Trade News

Kia's ad push for the Carnival MPV has a flair normally seen in spots for versatile utility vehicles.

The stylish people hauler breezes down a desert road pulling a boat, showcasing its towing chops as well as blind-spot monitoring and lounge-style seating that reclines. Throughout the ad, a series of life moments such as camping and dirt-bike riding play out as the Carnival passes by.

Despite the prominent sliding door on each side, the M-word is never uttered. Kia says the minivan label doesn't quite fit the Carnival, which replaces the Sedona in its North American lineup this year, and it says some consumers agree. So it's using the term MPV, which stands for multipurpose vehicle — and even treating it as part of the vehicle's name.

"Most of our customers, when we did clinics, they looked at it and they didn't see it as a minivan," Russell Wager, vice president of marketing for Kia Motors America, told Automotive News. "That's …

Out of 15 companies developing automated driving systems, Waymo is in the lead, while Tesla comes in last, according to the latest leaderboard report from consulting company Guidehouse Insights.

The report, released last week, evaluated the companies and categorized them as leaders, contenders, challengers or followers.

Leaders scored 75 or above in strategy and execution, while contenders earned between 50 and 75. Challengers scored higher than 25 but were deemed not yet contenders, and followers scored below 25.

Guidehouse focused on companies developing automated driving systems rather than on companies directly commercializing autonomous vehicles. The report also focused only on companies developing for light- to medium-duty vehicles.

Waymo was also ranked the top vendor of automated driving vehicles on Guidehouse's leaderboard last year.

"The trend I've seen from Waymo over the last four or five years is building not just the techno…

Volvo Car Group is helping chart a new path in vehicle electronics as an early adopter of Google's Android Automotive operating system. By getting in on Android's ground floor, Volvo also is playing a role in shaping an infotainment platform that will populate across auto brands.

Infotainment systems have become a high-tech battleground for automakers seeking differentiation and new revenue sources from subscription services. Not all manufacturers are convinced that outside suppliers are the way to do battle.

Volvo's luxury competitors Tesla, Mercedes-Benz and BMW have plowed millions of dollars into developing powerful and bespoke systems to turn their dashboards into oversized smart devices.

The Swedish company took a more pragmatic approach, choosing to abort further development of its Sensus Connect infotainment system in favor of hooking up with Silicon Valley.

Stellantis has also adopted Android Automotive via its Uconnect 5 system. While …

A high-volume Fiat Chrysler Automobiles salesman in suburban Detroit has been charged with defrauding the automaker out of $8.7 million by giving employee discounts on vehicles to customers who weren't eligible.

Apollon Nimo, 34, a salesman at Parkway Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram, illegally used discount codes meant for family members of FCA employees in sales and leases to nonqualified buyers thousands of times from 2014 to the present, a federal investigator wrote in an affidavit filed Friday in U.S. District Court. Nimo closed more deals using employee discounts than any other FCA salesperson in Michigan, and at times was No. 1 nationwide, according to the affidavit.

Officials at the dealership in Clinton Township, Mich., did not immediately return a message seeking comment. Nimo has been removed from the staff listing on the store's website.

“FCA US is committed to preserving the integrity of our employee purchase programs and is cooperating with the U.S.…

Dick's Auto Group of suburban Portland, co-owned by a pair of second-generation dealer siblings, acquired its fifth dealership Monday.

Shannon Inukai-Cuffee and Scott Inukai, owners of Dick's Auto, bought Bruce Chevrolet in Hillsboro, Ore., from longtime owner Bruce Patchett. Terms were not disclosed, but the store was renamed Dick's Hillsboro Chevrolet.

Scott Inukai said adding the Chevrolet dealership complements the rest of the group's franchises. Dick's Auto now has brands from each of the Detroit 3, and Chevrolet gives the group another lineup of pickups to sell. The group also owns a Honda store and a Hyundai store.

"It fits well with our auto group," Scott Inukai said. "We have a Ford store, a Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge-[Ram] store and now a Chevy store, so all the trucks. We're definitely a truck town and a truck auto group."

The acquisition is the group's first expansion since 2013, when it bought Honda and Hyundai stores from Larry H. Miller …

WASHINGTON -- The UAW said Friday it wants tax incentives for electric vehicles revised to require U.S. assembly for those vehicles to qualify.

The current $7,500 tax incentive does not require EVs to be made in the United States. "The UAW is working with the Biden administration and Congress to make sure that the final legislation extending electric vehicle subsidies is clear that those investments subsidize the jobs of U.S. workers," said UAW Vice President Terry Dittes.

