Trade News

With vehicle sales plummeting and thousands of dealership showrooms coast to coast ordered to shutter in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, dealers are desperately slashing costs — including laying off employees en masse.

Stay-at-home mandates by governors and local leaders to curb the outbreak accelerated last week. The resulting restrictions on vehicle sales in those locations added to the rapid falloff in sales and showroom traffic across the U.S. and left one dealership hiring expert predicting that retailers will have to cut a third of their work forces by May.

That would equate to 360,000 or more dealership employees out of work in a matter of weeks. U.S. dealerships last year employed more than 1.1 million people, with an estimated 225,000 people working directly in vehicle sales, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association.

While it's unclear just how many employees have been affected thus far, many dealer…

BEIJING -- China's auto industry has gone from zero to sixty in its post-pandemic campaign drive, with manufacturers and dealers moving quick to woo back lockdown-weary consumers through campaigns as unusual as a makeup-promoting personality touting leases.

Social media celebrity Lipstick King urged millions of fans on a live-streamed shopping show to sign up for a lease deal for one of General Motors Co.'s Cadillac CT4 compact sedans.

"This color has the sense of 'I'm in charge' independence," he said, displaying a scale model of a chocolate-colored car.

The plug is just one part of a flury of promotional campaigns featuring steep discounts, cold calls and gimmicks, from an industry rocked by government restrictions on movement imposed in January to curb the spread of a virus which in China has infected 81,000 people and caused 3,300 deaths.

The economy shrank 21 percent in January-February with sales in the world's biggest vehicle market last mo…

BYD Co. will start offering a full suite of electric-vehicle components to rivals and aspiring auto manufacturers to diversify its revenue sources amid sputtering car demand.

Among the parts that the Shenzhen-based company makes and now sells are EV batteries, powertrains and lights, founder Wang Chuanfu said in an online press conference on Sunday.

BYD, China’s biggest maker of vehicles powered by alternative energy for the past six years, will use the brand name FinDreams for the parts business.

EV sales have been slumping in China since July, when the country reduced sales subsidies, and the decline has been exacerbated by the coronavirus outbreak. BYD, which is financially more stable than most local EV competitors, is betting the new business will help it return to growth quicker even as the market contracts.

“BYD will open its technology and products to the whole world,” Wang said. “FinDreams units will help change the role participants in C…

Credit ratings agency Moody's Investor Service on Friday sharply cut its 2020 outlook for global auto sales, with Western Europe expected to take the biggest hit as the coronavirus outbreak worsens outside of China.

The agency said it now expects global auto sales to fall 14 percent in 2020, much more than its previous estimate of about 2.5 percent drop in February.

The credit rating agency now expects auto sales in Western Europe to see the steepest drop-off in demand - at 21 percent this year, sharply weaker than its previous forecast of a 4 percent decline.

In China, the world's largest market, auto unit sales are expected to fall 10%, a steeper decline than the previous projection of a 2.9% drop.

In the U.S., the agency expects light vehicle sales to fall at least 15 percent in 2020, weakening from its previous forecast of a 1.2 percent decline.

The number of U.S. coronavirus infections climbed above 82,000 on Thursday, surpassing the n…

DETROIT — Whenever Fiat Chrysler Automobiles restarts North America production, the UAW members working the lines will have to cope with the grim reality that COVID-19 has claimed the lives of several colleagues.

The rising death count from the global coronavirus pandemic is personal for them now. It includes familiar faces who walked the same halls and toiled on the same factory floors they did.

Clocking in won't be the same for Aric Holloway, a longtime worker at FCA's Warren Truck Assembly Plant north of Detroit. A co-worker who would greet people at the door died Wednesday, March 25.

"He would usually be there in the morning when you come in the front door, shaking your hand and telling you, 'Thanks for coming to work.' It was a joke that we" had, Holloway told Automotive News. "He would be in front of the plant every morning."

These deaths loom as automakers plot their courses of action. Mid-April appears to be the earliest that most North A…

SAN FRANCISCO — On a rainy December afternoon, Anthony Levandowski sat on a stool near the front of a coffee shop, engrossed in his phone.

He scrolled through pictures on a website that dares users to discern the difference between images of humans generated by artificial intelligence and actual photos of humans. For the uninitiated, it’s a crapshoot. The more time spent staring at the images, the more convincing the fakes appear. Doubt seeps in. The more unnerving the game becomes.

