GM Putting Major Effort To Make a Dent In Ford’s Pickup Dominance

GM has been watching Ford, hungry for its share of the pickup truck segment. The F-series pickups are practically synonymous with pickups in America, but by paying close attention to technology, the F-series’ construction methods, and materials, GM is planning to unveil a vehicle that can give the F-series a serious, dangerous competitor. The Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra are the contenders, and between the extreme weight and metal cutbacks, these pickups are rated to get around 32 miles to the gallon - light SUV gas efficiency levels. Not only that, but since the cost to make the body is reduced, that gives more budget to put entertainment or tech suites into the car. Let’s see how this battle turns out, folks.   When General Motors Co (GM.N) engineers were developing the 2019 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks, some of them joined public tours of Ford Motor Co’s (F.N) Dearborn, Michigan factory to watch aluminum-bodied F-series trucks go down the assembly line. The redesign of the Ford F-series trucks, launched in 2014, set a new standard for fuel economy and lightweight vehicle construction. But armed with stopwatches and trained eyes, the GM engineers believed they saw problems. “They had a real hard time getting those doors to fit,” Tim Herrick, the executive chief engineer for GM truck programs told Reuters. His team did more intelligence gathering. They bought and tore apart Ford F-series doors sold as repair parts. Their conclusion: GM could cut weight in its trucks for a lower cost using doors made of a combination of aluminum and high strength steel that could be thinner than standard steel, shaving off kilograms in the process. Click here to continue reading

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Toyota Warns Trump Tariffs Will Only Hurt Workers and Consumer Wallets

President Trump’s trade tariffs seem to be driving Toyota up a wall, as the company is letting reporters know. The tariffs will add about $3,000 to the sticker price of its most popular cars, due to the fact that Toyota is not an American automaker. The broad scope of the tariffs and the fact they actually hurt consumers more has Toyota trying to communicate with the press very intently. For example, the Toyota Camry is assembled in Kentucky, but still will be subject to the tariff and cost and extra $1,800 to the consumer, according to the company.   The Trump administration's trade war will make Toyota pickup trucks and minivans more expensive, adding about $3,000 to the sticker price of some of its best-selling automobiles, Toyota executives said after reporting record profits Friday. Global net income at the Japanese automaker rose from 613.0 billion yen ($5.52 billion) to 657.3 billion yen during its first quarter ended June 30. But executives told reporters on a call Friday that the increased U.S. tariffs could seriously affect Toyota's bottom line and hurt jobs. "A 25 percent tariff on automotive imports, which is just a tax on consumers, would increase the cost of every vehicle sold in the country," Toyota said in a statement. The extremely popular Toyota Camry sedan, which is assembled in Kentucky, would cost an extra $1,800 if a 25 percent tariff were to take effect, the company said. Click here to continue reading

Toyota Warns Trump Tariffs Will Only Hurt Workers and Consumer Wallets was originally published to CarDaddy

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Ford May Be Bringing the Courier Back, and to the North America Market

Car rumors are always fun, but here’s a really fun one: Ford may be bringing back the Courier, a small pickup sold primarily in countries like Brazil and Mexico. Ford has just applied to trademark the Courier name, which was last applied to a 70s 80s small pickup. According to reports, the Courier will be built on the Ford Focus framework. When asked about whether the Courier is coming back a Ford spokesperson sent an email saying Ford is “significantly expanding our North America lineup with all-new vehicles and entering new segments with fresh designs.” Yes or no? Who knows?   Ford is rumored to be working on a small subcompact pickup truck that may also make its way to the North American market. The new truck is expected to serve as the informal replacement to the Ford Courier—a small pickup that was sold in countries such as Brazil and Mexico. Whereas the previous Courier was based on old Ford Fiesta components, Automobile Magazine reported the new model will share its underpinnings with the latest global Ford Focus compact car. Supporting the model’s North American prospects: Ford has applied to trademark the Courier name with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The nameplate was previously applied to a Mazda-based compact pickup truck Ford sold in the United States throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. More recently, Ford has used the name on the Transit Courier small van that is sold overseas, and it’s possible that Ford’s trademark application is in reference to that vehicle. Click here to continue reading

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Ford and VW May Work Together on a Mid-size Pickup

