Trade News

Key Auto Group, of Portsmouth, N.H., which acquired two stores in April, was on the selling end of its latest transaction.

Johanna Cicotte on Wednesday bought Key Nissan of Lebanon in New Hampshire — a dealership she had owned before.

Key Auto in 2019 acquired the store, then known as Team Nissan North, from Victoria Marcinkevich, according to Valley News. Marcinkevich had purchased the store from Cicotte in 2012, the newspaper reported.

Terms of the Key-Cicotte transaction were not disclosed, but the dealership has been renamed Nissan of Lebanon.

The Nissan dealership is across the street from Cicotte's other store, Volvo-Volkswagen of Lebanon. Lebanon is near the New Hampshire-Vermont border.

Last month, Key Auto acquired Newcastle Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram in Maine and Newport Chevrolet-Buick-GMC in New Hampshire. In 2020, Key acquired Port City Chrysler-Dodge-Ram in Portsmouth and a Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram store in Rochester, N.H.

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Burt Watson Auto Group has added a third store to its portfolio and its first Ford dealership.

Owner Richard Watson IV purchased Dean Arbour Ford in Pinconning, Mich., from Matt Arbour and sister Colleen Arbour Chapleski on May 3.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. The store has been renamed Burt Watson Ford.

The third-generation group has a Chevrolet store in Freeland, Mich., its flagship dealership dating to the 1960s, and a Chevrolet-Buick dealership in Reese, Mich., that it acquired in 2018.

Watson said he learned in the fall that the Ford dealership was available. He said he thought it would be a great opportunity to buy a Ford store, and he is hoping to grow its sales.

"We're looking at expanding and just kind of growing our power as a group," Watson told Automotive News. "Nowadays, you're either kind of growing, or you're dying. We want to continue to grow."

Dean Arbour Auto Group dates to 1970, when John Dean Arbour ac…

Dave Bates, chief customer ambassador at Reynolds and Reynolds, says the dealer management system giant is aiming to improve its relationships with auto retailers as it looks to aggressively expand its business and win back customers.

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BERLIN -- Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk called for cuts to German red tape on Monday as he said it was unclear when exactly the first electric car would roll off the production line of its planned plant outside Berlin.

Last month Tesla delayed the opening of its first European gigafactory to late 2021 from an initial July 1 date after adding plans to also establish a battery cell plant on site as well as a lengthy approval processes..

"It's hard to predict with precision cause you can only make the cars when all of the pieces are here," Musk said during a visit to the Gruenheide site in the German state of Brandenburg.

"It looks like we're able to start production end of this year," Musk added.

Home to traditional rivals Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW, Germany is also known for its complex regulation and bureaucracy.

"I think there could be less bureaucracy, that would be better," Musk told reporters at the Gruenheide site, adding that rules were "…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ Let's go all the way

The auto industry is dividing into two camps at this moment. And you're seeing it happen live on our pages.

One camp is populated by manufacturers who are excited and zealous about a new era of vehicle power, the transformation from joyously booming internal combustion engines to miraculously silent and green electric motors.

This camp is trumpeting to the world their remarkable product plans for new EVs and new initiatives. In this week's issue you'll read about Hyundai Motor Group earmarking $7.4 billion to electrify and mobilize its U.S. business, about Ford's zeal to produce an electric F-150, and about Marelli, the established supplier of lighting and air conditioners, boldly pushing into those components we now call "e-axles."

This movement is big. And it's all over Automotive News, every week.

But then …

Then there's this other emerging camp.

A small handful of automake…

Christophe Marnat, executive vice president of electronics and advanced safety systems at global supplier ZF, discusses the evolution of driver monitoring into occupant monitoring, clarity in naming assist systems and new advances on the sensor front.

How do I subscribe?

Apple Podcasts: “Shift: A podcast about mobility” is available on the iTunes Store and through the ‘Podcast’ app pre-installed on all iOS devices. Click here to subscribe.

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Google Play: "Shift: A podcast about mobility" is available on Android devices through the Google Play store. Click here to subscribe.

BERKELEY, Calif. -- A Tesla car driver killed in a recent accident in California praised the automaker's "full self-driving" features, and posted videos on his apparent Tiktok account, in which he appeared to drive with his hands off the wheel.

On May 5, a Tesla Model 3 crashed into an overturned truck on a highway in Fontana, killing the Tesla driver and injuring the truck driver and a motorist who had stopped to help him.

