Trade News

Having enough used vehicles to sell has been a challenge for most auto retailers in 2021, even those such as Carvana with national supply chains.

CEO Ernie Garcia said the digital used-vehicle retailer has been struggling to get its inventory sale-ready since the coronavirus began spreading in the U.S. last spring.

"We pulled back massively, operationally, early in the pandemic, and then demand came racing back," Garcia said in an installment of Automotive News' Congress Conversations series, which aired Thursday, April 22.

Then, through three successive waves of the pandemic, it was difficult for Carvana to ramp up its reconditioning capacity and subsequently have enough sale-ready cars and trucks on its website to keep up with demand.

The company said in its fourth-quarter letter to shareholders that sales outpacing reconditioning drove sale-ready inventory down from about 25,000 vehicles to about 10,000 since the onset of the pandemic. The com…

Gentex Corp.'s sales and profit margin grew in the first quarter of 2021 despite vehicle production levels taking a hit because of shortages of electronics and other parts.

The Zeeland, Mich., supplier of dimmable rearview mirrors, digital vision and other electronic components posted net income of $113.5 million for the first quarter, a 27 percent bump from the same period a year earlier.

That was driven by a quarter-over-quarter increase in sales, an improved product mix, higher gross margins and the effects of cost-saving structures put in place in the second quarter of 2020, according to Gentex.

The parts shortages caused North American light-vehicle production levels to drop by 12 percent in the quarter, Gentex said. Production levels in the European, Japanese and Korean markets were also affected. The company indicated the shortages and modifications to production that resulted from them reduced revenue by about $45 million during the quarter.

Key Auto Group of Portsmouth, N.H., on Wednesday acquired its second dealership in a little over a week.

The group bought Newcastle Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram in Maine from Randy Miller. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but the store has been renamed Key Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram of Newcastle.

Miller, who owned the dealership for 24 years, is staying on as general manager, according to Nancy Phillips Associates, a dealership buy-sell firm in Exeter, N.H., that handled the transaction for both parties.

The acquisition gives Key Auto its second dealership in Maine after Key Ford of York. The group now has 16 dealerships in New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont and Florida, as well as three used-car stores and a heavy-truck dealership.

On April 13, Key Auto bought Newport Chevrolet-Buick-GMC in New Hampshire.

Last year, Key acquired Port City Chrysler-Dodge-Ram in Portsmouth and a Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram store in Rocheste…

General Motors is revamping its model for working with diverse-owned and diverse-targeted media, including hosting its own advance "upfront" briefings dedicated to these outlets, creating a new $50 million incubation fund and rethinking measurement criteria.

The new plan follows GM’s conversations with Black-owned media outlets led by the likes of Byron Allen among others, who called for the automaker to sit down with group after claiming the company had ignored such meeting requests in the past.

“This action plan will transform our engagement model with diverse media in a sustainable way,” Deborah Wahl, GM global chief marketing officer, said in a statement. “Over the course of several weeks, we met with many diverse-owned media organizations. We are grateful for the transparency and spirit of collaboration, which helped us frame this inclusive approach.”

Upfront meetings are important events in the advertising business. They allow media comp…

Jidu Auto, a joint venture between Chinese giants Baidu Inc. and Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, aims to spend 50 billion yuan ($7.7 billion) over the next five years on developing smart-car technology.

The company intends to hire between 2,500 and 3,000 staff for the project over the next two to three years, around 500 of which will be software engineers, it said. The branding for the nascent auto marque is set to be unveiled in the third quarter of 2021, a spokesperson added. Baidu owns 55 percent of Jidu and Geely has a 45 percent stake in the company.

The first model from Jidu will be an electric vehicle targeting launch within three years and designed to look like a robot in order to appeal to a young clientele, CEO Xia Yiping said in an interview with Reuters. The company then plans to release one new model every year or 18 months, he’s cited as saying.

Investment in EVs has been hotting up in China, where Xiaomi Corp. recently announced an ambitious…

Tesla has released the data logs of a car that crashed in China to the woman who garnered global headlines after she staged a protest at this week's Shanghai auto show claiming the vehicle's brakes had failed.

