Trade News

PLANO, Texas — For years, Lexus dealers and brand leaders have admitted that the weakest link across the Japanese luxury brand's lineup has been right there at their fingertips.

Whether it was a joystick or unwieldy touchpad, the center console-mounted controls for the brand's lackluster infotainment system have hurt its vehicles with reviewers and customers, which has cost it sales.

After three years of in-house effort, Lexus will debut a next-generation intuitive infotainment system, dubbed Lexus Interface, on the redesigned NX compact crossover and quickly spread it across the rest of the lineup.

"Honestly, it's been the Achilles' heel of our brand," said Cooper Ericksen, group vice president for product planning and strategy for Toyota Motor North America.

"With all the pain that we have endured with remote touch interface and joysticks? Believe me, we want to go as fast as humanly possible" to get the new system installed in the rest of Lex…

Dave Gardner was chosen in early March 2020 to run the automobile division of American Honda Motor Co. and formally took over May 1 that year. Between those dates, the surging pandemic changed the industry landscape, and Gardner adapted.

The former CEO of Honda Canada, who oversaw manufacturing and nonautomotive operations, was already seen as an agent of change before the pandemic turned the industry upside down.

Globally, Honda Motor Co. named a new CEO in April this year, Toshihiro Mibe, who was a driving force behind the company's electrification efforts and partnership with General Motors in his previous post as a managing director. In North America, Honda is undergoing a reorganization of its manufacturing and sales units, handing over key positions to a younger generation of leaders.

Gardner, 61, spoke with Staff Reporter Laurence Iliff. Here are edited excerpts.

Q: A year into your new job and just ove…

The latest forces to rock used-car values this spring have also shaken some dealers' use of various vehicle pricing tools on the market.

Leaders at Kelley Blue Book, Black Book and J.D. Power say they've invested in technology, increased the pace of valuation reports and added more retail transaction data to their calculations to help their tools keep pace with the seismic surge in prices. Yet some dealers say they have relied less on used-car pricing tools and guides and more on intuition.

Dave Katarski, COO at Feldman Automotive Group — which has stores in Michigan and Ohio — said there has been a disconnect between what the guides say and the price points at which Feldman vehicles are transacting.

"They're probably lagging more now than they ever have," Katarski said. "We're still going to look at how many there are in the market, what kind of market days' supply there is. It's just not as relevant as it typically is."

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Despite a precipitous drop in travel, pedestrians are dying in increasing numbers across the United States.

Highway safety officials say speeding motorists and diminished traffic enforcement may be driving an increase in pedestrian fatalities that's reached historic proportions during the pandemic. Approximately 6,721 died in 2020, according to estimates from the Governors Highway Safety Association.

If it holds, that would be the highest number of pedestrian fatalities in 31 years.

The number represents a 4.8 percent increase over 2019. Troubling on its own, the increase comes during a year when the number of vehicle miles traveled declined by 13.2 percent, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

Combined, the increase in deaths and lower travel rate result in a pedestrian fatality rate of 2.3 deaths per 1 billion miles traveled, a 21 percent year-over-year increase from the rate of 1.9 deaths in 2019.

PLANO, Texas — Lexus will use the redesigned 2022 NX compact crossover to introduce a variety of technology and safety upgrades that the Japanese luxury brand intends to spread across its lineup.

While all of the changes will be welcome, one is the most important for Lexus dealers: the brand's newly developed infotainment system that finally banishes Lexus' wonky center-console touchpad in favor of an intuitive touch screen. Brand officials told Automotive News that the old system had cost Lexus "thousands" of sales each year.

The redesigned NX is moving onto Toyota Motor Corp.'s TNGA-C platform, which also underlies the popular RAV4 crossover. The base NX 350 will be equipped with a 275-hp inline-four engine paired to a new eight-speed transmission that combine to produce an estimated 317 pound-feet of torque, enough to shave a half-second off the previous model's 0-to-60-mph time of 7.3 seconds.

The cabin is dominated by an opti…

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's main auto parts association INA forecasts that the severe semiconductor shortage that has slammed the brakes on the global auto industry will subside in July and return to normal by the end of this year.

Semiconductor chips are a crucial component for electronics in modern cars, including touch-screen displays as well as driver assist and other safety systems.

The chip shortage in North America alone has caused the region's carmakers to cut previously expected output by 1.16 million vehicles in May, a figure that has accelerated each month since the start of the year, according to data from IHS Markit.

