "When it gets to national news, it even makes its way back to Germany and China. So, they were a little concerned."

Gotion, whose largest shareholders are Volkswagen and Zhen, a Chinese national, has been at the center of controversy, from locals concerned over environmental pollution to politicians raising red flags over national security.

Thelen said he answered the ques…

Dave Boyle is the CEO of Traxtion, which provides service departments with tire and wheel alignment software and hardware.

First car: '69 Chevrolet Malibu (wish I had it today)

First concert you attended: The Cars

Name a pet peeve: People who are always late

Most thrilling/adventurous thing you've done: Raced cars professionally for 15 years

Your personal hero and why: My dad; isn't a father every son's hero?

First job: Professional race car driver

Something on your bucket list: Attend the Monaco Grand Prix

One thing you learned on the job you never forgot: As a manager, you need to explain something seven times before they will understand and internalize this.

If you could pick up a new skill, what would it be? Professional musician (I "try" to play the drums today)

3 people you'd invite to dinner, living or dead: My two grandfathers and father

CarGurus Inc.'s net income continued its double-digit percentage nose-dive in the second quarter, dropping 23 percent to $13.8 million, the company said Wednesday, nearly a week after it was initially slated to report quarterly results.

The vehicle listings company said overall revenue tumbled by 53 percent to $239.7 million and digital wholesale revenue plunged 80 percent year-over year to $68.8 million, though CEO Jason Trevisan said efforts to stabilize that segment have turned a corner.

CarOffer, CarGurus' wholesale digital trading platform, is a big part of its digital wholesale segment. The segment booked a $6.3 million second-quarter operating loss, more than double the loss from a year ago.

One bright spot: revenue from the company's U.S. marketplace business — its other reporting segment — grew 3.7 percent to $158.4 million from the same period last year. Trevisan attributed the gains to higher sales and price increases targeting both new and …

Vroom Inc. said Wednesday it recorded a narrower net loss in its second quarter but saw additional year-over-year declines in revenue and sales volume that have occurred since the company moved to scale back the business last year.

The online used-vehicle retailer reported a net loss of $66.3 million for the quarter ended June 30, slimmer than both the $115.1 million loss it reported for the same period in 2022 and the $75 million loss it reported for first-quarter 2023. Total revenue fell 53 percent to $225.2 million. Vroom sold 4,127 vehicles via e-commerce, down 55 percent from the year-ago period but up 5 percent quarter over quarter.

The company — which announced last year it would halt growth and restructure in light of a more volatile macroeconomic environment — continues to target improving gross profit per vehicle sold, Vroom CEO Tom Shortt said on a Wednesday earnings call with analysts and investors.

"We are at the turn where we are beginnin…

The UAW's list of contract demands — including more than 40 percent raises for members — would increase labor costs for the Detroit 3 by $45 billion to $80 billion a year and threaten their future viability, according to calculations by people familiar with the companies' costs.

The demands, which also include pensions for all workers, more retiree health benefits and fewer hours for the same pay, would nearly triple labor rates to more than $150 an hour per employee at all three companies, the sources said.

"Those costs would be unsustainable," Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who specializes in labor issues, told Automotive News. "They could not remain competitive at that level."

Today, Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Stellantis spend at least $64 per hour on each worker's wages and benefits. That's more than the roughly $55-per-hour cost at the transplant automakers that use nonunion labor.

Hourly l…

The UAW’s Shawn Fain tosses Stellantis’ contract proposal in the trash. Honda’s profits surge on booming U.S. sales. Plus, a look at how Volvo has found a way to side-step expensive U.S. tariffs on vehicles made in China.

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On Brazil’s east coast, the vast parking lot off Avenida Henry Ford sits empty. Shift workers once packed these spaces, next to a Ford Motor Co. plant that covers 1.8 square miles—an area larger than New York’s Central Park. On a recent weekday, a lone security car patrols its perimeter, the only sign of life.

Allison Barreto Sousa, a Ford maintenance technician for almost two decades, remembers when the company decided two years ago to shut down the plant, along with its entire operations in Brazil. Ford had a final ask: Could Sousa join a crew of 10 to perform the industrial equivalent of the last rites?

