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Editor's note: An earlier version of this story misspelled Aaron Wallace's name.

Aaron Wallace is a fourth-generation car dealer, not a software developer. He's the guy, he says, "with the marker and the white board."

But Wallace also was the guy with an idea. Today, that idea — A2Z Sync, a software platform that enables a one- person, one-price dealership sales model — is a standalone software business that last year exited beta testing and is now being shopped to dealerships across the country.

Creating a technology company wasn't what Wallace set out to do. Originally, he was trying to solve his own business problem — scaling a new customer-friendly finance-and- insurance model beyond a single BMW store in his family's Schomp Automotive Group in the suburbs of Denver.

Wallace isn't the only dealer dabbling in software to find solutions. Dealers and retail consultants say it's necessary for dealerships to embrace technology to evolve with a tra…

DETROIT -- Joe Hinrichs, whose is abruptly retiring after 19 years with Ford Motor Co., wrote a 1,000-word farewell letter thanking his team and encouraging them to continue working to improve the company's outlook and performance.

The letter, obtained by Automotive News, summarized many of the highlights since Hinrichs, 53, was named Ford's president of worldwide automotive operations in May 2019 and suggests he had no plans to retire as recently as last month, detailing a January meeting in which they "committed to each other that we would all work together to make this a great year."

A Ford spokesperson declined to comment.

His retirement was announced as part of a management shakeup that will elevate Jim Farley to COO and expand the role of Hau Thai-Tang, Ford's product development and purchasing boss. Hinrichs has not responded to a request for comment. His retirement is effective March 1. 

The letter touched on Ford's troubled launch o…

The first email Jeff Dyke, president of Sonic Automotive Inc., opens every morning isn't from a fellow corporate executive or a manager at one of the retailer's 96 franchised or used-only EchoPark stores. Instead, it's a message containing the latest online reviews from Sonic's customers.

Dyke said he and Sonic CEO David Smith wake each day eager to assess the public dealership group's results as compiled by Reputation.com, a software vendor that monitors online customer reviews.

"Tomorrow morning at 4:30, sure as heck, I'll get three Reputation.com emails, and we'll open them up," Dyke told Automotive News. "There'll be 100 in there or whatever, and [we] review them all. Anybody who puts something out there, we're reading about it."

Dealership operators weren't always so obsessive about online reviews.

Before search engines and rating sites, customers who took dealership complaints to cyberspace were more or less sh…

Amazon offered a sneak preview of its electric delivery vans from suburban Detroit startup Rivian, touting the vehicle's adaptable features and environmental friendliness.

The van had been seen only in artist renderings, but last week, Amazon released photos showing a scale model and a full-size clay mock-up of the EV and a behind-the-scenes video shot in the Rivian design studio. The tech giant said in a company blog that its goal is to reduce its carbon emissions, "raise the bar for driver safety" and optimize design. Amazon placed the order for 100,000 delivery vans from Rivian, of Plymouth, Mich., in September.

Much of the preview focused on the vehicle's design, which includes a massive windshield.

There is also a digital instrument cluster and central display screen that are integrated with Amazon's logistics management and routing and package delivery technology.

The company said the logistics management, and …

The Justice Department has abandoned its antitrust probe of four automakers that sided with California over President Donald Trump in a fight over the future of fuel economy and emissions requirements.

The inquiry had targeted Ford Motor Co., Honda Motor Co., BMW Group and Volkswagen Group over their agreement last year with California regulators to voluntarily meet the state’s targets for fuel economy and tailpipe emissions. The decision was seen as undercutting Trump’s plan to relax the national requirements and was decried by the administration at the time as a “PR stunt.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom cheered the Justice Department’s decision to back down, calling it “a big loss for the president and his weaponization of federal agencies.”

“These trumped up charges were always a sham -- a blatant attempt by the Trump administration to prevent more automakers from joining California and agreeing to stronger emissions standards,” Newsom said in an e…

The Paslin Co. plans to invest $45 million to expand its operations in suburban Detroit to supply assembly line robotic systems for EV startup Rivian Automotive LLC.

