Trade News

Genesis quintupled U.S. sales in October compared with last year and has filled a trophy case with industry awards over the past five years. But now it needs a big push to raise brand awareness, Claudia Marquez, COO for North America, told Automotive News.

"Growth year-over-year has been outstanding," said Marquez, just six weeks into the newly created COO job. "Priority No. 1 is that we have to make sure that consumers understand that we have great products. They are outstanding. But we are missing awareness."

The new GV70 compact crossover won Motor Trend SUV of the year last month. And last week, it was chosen as a utility-vehicle finalist for the North American Car, Truck and Utility Vehicle of the Year Awards.

"We know that SUVs do well, but we're also doing great with our sedans," Marquez said. Because Genesis is a growing brand, Hyundai Motor Group has given the newcomer priority for semiconductor chips in order to achieve its business plan for …

After more than a century of being humble, SAE International is starting to brag a bit by launching a "Meet SAE" ad campaign.

SAE hopes the campaign will help increase membership and participation in events and on technical committees. The target market for these ads includes people working on advanced mobility technologies such as electrification and autonomous driving.

"We're trying to reach a broader audience, reach new people to become members and become interested in SAE ... new, younger members, people who don't associate us with electrification or zero emissions," Frank Menchaca, chief growth officer for the nonprofit in Warrendale, Pa., told Automotive News. SAE's goal is "to reach those new mobility professionals and younger people to say there's real value in working with us."

To accomplish that goal, SAE created four ads with a focus on technologies' end consumers. SAE has about 130,000 members who are engineers, technica…

HOUSTON -- A prominent forensic psychiatrist testified that billionaire Robert Brockman is feigning dementia as a “magic bullet” to avoid trial on charges of evading taxes on $2 billion in income.

Brockman, 80, is in cognitive decline but he’s exaggerating his impairment and his mind remains sharp enough to understand the charges against him, Park Dietz told U.S. District Judge George C. Hanks Jr. on Friday in Houston.

Hanks conducted a weeklong hearing to determine if Brockman is competent to stand trial.

Dietz, a California-based psychiatrist, said he was on a team of government medical experts who interviewed Brockman, including in May 2021, before making his assessment. Brockman talked in detail then about tax matters, the charges against him and how easy it would be to fabricate emails, Dietz said.

“I did not think it was even a close call whether he was competent to stand trial at that time,” Dietz said.

Brockman “has extreme motivat…

Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk said on Friday that the company's mobile application was coming back online after an app server outage earlier prevented many owners from connecting to their cars.

Musk was responding to a Tesla owner's tweet, who said that he was experiencing a "500 server error" to connect his Model 3 through the iOS app in Seoul, South Korea.

"Should be coming back online now. Looks like we may have accidentally increased verbosity of network traffic," Musk said.

The outage was first reported by Electrek.

About 500 users reported they faced an error at around 4:40 p.m. EST, according to outage monitoring website Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a series of sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform. There were just over 60 reports at around 9:20 p.m. EST.

"Apologies, we will take measures to ensure this doesn't happen again," Musk tweeted.

From June 2018 through September 2019, four major hailstorms pelted the inventory at Stapp Interstate Toyota north of Denver.

Although insurance covered the damages, its Toyota Financial Services-preferred provider chose to walk away after Stapp's policy expired, citing the high risk in an area prone to such severe weather. When the store in Frederick, Colo., moved to another insurer, its deductibles and premiums soared.

Faced with rising costs — and the ever-present prospect of more damaging storms — Dealer Principal Brion Stapp decided to take a seven-figure gamble in the form of a 53,000-square-foot hail canopy that includes 720 solar panels.

Stapp reasoned that insurance costs would fall once providers saw the reduced risk to his inventory. Aside from that, he thought, the dealership could recoup some money by generating its own electricity.

An Obama administration-era solar tax credit, as well as a Trump administration depreciation opportuni…

A private investment firm connected to longtime automaker executive Mark LaNeve aims to spend around $400 million over the next three years buying minority stakes in auto dealerships.

New York-based Franchise Equity Partners launched this month. It was co-founded by Michael Esposito and Scott Romanoff, who are the firm's managing partners. LaNeve, a former Ford Motor Co. and General Motors sales and marketing executive, and Don Reese, former CEO of used-car retailer DriveTime, are part of the firm's leadership team.

Franchise Equity Partners is backed by New York investment firm HPS Investment Partners, which has $75 billion in capital, Esposito said. HPS has allocated $1 billion to fund Franchise Equity Partners, which will invest in five areas: auto dealerships, restaurants, heavy-equipment dealerships, beverage distributors and consumer services such as health and beauty.

Esposito noted that while he and Romanoff have invested some of their own mone…

LOS ANGELES — Plug Zen, a minority-owned startup, is set to supply 10,000 of its Level 2 electric-vehicle chargers to Verizon for sale at stores nationwide — once it gets the necessary computer chips.

