Trade News

General Motors' GMC brand announced a three-year partnership with the Marcus Graham Project to foster diverse leadership in advertising, media and marketing, and marks the organization's first contractual, multi-year commitment with a brand.

The financial commitment from GMC is earmarked to support the nonprofit’s annual iCR8 Boot Camp program, which trains aspiring marketers from non-traditional backgrounds.

The commitment will begin on Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend in January of 2022, as the Marcus Graham Project reaches its 15th anniversary. Its previous brand sponsorships have included Apple, Fossil and Patron.

“As part of a larger GMC community partnership outreach, we are looking to build deeper relationships within diverse communities from high school students to young professionals, from a local and national level,” says Jamie Barbour, senior manager, GMC advertising and media. 

“Working on this initiative with our adverti…

U.S. light-vehicle sales volume this month will fall to its lowest September level since the Great Recession as the ongoing global microchip shortage continues to deplete inventory, according to a forecast by Cox Automotive.

Cox predicts that sales volume will drop to 1 million units in September, down 26 percent from a year earlier. The last time September volume fell below 1 million was in 2009. There have only been three months of below 1 million volume in the past decade, according to Cox.

Many U.S. automakers plan to report September and third-quarter light-vehicle sales on Friday, as they continue to idle plants intermittently to redirect chips. Ford Motor Co. reports on Monday, Oct. 4, and Daimler reports later next week.

AutoForecast Solutions estimates the global auto industry has lost 8.9 million vehicles from production plans because of the chip crisis, including 2.9 million in North America.

Cox expects the September sales pace, or t…

ChargePoint's product chief explains why charging an EV is 'liberating' and where most drivers will 'top off' vehicles. 

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Swedish electric-car maker Polestar said on Monday it will go public by merging with a blank-check firm backed by billionaire Alec Gores and investment bank Guggenheim Partners at a valuation of $20 billion including debt.

The deal with Gores Guggenheim Inc. will include cash proceeds of around $800 million and a PIPE, or private investment in public equity, of $250 million from top-tier institutional investors.

The premium EV maker, backed by Volvo Car Group and affiliates of Geely Chairman Eric Li, also counts Hollywood actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio among its investors.

Polestar's current product line includes two models -- a hybrid performance car known as Polestar 1 and a fully electric Polestar 2 -- which are currently on roads across Europe, North America and Asia.

That $20 billion figure matches the reported valuation of Volvo, which plans to list on the Stockholm stock exchange this year. It is also double the value of Renault Grou…

Demand for used vehicles has been high this year, and flooding this month from Hurricane Ida just sent more customers clamoring for cars at Planet Honda in Union, N.J.

Planet Honda isn't alone facing that growing demand. In times like these, General Manager Bill Feinstein said he and other dealership leaders he knows are choosing to sometimes not certify used vehicles that would otherwise qualify for automakers' certified pre-owned programs. Dealerships, particularly in parts of the Northeast hit hard by Ida's flooding, simply need to get cars and trucks ready for sale to meet demand.

"There [are] some [dealers] saying, 'Hey, you know what, it's going to take an extra three hours in my shop to make it a CPO, and I don't have enough cars on the lot,' " he said. "I think you can make those decisions."

While the need has intensified in recent weeks for Feinstein and others because of the storm, it's been a persistent theme for retailers across the country…

Many new cars and trucks are hard to find in the U.S. these days, but they're even more scarce in Chile, where a red-hot economy has created waits of more than a year for some popular models. One of the toughest nameplates to get is the Chevrolet Silverado. The current estimated delivery date for a diesel Silverado is October 2022, according to Bloomberg.

Chileans began snapping up vehicles, appliances and electronics after the government injected $49 billion into the economy by allowing early withdrawals from private pension funds established under former dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Cash payouts during the coronavirus pandemic have fueled demand even more.

"The money came in and then people started to buy cars like crazy," said Carol Castillo, a saleswoman at a Chevrolet dealership in downtown Santiago.

