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Nissan Motor Co. is ready to invest $500 million to $750 million in Renault's electric vehicle business, viewing the French automaker's reorganization as a chance to reshape their decades-old alliance, a person familiar with the matter said.

In exchange for backing the entity being set up by Renault CEO Luca de Meo, Renault is willing to sign onto a plan to reduce its ownership of Nissan to 15 percent, from the current 43 percent, over time, said the person, who asked not to be identified because negotiations are ongoing.

The moves would alleviate an imbalance that has been a source of friction for years. Renault rescued Nissan in 1999 and sent in Carlos Ghosn, who eventually became CEO of both carmakers and the chairman of their alliance. He later added Mitsubishi Motors to the partnership, but was arrested in 2018 on charges of under-reporting his compensation. He escaped Japan in December 2019 and is currently in Lebanon.

Nissan, which owns 15 percen…

There's certainly never a good time for a massive ship carrying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of vehicles to catch fire and sink.

But for bespoke luxury brand Bentley, what tragically happened to the Felicity Ace in February in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic weirdly may have been a case of the wrong ship ... at the right time.

Why? Because unlike other massive car carriers that regularly ferry Volkswagen Group vehicles from Europe to customers and dealerships in North America, the Felicity Ace didn't have 40 to 70 Bentleys aboard, as is typical, among the roughly 4,000 vehicles on that particular sailing.

It had a whole lot more than that: 189, each carrying an average price tag of about $300,000, according to a Bentley spokeswoman.

Yet, with quick action and thanks to a bizarre set of global circumstances, Bentley — which manufactures each of its vehicles by hand in its single factory in Crewe, Engla…

NADA guidelines provide clarity in changing times

The auto industry is going through an array of profound changes, many of which could be detrimental for America's franchised auto dealers: digital retail, the shift to electric vehicles, over-the-air updates. The emergence of new entrants — including Tesla, the dominant seller of luxury vehicles — that sell directly to consumers presents another significant competitive challenge.

As automakers have attempted to adapt to the new retail reality, dealers could be forgiven for assuming a defensive crouch — wary that each change could cut them out of future revenue or add unreimbursed costs. Where the next initiative would come from was as unpredictable as when it would stop.

The National Automobile Dealers Association was making the case that dealers are essential to bringing all of these technological advances to the American public and a competitive advantage for manufacturers. But both sides remained une…

Renault is open to reducing its stake in Nissan as the partners bargain over the French carmaker's plan to split its electric-car and combustion-engine assets, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Executives have discussed Renault's carve-out plan and reshaping the pair's two decade-old alliance since February during meetings in France and Japan.

Negotiations are intensifying as the French company plans to announce details in early November.

Renault CEO Luca de Meo was due to attend the Formula 1 race in Suzuka, Japan, on Sunday, giving him an opportunity to speak with Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida.

The parties' lopsided capital ties have long been a contentious issue for Nissan. The Japanese company is pressing Renault to reduce its stake to 15 percent from 43 percent to draw level with Nissan's share in Renault, the people said, declining to be named as details are private.

While this weekend's talks are unlikely to yield concre…

New estimates show that 94,000 more vehicles were removed from automakers’ production schedules at assembly plants worldwide because of the microchip shortage, according to AutoForecast Solutions.

The majority of those cuts were at North American factories, where more than 61,000 vehicles were axed. The remainder were trimmed from plants in South America and in Asia outside of China.

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said last week he expects the shortage to ease near the end of 2023, while Honda said it will have to cut output at two of its plants in Japan this month.

Still, production is “clawing its way back, and more manufacturers are reporting that their supplies of chips are becoming more stable,” said Sam Fiorani, AFS vice president of global vehicle forecasting, in an email. But automakers continue to steer chips into higher-profit models at the cost of lower-priced vehicle production, he added, leading to higher transaction prices.

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When a Texas dealership group and a Stellantis store resolved a class action suit alleging underpayment of wages and overtime to detailers, porters, valets, shuttle drivers and car washers employed by a now-defunct company, the settlement reflected a legal and financial dilemma confronting dealerships that rely on outside contractors for fixed ops services.

And when a Texas vendor that supplies detailer, valet and car wash services agreed to pay $166,435 to close a U.S. Labor Department employee misclassification complaint, that settlement averted potential claims against the vendor's dealership clients.In the first case, a settlement reached earlier this year by Sonic Automotive Inc., several of its Texas dealerships and Gulfgate Dodge-Chrysler-Jeep-Ram in Houston meant a judge didn't need to decide a thorny question: Was Rascoa LLC, an independent contractor that had hired the workers, solely responsible for personnel management and compensation, as the …

A majority of service customers know their adviser and/or technician by name, according to a DealerRater survey conducted for Fixed Ops Journal in September.

Customers were asked whether they knew the names of the service department staff the last time they brought their vehicle in for repair or maintenance. More than half of respondents spread across both luxury and mass- market brands responded they did know the name of either their adviser or technician before showing up for their service appointment. A little more than 40 percent replied they didn't know their adviser or technician beforehand.

Fixed ops trainers and consultants say the goal for advisers is to provide such good service that customers ask for them by name each visit. Likewise, technicians should look to make a connection with their video multi-point inspections so customers will request them by name.

Q: The last time you brought your vehicle into the dealership for s…

There's little doubt the Inflation Reduction Act will have a seismic effect on the U.S. electric vehicle industry, but the dust hasn't yet settled on the details that will determine the affordability of different makes and models now on the market.

Major players are already requesting tweaks and adjustments to the act. If enacted as written, the new law could have the unintended consequence of actually suppressing sales of North American EV manufacturers, because few, if any, can meet all aspects of the supply chain criteria in the language.

If this and other issues are addressed, however, a couple of basic trajectories will have been set that carry long-term implications on supply and demand.

First and perhaps most obvious is the clear effort by the act to support domestic EV manufacturing. Vehicles made outside North America do not qualify for new federal tax incentives.The second is the effort to democratize demand. To attract Main Stre…

The National Automobile Dealers Association's guidelines on the changing auto retail industry can help state associations, leaders say, but the national guidelines will need to keep changing, too.

Some state dealer association leaders were consulted as NADA drafted a set of guiding principles that advocate for the franchise model. It lays out NADA's position on such things as vehicle reservation programs and selling vehicles directly without franchised dealers.

The guidelines are useful, but they, too, will need the flexibility to continue to change along with the industry, said Brian Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Association.

"One thing that NADA has made clear is that these are designed to evolve, so if things change, then we can change the principle to reflect that change," said Maas, who offered input to NADA during the drafting process. "The idea is these are living documents."

NADA's framework outlines the association's…