The Associated Press cited police saying a preliminary investigation had determined the Tesla's driver assistant system Autopilot was engaged prior to the crash.

But in a correction issued late on Friday, police said, "There has not been a final determination made as to what driving mode the Tesla was in."

Two videos of a man driving with his hands off the wheel were posted on the alleged Tiktok account of the victim, 35-year-old Steven Hendrickson of Running Springs, Calif.

"What would do I do without my full self-drivi…

DETROIT — When Ford Motor Co. hosted a presidential visit a year ago this week, Donald Trump flouted company safety protocol by refusing to wear a mask for much of his trip and berated Executive Chairman Bill Ford behind the scenes for joining with California to support stricter emissions standards.

This week's visit from President Joe Biden stands to be much different.

Biden plans to tour Ford's new $700 million Rouge Electric Vehicle Center and get a glimpse of its battery- electric F-150 Lightning ahead of the Wednesday, May 19, unveiling. He'll likely tout the Lightning as an example of what could be possible under his administration's proposed $2 trillion jobs and infrastructure investment plan, which includes new funding for bringing more EVs to market.

"The fact that he's coming shows the commitment and interest our government has in the electrification of the auto industry," Bill Ford said last week at the automaker's an…

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — On a recent Friday afternoon, a delivery robot made its way along a crowded sidewalk on State Street. It made an abrupt stop in front of Amer's Deli, spun itself 90 degrees and backed into a parking space with the precise movements of a Revolutionary War soldier.

Some passersby were taken aback by the sight. Others walked right past. One oblivious deli customer used the parked robot as her personal table, then left her empty water bottle on its lid.

"Somebody sat on one the other day," said Pavel Vorobev, head of products for the self-driving division of Russian tech company Yandex, which deployed four of its Rover delivery bots in Ann Arbor last month.

How pedestrians and diners treat the robots is one thing he cannot control. How the robots treat them? That's very much in his purview, and part of what Yandex is hoping to learn from its operations in the heart of this college town.

Yandex has partnered wi…

The industrywide shortage of microchips is adding an extra layer of tension to an automotive ritual that is tense in normal times: factory launches of critical new products.

The chip shortage and its resulting drag on production flow is striking as Nissan Motor Co. orchestrates a product overhaul that is central to reviving consumer interest and profitability in the U.S.

The Japanese automaker's U.S. plants are preparing to introduce three key redesigns: the midsize Pathfinder, Infiniti QX60 crossover and Frontier midsize pickup.

New products are "the focal point" of Nissan's efforts to revitalize its business in its second-largest market, Michael Colleran, the brand's U.S. sales and marketing boss, told Automotive News last week.

"We prioritized our new models — that's the bedrock of Nissan Next," Colleran said, referring to a strategic turnaround plan introduced last year.

The situation is precarious for several brands —…

Amid a fresh push to commercialize its self-driving technology, Waymo has found its senior executive team in flux.

CFO Ger Dwyer and Chief Automotive Officer Adam Frost said last week they intended to leave the company by the end of May. They're the latest of a half-dozen longtime executives who have left or announced their departures over the past three months.

Frost joined Waymo's predecessor, Google's self-driving car project, in 2006 after 13 years at Ford Motor Co. and held a variety of roles, the latest of which included overseeing Waymo's projects with automakers, among them Stellantis, Volvo Car Group and Jaguar Land Rover.

Dwyer was a key figure in helping the company close a $3.25 billion funding round last year, the first external investments in Waymo's history. Both cited personal reasons for departing, according to a company spokesperson. The website TechCrunch first reported their departures.

"We're grateful to Ger and Adam for all…

For brothers Kurt and Craig Campbell, third-generation dealers in the Seattle area, nostalgia and identifying a gap in the market created a profitable component of their group's business.

The pair co-owns Campbell Auto Group, made up of Campbell Volkswagen of Edmonds, Campbell Nissan of Edmonds and Campbell Nissan of Everett.

In 2015, the group launched Caravan Outfitter. As the name implies, the retailer takes passenger and cargo vans and outfits them with creature comforts for customers looking to experience the outdoors via an all-in-one camper van.

In the 1950s, Volkswagen popularized such a setup with its Westfalia models, which were notable for their pop-up roofs.

"My brother and I grew up as Volkswagen dealers," Kurt Campbell said. "At one time, we were one of the larger Westfalia dealers in the country for Volkswagen. That product went away and we saw that that niche needed to be filled."

The brothers hired engineers and spent tw…