Trade News

Austin Russell, a 28-year-old automotive technology billionaire, acquired an 82 percent stake in Forbes Global Media Holdings, parent of the well-known Forbes business magazine.

The deal values the company at close to $800 million, the parties said in a statement Friday. The seller, Hong Kong-based Integrated Whale Media Investments will retain a minority stake. The Forbes family will not, though Steve Forbes will remain involved.

Russell is the CEO of Luminar Technologies Inc., which provides autonomous driving technology to the automotive industry. The company, which has a $2.1 billion market capitalization, posted sales of $40.7 million last year and isn’t profitable. Shares in Luminar fell 2.8 percent to $5.53 on Friday.

Russell plans to serve as a visionary for the Forbes brand and won’t be involved in day-to-day operations, according to the statement.

Forbes plans to appoint a new board consisting of American media, technology and artificial…

New-vehicle inventories continued their slow climb last month, even in the face of the fastest sales pace in more than a year, in a further sign that production constraints are easing, according to data compiled by Cox Automotive and the Automotive News Research & Data Center.

Cox's most recent estimate of the U.S. inventory is 1,904,958 vehicles, a 53-day supply. That's up from 1,893,855 vehicles, or a 56-day supply, in the previous month, and about 71 percent higher than it was a year earlier. However, it is very close to where the industry was at the same point in 2021 as inventory levels began to rapidly recede and industrywide days' supply fell below 40. Cox computes days' supply based on the selling rate of the previous 30-day period.

As they have been for several months, midsize, compact, subcompact and high-performance cars were the only segments with less than a 40-day supply of inventory, Cox said, while full-size pickups, electric…

Alfa Romeo is preparing to launch a TV ad blitz for the Tonale compact crossover, the Italian brand's first plug-in hybrid vehicle.

The Tonale has been making the rounds in an outreach tour highlighted by a display at a Formula One race in Montreal, various auto shows and an April 2022 appearance on "Live with Kelly and Ryan."

Now, with it arriving in dealerships this month, Alfa Romeo wants to make the crossover's presence known on a broader scale with a significant investment in TV advertising.

Stephanie Goldstein, the brand's head of North America marketing, said the TV campaign has the potential to boost Alfa's other offerings, the Giulia sedan and the Stelvio crossover, as well. Consumers heading online to search for the Tonale may perhaps find those nameplates to be more appealing, she said.

The Tonale is the brand's last new vehicle with an internal combustion engine. Alfa Romeo — which reported a 30 percent U.S. sales decline in 2022 and …

As General Motors invests heavily in software, the automaker will get a boost from the Silicon Valley tech world.

Mike Abbott, who led cloud services at Apple Inc., will become GM's executive vice president of software beginning May 22, the automaker said last week. He will report to CEO Mary Barra and oversee a reorganized software team focused on information and digital technology, software-defined vehicle and operating systems, and digital business.

Abbott, 50, joins GM at a time of digital transformation at the automaker. GM continues work on its Ultifi software platform and the development of software-defined vehicles, which will be able to offer apps and other features to consumers through over-the-air updates. GM also expects software and subscription services to be a key future revenue driver, to the tune of $20 billion to $25 billion by 2030.

At the same time, GM said its upcoming electric vehicles would not offer Apple C…

Bosch is reorganizing its Mobility Solutions business sector, giving it more autonomy within the huge supplier's corporate structure, and forecasting a surge in revenue to $88 billion by the end of this decade.

The change reflects the auto industry's global shift away from the parts and hardware that make up vehicles powered by internal combustion engines, a business that has made Bosch a global leader over the past century. In the coming decade, automakers will increasingly rely on technologies that can update and alter a vehicle's performance or improve its safety.

The German company's unit will be called Bosch Mobility and led by Markus Heyn, chairman of Mobility Services since January 2022, the supplier said. The change will be effective Jan. 1, 2024.

Its expected growth engines will include automotive software, which Bosch says has been growing by "double digits" in recent years. The company estimated the segment will have a …

Ford dealer Richard Bazzy's indecisiveness has helped dozens of students from his high school alma mater attend college.

In 2020, Bazzy, who owns three Shults Ford locations outside Pittsburgh, created a $5,000 annual scholarship intended for graduates of Steel Valley High School.

The next year, 11 students applied for the scholarship, which asks for a one-page essay on how their schooling prepared them to succeed. Bazzy couldn't choose just one winner, so he gave the full $5,000 to all 11 applicants.