The supplier recently secured a contract to supply Rivian with vehicle and battery frame assembly robotic systems. The automaker, which has received more than $1 billion in investments from Amazon, Ford and others, plans to begin production if its all-electric truck and SUV in late 2020 with deliveries beginning in 2021. The vehicles will be assembled at Rivian's plant in Normal, Ill., a former Mitsubishi Motors plant it acquired in 2016.

The Paslin project, which is supported by a $1 million grant from state of Michigan, is expected to create 200 jobs in Warren, Mich., over a three-year period. The city of Warren is supporting the expansion by expediting permitting and hosting a job fair.

The new jobs are expected to pay $10 more than the average hourly wage in the surrounding cou…

WASHINGTON -- A U.S. House panel will hold a hearing Tuesday on autonomous vehicles as lawmakers try to hammer out legislation to advance self-driving cars.

An Energy and Commerce subcommittee overseeing automotive issues will hear from officials of trade groups representing automakers and tech companies, as well as safety advocates and a San Francisco transit official.

Congress has worked for four years on legislation that would remove regulatory barriers but has not reached agreement. Last summer, a bipartisan group of lawmakers released sections of a draft self-driving car bill for discussion.

The bills that have been under consideration would clear the way for automakers and tech firms to deploy tens of thousands of self-driving vehicles without human controls on U.S. roads if they could demonstrate the vehicles were at least as safe as human-driven vehicles. They would also bar states from setting performance standards for self-driving cars.

…

BEIJING -- Japanese carmaker Nissan Motor Co. said on Friday its sales in China, the world's biggest auto market, fell 12 percent in January, as the Lunar New Year holiday began earlier than usual and the coronavirus outbreak stymied economic activity.

The company, which has embarked on a turnaround to reverse a sales slump, is counting on strong Chinese business.

Last year, it sold around 1.55 million cars and light trucks in China, 1.1 percent lower than a year earlier, but bucking the overall Chinese new-vehicle market that fell 8.2 percent.

Nissan sold 118,143 vehicles in China last month. It is expected to announce October-to-December financial results on Feb. 13.

The company, which has a joint venture with the Dongfeng Group, based in Wuhan where the coronavirus has been concentrated, said is considering restarting production in China sometime after Feb. 10.

Production in Hubei province of which Wuhan is the capital, will start someti…

NEW  YORK -- Tesla Inc. has always had one foot in the automotive world and the other in technology. But when it comes to the company’s valuation, neither truly fits.

The stock’s stunning ascent -- doubling in just the first 23 sessions of the year on record vehicle deliveries, the opening of a China plant and an earlier-than-expected profit at a jointly operated battery factory -- has cooled off as exuberance gives way to caution. But the still-meteoric advance of the last five weeks has prompted more comparisons with high-growth technology names, and even has tech-focused market watchers looking more closely at the stock’s fundamentals.

“With Tesla’s extraordinary rise from $180 last year to nearly $1,000 this past Tuesday, we are receiving an increasing volume of calls from tech PMs and analysts who have begun to pick up coverage of Tesla from the traditional industrials/autos cohort,” Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas wrote in a report, referring to po…

DETROIT --  Ford Motor Co.’s Joe Hinrichs, 53, will retire as president of automotive, and Jim Farley, 57, president of new business technology and strategy, will become COO, Ford said.

The changes are effective March 1. Farley will report to CEO Jim Hackett.

Ford said the changes are meant to "accelerate its transformation into a higher-growth, higher-margin business." 

On Wall Street, Ford shares fell 2.5 percent in early trading to $8.04.

Hinrichs had been at Ford for 19 years while Farley joined the company in 2007.

"Jim Farley is the right person to take on this important new role," Hackett said in a statement. "Jim's passion for great vehicles and his intense drive for results are well known. He also has developed into a transformational leader with the imagination and foresight to help lead Ford into the future." 

Farley is expected to retain his role as head of Ford Smart Mobility, the company's  auto…