For Levandowski, more skilled in separating what’s real from Silicon Valley creations, spotting the telltale signs of images designed to deceive is an easier task. A small discoloration. A stray hair. He has aced six in a row, and his enthusiasm spills over as he gains momentum.

“Look, look at the freckle on the side,” he exclaims, pointing to an otherwise innocuous blemish.

While he examines images with dermatological care, he’s oblivious to the gawkers and passersby…

On March 11, an employee of Roy O'Brien Ford in St. Clair Shores, Mich., visited his pregnant sister. Three days later, she went into labor and developed a fever.

When the employee phoned the dealership to say his sister was awaiting the results of a COVID-19 test and he had potentially been exposed, leadership acted quickly.

"Our general manager — who happens to be my brother — and I sat down and talked about our plan of attack," said dealership Chairman Mark O'Brien. The employee, who had worked at the store for several days before his sister developed symptoms, was told to quarantine at home for two weeks. On March 17, O'Brien and his brother decided to split shifts across the dealership.

Sales staff divided into two teams that would work every other week while technicians halved the day; morning shift clocked in at 7:30 a.m., leaving at 12:30 p.m., while a second team of technicians worked from 1 to 6 p.m. During the break b…

TOKYO — The auto industries of Japan and South Korea have remained out of step with the pandemic-beleaguered worlds of North America and Europe in recent days.

As vehicle assembly plants and dealerships shut down in rapid succession from Madrid to Wolfsburg to Detroit, those in Japan and South Korea have been able to continue pumping out and selling cars.

Although cracks began appearing last week, along with mounting calls to lock down social activity, it has been almost business as usual for the two Asian automotive heavyweights in the face of the global health crisis. Factories stayed open, as did much of the rest of society, including bars, restaurants and shopping malls. Springtime revelers in Tokyo were still turning out to drink under the trees for the annual cherry blossom viewing.

But last week, the world's new economic worries began to prove a contagion of its own here. Soon after the governor of California issued a stat…

DETROIT — Two Ford Motor Co. workers have died from the coronavirus, the UAW said Saturday.

One worked at the automaker's Dearborn Stamping plant while the other was a skilled trades employee at the Ford Data Center in Dearborn, Mich., the union said.

The pair are the first Ford employees known to have died from the virus. Five workers at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles have died, four of whom were UAW members.

"It is a tragic reminder that the coronavirus crisis is everywhere and requires the attention of all of us," Ford said in a statement confirming their deaths. "Our thoughts are with their families, friends and co-workers during this difficult time. Nothing is more important than the health and safety of our work force, dealers, customers and communities. We will continue to follow the guidance from global health experts to do all we can to keep our people healthy."

It was unclear when exactly the workers died. The names of the two workers we…

DETROIT -- The 2020 North American International Auto Show has been canceled amid the worsening coronavirus pandemic. 

The TCF Center, where the Detroit show was set to take place in June, will be converted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency into a field hospital as COVID-19 cases in Michigan continue to rise.

The next Detroit auto show will be staged in June 2021, according to a memo sent to sponsors obtained by Automotive News.

"The health and welfare of the citizens of Detroit and Michigan is paramount," Rod Alberts, executive director of the show, said in the memo. "TCF Center is the ideal location for this important function at this critical and unprecedented time.” 

In a statement released later Saturday, Alberts said: “With the more than 100 convention centers and facilities around the country being considered to potentially serve as temporary hospitals, it became clear to us that TCF Center would be an inevitable op…

Editor’s note: This story is part of a package on leadership during the coronavirus crisis that will appear in the March 30 issue of Automotive News.

By the time automakers halted production across the globe in response to COVID-19 — all but forcing their parts makers to do the same — one South Korean automotive supplier, StradVision Inc., had already recognized the danger and implemented a multistep plan to tackle the virus' spread.

Before the coronavirus became a pandemic, the fledgling supplier of autonomous vehicle and advanced driver-assistance systems technology began responding to the crisis in January, taking steps to protect its staff at offices in South Korea, Germany, Japan and San Jose, Calif.

The company was determined to protect its early successes with customers, as well as its chief assets — the employees who were making it possible.

That response made the 6-year-old StradVision one of the early adopters of critical precautionary …