The new decade is approaching, that that means that automakers are looking to come up with new, sexy ideas. Well, how sexy is a team-up between Ford and Volkswagen on a mid-size pickup truck? If rumor isn’t quite enough for a first taste, the rumors are circulating because of hints the companies are giving out themselves. There’s a joint venture between the two to make commercial vehicles, but a regional managing director for VW hinted that there might be more than just commercial trucks coming out of that arrangement. The Ford Ranger and VW Amarok might even share tech and parts. More concrete details will no doubt follow later.   Australian website GoAuto is reporting, based on an interview with a local Volkswagen executive, that the next-generation Amarok pickup truck could be related to the next-generation Ford Ranger pickup truck. The story was soon picked up by Automobile, where we saw it (because we don’t often peruse Australian news). Cue head-shaking surprise! Could it be that Ford would team up with VW to develop a new mid-size truck? Maybe. In his interview with GoAuto, Volkswagen Group Australia managing director Michael Bartsch touched on a recently announced commercial-vehicle joint venture between the German automaker and Ford, leaving open the possibility that the connection could bear fruit beyond work vehicles. Of course, justification along the lines of lowered development costs, complex global-supply-chain matters, and tariffs were dangled as hints that a VW/Ford mid-size-pickup mashup could be in the works after each automaker updates its trucks for 2020. Click here to continue reading

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Foreign Automakers Trying to Fill Sedan Gap Left By Domestic Automakers

Sports Utility Vehicles. Those words sound like money to domestic automakers like GM and Ford, but when they move toward them at the expense of other words like “sedan” and “luxury sub-brand,” who fills the gap? Well, companies like Honda Motor Co. are hoping that by attending to the base that wants a sedan, those customers will gravitate to their luxury brands like the Acura to fix their demand for luxury vehicles, even if it’s less than that for SUVs and crossovers. Maybe domestic makers are leaving too wide a niche for the competition to get into… time will tell in the years to come.   In the Age of Ute, the future of mainstream sedans is in flux: Detroit automakers Ford Motor Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles are largely exiting the passenger-car market to concentrate on profit-rich SUVs. But for foreign automakers, sedans are not only profitable, they're seen as an opportunity. Sedans as well as SUVs are important foundation stones for their luxury brands — and introductory gateways to higher-priced models. As domestic automakers leave sedans, some auto insiders wonder if they are ceding a competitive advantage to full-line foreign automakers. Take Honda Motor Co., which depends on less-expensive Honda-branded offerings to feed new customers to luxury-brand Acura. Click here to continue reading  

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GM Warns It Might Discontinue Chinese-made ‘Envision’ Model Because of Tariffs

Amid the President’s continuing sweeping 25 percent tariff on many imported Chinese goods, carmakers are among the unlucky businesses left to account for it. General Motors is in a particularly bad spot, due to the popularity of its Buick Envision luxury crossover both in China and the U.S.A. GM has applied for an exemption for the big moneymaker, but it warns that it might discontinue the line in America if they can’t get the government’s exemption. Considering that 19 percent of U.S. Buicks sold were Envisions, that’s a pretty big sacrifice to make...   President Donald Trump's 25 percent tariff on certain goods imported from China into the U.S. is now in effect and unfortunately for Buick, cars are part of that sweep. General Motors is making an effort to get an exemption for the Chinese-built Buick Envision SUV, but last week the company warned that it might discontinue the model in America if its request isn’t approved, according to Automotive News. Starting in the 2016 model year, the Buick Envision became the first ever made-in-China Buick to be available for sale in this country. China is by far Buick’s biggest market and from a manufacturing perspective, it just makes sense for Buick to build the Envision where they’re going to sell more of them and import them into the U.S. It also makes sense that they'd want to keep it in the American market: in 2017, about 19 percent of all Buicks sold in the U.S. were Envisions. That's a lot of sales to save. Click here to continue reading

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Buick Commercials Imply a Move Away From Passenger Vehicles