Chile's coronavirus vaccination rate, near 75 percent, is the highest in all the Americas, providing yet another lift to the economy as infectio…

With the ever-increasing use of smart devices, consumers expect their cars to offer new experiences and features that are connected to their digital lifestyles. Vehicle manufacturers and Tier 1 suppliers recognize the need to deliver these features quickly and are utilizing the power of cloud-based modern data strategies, scalable Internet of Things and machine learning platforms to accelerate innovation and time to market.

To deliver developer-friendly platforms focused on continuously updatable and flexible software architectures, automakers are radically changing how they look at vehicle systems. They no longer view the vehicle as a heterogeneous collection of hardware-based electronic control units that deliver specific features and functions. Rather, they see it as a holistic, consolidated and flexible system of software-based microservices and data-driven functions that provide seamless interaction with the cloud to bring new experiences to drivers a…

Lamborghini is moving to embrace the synergies available to it as a part of the Volkswagen Group and is now organized in the automaker's sport grouping, where it will be able to take advantage of some of the electrification groundwork done by sibling brands Audi and Porsche.

The supercar brand won't have a full electric vehicle until sometime in the second half of this decade, Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann told journalists this year when the brand laid out its Direzione Cor Tauri plan.

Until then, Lamborghini will continue to hybridize its lineup — the last combustion-only Lamborghini is scheduled to be built in 2024 — and build a series of one-off derivatives to keep customers happy.

Huracan: The reengineered Huracan is expected to arrive in 2024, according to sources. Like the rest of the lineup, its V-10 engine will undergo hybridization as part of that reengineering process.

Aventador: Its eventual successor will be a plug-in hybrid mod…

Change is coming to Rolls-Royce's tony product portfolio.

The British purveyor of ultraluxury will sunset sales of its coupe and convertible models in the U.S. next year to make room for new product, including the brand's first electric model.

The Dawn and Wraith will not move to Rolls-Royce's Architecture of Luxury platform, limiting their shelf life, so bringing them to spec to meet U.S. emissions standards for 2022 didn't make financial sense. Discontinuing their U.S. sales also allows Rolls-Royce to assign more production capacity to the Ghost and family-friendly Cullinan.

But the two-door models have helped Rolls chip away at its stodgy image by attracting new and younger buyers. The Wraith coupe, launched in 2013, lured Ferrari's and Lamborghini's performance buyers as a "sporty" Rolls. The Dawn convertible, which debuted in 2015, has drawn female buyers to the brand.

Rolls-Royce also is looking beyond the throat…

The number of global vehicle production losses related to the microchip shortage surged by 576,500 vehicles last week, pushing the industry’s amount of projected lost volume past the 10 million mark, according to new AutoForecast Solutions data. 

The bulk of vehicles taken off production schedules were in the Asia-Pacific (306,000) and North American (214,000) regions. 

China accounted for the majority of Asia-Pacific losses, nearly 194,000 vehicles. About 112,000 vehicles were removed in the rest of Asia.

Honda Motor Co. cut 115,000 vehicles in the U.S., 57,000 in Canada and 19,000 in Mexico. Stellantis had a net loss of 19,500 in North America, while Ford Motor Co. lost 3,300 units in two Canadian plants.

AFS estimates the global industry has lost 8.9 million vehicles from planned production so far, and the potential lost volume is 10.15 million. 

Last week, AlixPartners raised its estimate of lost auto industry revenue to…

The unlikely combination of a Canadian billionaire, a German luxury brand and the booming SUV market has given Aston Martin another chance at long-term success.

Though still losing money, Aston's sea of red ink is rapidly shrinking thanks to strong sales of the company's first SUV, the DBX, reduced costs from using Mercedes-Benz engines and technologies and delaying the move to electric vehicles until 2025.

In an interview with CNBC last month, Executive Chairman Lawrence Stroll, the Canadian billionaire whose investment gives him a 25 percent ownership stake, said: "The risks are behind us. We have tremendous growth in front of us and a Formula 1 team to market it."

Stroll says Aston is on track to produce 10,000 vehicles per year in 2025 — up from 6,000 this year — as part of its Project Horizon rejuvenation plan.

The next five years will be busy for James Bond's favorite high-performance brand as Aston introduces hy…