CBT automotive newscast: June 23, 2021

Featured Interview:

Cox Automotive Pres. Steve Rowley discusses his perspective on the future of auto retail
Cox Automotive has more than 40,000 auto dealer clients across five continents and is home to brands like Autotrader, Dealer.com, Dealertrack, Kelley Blue Book, Manheim, NextGear Capital, vAuto, and Xtime. On today’s show, we sit down with the new President of Cox Automotive, Steve Rowley, to discuss his first nine months as President and his perspective on trends across the retail automotive industry. Watch the complete segment here.

Top Headlines:

Former President of Tesla’s heavy-duty trucking, Jerome Guillen has sold over $270 million worth of shares by exercising stock options after he left the company in early June. According to an Insiderscore analysis, Guillen had over $470 million in unvested options and unvested restricted stock. Guillen hasn’t commented on why he left or about his personal investment approach. Tesla has yet to make an announcement for a new president of heavy-duty trucking.

Speaking of Tesla, auto start-up Virtuo plans to add around 50 Tesla Model 3 long range vehicles to its fleet, and will be packed with the latest features and innovations. This is part of the car hire firm’s goal of having 50% of its vehicles be electric by 2025 and 100% by 2030. The introduction of the Tesla Model 3 to Virtuo’s fleet comes after investors provided $60 million of funding to the company, bringing the total investment to $96 million. The company says it plans to use the money to accelerate the electrification of its fleet.

Virtuo is not the only company investing in an electric future. Audi CEO Markus Duesmann has shared the timeline for Audi to become electric-only, too. The automaker plans to end the expansion of new internal combustion engine models by 2026 and focus on full-electric drivetrains. After 2026, they will only develop battery-powered models. Although, Audi plans to stop manufacturing new gas, diesel, and hybrid cars, its new models launched by 2026, will continue to be made and sold until the early 2030s. Afterward, they will become a purely electric car maker.

In other OEM news, Nissan is making changes to their production schedules at multiple factories due to the worldwide chip shortage. The shortage will affect the productions of almost 500,000 vehicles this year. To prevent more production loss, the automaker is looking to take action and stabilize its supply of parts.

News & Opinion:

Four ways to improve customer engagement at your car dealership
If there’s one thing that dealers have learned in the past 17 months, it’s how to be adaptable. Aside from a select few instances, the business of selling cars was almost exclusively an in-person process, but necessity forced change. Customer engagement no longer was all about booking appointments for face-to-face interaction but required creativity and flexibility. Yet, customer engagement is far from a consistent process from person to person, and especially from store to store. The pandemic has reshaped how car dealers engage with sales customers, and CDK Global has indicated as much in a white paper titled “Reshaping Consumer Engagement” released June 21. Read more

EVs are up and coming, but what about electric trucks?
With the help of the 2020 Great American Truck Survey, it became clear that truck owners are in love with their pickups. In fact, 25% of the owners have named their truck, with 15% of owners getting a tattoo related to their truck. This isn’t something that could be said about the average sedan or SUV driver. It’s clear that America identifies itself as a nation filled with truck lovers. On the other hand, we are quickly becoming a nation that is fond of the electric vehicle, with 57% of drivers willing to consider an electric vehicle. Read more