Trade News

When Rivian launched its much-delayed R1T electric pickup last fall, the reviews were breathless.

"The coolest pickup ever made," said auto enthusiast and popular YouTube presenter Doug DeMuro. "The most remarkable pickup truck we've ever driven," declared MotorTrend before naming it Truck of the Year.

More recently, the Amazon-backed startup has been on something of a roller-coaster ride, with last year's euphoria fading into fresh concerns over production targets and the departure of a top executive.

The company saw its market value soar after its November initial public offering, besting General Motors and Ford Motor Co., a key Rivian investor. In mid-December, Rivian announced a second factory, near Atlanta, that will increase the company's production capacity by 400,000 vehicles per year.

"The plant, which will eventually employ more than 7,500 workers, represents a key next step as Rivian scales aggressively toward higher-capacity producti…

Car sales reps and finance managers often operate in silos, with little motivation to work together to sell finance and insurance products.

But at the nine Sacramento, Calif., area dealerships owned by Niello Co., a compensation plan rewards salespeople for products sold by finance managers and also motivates those managers to sell more products, said Dennis Gingrich, the company's director of sales and finance.

"In most dealerships, salespeople are strictly concerned with selling cars, not about what's happening in finance because there's no money in it for them," said Gingrich, who has extensive F&I experience. "Plus they're a little envious of finance managers because they make more money."

With its pay plan, Niello is aiming to break down the "siloing and infighting" that often occurs between finance managers and salespeople in the industry, Gingrich said. He noted that the tension often is a direct result of the "terrible c…

BMW racked up China sales of 815,691 in 2021 to become the top-selling luxury brand in the world’s biggest car market.

Combined deliveries of the BMW and Mini brands also set a record high in China in 2021 while Mercedes-Benz, the 2020 winner, and Audi each reported a slight decline in annual sales.

BMW Group sold 846,237 vehicles under the BMW and Mini marques last year, an increase of 8.9 percent from a year earlier, the German automaker said this week. The tally is made up of 815,691 BMW vehicles and 30,546 Mini sales, according to figures disclosed by BMW Group’s China office.

Annual deliveries at Mercedes-Benz slid 2 percent to 758,863 while Audi volume dropped 3.6 percent to 701,289.

At Hongqi, a local luxury brand, volume surged 50 percent to some 300,600, according to parent China FAW Group Corp., a state-owned Chinese automaker.

Among other global luxury marques, Lexus sales edged up less than 1 percent to some 244,000 while Cadill…

A coronavirus outbreak at an Ohio plastics and metal auto supplier, including what authorities said was a work-related COVID-19 death, is prompting fines and citations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

OSHA announced Jan. 14 that it was proposing fines of $26,527 against Sanoh America Inc., saying the company did not follow proper health guidelines at a plant in Mount Vernon, Ohio, and that it suffered a coronavirus outbreak in August that hospitalized several employees, with two workers dying.

"OSHA investigators determined that at least one of the deaths was work related," the agency said in a statement. "[The] company did not enforce its own policy or federal guidelines on social distancing and mask wearing."

Officials with Sanoh America, however, said OSHA has not explained why they consider the cases work-related and said the surrounding community was having an outbreak at the same time.

The company, based in Findlay, Oh…

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's government said on Friday that a trade union vote at the General Motors plant in the central city of Silao will be held on Feb. 1-2 after workers voted last year to scrap their collective contract.

GM workers will be asked to choose from four unions aiming to win the contract, according to the document.

One, SINTTIA, is an independent group that grew out of the efforts last year among workers to scrap their collective contract.

The union that previously held the Silao plant's collective contract will not attempt to win back its representation.

Empire Toyota of Huntington in New York fired two employees Thursday after they were recorded harassing a family on the Long Island Rail Road in a video posted on social media sites.

The two employees were recorded Monday night on the way back to Long Island after a New York Knicks basketball game yelling xenophobic slurs at what the posts described as an immigrant family.

The video was posted on Facebook and tweeted out by Osman Canales, president of Long Island Immigrant Student Advocates, identifying the two and calling for Empire Toyota to fire them.

In the video, one of the employees can be heard saying, "These f---ing foreigners ain't taking over my f---ing country." The post also said that the employees threw beer at the family.

