Production Update: Toyota and Volkswagen Ready to Go, Honda Hangs Back

You just read how an announcement from the United Auto Workers poured cold water over the Detroit Three’s tentative plans to resume vehicle assembly in the United States, but non-domestic automakers don’t have that problem.

Sure, they still need to grapple with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, devising new methods of keeping plant workers safe while carrying out the business of building cars, but early May still looks promising to several large industry players. With U.S. auto sales entering a slow rebound, almost everyone’s itching to get started.

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Back to Work in Early May? Not So Fast, Says UAW

The domestic auto industry is revving its engines, ready to cautiously punch the accelerator, but something’s standing in its way. That something would be United Auto Workers President Rory Gamble, who on Thursday appealed to companies to put the green flag away and think of their employees instead.

Seeing automakers angling for a production restart in the first week of May, the UAW boss said it was too early to move ahead.

“At this point in time, the UAW does not believe the scientific data is conclusive that it is safe to have our members back in the workplace,” Gamble said in a statement. “We have not done enough testing to really understand the threat our members face.”

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When Transit Riders See Buses and Trains As Plague Vessels, Automakers Hungrily Lick Their Lips

It stands to reason. Despite the ecological advantage offered by buses and trains, private vehicle ownership starts looking mighty attractive in the midst of a viral pandemic. Fear and self-preservation often trumps virtue.

So it’s little wonder that a significant percentage of people browsing Cars.com in the first half of the month were people who’s never done so before, and who’d never owned a vehicle before. With transit ridership at all-time lows and ride-hailing companies hurting, the private car is king.

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Everyone's Doing It: Toyota Joins the Club, Slashes Rates

When venturing out of the home carries an extra degree of danger, automakers know there needs to be a reward for breaking self-isolation. Even if physically entering a dealership isn’t necessary, there’s still the current economic uncertainty to dissuade customers.

As we told you yesterday, U.S. auto sales are on the rebound, slowly rising from the rock-bottom position reached less than a month ago. While per-vehicle incentives are, on average, on the decline (the byproduct of a smaller pickup slice in the retail mix), discounts aren’t the only way to lure customers into a buy. There’s also loan rates — and it seems Toyota has finally arrived at that party.

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On the Rebound: U.S. Auto Sales Begin Long, Slow Recovery

It’s been a long month and change for most Americans, and by no means is anyone out of the woods, either employment-wise or health-wise. Same goes for new vehicle sales, which remain depressed after falling off a cliff in late March.

The difference now is that sales are rising.

Not on a year-over-year basis, with gains made over “normal times” tallies. No, nothing like that. But they have started a slow climb out of the pit after hitting rock bottom, which represents another brick laid on the pathway to normality.

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Tale of Two Countries: U.S. Finds Itself With Oversupply of Hyundai Model

South Korea moved swiftly to counter a coronavirus outbreak back in February, soon becoming a best-case example for other countries to follow. While domestic auto production was mildly hampered by the outbreak, and further impacted by supply chain issues originating in hard-hit China, output has barely flagged.

In the case of one popular compact crossover, perhaps Hyundai should have turned off the taps for a bit.

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An Experiment in Error? Maven Bites the Dust, GM Lauds 'Insights' Gained

The great General Motors ride-sharing experiment is over. At least for now. Maven, which hit parking lots in 2016 and eventually expanded into the nation’s driveways, was GM’s attempt to put its vehicles to work, rather than sell them to retail or fleet customers like some kind of dinosaur.

For a fee, users could access the GM-owned fleet of Maven products to perform random driving tasks. Short trips, mainly, in the absence of an Uber or Lyft ride or participation in a more formal car-sharing agreement. Tap that app, find the car, unlock it, and drive off. Abandon somewhere after you’re done.

Well, that’s what GM just did with Maven.

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Laid Low in Lordstown: Coronavirus Didn't Spare the Startups

Lordstown Motors is just one of the contenders vying for buyers in the yet unrealized electric pickup segment and, like the others, it isn’t immune (pardon the phrasing) from the coronavirus pandemic’s fallout.

