News

LMP Automotive Holdings Inc.'s brief and tumultuous tenure as a franchised dealership group — which began as a vehicle subscription provider and later as a small public auto retailer — appears to have come to a quiet end this month following the sale of its two final franchised stores.

The two West Virginia dealerships, sold in separate transactions, have returned to groups in the Mountain State.

LMP on June 12 sold King Coal Chevrolet in Oak Hill, W.Va., southeast of Charleston, to Stephens Automotive Group, according to Chase Barton, the Stephens group's operations manager. It was renamed Stephens Chevrolet.

"As LMP began to wind things down, we kind of got together and made something work for everybody," Barton told Automotive News. "We're very familiar with the store, and I still live in Oak Hill."

Barton said he had been a partner in the Chevrolet dealership with Ernie Davis and Lori Davis from 2016 to 2020. Barton left the Chevrolet store a…

Volkswagen is in talks with Tesla to adopt its North American Charging Standard (NACS) technology, while the German automaker's charging network unit Electrify America has already agreed to use the system.

The announcement comes as a slew of automakers and charging equipment makers choose Tesla's charging design on concerns of losing out on customers if they offer only the Combined Charging System (CCS) design, which is backed by automakers like Volkswagen and Hyundai Motor.

Ford, General Motors and ChargePoint are among the companies that have signed up for Tesla's charging design in the past few weeks.

"Volkswagen Group and its brands are currently evaluating the implementation of the Tesla North American Charging Standard for its North American customers," the German automaker said.

Electrify America, Volkswagen's EV charging network unit, has more than more than 850 charging stations with about 4,000 chargers in the U.S. and Canada. Dur…

Tesla's electric vehicle charging network is significantly more reliable than competitors, according to J.D. Power's most recent E-Vision Intelligence Report.

About 21.6 percent of EV drivers visiting non-Tesla public charging ports in the first quarter of 2023 were unable to charge their vehicle compared to just 3.9 percent of Tesla drivers using the Tesla Supercharger network.

"When it comes to reliability, no other provider is even close to Tesla," the report said.

Tesla's charging system is gaining traction as an industry standard in North America. Ford, General Motors, Rivian and Volvo have reached agreements to add Tesla's North American Charging Standard charging sockets to their EVs over the next several years. Stellantis and Hyundai are considering similar deals.

The Supercharger network benefits from being more vertically integrated than competitors, J.D. Power said.

"This enables Tesla to control and test the compatibility betwe…

Autonomous trucking company TuSimple is considering selling its U.S. business, according to documents filed Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The decision to explore strategic alternatives for the U.S. business, including a possible sale, "was guided by the company's review of multiple business factors and commercial opportunities," according to a TuSimple press release.

A company spokesperson said Thursday that the board was "regularly evaluating a range of business factors that includes macro environment, access to capital, commercial partnerships and timelines. Those factors led to the board to make the decision to explore a possible sale at this time. We are very early in the process, so we don't have any specific prospects that we are able to discuss at this time."

TuSimple, of San Diego, develops autonomous driving technology for long-haul, heavy-duty trucks. The company operates in the U.S. and Asia.

If the U.S. bu…

Electric-vehicle startup Nio Inc. has partnered with China National Offshore Oil Corp., a state-owned oil producer and distributor, to construct battery swap stations for EV customers in China.

To mark the deal signed on Tuesday, Nio said it commissioned a battery swap station as well as charging piles installed on the site of CNOOC’s gasoline station on the same day in the south China city of Huizhou. 

CNOOC is the third state-owned oil producer Nio has signed up to help expand a network of battery swap stations in China, following China National Petroleum Corp. and China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. 

Nio, established in Shanghai in 2014, has installed 1,500 battery swap stations across China as of June 25.

The EV startup aims to boost the number of its battery swap stations in China to 2,300 by the end of this year. 

Retail sales of new passenger vehicles in China will decrease 5.9 percent in June, ending a rebound that stretched three straight months, the China Automobile Dealers Association said.

The trade group predicts that 1.83 million sedans, crossovers, SUVs and multipurpose vehicles will be delivered industrywide this month.

