Trade News

Canadian auto supplier Magna International expects global sales to hit as much as $45.5 billion in 2023, according to company slides posted before the company's investor day on Tuesday.

The company said it expects sales to grow to a range of $43 billion to $45.5 billion in 2023, up from $32.6 billion in 2020, it said in slides posted online.

In its annual report issued last month, the supplier said it expects global light-vehicle production to grow six percent on average per year from 2020 through 2023.

“We expect our sales to grow 10-12 percent on average per year over that time frame,” the supplier said in the report.

However, that was before the global microchip shortage grabbed a hold of the industry, idling plants around the world for weeks at a time.

In that report, the supplier said that more than 90 percent of its 2023 sales were already booked, including:

EV battery enclosures that contribute to the structure of the vehicle, pr…

DETROIT — General Motors plans to restart production at its Spring Hill, Tenn., plant Monday — one week earlier than expected — and canceled a production pause for the Chevrolet Blazer in Mexico, the automaker said Tuesday.

Last week, GM said it would pause or limit production at six North America plants throughout April, including Spring Hill Assembly, which builds the Cadillac XT5 and XT6 and GMC Acadia crossovers, and Ramos Arizpe Assembly in Mexico, which builds the Blazer. Automakers are grappling with a global shortage of microchips.

"GM's supply chain organization has made strides working with our supply base to mitigate the near-term impacts of the semiconductor situation on both Spring Hill Assembly and Ramos Assembly," spokesman David Barnas said.

GM shut down production at Spring Hill on April 12 and had expected to take two weeks of downtime.

The automaker had planned to idle production of the Blazer crossove…

DETROIT — Federal prosecutors on Monday asked a judge to appoint lawyer Neil Barofsky as an independent monitor to oversee the UAW as part of its corruption case settlement with the union.

Barofsky, a partner at law firm Jenner & Block, previously was appointed monitor to oversee Credit Suisse Securities and Credit Suisse AG following billion-dollar settlements, prosecutors said. He also was an attorney in the Southern District of New York and was appointed inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program instituted by the U.S. Treasury after the Great Recession.

In a motion sent before U.S. District Judge David Lawson, prosecutors said they believed Barofsky "would dutifully fulfill the role as monitor in this case."

The UAW in February submitted its list of candidates, per the consent decree, which a spokesman on Monday confirmed included Barofsky. Prosecutors had the right to request additional candidates before selecting one and requestin…

The chief executive of Intel Corp. told Reuters on Monday the company is in talks to start producing chips for carmakers to alleviate a shortage that has idled automotive factories.

CEO Pat Gelsinger said the company is talking to companies that design chips for automakers about manufacturing those chips inside Intel's factory network, with the goal of producing chips within six to nine months. Gelsinger earlier on Monday met with White House officials to discuss the semiconductor supply chain.

Intel is one of the last companies in the semiconductor industry that both designs and manufactures its own chips. The company last month said it would open its factories up to outside customers and build factories in the United States and Europe in a bid to counter the dominance of Asian chip manufacturers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co.

But Gelsinger said Monday that he told White House officials during the meeting that…

DETROIT -- Volvo Cars said Monday it will use a new generation of high-powered chips from Nvidia Corp. to enable more autonomous driving functions in future vehicles, starting next year.

Volvo is among a crowd of new and established automakers putting digital processing power ahead of horsepower as they try to catch up with Tesla Inc.

Tesla, the world's most valuable automaker, has taken the lead in software-driven features and functional capability in part by equipping its cars and SUVs with powerful, and expensive, on-board computers that can manage complex tasks such as automated driving, and be upgraded over the air.

For Nvidia, the Volvo agreement, a similar deal with electric vehicle startup Faraday Future, and other agreements expected in the coming weeks mark a reboot of growth for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based gaming and data center processor company's automotive business.

"Nvidia's pipeline of automotive orders has grown into the ma…

DETROIT — General Motors plans to roll out a more convenient in-vehicle navigation system this month for select 2018 model-year and newer vehicles, the automaker said Monday.

On April 30, Maps+, which is powered by Mapbox, will be available to about 900,000 vehicles as part of select Connected Services plans. It's an upgrade from GM's OnStar turn-by-turn navigation tool, though that tool will still be available to drivers.

Owners of 2018 model-year and newer vehicles who want the new mapping system can download an over-the-air update. GM and Mapbox will continue to enhance Maps+ based on feedback and metrics, GM said.

"We know customers want an easy and convenient in-vehicle experience that improves over time," Santiago Chamorro, GM vice president of Global Connected Services, said in a statement. "We listened to customer feedback and developed a product that works seamlessly with our current infotainment systems and provides a highly personalized exper…

WASHINGTON --  President Joe Biden told companies vying with each other for a sharply constrained global supply of semiconductors that he has bipartisan support for government funding to address a shortage that has idled automakers worldwide.

During a White House meeting with CEOs on Monday, Biden read from a letter from 23 senators and 42 House members backing his proposal for $50 billion for semiconductor manufacturing and research.

“Both sides of the aisle are strongly supportive of what we’re proposing and where I think we can really get things done for the American people,” Biden said. “Now let me quote from the letter. It says, ‘The Chinese Communist Party is aggressively -- plans to reorient and dominate the semiconductor supply chain,’ and it goes into how much money will be they’re pouring into being able to do that.”

More than a dozen CEOs, including General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley and Stellantis CEO Carlos Ta…

JM Family Enterprises CEO Brent Burns discusses business opportunities outside the auto industry and the company's large-scale renovation of its Florida headquarters amid the pandemic.

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As dealerships accelerated digital retailing during the pandemic, giving customers the ability to conduct entire transactions electronically, David O'Brien saw a critical element of the sales process rapidly slipping away: the human interaction that builds relationships.

O'Brien, who has worked in various roles in dealership training for more than 20 years, saw another flaw in a system he helped perpetuate. People like him fly into a city, spend two or three days giving intensive training to service advisers, and then they leave. Soon after, the training often comes to a halt, and what was learned may soon be forgotten.

Those observations led O'Brien to co-found Quantum5, a training company based in Scottsdale, Ariz. It uses artificial intelligence and other technology — as well as person-to-person training — to help teach traditional sales skills, such as recognizing the needs and desires of customers to find what motivates them to buy product…

An oft-told story of 2020 was how the pandemic brought back into focus the importance of fixed operations at franchised dealerships. The pandemic forced states to temporarily close businesses, including auto sales departments across the country. But service departments were considered essential and remained open, bringing in money to keep dealerships afloat until restrictions eased later in the year.

Ian Grace, senior director of partner performance at automotiveMastermind, thinks the crisis that hits the industry in 2021 will be a lack of vehicle inventory.

Blame microchip shortages and other supply chain issues that are pinching production. And that could result in a sort of dealership déjà vu.

"It's causing many [dealers] to kind of go back to that 2020 view of the importance of the service drive," Grace says.

Yes, fixed ops might be called upon again to help carry the front of the store as they did during the pand…