There was an "outcry on social media," Joseph Gentile, general counsel for Empire Automotive Group, told Automotive News. Empire Toyota of Huntington also received multiple phone calls from individuals asking for …

A year ago, Jannell Ford in Hanover, Mass., promised to charge no more than sticker price for the highly anticipated Bronco SUV. But that was before the industry's microchip shortage caused new-vehicle inventory to dry up.

For Ford's next hot product, the F-150 Lightning electric pickup due out this spring, the dealership is charging a $5,000 premium. General Manager Bill Roderick said he's upfront with customers about the markup and believes it's justified because his store's allocation is expected to be small, given the truck's nationwide appeal and Ford's early production constraints. Jannell Ford last year received just 20 Broncos, which generated low margins after a challenging and time-consuming ordering process.

"It's supply and demand, and for the amount of work that goes into it, it needs to yield a little bit more," Roderick said. "I don't like overpricing anything. I don't want to. But at the same time we have to keep the doors open and feed mouths …

Four dealerships changed hands in single-store transactions in the fourth quarter, two in New York and one each in Alabama and North Carolina.

Here's a look at the deals involving domestic, import and luxury brands.

New York growth for Bill Rapp

Bill Rapp Inc. expanded its presence in upstate New York last month with the purchase of a General Motors dealership.

Bill Rapp, owned by father-son duo Bruce Rapp and Brian Rapp, bought Mort Backus & Sons, a Buick-Chevrolet dealership, in Ogdensburg, N.Y., on Dec. 6, according to Nancy Phillips Associates. The dealership advisory firm in Exeter, N.H., handled the transaction.

The group bought the dealership from brothers Paul, Michael, John and Patrick Backus. It was the Backus family's only dealership, the advisory firm said.

The store was renamed Bill Rapp Chevrolet-Buick of Ogdensburg.

It marks the fourth franchised dealership for Bill Rapp, of Syracuse, N.Y., joining two Suba…

U.S. truck fleet operator J.B. Hunt Transport Services and Alphabet Inc's self-driving unit Waymo are expanding their alliance to deploy fully autonomous trucking operations in Texas in the next few years, the companies said on Friday.

In June last year, the companies began testing self-driving trucks, with a driver and a technician supervising, to deliver cargo between Houston and Fort Worth in Texas.

The companies said their extended collaboration includes analyzing the operational capacity of Waymo Via, which covers trucking to last-mile deliveries, to address customer needs.

J.B. Hunt also said it would explore a technological integration with Waymo, in which Waymo Via would be made accessible on its digital marketplace J.B. Hunt 360.

Although Waymo and other companies have been developing autonomous driver technology for more than a decade, large-scale commercial operations of such services for moving freight or everyday commuting have not co…

For the first time, Ford Motor Co.'s Lincoln luxury brand sold more vehicles in China than in the U.S., a milestone for a latecomer to the world's largest vehicle market who has made the country a key pillar of growth.

The automaker late Thursday said Lincoln sold more than 91,000 vehicles in China in 2021, a 48 percent increase over 2020. Lincoln's U.S. sales fell 18 percent last year to 86,929, its lowest annual mark since 2013.

Lincoln opened its first China dealerships in 2014, well behind much of its luxury competition. But the brand made a point to study Chinese customers and offer them a unique car-buying experience, called the Lincoln Way.

Lincoln hired Eight Inc., the firm that designed the original Apple stores, to craft warm, welcoming dealerships including tea rooms, waterfall displays and a heritage wall that showcased the brand's history. Designers insisted on a small number of vehicles in the showroom, and placed t…

DETROIT — Robert Bollinger's dream of producing his rugged, boxy off-road electric pickup and SUV will have to wait.

The CEO of startup Bollinger Motors said the B1 and B2 electric vehicles are being indefinitely postponed, and the suburban Detroit company is shifting its focus from consumer vehicles to the commercial EV fleet business.

"When we revealed the B1 and B2 in 2019, we showed the chassis underneath, and that's when commercial interest started happening," Bollinger said. "Large companies were coming to us and asking if they could use it for their commercial fleets." It didn't make sense, he said, because the B1 and B2 chassis was equipped only with four-wheel drive.

But early last year, as interest in commercial EV fleet vehicles began to grow, Bollinger began working on a commercial rear-wheel-drive version of the chassis, a unit that could be sold to upfitters for such vehicles as ambulances, delivery vehicles and work trucks.

"We've …

Executive Editor Jamie Butters gives you the top headlines and talks with Automotive News supplier reporter John Irwin on Aptiv's $4 billion purchase of Wind River and the supplier's key target: the tech talent.

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