Trade News

A shift in focus from market share to profit, coupled with new retailer-friendly policies, has propelled Nissan from industry laggard to middle of the pack in a key dealer survey.

The Nissan brand ranked 15 out of 32 in the latest National Automobile Dealers Association Dealer Attitude Survey — an industry insider's measure of how auto retailers feel about their franchise.

The 10-place surge from a year ago is a promising sign for the Japanese brand that until recently faced rebellious retailers fed up with its high-pressure sales program.

Nissan is "changing the conversation," U.S. sales chief Judy Wheeler told Automotive News last week.

"We're not pushing wholesale with our dealers," Wheeler said. "Instead, we're working with our dealers on: how do we help them run their business better; how do we engage better with customers; how do we use our e-commerce platform to touch the customer wherever they are in the buying…

For Toyota and its Lexus brand, this December could be one to remember — for all the wrong reasons.

Ongoing microchip and other supply chain shortages caused by the pandemic have forced Toyota Motor Corp. to continue to cut its global production. Meanwhile, U.S. retail demand for new vehicles has slowed, but not yet enough to repopulate empty dealership lots.

That's left Toyota Motor North America executives with a conundrum: Do they still hold their traditional end-of-year sell-offs — and spend the requisite marketing money — if their dealers don't have any inventory to sell off?

The answer is probably, but top leaders at the company admit that they are couching that answer in a prayer that their production woes will begin to get better soon.

"I'm optimistic the inventory situation will start to change for the better," said Jack Hollis, senior vice president for automotive operations at Toyota Motor North America. "With…

DETROIT — It's taken Jim Farley less than one year as Ford Motor Co. CEO to accomplish what his two immediate predecessors couldn't over six: reverse the company's long stock slide.

There's much still to fix, including problematic launches of high-profile vehicles, money-losing overseas markets and slumping U.S. sales amid the coronavirus pandemic and global microchip shortage.

But Farley, 59, has changed the narrative surrounding the 118-year-old automaker by exciting Wall Street with a vision of profitable, electrified products and software services that generate recurring revenue to insulate Ford from the industry's traditional ebbs and flows. He has reshaped Ford to emphasize commercial vehicles and technology development, elevating insiders to new roles and plucking talent from the likes of eBay and Apple.

"It's been so long since we had a reasonable sense of confidence in Ford's EV/AV/mobility strategy," Adam Jonas, an analy…

General Motors is ramping up pressure on white-collar employees to comply with a corporate mandate to report their vaccination status confidentially. The company sent out a memo on Wednesday warning that continued failure to do so could lead to safety violation letters and a partial loss of a company performance bonus. The Wall Street Journal reported on the memo earlier Friday. The automaker hasn’t required any workers to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

“We are pleased that virtually every GM salaried employee has reported their vaccine status via our confidential reporting tool,” the company said in an emailed statement. “We continue to work with a very small number of employees to reach 100 percent completion.” 

GM ordered its U.S. salaried staff to report their vaccination status last month, though the requirement doesn’t apply to factory employees represented by the United Auto Workers. The union has said it’s reviewing details of a sweeping rule by …

LOS ANGELES — Honda is late to the EV push, without an electric vehicle on sale now in the U.S. and not much success with its cute-but-pricey "e" model in Europe. But that's not stopping the brand from predicting ambitious sales of future EV products.

Honda said last week that its initial target is 70,000 annual sales from its first volume EV, the Prologue crossover, when it reaches the North American market in early 2024. The Prologue is being jointly developed with General Motors on GM's Ultium platform.

As Honda develops its own e:Architecture platform for future models, it has set a goal of 500,000 battery-electric and fuel cell vehicles by 2030 in North America. The automaker said that would represent 40 percent of sales, but also clarified that's a rough estimate contingent on EV incentives and other factors.

Separately, premium brand Acura is developing a crossover with GM, but Honda said the sales targets from last week were only for the Honda b…

In its march toward a carbon-neutral future, Volvo Cars is targeting how its steel is made. Its hope: To adopt a new "green steel" that promises to eliminate the need for coking coal in its manufacturing process.

If the idea works, it could take a significant bite out of the CO2 in the automaker's supply chain.

