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NEW YORK — Cadillac's electric Escalade was barely a day old, but Will Churchill already had more than 30 emails from clients and friends wanting to buy one.

Since General Motors' luxury brand unveiled the 2025 Escalade IQ last week at an event here, it has generated some of the biggest response the Texas dealer said he has received for a new model.

"Escalade's become its own brand, and I think this continues that narrative," said Churchill, who has Cadillac stores in Fort Worth and Arlington. "It delivers on what you expect from an Escalade."

Staying true to that brand as an electric vehicle will be key for Cadillac's top-selling franchise. The Escalade IQ is, on one hand, a clean-sheet EV designed from the ground up on GM's Ultium battery platform, rather than a gasoline vehicle architecture retrofitted with batteries and an electric motor.

But unlike Cadillac's first two EVs — the Lyriq midsize crossover and upcomin…

The U.S. new-vehicle inventory rose slightly last month while staying in the same tight band it's been in all summer, according to data from Cox Automotive and the Automotive News Research & Data Center.

Cox estimated unsold inventory at 1,960,435 vehicles, or a 56-day supply, up 39 percent from the same point a year ago, and up slightly from 1,953,512 a month earlier. Cox uses the sales rate from the preceding 30-day period to calculate days' supply.

Unsold inventories crossed back over 1.9 million units in mid-May, according to Cox estimates, and have undulated in a small band all summer, despite strong sales, but they have yet to cross back over the 2 million benchmark they last hit in April 2021.

The broader trend lines that have emerged this year as the industry continues to recover production and inventories held true again in July, Cox said. The tightest stock levels again were among lower-priced vehicles and segments, wh…

The possibility of a recession seems less likely this year, GM Financial CEO Dan Berce said, adding he is "quite optimistic" industrywide sales volumes will stay strong to finish out 2023.

One potential headwind for the remainder of the year would be a downward trend in used-vehicle prices, Berce said, which have fallen steadily after rising this spring but slowed a bit in late July.

Berce told Automotive News that GM Financial is "set up pretty well" for the second half of the year.

"Everybody was predicting a recession sometime in '23. I think that's been pushed back to a soft landing," Berce said. "That bodes well for consumer performance in the second half of the year."

General Motors' captive lender has seen prices of 3-year-old GM vehicles coming off lease fall almost every week since late April, Berce said. GM Financial noted a steady decline in used-vehicle prices from June to late July.

"That bein…

Wanting to boost sales and fill an opening for a general manager, Bob Nouri borrowed an idea he first heard in the 1970s: Two are better than one.

"I had a mentor; his name was Bob Moore," Nouri told Automotive News. "He took a guy who was good at used cars and he took a guy who was good at new cars and made them co-GMs."

Nouri, co-owner of Nouri/Shaver Automotive Group, had two employees with similar complementary backgrounds at his Van Nuys Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram dealership in California.

"I did not want to go outside the organization to hire a general manager so I made them co-GMs," Nouri said.

Since Raed Malaeb and Jonathan Schwartz were promoted to co-general managers at the Van Nuys store in January 2021, more employees have stuck around.

In 2020, the dealership had a 35 percent turnover rate. That number in 2021 and 2022? About 10 percent, according to Nouri/Shaver CEO Armina Mgerian.

"Having two genera…

Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley once called the company's commercial business unit, Ford Pro, its "secret weapon."

Today it's not so secret: Ford Pro turned a $2.4 billion profit in the second quarter and is on track to generate nearly $8 billion for the year. In addition to commercial vehicles such as the F-150 or Transit, Ford Pro offers fleet buyers financing through Ford Pro FinSimple, part of a push to become a one-stop shop for business owners.

FinSimple offers a commercial line of credit for fleets of any size, vehicle leasing and purchasing as well as charging infrastructure for commercial EVs. It also launched an insurance product this year.

Jim Drotman, executive vice president of Ford Pro FinSimple, spoke with Staff Reporter Michael Martinez about the business and its growth plans. Here are edited excerpts.

Q: What's the business case for creating Ford Pro FinSimple?

A: When Ford Pro was created, w…

Chance Mayfield argues that automotive dealerships are still missing a lucrative opportunity — reaching the ever-growing number of Spanish-speaking customers.

