This is Autoline Daily, the show dedicated to enthusiasts of the global automotive industry.
ATP CONTINUES TO CLIMB
Car prices continue to soar in the U.S. Kelley Blue Book reports that the average transaction price for a new vehicle in December hit a record high of just over $47,000, that’s up 14% compared to a year ago. That price includes luxury vehicles, but if you take those out, the average price for a new non-luxury car is still over $43,000. Inventories are low because of the chip shortage and with high consumer demand, prices continue to climb.
GM LAUNCHING USED VEHICLE SHOPPING PLATFORM
That’s why so many people started turning to used vehicles. Although their prices are rising too. But customers will have a new platform to turn to, to buy used vehicles. GM is launching CarBravo where customers will be able to look at used vehicles from dealer inventory as well as vehicles coming off-lease, former company-owned cars and ones from rental companies. Non-GM vehicles will be included too. It will also provide pricing, history reports and pictures of the vehicles. Every vehicle is inspected and will be repaired to a standard set by GM if needed. Customers can also get guaranteed online offers to buy their vehicle even if they’re not purchasing a vehicle through CarBravo. Look for the platform to be up and running this spring.
1ST SALES INCREASE IN CHINA SINCE 2017
Car sales in China increased for the first time since 2017. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers or CAAM for short, carmakers sold more than 26 million vehicles in 2021, up nearly 4% compared to a year ago. Sales of new energy vehicles, which includes BEVs, plug-in hybrids and fuel cell vehicles, hit 3.5 million last year, which is up 157%. And that momentum is expected to carry into this year. CAAM estimates that sales will hit 27.5 million in 2022 and that new energy vehicle sales will jump 50% to five million.
VW EV SALES UP
And speaking of electric vehicle sales, Volkswagen revealed its BEV sales increased 96% in 2021, just shy of 453,000 units globally. BEVs now account for 5% of VW’s total sales. The automaker also revealed it sold nearly 310,000 plug-in hybrids worldwide last year, up 61%. But while its electrified vehicle sales were up big, sales of conventionally powered vehicles stumbled. In total, the VW Group sold 8.9 million vehicles last year, down 4.5%.
NACTOY WINNERS ANNOUNCED
Ford walked away with two of the three NACTOY awards yesterday. It won Truck of the Year with the Maverick pickup truck and Utility of the Year with the Bronco. Honda won the Car of the Year with the new Civic. The NACTOY jury is made up of 50 automotive journalists, men and women, from the US and Canada. They represent all kinds of media outlets, including enthusiast, consumer, trade and business. Our own John and Gary are jurors and no doubt they’ll be talking about who won and why on Autoline After Hours tomorrow.
Speaking of which, we’ll have Tim Jackson from the Colorado Car Dealers Association on the show. As you know, some car dealers are being heavily criticized for adding thousands of dollars to the prices of new cars. They’re taking advantage of tight inventory to charge a lot more and that’s going to be Topic #1 on the show, so be sure to tune in Thursday afternoon at 3 pm eastern time.
LEXUS REVEALS OFF-ROAD TUNED LX
True auto show aficionados want to see concepts on display stands, but we’ve been told that a decked-out truck or performance car is enough to get the general public excited. Lexus is taking the latter approach with a custom tuned LX Offroad model that it’s showing off in Tokyo. And it’s got the right look with blacked-out accents, skid plates, custom wheels with aggressive tires and a set of mud flaps for good measure. Lexus isn’t your typical off-road brand, but the LX shares a platform with Toyota’s iconic off-roader, the Land Cruiser.
CITROEN UPDATES THE C5 AIRCROSS
Citroen is giving the C5 Aircross a pretty standard refresh. The big change is the front fascia. Citroen said it dropped the curves of the previous model in favor of a more structured look. At the rear it was given a new LED lighting signature, which is supposed to provide a 3D effect. A new set of 18-inch wheels and floating 10-inch display screen round out the list of improvements.
ZF TO SUPPLY VINFAST WITH ADAS TECH.
At CES last week in Las Vegas, ZF announced it will be supplying Vinfast, the Vietnamese startup, with Level 2, L3 and L4 technology. Vinfast launches this year with a L2 ADAS, then next year it will add Level 3 technology for a traffic jam assist application. That’s where drivers can operate hands-free and foot-free and don’t even have to pay attention to what’s going on around them at speeds up to 40 miles an hour or 63 kilometers an hour. In 2024 Vinfast will launch a Level 4 system from ZF for automated valet parking. Vinfast is moving fast by partnering with companies like ZF. And it turned to Pininfarina to design its vehicles. While it sells vehicles with internal combustion engines, it wants to be fully electric by the end of the year.
BOSCH ADDING CONNECTIVITY TO E-BIKES
Bosch used CES to highlight how it’s taking e-bikes to the next level. Bosch is a pioneer in this segment. It launched its e-bike business in 2010 and has been riding a wave that continues to grow. Now it’s providing connectivity for e-bikes, where riders can connect their bike to their smartphone via an app. They can access info such as the battery state of charge, how much distance they’ve travelled and they can upload data to a fitness app. Bosch will offer over the air updates to the system and will provide cloud services to e-bike manufacturers as it fully expects e-bikes to soar in popularity.
And that wraps up today’s show, thank you for watching.