General Motors announced Thursday it would invest $1 billion in its Mexico operations and begin building EVs there in 2023.

Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, said "electric vehicles must be built here in America by the finest workforce in the world – the American worker. Not one American dollar should support our own jobs being shipped off to Mexico."

The White House did not immediately comment Friday, but President Joe Biden has called for $174 billion to boost U.S…

DETROIT -- Credit Acceptance Corp. announced this week that longtime CEO Brett Roberts will retire and the company reached a $27 million settlement with the Massachusetts attorney general tied to alleged deceptive loan practices.

Roberts, 54, will leave the top position at the subprime auto lender effective May 3, the company said in a Thursday press release. The company's board of directors named current CFO Kenneth Booth, 53, to succeed Roberts as Credit Acceptance's president and CEO. He will also join the board. The board increased the seats on the board to five and named Vinayak Hegde, president and COO of Seattle-based Blink Health, as a director.

Roberts leaves the company as it battles regulators and short sellers over its lending practices. Credit Acceptance's main business is to acquire consumer auto loans from dealerships, typically high risk loans. The company repossesses upward of 35 percent of the vehicles it finances, Plainsite reported in 2018…

Editor's note: GM posted adjusted earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of $9.7 billion in 2020 and $8.4 billion in 2019. An earlier version of this story misstated those figures.

DETROIT — Mary Barra remained the highest-paid CEO of the Detroit 3 in 2020. She earned $23.7 million, a 9.4 percent increase, in her seventh year leading General Motors.

Barra is the only Detroit 3 CEO who is also chairman. Her compensation, disclosed Friday in GM's annual proxy statement, includes a base salary of about $2 million, a 5 percent decline from 2019; $3.8 million in short-term incentives vs. $2.7 million in 2019; and $13.1 million in stock awards, up from $12.1 million.

Mike Manley, in his last year leading Fiat Chrysler Automobiles before merging into Stellantis, made $14.2 million in 2020. Jim Farley, who became Ford Motor Co.'s CEO in October, received $11.8 million last year, while predecessor Jim Hackett made $16.7 million.

GM also said its lead in…

Free2Move, the short-term vehicle rental operation owned by Stellantis, has been pushing its car-sharing services into the U.S. market recently following its success with the model across the globe.

Now Free2Move is bringing its Car on Demand subscription services to the U.S. after operating them in Europe since 2019.

The company has been operating a fleet for its app-based car-sharing service that can be rented by the minute, hour or day in Washington, D.C., since 2018, and recently announced plans to expand to Portland, Ore., this spring or summer, starting with a fleet of 200 Jeep Renegades.

Free2Move will now expand its subscription service to six U.S. states before the end of the year, starting in Los Angeles. The other locations were not disclosed.

Car On Demand gives customers access to vehicles on a monthly basis and includes insurance, roadside assistance, vehicle maintenance, free delivery and up to 1,000 mile…

On the same day that Ford Motor Co. said it would be able to produce only half as many cars as planned due to a global chip shortage, Apple announced blowout quarterly earnings as smartphone and computer sales soared, with the chip shortage having only a small impact on its business.

The contrasting results show how major players in the electronics industry, accustomed to the long-time horizons of chip production, have mostly avoided major disruptions from the chip shortage.

Automakers and their suppliers, with "just-in-time" production lines that can more easily be spun up or changed to produce different varieties of parts, have not.

Apple said Wednesday that it would lose $3 billion to $4 billion in sales in the current quarter due to limited supplies of certain older chips.

Still, that represents just a few percentage points of Apple's projected sales of $68.94 billion for the fiscal third quarter, according to Refinitiv revenue estimates, comp…

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an inquiry into the U.S. unit of Volkswagen Group over a marketing stunt in which it falsely said it was changing its name in the United States to "Voltswagen," a person briefed on the matter confirmed to Reuters.

Spiegel first reported the inquiry and the SEC's request for information about the issue made in early April and quoted VW as confirming the investigation.

Volkswagen declined to comment on the matter to Reuters. The SEC did not respond to a request for comment.

The company in March apologized after a false statement it issued about a phony name change was widely slammed on social media.

The stunt, which came just ahead of April Fool’s Day, was meant to call attention to its EV efforts, the carmaker said.

The initial statement outlining the name change, posted on its website and accompanied by tweets, was reported by Automotive News, Reuters and other outlets glo…