They’d dismantle, piece by piece, the same equipment they’d once installed and maintained, so it could be packed up and shipped away. Sousa started the work, but memories of colleagues flooded his mind.

He just couldn’t do it. “When I got married, I was at Ford. When my children were born, I was at Ford—all my good memories are somehow connected to Fo…

Two-thirds of automaker executives think a hybrid of automakers and dealers will "own the primary customer relationship and most customer data in five years," according to the inaugural 2023 Kerrigan OEM Survey.

The results show "that the industry is evolving," said Erin Kerrigan, managing director of Kerrigan Advisors, a dealership sell-side firm in Incline Village, Nev.

Kerrigan Advisors collected about 115 responses from automaker executives from December through May and plan to make the poll annual, Kerrigan said. "These are individuals that don't often get surveyed," she said. "We're getting a window into their views on what's going on."

A majority of automaker executives, 69 percent, expect dealership profits in the next 12 months will decline, while 24 percent expect profits to stay the same and 7 percent expect profits to increase. And almost three-quarters of the surveyed executives think new-car margins will settle somewhere between pre-COVID…

ChargePoint, one of the largest public electric vehicle charging networks in the U.S., has launched a four point plan to improve the reliability of its chargers.

Charger reliability has become a major sore point for EV drivers. They often pull up to a public charging station only to find it is out of order or won't sync with their vehicle. Auto industry research firm J.D. Power said one in five public charging attempts failed in the first quarter.

The ChargePoint initiatives include opening a network operations center for around-the-clock station monitoring, tracking social media posts that mention charging issues at one of ChargePoint's ports and developing a training and certification program for charger technicians.

The company also plans to incentivize site hosts—or the property owners who own and operate the chargers—to decommission chargers that are no longer functional. ChargePoint will remove and repurpose those chargers.

"Every month or…

TOKYO – Honda Motor Co.’s operating profit jumped 78 percent in the latest quarter as improved semiconductor supply fed North American production and boosted the Japanese automaker’s sales.

Operating profit climbed to 394.4 billion yen ($2.73 billion) in the company’s fiscal first quarter ended June 30, compared with 222.2 billion yen ($1.54 billion) a year earlier, Honda said in its financial results on Wednesday.

Net income more than doubled to 363.0 billion yen ($2.51 billion), from 149.2 billion yen ($1.03 billion) the year before.

Revenue climbed 21 percent to 4.62 trillion ($31.96 billion) in the three-month period, while global sales increased 11 percent to 901,000 vehicles in the quarter.

Deliveries in the U.S., Honda’s biggest market, soared 45 percent to 347,000 vehicles, helping power Honda through the quarter. Sales fell 5 percent in China to 309,000 units, and deliveries in Europe declined 13 percent to 20,000 vehicles.

Honda…

The Federal Communications Commission on Aug. 3 announced it had levied a record $300 million fine against vehicle service contract telemarketers running "the largest illegal robocall operation the agency has ever investigated."

The illegal service contract marketing scheme dated to at least 2018 and included more than 5 billion automated calls to more than 500 million phone numbers in just three months in 2021, the FCC said. The group's communications with customers included a prerecorded message beginning, "'We've been trying to reach you concerning your car's extended warranty,'" the FCC said.

The group's alleged violations included breaking federal "spoofing" laws by using more than 1 million caller ID numbers to fool consumers into answering their phones, calling Do Not Call numbers, making telemarketing calls without consumer consent and failing to offer an opt-out number.

The FCC last year directed and authorized phone servic…

Auto dealerships should train employees on compliance, governance and risk every month and have personnel sign documentation they will behave properly, says Tom Kline, founder of compliance company Better Vantage Point.

"Then, when challenged by a regulator or lawyer, the dealer can argue that any incident with an employee violation of these policies would be an anomaly," Kline writes. "It's not a pattern and the dealership can prove he educates his staff to ensure compliance with all laws and regulations."

One dealership compliance form provided by Kline describes a state regulator's allegations of deceptive finance-and-insurance practices at a different retailer and has employees commit to avoid that specific behavior. The employee must sign off on the language, "The Company expressly forbids any misrepresentations, inflation of customer income, or the changing or forging of any documents signed by the consumer. Misrepresentation, falsification and/or forgery…