Tag: automotive news china

Renault’s Alpine Brand Is Developing Two Electric Crossovers for the US

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Alpine Developing Two Crossovers for the USGREG PAJORenault performance sub-brand Alpine is developing two electric crossovers for the United States market, the company’s CEO confirmed Thursday. Alpine boss Laurent Rossi told journalists on a roundtable phone call the “US is the main destination for these cars,” reports Automotive News. The first will be a mid-size electric crossover, followed by a similarly designed full-size version, meant to compete against cars like the Macan and the bigger Cayenne. They’ll be the first Renault-built cars to be officially sold in the US since the early Nineties. The new crossovers are a part…
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Volkswagen Is Reportedly Removing Its Design Chief

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Volkswagen Is Reportedly Removing Its Design ChiefULI_SONNTAG/VWVolkswagen will replace its current design chief Jozef Kaban, Automotive News Europe’s affiliate Automobilwoche reports. The designer’s work reportedly hasn’t impressed new VW CEO Thomas Schaefer, and as a result, he’ll reportedly be replaced by Bentley design boss Andreas Mindt. Kaban has been the head of Volkswagen design since 2020. He came to the company from Rolls-Royce, where he led the design team for six months. Automobilwochereports that Kaban’s retro ID. Life concept—which was supposed to preview a 2025 mainstream EV from VW—didn’t impress the new CEO, who wanted a more modern look.…
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Toyota predicts $50,000-plus average new-car price this year

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Top executives at Toyota’s North American operations anticipate new-vehicle average transaction prices will break the $50,000 barrier and continue to rise, that demand will outstrip supply again this year even as the supply chain recovers and that there now may be as many as 6 million potential new-vehicle buyers sidelined by inventory and pricing. Speaking to reporters Monday to give a periodic update on the Japanese automaker’s business, Jack Hollis, head of sales for Toyota Motor North America, said 2023 would likely see Toyota and Lexus pick up another 100,000 sales above the 2.1 million it sold in the last…
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Car cybersecurity firm expects consumers to emerge as hackers

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Add vehicle owners to the growing list of potential cyber security threats against automakers in 2023. Early adopters of new digitized offerings from automakers will find ways to bypass premium features by manipulating their vehicles’ systems fraudulently, according to executives from Israeli cybersecurity firm Upstream. Speaking at a cybersecurity webinar Tuesday, the Upstream team said consumers may push back as automakers launch subscription-based services and features in new vehicles. Automakers — from BMW and Tesla to Volkswagen, Toyota and General Motors — have offered monthly subscriptions for services like heated seats, global positioning systems, music streaming and remote keyless start…
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2024 Polestar 2 to start at $51,300

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Polestar’s electric fastback, the Polestar 2, delivers more power, range and content for the new model year — along with a higher sticker price. The 2024 models arrive in August. The updated Polestar 2, like its XC40 and C40 siblings from major shareholder Volvo, receives a new-generation permanent magnet electric motor and new silicon carbide inverters to help boost efficiency and performance. It also gets larger, improved lithium ion batteries. For 2024, the single-motor Polestar 2 starts at $51,300, including shipping — a 3 percent premium over the current model. The single-motor variant shifts from front- to rear-wheel drive. A…
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Tesla EV charging agreements with Ford, GM muddle standard

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Two pathways are emerging as electric vehicle charging infrastructure expands across the US Automaker partnerships will determine whether those technologies will coexist or whether one will push the other out, like VHS and Betamax. Four months ago, the US was heading toward a standard way of charging EV with chargers other than those built by Tesla using a common connector to become eligible for federal funding. Tesla’s charging agreement with Ford Motor Co. and General Motors threw that push to standardization into question and could further fragment the country’s charging infrastructure, at least for now, analysts say. GM and Ford…
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What dealerships service managers are reading

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When I was first starting at Automotive News a few years back and trying to learn the service and parts business, Lee Harkins, CEO of dealership training company M5 Management Services, let me be a fly on the wall at one of his performance group meetings. I must not have made too big of a nuisance of myself because I’ve been invited back to every meeting since, including one a couple weeks ago in Orlando. The discussions there were the same: What are you struggling with? Where are you having success? What’s one best practice you want to share with…
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F&I talks over video a good option for car buyers

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Jonathan Jordan, director of retail strategy for F&I product provider JM&A Group, said his company launched its so-called virtual F&I offering in 2018. He told Automotive News in late January the company had logged more than 23,000 transactions where the F&I manager and customer had never actually met — with about 20,000 occurring in the past two years. The video chat feature at first focused on the notion “customers don’t want to come to the dealership,” Jordan said. But this hypothesis was found to be incorrect, he said. “What I like to say is ‘it’s not that they don’t want…
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