The actors communicate Buick’s message via mistaking a Buick for a passenger vehicle: Buick is changing, folks. Image changes are bound to happen with long-lived companies, but few try to sell it as hard as Buick is. With SUVs on the rise and passenger sedans on the decline, it makes sense that Buick wants people to see its relevance in areas outside of sedans. Indeed, Buick’s sales in the SUV sector are seeing the same buying trends nationally that other companies are seeing, so buttering up the customers to show off their good side makes good business sense.   When Buick launched its “That’s Not a Buick” advertising campaign a few years back, it was to highlight the new look that the Buick line had adopted. Buick’s most recent advertisement, entitled “Mistaken Identity,” employs a similar theme of misidentifying Buick vehicles. Yet, while the old advertisements broadcasted the new design portfolio of Buick’s vehicles, this latest commercial seems to signal another change for the Buick line: a shift away from sedans. [...] All of the cases of mistaken identity featured in the ad have one thing in common: onlookers mistake someone’s Buick for a traditional Buick sedan. Ultimately, it is the utility model that serves as the desired vehicle. Click here to continue reading

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American Automakers Poised to be Hurt by Upcoming Tariffs

Although there have been some incredible gains in the auto industry insofar as recent sales surges have been concerned, American auto manufacturers like GM, Ford, and Chrysler are more than worried that the proposed tariffs by the executive branch may have incredibly detrimental effects on the domestic auto industry. Worse is that those problems would then be on the workers’ shoulders, meaning there may be impending layoffs coming soon that are unavoidable.   Automakers have been reaping a windfall from a strong economy and sales of big, profitable vehicles for the last several years. But the profit bonanza may be coming to an abrupt end amid concerns about escalating costs stemming from a global trade dispute. And consumers may have to pay the bill in the form of higher prices. President Donald Trump's sudden imposition of steel and aluminum tariffs and the possibility of tariffs on imported and exported vehicles threaten to undermine the industry's finances and increase prices for consumers. His tariff threats have drawn support from the United Auto Workers union, which represents hourly U.S. workers for GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler, and from U.S. steel companies. Click Here to Continue Reading

American Automakers Poised to be Hurt by Upcoming Tariffs was first published to CarDaddy's Blog

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GM (Also) Launching an Airbnb-Style Car Sub-Renting Program

General Motors seems to be running in a different direction from other carmakers by trying out an Airbnb-style rental program, a fairly new concept in the auto industry, similar to (but independent of) one we discussed before. Like the aforementioned company, subscribers would list their car when it is not being used, and give people permission to drive their car, which would in turn earn easy cash for the car’s owner. However, we all know how people like to drive when they’re in someone else’s car, and that would probably be a nightmare on your upkeep costs. Instead, do as we recommended in the other piece about an Airbnb-style-car-renting program and just get an affordable used car through us instead.   Car ownership ain’t what it used to be. Despite more people buying cars than ever before, the big auto companies are experimenting with alternate ownership models under the assumption that their sales will drop in the future. The most recent example is General Motors, which announced Tuesday a new peer-to-peer car-sharing service, in which owners of GM-branded vehicles would rent their cars to other people.The service, which will be operated under the automaker’s two-year-old Maven car-sharing company, has been in works for months. But it will be limited at first: car owners who live in Chicago, Detroit, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, can list and rent out their own personal cars when they aren’t using them, much like Airbnb users do with their homes and apartments. Click Here to Continue Reading

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“Airbnb For Cars” Expects to be the Future of Car Ownership

Andre Haddad, the CEO of Turo, has a lot of faith in his business plan if he’s letting people drive in his own small fleet of cars. Turo, best described as the Airbnb of car ownership, is a company looking to change up the way people do car lending by managing it through an app, like Uber or those yellow bikes littering the sidewalks. He’s put his Audis and Teslas (yes, plural) to work and has so far made over $11K in 2018 through rental. However, if you’re not keen on sharing cars with other people (or their germs or the way they smell), make sure to browse CarDaddy to find an affordable ride you won’t be forced to share just to afford.   Over the last Fourth of July weekend, Andre Haddad handed over the keys to his cars to seven strangers. While he barbecued with family at home, his Audi R8 and three Teslas carried guests where they needed to go. By Sunday night, they were back in his driveway. Haddad rents out the vehicles on Turo, a person-to-person car-sharing service most easily described as "Airbnb for cars," where Haddad has been CEO since 2011. "I'm a car enthusiast. I have the trifecta of Teslas," Haddad told Business Insider. And he puts those cars to work. So far in 2018, Haddad said he's earned a little over $11,000 renting five luxury vehicles on Turo. He's on track to beat his 2017 earnings. Click Here to Continue Reading

The following article “Airbnb For Cars” Expects to be the Future of Car Ownership was originally published to CarDaddy's Blog

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