In 2022, 18 students applied. Bazzy again awarded the scholarship to all of them. This year saw 26 applications, and once again, 26 oversized checks were presented at a ceremony this month.

"If I can help people, it's my responsibility to do that and especially for my high school," Bazzy, who didn't attend college after graduating in the 1970s, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for a story last week. "To me, it is a disappointment that I cannot do m…

WASHINGTON, May 12 (Reuters) -The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration demanded the recall of 67 million air bag inflators because it believes there is a safety defect, but auto supplier ARC Automotive Inc. rejected the U.S. regulator's request, documents released on Friday show.

ARC air bag inflators are in General Motors, Stellantis, BMW, Hyundai Motor, and Kia Motors vehicles.

GM on Friday agreed to recall nearly 1 million vehicles with the ARC air bag inflators after a rupture in March resulted in facial injuries to a driver.

The GM recall covers 994,763 Buick Enclave, Chevrolet Traverse, and GMC Acadia vehicles from the 2014 through 2017 model years with modules produced by ARC Automotive Inc. Dealers will replace the driver's air-bag module.

GM said in its filing Friday in March it learned of a report that a 2017 Chevrolet Traverse was in a crash and that the front-driver airbag inflator ruptured during deployment. An April 25 insp…

WASHINGTON -- A group of U.S. Tesla Model S and Model X owners filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against the electric vehicle maker in California on Friday over automatic software updates that reportedly decreased driving range or cause battery failures.

The lawsuit claims Tesla’s updates and their effects violate state and federal laws because they can cut driving range by up to 20% and can require some owners to replace batteries at a cost of $15,000.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, argues impacted Tesla vehicles are “protected computers” under the definition outlined in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and that automatic updates violate consumers’ rights under the law.

"Tesla owners and lessors are uniquely at the mercy of the maker of their cars, and Tesla imposes software updates without consent whenever their vehicle is connected to Wi-Fi,” said …

Join us at noon Wednesday for a LinkedIn Live talk with Michael Robinet, executive director of automotive advisory services at S&P Global Mobility.

He will be joined by Automotive News Executive Editor Jamie Butters and Staff Reporter John Irwin to discuss the labor shortage, distressed suppliers, the costly shift to electric vehicles and the risk of strikes at automakers this year.

Robinet has more than three decades of experience in automotive forecasting, strategic analysis and manufacturing finance.

We welcome questions in advance.

Tesla and other EV makers likely cost California dealers $910 million in profit opportunity last year. Tesla recalls just about every car it has sold in China. Plus, a conversation with dealership marketing director April Simmons, who says more retailers should start marketing their sales and service in tandem.

How do I subscribe?

Can't wait to hear the next episode of "Daily Drive"? Subscribe through a podcast app to receive episodes days in advance. If you don't have a podcast app already, here are some options. 

iPhone / iPad

Android

Spotify

A freshly formed group purchased its first dealership, another snagged its fourth store in Oklahoma, two stores selling General Motors vehicles traded hands, and a Ford dealership got new ownership in transactions that closed in the third and fourth quarters of 2022 and the first quarter of this year.

Here's a look at the deals involving domestic dealerships in Michigan, Oklahoma, Indiana and New York.

One transaction involved a retailer ranked on Automotive News' list of the top 150 dealership groups.

Maxey family buys Fowlerville Ford

The Maxey family on Nov. 10 acquired Fowlerville Ford in Michigan from Ken Hagar, according to Mike Maxey, owner-operator of the store renamed Bob Maxey Ford in Fowlerville.

The dealership "is kind of a consolidation between the Fowlerville location and my Howell location," Maxey told Automotive News.

Maxey said the Fowlerville store offers service and used-car sales and is a satellite location to Bo…

The U.S. Department of Energy on Friday said it plans to loan $362 million to help California wiring components startup CelLink open a factory in Texas.

The conditional commitment from the government's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program is for the development of lighter, more efficient flexible circuit wiring harnesses for automotive and other industries. Once fully operational, the Georgetown, Texas, facility is expected to produce flex harnesses to support some 2.7 million electric vehicles per year, the department said.

The loan commitment comes after CelLink last year closed on a $250 million funding round with backers including BMW and suppliers Lear Corp. and Robert Bosch. Ford Motor Co. was also an early backer of the San Carlos, Calif., company, which was founded in 2011.

"Factory construction is pretty expensive," CelLink CEO Kevin Coakley said in an interview with Automotive News. "So having an entity like [the Energy Depar…