The Model 3 car, which was being driven by Zhang Yazhou's father at the time, was traveling at 118.5 kph (74 mph) just before impact and slowed to around 48.5 kph (30 mph) after the brakes were applied, according to a local media report.

The data also showed that the driver braked more than 40 times in the half-hour before the crash, and at multiple points the vehicle was traveling at more than 100 kph (62 mph).

Tesla and Zhang have been arguing for several months over whether the car was speeding and if the braking system failed, the report said. Tesla has said its stance was based on vehicle data, which Zhang alleges was tampered with.

In China, the sort of road on which Zhang's father was traveling generally has a speed limit of 80 k…

TOKYO -- Honda will phase out internal combustion engines in all new automobiles by 2040 under an aggressive electrification plan unveiled by Toshihiro Mibe, the automaker's new CEO.

Mibe, who took office April 1, outlined the new target in a news conference on Friday, pitching it as a step toward achieving companywide carbon neutrality by 2050.

Honda will achieve the goal in steps, first deriving 40 percent of its sales in major markets from pure electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in 2030. It wants that share of EVs and fuel cells to reach 80 percent in major markets in 2035, and then 100 percent in all markets by 2040.

Japan's No. 3 automaker also set out lofty 2050 goals of achieving carbon neutrality in all products and corporate activities and of realizing zero traffic fatalities in its motorcycles and automobiles. It also wants to develop products from 100 percent sustainable materials.

"The hurdles are quite high," said Mibe, who was…

HAMBURG -- Bernd Osterloh, who heads Volkswagen Group's powerful works council, is taking up a management position at the company's heavy truck unit Traton.

Osterloh, 64, will become Traton's personnel director on May 1, Traton said in a statement on Friday.

Osterloh is stepping down from all his roles at Volkswagen and will be replaced by deputy works council head Daniela Cavallo as soon as possible, the automaker's employee representatives said in a separate statement.

Cavallo will also take over Osterloh's functions on Volkswagen's supervisory board.

Osterloh has been a member of VW's supervisory board since 2005. Under Germany's system of corporate governance labor representatives make up half the board.

Osterloh's exit could weaken resistance to faster and more drastic restructuring at VW.

VW Group CEO Herbert Diess's most outspoken opponent is sidelined and "it's fair to say that it creates the opportunity to run VW in a more …

Daimler raised its profit outlook for 2021, but warned that the global semiconductor chip shortage may continue to impact its sales in the second quarter.

The Mercedes-Benz maker said that although "visibility is limited at present," it assumes some recovery in the availability of chips in the second half of this year.

But the company said it still expects its operating profit this year to be significantly above 2020 as the global economy recovers from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic.

"After this promising start, we are very confident that we can keep up the pace to improve our margins on a sustainable basis and at the same time expand our electric vehicle lineup," CFO Harald Wilhelm said in a statement on Friday.

Daimler said it now expected an adjusted margin from its Mercedes cars and van business of between 10 percent and 12 percent, up from its previous outlook of between 8 percent and 10 percent.

Last week Daimler unveiled th…

Steve Kalafer -- a minor league baseball team owner, Academy Award nominated filmmaker, and longtime car dealer and advocate for auto retailers -- died Wednesday.

The cause was cancer, according to a colleague. He was 71.

Kalafer got his start in auto retail in 1976 at the age of 26, selling out of a one-car showroom inside a Mobil gas station with seven employees. He expanded the group, Flemington Car & Truck Country, in Flemington, N.J., to eight dealerships selling 16 brands. He also had Honda and Jaguar Land Rover stores outside the Flemington brand.

In his nearly 45 years as a dealer, Kalafer bluntly denounced automakers for business strategies he thought disadvantaged dealerships. In 2016, Kalafer sold a profitable Nissan store, citing "the complexity of doing business with them" among his reasons for ending the relationship.

Stair-step programs were chief among his concerns. The incentives forced dealerships to accept inventory they did…