Trade News

A lot of us in the media, like many in the automotive industry, have learned a lot about working remotely these last couple of months.

Some conference calls and other routines stay the same. Other practices are modified or dropped based on priorities and what is possible. This is an important time for us to be working; we have the tools to do it from anywhere and we can just carry on.

But it isn't the same.

It isn't the same as a newsroom humming with theories and gossip and the latest actual news. It isn't the same as sharing coffee with a colleague, shaking the hand of a dealer or looking in the eye of a CEO.

We do the best we can. And compared with how our parents or grandparents worked, it's amazing what so many of us can do from our homes with this fabulous 21st-century technology.

But it isn't the same.

John Krafcik knows. The Waymo CEO was on a "Daily Drive" podcast last week with Automotive News Publisher Jason Stein (Shamele…

Danny Shapiro, senior director of automotive at Nvidia, discusses the company’s pivot to support ADAS technologies, consumer trends to watch and how AI is helping in the fight against COVID-19.

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When it arrives in dealerships late this year, Toyota's redesigned 2021 Sienna will finally match its competitors when it comes to creature comforts and technology. And it will best them when it comes to fuel economy with a standard hybrid powertrain that increases the minivan's estimated combined rating to 33 mpg, a 57 percent improvement over the outgoing non-hybridized model.

The newest Sienna, redesigned onto Toyota's flexible TNGA-K platform — which underpins vehicles as diverse as the Camry, RAV4 and Highlander — receives much-needed styling and interior updates, as well as extra safety equipment and capabilities made possible by its first new platform in a decade.

The Sienna borrows attributes that drew families to large crossovers while keeping the sliding side doors and roomier interior that once made minivans the king of people movers. Among its new available features are an on-board refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner and footrests for second-row seats.<…

Everything about David Sokol's work routine has changed. Even his lunch hour.

The third-generation Ford Motor Co. employee puts fasteners on Super Duty pickups, Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators. Since walking into the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville last week for the first time since the coronavirus halted auto production nationwide in March, Sokol has had to adjust nearly all the habits he'd become used to since being hired eight years ago.

He now sits in the parking lot a few extra minutes before each 10-hour shift to fill out a health survey on his phone. He slips a mask over his mouth and nose and tries to stay 6 feet from other employees without falling behind on the steady stream of trucks coming down the assembly line. And he eats in relative solitude at picnic tables where black plastic partitions wall him off from his co-workers.

"It feels like you're in elementary school trying to take a test and they don't want y…

In an alternate 2020, Russian tech company Yandex might have been the standout at the North American International Auto Show.

The company had begun mapping the streets of Detroit this year in anticipation of an ambitious showcase of self-driving technology during the auto show, which had been scheduled for June. That display would have consisted of Yandex using its Hyundai Sonatas to do something none of the other companies in attendance would have done — ferry members of the show-going public without using predetermined routes.

The company's plans, along with the rest of the show, were scrapped amid the COVID- 19 fallout. It has not yet been decided whether Yandex will continue to use Detroit as its North American hub or whether it will return for next year's show.

But COVID has allowed Yandex to accelerate efforts on the delivery front. In late April, the company deployed its Yandex.Rover sidewalk delivery bot in Skolkovo, Russi…

When coronavirus-related stay-at-home orders led the Las Vegas Strip to go dark — reportedly for the first time since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 — anxiety rippled through the community that is the customer base of Gaudin Ford.

"You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't [work], or doesn't have family who works, on the Strip in some way," General Manager Wesley Gregg told Automotive News.

Sales declined as fears mounted and strict shelter-in-place orders and mandatory closures shackled local businesses. But the Nevada dealership realized in late March that while the orders might keep customers from coming into its showroom, it didn't stop them from buying vehicles remotely.

Plucking a Ford Transit van from the dealership's used-vehicle inventory, a team of employees converted it to house everything necessary to finalize a vehicle purchase face-to-face with minimal risk of infection.