INA's head of foreign trade, Alberto Bustamante, forecast in an interview on Thursday that the semiconductor shortage will begin to ease by the second half of July before returning to normal in December.

The supply crunch began last year as the coronavirus pandemic forced the North American auto industry to shut down f…

A memo to Volkswagen Group of America dealers obtained by Automotive News identified a vendor involved in a data breach impacting more than 3.3 million customers and prospective buyers, primarily at Audi. In the email sent Thursday, Audi of America President Daniel Weissland identified the vendor as Shift Digital, which is “used by Audi, Volkswagen, and some authorized dealers in the United States and Canada.” Two dealers with knowledge of the situation verified the vendor’s identity with Automotive News.

Multiple messages seeking comment were sent Friday to Shift Digital, of Birmingham, Mich., but were not immediately returned. Spokespeople for the Audi and Volkswagen brands declined further comment beyond a statement the automaker released earlier in the day, which did not publicly name the vendor.

The information, gathered for sales and marketing between 2014 and 2019, was in an electronic file the vendor left unsecured, VW of America said in its state…

Three dealership groups, including the growing Hudson Automotive Group, have purchased stores in Alabama and Louisiana in deals that closed in the second quarter.

Here's a quick look at the transactions involving domestic and import brand stores.

Hudson Automotive, of Charleston, S.C., acquired its first dealership in Alabama on Monday when it bought Hoover Toyota, located south of Birmingham. The group bought the dealership from Gordie Stewart, who had owned it for 22 years, the Hoover Sun reported.

"It's a great brand, and Birmingham is a great market," David Hudson, CEO of Hudson Automotive, told Automotive News. "We like Toyota a lot."

This is the group's 33rd rooftop, Hudson said, including a used-vehicle store. Hudson Automotive also has dealerships in Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia and Ohio. Hoover Toyota was the group's first transaction since November, when it acquired Beaman Automotive Group, mad…

Oshkosh CEO John Pfeifer opens up about the company's plans to build as many as 165,000 delivery vehicles for the U.S. Postal Service.

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Apple Inc. has hired Ulrich Kranz, a former senior executive at BMW AG’s electric car division, to help lead its own vehicle efforts, according to people familiar with the situation.

The technology giant hired Kranz in recent weeks, about a month after he stepped down as CEO of Canoo Inc., a developer of self-driving electric vehicles. Before co-founding Canoo, Kranz was senior vice president of the group that developed the i3 and i8 cars at BMW, where he worked for 30 years.

Kranz is one of Apple’s most significant automotive hires, a clear sign that the iPhone maker is determined to build a self-driving electric car to rival Tesla Inc. and other carmakers. Kranz will report to Doug Field, who led development of Tesla’s mass-market Model 3 and now runs Apple’s car project, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss a private matter.

Apple has become the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalization of more than $2 trillion, by sel…

The spread among automakers in how quickly they replace their annual volume with new models is reaching its widest point in recent auto industry history.

Honda and Toyota lead in model replacement rates, while Stellantis and General Motors trail the pack, according to a study of U.S. product pipelines in the latest annual "Car Wars" study.

At the same time, the arrival of new vehicle models across the industry is ramping up to its highest level of activity in at least two decades, John Murphy, senior auto analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which publishes the study, said Thursday.

Murphy said automakers will launch roughly 240 new models over the next four model years, averaging 60 a year. Over the past 20 years, new launches have averaged just 40 a year.

That should be good news for retailers, according to the study: Due to a mix of competitive pressures among rival automakers, the entry of newer manufacturers into the business…

DETROIT — Gary Jones strode onstage in downtown Detroit for the first time as president of the UAW in June 2018 to the Rocky theme song, thrusting his fist into the air and promising members that he'd "fight for you."

He didn't pick the music himself — some union leaders later complained it wasn't as enthusiastic as they'd have liked — but if anyone in the UAW fancied Jones the Italian Stallion, they were sorely mistaken. In this movie, he's the bad guy who gets knocked out at the end.

His 28-month prison sentence for embezzlement and tax evasion handed down Thursday proved that the only thing Jones had in common with Rocky Balboa were connections to the criminal underworld. If you remember, Philly's favorite fictional boxer started off as muscle-for-hire for a local mob boss to make ends meet.

Jones had bigger illicit ambitions.

The 63-year-old certified public accountant hoodwinked auto workers out of millions from 2010 to 2019, prosecutors disc…