The steel industry is among the three biggest producers of carbon dioxide because the industry is dominated by an iron ore-based steel- making technology that uses blast furnaces that depend on coking coal.

Every ton of steel produced in 2018 emitted on average 1.85 tons of carbon dioxide, equal to about 8 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the World Steel Association. That is why Volvo seeks to implement a process that could eliminate the use of coking coal — a major pollutant in steel making.

The Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology, or Hybrit — developed by steelmaker SSAB, iron …

While going through National Automobile Dealers Association training, the convoluted process of buying a vehicle became more obvious — and more alarming — to Patrick Daly.

Mystery shopping at competitors' dealerships and his store showed that car shopping was still more complicated than it needs to be, said Daly, general manager of Randy Wise Chevrolet in Flint, Mich."It's a tiring process to get the information you're looking for as a consumer," he said.

Daly is working to make that easier for his customers and says it has noticeably increased his store's sales.

After the dealership temporarily laid off much of its staff and paused in-person sales at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, he made one of his new-car sales managers, Aaron Erway, an Internet sales manager in the business development center. The Internet manager responds to each customer request personally, and on the first call, he can appraise a trade, get credit approval and fin…

DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. is recalling 38,714 Mustang Mach-E crossovers in North America and Europe for improperly bonded windshields and sunroofs that could fall off.

All of the vehicles have a faulty windshield, while 27,318 of them also have a faulty sunroof, Ford says. The automaker said it is unaware of any accidents or injuries related to the defect.

The affected Mach-Es were built between Feb. 24 and June 18, according to a Ford spokesman. Dealers will replace and properly attach the windshields and sunroofs.

The Mach-E, which went on sale late last year, is among Ford's highest-profile products. In March, the automaker recalled a small number of Mach-Es with defective subframe bolts after delaying some early deliveries for additional quality checks.

The vehicle earlier this year won Car and Driver's inaugural Electric Vehicle of the Year award and has generally received positive reviews. It is the first in a new wave of electric vehicles fr…

Ford of Canada plans to open a $95-million parts distribution center near Ottawa, Canada, as part of a plan to close a Toronto-area depot and transfer operations to eastern and western Ontario, according to a developer and the union representing workers at the current oepration.

The 500,000-square-foot building is expected to start operating in 2023 in Casselman, Ont., about 30 miles east of Ottawa. It will join a western Ontario depot to be built in Paris, Ont., near Brantford, the union said.

Ford of Canada has made no public announcement of the projects and didn't return calls seeking comment. According to Unifor Local 584, which represents about 200 employees at the Bramalea Parts Distribution Centre near Toronto, however, both locations have been confirmed.

As well, a Montreal-based developer has released a drawing of the eastern depot, which it envisions as anchor of a 3-million-square-foot industrial hub on the Ottawa-Montreal corridor. Rosefello…

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Lexus has had two long-standing issues that it struggled with in recent years: a widely unloved infotainment system, and a clientele that skews far older than those of its luxury competitors.

Lexus' U.S. head Andrew Gilleland believes the redesigned 2022 Lexus NX crossover is the first step toward eventually fixing both of those nagging issues.

"Clearly, you know, we're trying to design cars that speak to younger people," he said, adding that they're different in how they interact with the brand, where they turn for information and how they make decisions.

Lexus — whose average customer is older than 60 — has no choice but to change to achieve that demographic shift, he said.

On the technological front, the new Lexus Interactive infotainment system uses conversational and intuitive voice prompts to enable the driver to control vehicle functions as varied as turning on the windshield wipers, adjusting the climate controls and s…

Electric vehicle producer Rivian plans to hire 100 workers and invest $4.6 million into a new customer service center near Detroit in Plymouth, Mich., following the launch of its first electric pickup.

The 12-year-old startup, backed by Amazon, Ford Motor Co. and others, established its Service Support Operations Center to provide "around-the-clock" business-to-business and customer service, according to a Thursday statement from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

The project is being backed by a $750,000 performance-based grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corp., which said the state outcompeted other states to land the investment and jobs promise.

"This investment by Rivian will create 100 high-skill jobs as we work to grow Michigan's economy, create good-paying jobs, and build the industries of the future," Whitmer said in the statement.

The service center begins operating this week, Rivian spokesman Zach Dietmeier said in an email. The…