The Detroit-based company, which displayed its expandable charging units at the Los Angeles Auto Show, this week secured a contract to supply the wireless telecommunications company. Assembly of the chargers, however, may not start until the second quarter, because of the chip shortage, said company President Kwabena Johnson.

"We're a small company, a startup and [semiconductor suppliers] are going to prioritize their bigger clients," such as Ford Motor Co., where he used to work, and General Motors.

The key advantage of the Zen Station, which has two plugs and is projected to cost about $800, is that it can be easily expanded with additional units to power up to 10 vehicles at a time as EVs become more common, Johnson said, making it ideal for apartment bu…

Keating Auto Group has acquired three more stores in Texas, while a growing dealership group purchased two import stores within the past month and a family-owned dealership bought its second store in Iowa.

Here is a look at the deals, which include import and domestic stores. One of the deals involves a group ranked by Automotive News on its top 150 dealerships list.

Texas expansion

Keating Auto Group expanded its presence in the Houston market earlier this month with the acquisition of three rooftops.

Keating Auto, of Victoria, Texas, on Nov. 9 bought Hub Hyundai Houston, Hub Hyundai Katy-Genesis West Houston and Hub Mitsubishi Katy, all in Houston, from retiring dealers Bob Cox and Jackie Cox, said Ben Keating, owner of Keating Auto.

The dealerships were renamed Northwest Hyundai, West Houston Hyundai-Genesis of West Houston and West Houston Mitsubishi.

Keating is planning to construct separate facilities for the West Houston Hyun…

ENCINITAS, Calif. — When it reaches U.S. dealerships in the spring, the 2023 Toyota bZ4X won't have an eye-popping range or bleeding-edge technology that would make the electric midsize crossover stand out from the competitors expected to fill the segment.

But it will have something that none of its rivals will carry: a Toyota emblem. And executives at the Japanese automaker believe that logo will be enough to make it and a coming lineup of other Toyota EVs successful in the U.S.

"Don't underestimate the power of the Toyota badge because it comes with a lot of things that people like: peace of mind, quality, driving dynamics, reliable dealer network, long-term durability — all those things," said Cooper Ericksen, group vice president for product planning and strategy at Toyota Motor North America.

The bZ4X will feature a Toyota-estimated range of up to 250 miles and an advanced standard suite of safety and driver-assistance technologies. Sizewise, it wi…

DETROIT — After going public this month, electric-vehicle startup Rivian Automotive is worth almost 50 percent more than one of its early big investors: Ford Motor Co.

But Ford believes it can soon add more value for shareholders than at any point in the past century with a plan to become the nation's second-biggest producer of EVs in two years. And Ford no longer thinks it needs Rivian's help to get there.

The two companies have scrapped plans to jointly develop an EV, Ford CEO Jim Farley told Automotive News. Ford already had canceled a planned Lincoln collaboration at the start of the coronavirus pandemic but still intended to work with Rivian on a different vehicle until recently.

"Right now, we have growing confidence in our ability to win in the electric space," Farley said in an interview Thursday. "When you compare today with when we originally made that investment, so much has changed: about our ability, about the brand's direction in both case…

DETROIT — Score one for the legacy automakers.

Ford Motor Co.'s upcoming F-150 Lightning and the electric Chevrolet Silverado expected in 2023 topped the Tesla Cybertruck and Rivian R1T in an Autolist survey on which electric pickups consumers are most interested in buying.

Of those surveyed, 38 percent said they prefer the Lightning, 26 percent said they want General Motors' Silverado EV, 20 percent prefer the Cybertruck, and 11 percent want the GMC Hummer EV. Five percent said they want the R1T, which is the only one of the five that's already on sale.

In a similar survey Autolist conducted in 2019, Rivian's pickup ranked first, followed by Tesla second and Ford third. Ford had not yet announced the Lightning name or released any product details at the time.

"The Lightning has all the ingredients of a successful launch," Autolist CEO Corey Lydstone said in a statement. "It has the name recognition that transcends the EV marketplace, it has the s…

DETROIT-- General Motors said it will soon lift charging, parking and range restrictions on Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUVs that have been recalled because of battery-fire risk.

Owners of 2019 Bolts who have not yet received battery module replacements can receive a software update from their dealership that will remove the restrictions starting Friday. The software will be available to owners of 2017-18 and 2020-22 Bolts within the next 30 days, GM said in an emailed statement on Friday.

The new software significantly reduces fire risk by automatically setting the vehicle's maximum state of charge to 80 percent, spokesman Kevin Kelly told Automotive News. The software reduces vehicle range but eliminates the need to follow GM's previous guidance. It allows owners to safely charge indoors overnight, park indoors after charging and operate their vehicles below 70 miles of range.

The software also includes diagnostics to detect specific abnormalities that migh…