Restocking Dealer Lots a Tough Task for Industry
Relatively strong retail sales and continued production hiccups from COVID-19 have pushed new-vehicle inventories nationwide down to just 2.3 million vehicles, according to figures tabulated by Cox Automotive and confirmed by the Automotive News Data Center. It's the lowest nationwide inventory level since November 2011. So why are inventories continuing to fall if sales haven't fully returned and factories have reopened? It turns out that many of those factories aren't running at a pre-COVID-19 pace all the time. Collectively, 2.3 million new vehicles represents a 62-day supply based on the July selling rate, according to Cox. But as dealers across the nation will attest, when it comes to the supply of certain popular models, such as the Toyota Tacoma, Kia Telluride, and Hyundai Palisade, the stocks available to sell are depleted and likely costing sales as a result. Read more here (Source: Automotive News).
Could a Decade of Stability in Dealership Count Be Ending?
The number of new vehicles sold on average at U.S. dealerships will plunge in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic pushes down total industry sales. But it's too early to know whether that will translate to more dealerships shutting for good, according to Urban Science, a consulting firm that tracks the franchised dealership count in the U.S. According to Automotive News, that drop in dealership throughput for 2020, to a forecasted 734 new vehicles per store from 940 in 2019, comes more than a decade after the last big plunge during the Great Recession. After vehicle sales dropped in the 2008-2009 period, the U.S. dealership count also tumbled, from 20,000-plus franchised stores to 17,659 in 2010. "It's been pretty stable year to year since 2010," said Mitch Phillips, Urban Science's global data director. He noted the total number of dealerships in the U.S. has, in fact, steadily grown since then. Urban Science last week released its midyear franchised dealership review showing that U.S. store count is down by 34 outlets to 18,161 as of July 1. The total franchise count slid by 154 to 32,031. Read more here (Source: Automotive News).
Interest in Electric Pickups is Growing, with Rivian's R1T at the Top
Interest in electric pickups is growing, and the early leaders — very early, since none of the vehicles in question exists yet — are Rivian’s R1T and the Tesla Cybertruck, according to a July survey of Tweets. According to The Detroit Free Press, there are some oddities in the data, led by the absence of Ford’s upcoming electric F-150 and the fact that the Nikola Badger dominated the Southwest. The F-150, of course, has been the bestselling vehicle in the U.S. for decades. An electric version should be available in 2022. The Chevy Silverado, America’s No. 2 seller with an EV model promised by 2025, also failed to make the list. You’d probably get long odds against all the trucks other companies have promised making it to volume production, but online traffic indicates interest in EVs may be penetrating the pickup market, the largest sales segment in the country. Read more here (Source: Detroit Free Press).
Japanese Officials Tried to Push Nissan-Honda Merger Talks, Report Says
Government figures tried to bring Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. to the table for merger talks this year, but the project fizzled out due to the companies’ rejection of the idea, reports The Japan Times. The suggestion was made to the major automakers at the end of last year, amid intensified global competition in the auto sector to shift toward self-driving electric vehicles, the international business paper said, citing three people familiar with the matter. The idea of bringing together Nissan and Honda appears to have come from advisers to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, as they were worried that the state of Nissan’s alliance with Renault SA of France had soured badly since the 2018 arrest of former boss Carlos Ghosn over financial misconduct, the newspaper reported. Abe’s aides feared that Nissan’s deteriorating ties with Renault could result in the alliance collapsing altogether and “leave the Japanese company exposed,” the FT said. The three-way alliance also involves Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors Corp. Read more here (Source: The Japan Times).
Lucid Motors Has Ambitious Plans to Defy Skeptics and Take on Tesla
It’s been nearly a decade since Peter Rawlinson took the stage at the 2011 Detroit auto show to reveal the Tesla Model S sedan, reports CNBC. There was a problem though. The car wasn’t ready, so he instead showed the car’s body shell. “I was almost a laughing stock. I was derided,” Rawlinson, who was the Model S chief engineer and vice president of engineering at Tesla, told CNBC. “No one took me seriously.” Rawlinson, who left Tesla in 2012, is now looking to defy skeptics again with a similar playbook as CEO of Lucid Motors, a start-up electric vehicle manufacturer he says has the cash, technology and talent to become one of the first real rivals to his former employer. Rawlinson is taking lessons learned from his three years at Tesla as well as other experiences with British car manufacturers Lotus and Jaguar in an attempt to differentiate and validate Lucid from a growing list of electric vehicle startups promising to change the world and bring new electric vehicles to market in the coming years. Read more here (Source: CNBC).
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