He is the founder of Carfluent, a startup designed to help address this. The Dallas-based company formally debuted its artificial intelligence software in June, with a pitch the technology would publish additional search, inventory and vehicle detail pages on dealership websites with highly accurate Spanish translations. It is designed to be a plug-in that is compatible with dealerships and their dealership management systems, allowing them to be "instantly bilingual" with their Spanish-speaking customers, Mayfield said.

Carfluent is a young company with eight employees that formally launched in 2022. It is bootstrapped, or self-funded, so far. The company started generating revenue last year and has roughly 10 customers, including independent and franchised dealerships, Mayfield said.<…

It's not that there aren't many electric vehicles at the $25,000 price point that Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares asserts is the sweet spot.

There are none at all, from Stellantis or any other manufacturer, with sticker prices below that mark today.

Whether Stellantis and other manufacturers can hit such an ambitious target on a wide scale in the coming years remains to be seen, but Tavares said producing EVs that are attainable for the middle class should be a topic of discussion during this year's UAW contract negotiations.

Reaching that price range, Tavares said last month, will be crucial to protecting jobs in the long run. Tavares has said in the past that Stellantis would need to absorb the additional costs that come with building EVs and not pass them onto consumers.

The company's imperative to reduce its fixed-cost structure in pursuit of more affordable EVs is clashing with the UAW's demands for higher wages and b…

Top executives at Shift Technologies Inc. said Thursday the used-vehicle retailer sought to urgently improve operations efficiencies in the second quarter and is evaluating "all avenues" to raise capital.

Shift CEO Ayman Moussa, who spoke during the company's quarterly earnings call Thursday, said he determined it was critical to change the course of the business after he joined it in June.

Shift Technologies, of San Francisco, reduced its employee head count by one-third last month as part of a restructuring plan aimed at cutting expenses. It also eliminated investment in its dealer marketplace business. That restructuring followed Shift's disclosure in May that its board of directors was reviewing "strategic alternatives" for the company.

"The company has gone through several changes in strategy over the last 18 months to adjust to industry and capital market factors, creating distraction and making it hard to achieve results among shifting prioritie…

Changan Ford Motor plans to set up a new-energy passenger car joint venture with state-owned Chongqing Changan Automobile, a document published by China's market regulator on Friday showed.

Changan Ford Motor will own a 60 perce t stake and Chongqing Changan Automobile the remaining 40 percent stake. Changan Ford is a 50-50 joint venture between Ford Motor Co. and Changan Automobile, meaning Chongqing Changan will own more than 50 percent of the new venture.

In the future, the joint venture plans to engage in the "supply business of mainstream brand new energy passenger vehicles and the distribution business of Ford brand models that Changan Ford has invested in," the statement said. Ford said in a later statement the new venture also will sell existing Ford-brand gas-powered vehicles.

Ford said the venture was being formed "to better grasp the development trend of electrification and intelligence in the auto industry."

Asked whether this new ve…

A vehicle struck and killed a dealership customer while the collision injured two employees in the service area at Hamer Toyota in Mission Hills, Calif., on Wednesday morning, according to police and fire officials.

Bystanders freed the woman, who was trapped under a 2017 Toyota RAV4, and attempted to revive her, but she later died of her injuries, according to a dealership employee.

An elderly motorist, who was a dealership customer, lost control of the vehicle, which "crashed through a glass enclosed reception area and came to rest against a distant cinder block wall well within the business," according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The initial investigation suggests the driver may have accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake, according to a Los Angeles Police Department spokesperson.

The collision dragged the 56-year-old woman over 20 feet, the fire department said. An off-duty nurse tended to the "pulseless and non-breath…

<!--*/ */ /*-->*/ Vehicle-to-infrastructure connectivity is finally changing America’s streets

Santa Clara County in California is giving buses more green lights. Real-time data on viaduct flooding is being collected in Louisville, Ky., to prevent car drowning deaths. Officials in College Station, Texas, are outfitting five intersections with warnings for pedestrians when buses and emergency vehicles approach.

A long stalemate over the details of deploying vehicle-to-infrastructure technology has ended, and the investments keep coming. The federal government requested proposals for more solutions this year, with vehicle connectivity groups calling 2023 "pivotal." Federal Communications Commission waivers granted in April have given automakers clarity on the way forward after decades of ambiguity.

"We're in the red zone, and I can finally see where we can get this ball over the goal line," said John Kwant, executive director of the Americas at 5G…