Outfitted with a bolted-down …

LONDON -- Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer is leaving the automaker as part of a management shake-up, the Financial Times reported, citing people with knowledge of the move.

The company will name Tobias Moers, CEO of Mercedes-AMG, as Palmer's replacement on Tuesday, the paper reported on Sunday.

Daimler owns a 5 percent stake in Aston Martin and supplies the automaker with Mercedes-AMG engines.

Palmer joined Aston Martin in 2014 after working for Nissan for 25 years, rising to become chief planning officer and a key lieutenant of former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn.

Aston Martin's shares have fallen by more than 90 percent since its initial public offering in 2018 as the company was hit by oversupply to its dealerships, and a global slowdown among luxury buyers.

The automaker booked a 120 million-pound loss ($146 million) in the first three months, in part because factories and dealerships were forced to closed due to coronavirus.

In Jan…

The short version of Hertz Global Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy story goes something like this: global pandemic obliterates the travel business and lands an iconic 102-year-old company in court to seek protection from creditors.

The long version is a fable about what happens when a company relies on accounting and consolidation to keep shareholders happy. It’s a tale of lurching from one CEO to another and management teams failing to stay attuned to consumer tastes.

Enterprise Holdings Inc. and Avis Budget Group Inc. are suffering through the same COVID-19 drought, but Hertz’s own bad decisions and hard luck made it vulnerable at the worst time. One former top executive summed up its plight as a slow-moving train wreck.

On its Chapter 11 petition, Hertz listed $25.8 billion in assets. It has over $1 billion in cash and $24.4 billion of debt. A company that began with a dozen Ford Model Ts and was taken for a spin by General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and a grou…

Last month, Mel Hambelton Ford in Wichita, Kan., found itself at the center of a coronavirus cluster.

Five confirmed cases of the respiratory illness caused by the virus were connected to the dealership, the health department in Sedgwick County, Kan., news release.

It is an event that illustrates the anxiety of many retailers at the moment, with employees, customers, managers and local officials all caught up in an unfamiliar crisis.

The county health department stepped in to issue a public notification because of potential customer exposure to a dealership employee who contracted COVID-19 but couldn't identify every recent contact.

Kansas had deemed dealerships to be essential functions that could operate during the coronavirus threat. And the store remained open despite the confirmed cases, a decision county public health officials said is usually left to individual businesses. But working with health department g…

Toyota's massive truck plant near San Antonio had a one-week head start on its Detroit 3 competitors when its workers returned to their jobs May 11, but that didn't translate into an extra week's worth of new Toyota Tundras and Tacomas.

In fact, the plant didn't produce a single vehicle for three days.

After meticulous preparations and the retraining of 3,000 workers and supervisors to do their jobs within new social distancing protocols after a seven-week shutdown, the plant built just five pickups May 14 and 10 the next day, said Kevin Voelkel, president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas.

"It's not about building trucks; it's about building trust. And if I can build trust, then building trucks is easy," Voelkel told Automotive News last week.

Toyota had planned a slow start to retrain its workers after shutting down all 14 of its active assembly and parts plants across North America on March 23 because of the COVI…

ATLANTA — Mercedes-Benz USA has ordered its 875 headquarters employees to work remotely for the remainder of the year.

The directive could extend into 2021.

"Working remotely was the exception — for the foreseeable future, it will become the norm," Mercedes-Benz USA CEO Nicholas Speeks told Automotive News last week.

Several corporations, including Google, Microsoft and Amazon, have extended the remote-work plans they imposed this year as employees remain skittish about possibly contracting the coronavirus.

Mercedes' metro-Atlanta headquarters emptied in mid-March as schools closed and Georgia went into lockdown, but business has continued from living room couches, kitchen tables and patio chairs. Speeks said it is actually going smoothly.

"We are able to function effectively and it gives people an opportunity" for better work-life balance, the CEO said.

He described the work-from-home poli…