New Vehicles Will Need to Travel 40 Miles Per Gallon By 2026
New vehicles sold in the United States will have to travel an average of at least 40 miles per gallon of gasoline in 2026 under new rules unveiled Friday by the government. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said its fuel economy requirements will undo a rollback of standards enacted under President Donald Trump. NBC News reports the new requirements increase gas mileage by 8 percent per year for model years 2024 and 2025 and 10 percent in the 2026 model year. For the current model year, standards enacted under Trump require the fleet of new vehicles to get just over 24 miles per gallon in real-world driving. Agency officials say the requirements are the maximum that the industry can achieve over the time period and will reduce gasoline consumption by more than 220 billion gallons over the life of vehicles, compared with the Trump standards. Trump’s administration rolled back fuel economy requirements so they rose 1.5 percent per year, which environmental groups said was inadequate to limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change. Click here to learn more about the new standards.
House Democrat Introduces Bipartisan Bill to Provide LIFO Tax Relief to Car Dealerships
U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee plans to introduce legislation that would provide tax relief to dealerships that use the "last in, first out" inventory accounting method and have struggled to maintain inventory levels because of the global semiconductor chip shortage. The bill would allow dealerships to wait until as late as 2025 for their inventories to be replaced to determine the income attributable to the sale of inventory during 2020 or 2021, giving dealers time to restock their inventories as the chip shortage eases and auto production returns to pre-pandemic levels. "This is an anomaly. It's an unexpected, unplanned for event that was out of the control of any of these dealerships," Kildee, a Michigan Democrat, told Automotive News. "We can accommodate that by allowing them additional years to replenish inventory and avoid a big tax event that the federal government never would have expected, nor would they, had it not been for this chip shortage." Jodey Arrington, a Texas Republican, also is supporting the bill, which is specifically targeted to the auto industry. Click here to learn more about the bill.
Future Hyundai EVs Could Vibrate, Accelerate Like Normal Gas Cars
Hyundai currently makes a solid lineup of performance cars powered by internal combustion engines, but the Korean automaker is also a big player in the race toward electrification. As such, it seems to understand that a balance must be struck between the new world of EVs, and the known quantity that is internal combustion. A lot of people don't want change, and according to a recent patent application, Hyundai still wants to cater to ICE buyers, even if the car doesn't have an internal combustion engine. The Drive reports a patent app document published arch 24 details a system by which idling, gear changes, stopping/starting, and more are all simulated via audio cues, visual displays, and vibration from the car's drive motor. The text claims that a person who is used to driving an ICE-powered car "may be bored due to the absence of an ICE, a transmission, a clutch, or the like," when they buy an EV. As such, it might be desirable to "differentiate an EV by providing a function for virtualizing the driving characteristics of an internal-combustion-engine vehicle." Click here to learn more about Hyundai’s plans for future EVs.
3 Best Practices for CRM Customization
The past few years have been a challenge for all industries — especially retail automotive. Shuttered showrooms, a boom in digital retailing, lack of new cars on the ground, and a pivot to selling pipeline and virtual inventory all changed the “normal” sales process. It’s not surprising that CBT News’ recent CDK Global Automotive Retail Friction Report revealed that 94 percent of the 303 dealers surveyed are reevaluating their sales process. It’s a smart move to leverage CRM customizations to support new workflows. Your CRM can help facilitate and orchestrate the customer journey, manage leads across all channels, and uncover new sales opportunities. Today’s new challenge is how to respond to leads when you don’t have any inventory. Many salespeople ignore these leads because they don’t know what to say and/or are afraid of angering the customer. Of course, ignoring inquiries is a great way to anger customers. Instead, salespeople need help selling pipeline and virtual inventory. Customize email templates within your CRM that speak to the process of ordering “in demand” vehicles and also purchasing vehicles in your pipeline. Click here for the full story.
These are the Safest SUVs You Can Buy in 2022
If you're looking to buy a new car, truck, or SUV, you're almost certainly thinking about safety. Luckily, the NHTSA and IIHS crash-test and evaluate new vehicles so you can have a little more peace of mind before you walk into a dealership and sign on the dotted line. Impressively, even with new safety guidelines regarding headlights for 2022, many of the vehicles that made Motortrend’s list in 2021 also made this list. Determining which SUVs are the safest of all can seem daunting, but to make things easier, Motortrend has assembled the safest SUVs you can buy in 2022. If an SUV is found on this list, that means it's a 2022 IIHS Top Safety Pick+ and it has a five-star overall rating from the NHTSA. Not all SUVs meet both criteria, so you can be sure these family haulers are the safest ones on the market. They are arranged these in alphabetical order and not necessarily most to least safe. Click here to see the rankings.
Around the Web
7 Things About Mazda You Probably Didn't Know [Carbuzz]
2022 Mercedes-AMG EQS: Starts at $148,550 for 277-Mile Range, Up to 751 HP [The Drive]
7 Wagons That are Worth a lot More Than Their Sedan and Coupe Siblings [Hagerty]
Test Drive: Is the 2022 Kia EV6 Really the World's Best Car? [Fox News]
