Trade News

Finance-and-insurance software provider Dealertrack is now capable of supporting a fully digital process after adding an electronic signature feature to its tool and integrating another so customers can remotely sign and submit any deal document digitally, the company said last month.

Pandemic conditions accelerated progress of the technology, which was previously expected to launch within six months, according to Emil Banga, associate vice president of F&I dealer operations at Cox Automotive.

"We put this at the head of the pack," Banga said about the advancements. "We were able to get that done in a very, very short time frame."

The new feature, Dealertrack Ready Sign, allows dealership employees to upload forms to the company's uniFI F&I software and assign blocks from customer signatures, initials and dates — much like a PDF. Once uploaded, documents can be sent to customers through a secure link accessed through a smar…

Schaeffler will cut 4,400 jobs and close or sell several German plants as the automotive supplier joins peers in reeling from the coronavirus pandemic.

Most of the reductions will take place at a dozen facilities in Germany and two sites elsewhere in Europe, the maker of engine, transmission and chassis components said in a statement Wednesday. Factories in Wuppertal, Eltmann and Clasthal-Zellerfeld will be shut or shopped to other companies, with the cuts expected to save Schaeffler as much as 300 million euros ($354 million) a year. The company will take a one-time charge of 700 million euros ($826 million) for the restructuring.

“We’re in a situation where the really bad effects of the pandemic are easing, but the levels we saw in 2019, we’re not going to reach anytime soon,” CEO Klaus Rosenfeld said in an interview, adding that a recovery might take until 2024. “It’s not going to be v-shaped.”

Suppliers including Schaeffler and Continental, which are…

Hella is establishing a global unit to house and coordinate all software activities across the company and accelerate the development of software-based business models.

The Global Software House will draw together Hella's 2,000 software employees to reduce "complexities surrounding software development" and align its cross-divisional software activities into one uniform approach, the German supplier said Wednesday.

Hella, traditionally a supplier of electronic and lighting controls and systems, has been moving into software as automaker customers continue to call for more software development in their vehicles.

"The future of the automobile is largely decided by software developers. By 2030, the market for software and electronics in vehicles will almost double," Hella CEO Rolf Breidenbach said in a statement.

"This does not even take into account the diverse, far-reaching applications of digitalization and software in production and administratio…

Jack Oliver Jr., dealer principal of Oliver Ford-Lincoln in Plymouth, Ind., died of COVID-19 on Aug. 7. He was 78.

Oliver and his wife, Jana Oliver, tested positive for coronavirus in the middle of July and were hospitalized and isolated from friends, family and each other, said his son, John Oliver III.

Jeff Wills, finance manager at Oliver Ford-Lincoln, told Automotive News about Oliver's death in hopes of sharing the importance of taking the coronavirus seriously.

"It's real, and it hit our family here," he said.

John Oliver III, the dealership's general manager, is in line to take over as dealer principal. He said his dad prepared him for the role.

"As a son, I wondered for many years, why is he treating me so much differently than the other employees? He held me to a very high standard," he said. "It's because he was preparing me for my life now after."

Oliver is survived by his wife, three ch…

SAN FRANCISCO -- When Tesla Inc.’s shareholders gather Sept. 22 for their annual meeting, Kristin Hull will have roughly three minutes to make the case against the company’s use of mandatory arbitration for employee sexual harassment and racial discrimination claims.

Hull is the CEO of Nia Impact Capital, a social impact fund based in Oakland, Calif., that invests in several sustainable energy companies. Tesla is its biggest name and among its largest holdings. Late last year, she filed a first-of-its-kind proposal for a Tesla shareholder resolution.

The ask: for the board of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based EV maker, which has over 60,000 employees globally, to prepare a report on its use of employee arbitration.

Most people who work directly for Tesla sign away their rights to a trial. Hull wants to know how many discrimination and harassment cases go to arbitration, how much that’s costing the company, and investors, and the demographics of those bringing …

Prime and above customers fled the new-car market in recent years, finding quality and cost-effective alternatives on used-car lots. But aggressive incentive activity from automakers in the second quarter reversed that trend, credit bureau Experian said last week, allowing captive automakers to reclaim market share of its most desired consumer base.

Amid a sharp drop in second-quarter sales across the industry, consumers with prime and above credit made up 75 percent of new-vehicle loans, up from 72 percent last year.

The captive finance arms of automakers also collectively secured the largest slice of the new-vehicle financing market among auto lenders, raising market share to 31 percent of the industry compared with 29 percent last year at that time.

Many uncertainties lie ahead as the pandemic rages on in the U.S. How long will the economy, already in a recession, continue to tread water amid the crisis? What changes will be nec…

DETROIT — General Motors has told most of its U.S. salaried employees that they should continue working remotely through June 2021, stretching their work-from-home setup to as long as 15 months.

A "significant number" of employees have returned to their offices safely on a full-time or part-time basis, but the majority of GM's salaried workforce in the U.S. is still working remotely, spokesman David Caldwell said.

GM joins other large companies, including Amazon, Google and crosstown rival Ford Motor Co., in allowing employees to work remotely into next year during the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of instructing more employees to return to their offices soon, GM said its salaried employees will continue to work as they are either remotely or on-site.

"Our current outlook in the U.S. is to continue operating as we are today until June 30, 2021. During this period, we're listening to feedback and working on the elements of a more flexible work culture," C…

MEXICO CITY -- Volkswagen Group said late Monday it had severed ties with a distributor in Mexico City after a Twitter user posted photographs taken at the business showing a wall decorated with an image of a Nazi celebration of the Beetle car.

In a statement, Volkswagen's Mexico unit condemned the images from the salesroom in the southern neighborhood of Coyoacan and stressed its commitment to upholding human dignity.

"We strongly disapprove of (the distributor) showing those images at its facilities, which showed a regime that emphasized hatred and discrimination at a point in history that has fortunately been left behind," Volkswagen said.

The dealership could not immediately be reached for comment.

Initially founded in the 1930s on orders by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler to build the "people's car", Volkswagen employed forced laborers for the German military effort in World War Two.

The automaker's decision on the Mexican distributor came …

Most of the money spent on hydrogen fuel cells has been aimed at reducing the precious metal content, such as platinum, to lower the cost of the electricity-producing device. Automakers have made massive progress in that regard, as well as in reducing the size of the fuel cell stack.

But there is one part of the fuel cell that no automaker company ever talks about: high-volume production. That's because most of the fuel cells built for automobiles today are hand-made by technicians.

As of 2018, Toyota was building about seven Mirai fuel cell vehicles per day, all by hand.

The news Tuesday of General Motors' deal with startup truckmaker Nikola provided no details about the technology GM plans to embrace to crank out fuel cell stacks quickly and with zero defects. The stack, you will recall, contains membranes and thin metal plates, and much like the cells in a battery pack, the more the cells are stacked in a fuel cell, the more elect…