In contrast to the decline in the overall market, retail sales of electrified vehicles including full electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids will jump 26 percent to roughly 670,000, the CADA said.

From March to May, China’s new-vehicle market staged a strong rebound due to favorable comparisons to the same pandemic-hit period in 2022. 

Toyota saw a ten percent jump in global sales for May from a year earlier. Stellantis puts some U.S. plants in “critical status” ahead of UAW talks. Plus, Mark Wakefield of Alix Partners talks about the firm’s new report, which predicts an inevitable decline on the horizon for cars powered by internal combustion engines.

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Paul Daly is the founder of the auto retail content creation company Automotive State of the Union and, along with partner Kyle Mountsier, co-leads the docuseries "More Than Cars."

First car: 1987 Honda Accord EX. Subs in the trunk of course

First concert you attended: Metal band Petra, circa 1989

Most thrilling/adventurous thing you've done: Started a family

First job: Took over my dad's paper route at 12 years old

Something on your bucket list: Have at least a dozen grandkids

One thing you learned on the job you never forgot: If you aren't smarter than the next person, you can still out-work them

First website you go to in the morning: autonews.com, really!

3 people you'd invite to dinner, living or dead: Jesus, Leonardo DaVinci, Elon Musk (but they would all have to be there at the same time)

What did you want to be when you were a kid? In a band

…

Eighteen-year-old Riley Schlick-Trask, who started her own carburetor repair business at age 13, has been named the grand prize winner of the TechForce Foundation's 2023 Techs Rock Awards. The annual awards are part of the foundation's work force development campaign to inspire and support future technicians.

Schlick-Trask, who is headed to college this fall, owns Riley's Rebuilds in Bradenton, Fla. She was previously named winner of the Barrier Buster category by a panel of judges, which made her eligible for the grand prize. That was determined by a public vote.

Schlick-Trask will receive more than $10,000 in prizes from TechForce and its industry partners. She also gets an all-expenses-paid trip to the automotive training event STX 2024 in Nashville and additional prizes valued at $6,000. At the category level, she and the other four winners each received more than $1,900 in prizes.

"I am very excited, very honored and very grate…

"Not being afraid to charge what you're worth; that was a huge thing for me. A lot of that is diagnostics. I had a really, really tough time with that for a long time, and I would devalue myself, my technicians, my shop. As far as charging for diagnostics, I tried to put it into a package where it's, 'Hey, if you do this repair I will discount the diagnostic fee.' That was a big thing they taught me — don't do that. 'Your time and your technicians' time is worth something and your technicians' abilities, the time they have spent going to school, their tools and whatnot. People come to you for a reason. And the reason is they can't figure it out themselves. And you need to be charging for that.' It took me a while to get over that. But once I understood that concept, that was wonderful." — Kevin Oswald, owner of Oswald Service & Repair in Idaho Falls, Idaho, on one lesson his coach taught him on the Ratchet+Wrench Radio podcast.

A group opposed to a Ford Motor Co. electric vehicle battery plant in Marshall, Mich., is suing the city in hopes of stopping construction of the $3.5 billion project, according to court documents.

The plant — dubbed BlueOval Battery Park Michigan — is set to open in 2026. It is expected to create about 2,500 jobs and have the capacity to build 35 gigawatt-hours of lithium iron phosphate cells a year. That's enough power for about 400,000 EVs.

As reported Wednesday by MLive, the Committee to Save Marshall filed a petition in May for a referendum vote on a rezoning decision that approved 741 acres of the Ford site for industrial use. The petition was rejected by the city because it lacked sufficient valid signatures and because the city had already appropriated money to the project.

In a lawsuit against the city and the city clerk filed with the Calhoun County Circuit Court on Tuesday, the Committee argues the city's rejection of the petition was unconst…

Toyota is modernizing its famed production system to take on Tesla in the EV era. Volvo is the latest automaker to jump on the Tesla Supercharger bandwagon. And Ford and Chevy top the latest customer loyalty rankings while Toyota falls.

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. 

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