After moving into a mothballed General Motors assembly plant in Northeast Ohio late last year, Lordstown Motors now says the virus has pushed back its production plans.

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Used Car Prices Take a Dive, Spelling More Worry for Anxious OEMs

At this point, only two things in our present reality bear any similarity to what took place in the Great Before: average new car transaction prices are shooting for the Van Allen Belt, and pickups sell like hotcakes. The relationship between 1 and 2 can’t be downplayed.

Everything else has been turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting plunge in sales spurred by both fear and state lockdown measures. Domestic market share is up, zero-interest loans are proliferating, and used vehicle prices are falling through the floor.

That latter issue could spell big losses for manufacturers whose main business is selling new vehicles.

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Ohio Racetrack Plans to Defy Shelter-in-Place Orders

Commenters, rev up your typing fingers. This post is sure to stir debate.

Summit Motorsport in Ohio is planning to re-open soon, despite Ohio’s shelter-in-place orders.

The track’s season opener already didn’t take place due to shelter-in-place. Now, owner Bill Bader Jr. is taking to Facebook Live to talk about his defiance on video.

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Locked-down State Opens up Online Auto Sales, Nudging Industry in Direction of Recovery

Don’t expect the Present Year to come close to the sales tallies racked up in 2018 or the year before. No analyst foresees such a scenario; globally, LMC sees auto production taking a 20-percent haircut in 2020.

But the return to normality is underway in the U.S., aided by the federal government’s reopening plan (a set of guidelines to be acted on by individual states), but especially by the realization of governors that car buyers need some way to bring a vehicle home. Michigan, via an executive order, greenlit online sales on April 9th. Now it’s Pennsylvania’s turn.

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Auto Sales Officially Considered 'Essential Service' by U.S. Government

Updated social distancing guidance released by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday indicates the automotive industry is now an essential business.

Version 3.0 (for those keeping count) of what constitutes “essential critical infrastructure workers” added a number of job descriptions as the federal government mulls how to restart the U.S. economy. Among them is pretty much every job related to automotive manufacturing and sales.

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LMC: Pandemic, Recession Spell 20-percent Production Drop in 2020

This year stands to become one of those big “blip” years if predictions by industry forecaster LMC Automotive pan out.

The firm now expects global vehicle output to drop “more than” 20 percent as a result of both the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing recessions born of state-mandated lockdown orders.

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Your Opinion Is Now Worth More Than a Barrel of Oil

While OPEC member states and other oil-producing counties have signed a pact to stem the flow of crude by 10 million barrels a day and hopefully rein in the current price-crashing glut, the situation remains bleak for oil producers around the world. On Monday, May futures for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) dropped to the floor, with prices hitting $5 per barrel.

That number shifted into the negative* as the above paragraph was being written. We’re guessing that’s because the end of the May contract forces physical receipts at a time when storage capacities are basically nonexistent. June WTI prices are still riding just below $23 per barrel.

Meanwhile, Brent Crude is hovering around $26 bbl as the OPEC Basket hangs onto $17.73 bbl on a 4-day delay. The assumption is that both will come down, though perhaps not as dramatically as WTI did.

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Will China Help Volkswagen Out of This Hole?

Volkswagen Group has announced that its sales declined 23 percent against the previous year, to 2 million deliveries, from January through March of this year. Based upon last week’s assessment of the ailing European market, the region seems to have contributed quite a bit to VW’s downfall. However, the company said it is optimistic that the Chinese market will soon recover as the coronavirus pandemic loses strength in the region.

As the manufacturer’s largest market, Volkswagen has a lot riding on China coming out of this in once piece. There certainly have been a surplus of articles claiming the nation is on the fast track to economic restoration, but we’ve also heard enough conflicting reports on the status of its convalescence that it’s difficult to feel confident of anything. What exactly is in store for VW and other automakers doing business in China?

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  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.