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Comments (25)
January 12th, 2022 at 12:53 pm
1. Re prices ‘continuing to climb”, and at really high levels even excluding luxury cars. Part of this is due to a trend that many, many, strictly speaking non-luxury vehicles command stratospheric prices. For example, loaded pickup trucks, large SUVs, even some supercars costing 200 and 400k are not at all ‘luxury’ in their interiors. So it’s better to use price segments than terms like ‘luxury’ where every other guy has a different definition. But the other part, that many here still do not get, is the rampant inflation in recent months, and the slow creep of inflation the last 40 or so years, which makes cars in 2022 priced 5 times as much as they were in 1982. Admittedly the 2022 are far superior in tech and power, but still, most people are not enthusiasts and don’t care.
2. Re your COTY award. You cite a lot of positives about these awards, but you fail to mention they include o n l y the vehicles whose makers gave you a free copy to test around. Because of this constraint, you missed monumental home runs as both the Model S and the Model 3. Other auto magazines and TV shows were able to find the above vehicles to test, usually offered by their owners, and after testing them, they did give them the COTY crowns. Motor Trend comes to mind, correctly naming the Model S COTY in 2013.
3. Above reservations aside, I am quite pleased with two of the three awards. The Ford Maverick pickup, regardless what the usual never satisfied nitpickers here will say, has most deservedly won the award. It has an amazingly affordable price, even in hybrid form, 10,000s below the average vehicle price, and is still a whole lot of truck (which is an asset, not a liability), plus it gets stellar MPG in the $27k hybrid form. The Bronco is a silly exercise, an ugly competitor to Jeep, regardless how many buyers with bad taste initially buy them. The Civic is the greatest compact car, used to be a subcompact but now it is far bigger than the original Accord, let alone the tiny Civics of the past. I don’t like the extgerior styling of recent Civics, and the interiors have not become more luxurious with each larger model, but still it offers great fun and mpg at still affordable prices, with very good reliability. Why buy a boring, ugly Corolla instead?
January 12th, 2022 at 12:53 pm
Good NACOTY awards for Ford! I really believed that the BEVs may have taken a clean sweep. Maybe Ford’s wins may encourage GM to get into the unibody pick-up and Bronco type vehicles, here in the US.
I understand that the Lexus LX in the story is concept, but, IMHO, they should just stay where they are in the market with that vehicle. Let the Sequoia and Land Cruiser go knuckles deep with the real off roading stuff, while they continue with the Land Rover Ranger Rover alternative motif that the got going. I don’t think anyone driving an LX is going that far off the pavement, so it seems a little silly to go that route. Truth be told, I do not believe owners of the new Wagoner and GW will find themselves too far off in the rough, even though their vehicle has the street cred to do it!
January 12th, 2022 at 12:54 pm
I look forward to hearing what jurors John and Gary have to say about the vehicles they evaluated for the NACTOY awards. Everyone has raved about the wonderfulness of the Lucid Air, but with “value” being one of the judging guidelines, the Lucid appears to have lost a lot of points.
January 12th, 2022 at 1:01 pm
1 I’m pretty sure the Land Cruiser has been dropped from the US market. It’s price was too close to the Lexus version, and as you say, no one drives these off road anyway, no matter how capable they might be. Heck, very few people even drive Wranglers very far off road.
January 12th, 2022 at 1:02 pm
Re the 2021 calendar year US vehicle sales and its comparison to prior years. I strongly recommend you show the market share of each maker, and, more importantly, how it has gone up or down the last 10 years or so. I have detailed stats at my home computer, and plot a square with 1000 little squares inside, each 0.1% of market share. Only comparing 2021 to 2020, 2019, 2017 etc will you truly appreciate the strong and continuous growth of Tesla, which is still the only serious EV game in town, and, more importantly, at whose expense these gains have come. Hint: At the expense of the onetime big 3, and especially GM, which keeps losing market share for decades, like a leaky jar. Ford’s decision to go all trucks, despite the higher gas prices (but still far lower than the 2008 $4.50 peak, which, in 2022 dollars is more like $7.50!), has worked fine so far, and Ford was rewarded by getting 2 out of 3 COTY awards, plus a ton of other awards for the new Maverick. GM, on the other hand, is flailing, Mary Barra has been a huge disappointment so far, as one would expect with CEOS that are not appointed based on their Merit but on other, irrelevant considerations.
January 12th, 2022 at 1:12 pm
As the ATP continues to rise I wonder if in the near future we wont see a rise in repossessions. Since many banks will provide a bank loan to just about anyone and these huge increases are going to cause people to pay so much over value. When things finally normalize and price comes down they’ll realize they owe way more than its worth. If they want to trade up they’ll have to roll in thousands into their new loan. I really expect this have some long term affects 3-5 years from now.
January 12th, 2022 at 1:53 pm
4 Do banks, or “in house” loan organizations lend 30% over MSRP? If so, these loans could be 50% under water after production returns to normal, and used car prices return to normal.
January 12th, 2022 at 1:58 pm
That few people go off-road with the LX or Land Cruiser misses the point. This observation would probably apply to most 4×4 pickups too.
People buy a rugged body on frame SUV because it CAN go off-road with the best of them, not because there are any plans to do so.
There is a certain cache in tough, rugged, body on frame 4×4 SUVs and trucks that speaks to an appreciation of their capabilities and a desire to make sure that ability is in their “back pocket”. Just in case.
January 12th, 2022 at 2:06 pm
In light of new car prices, in 2019 I paid $41,000 for a Tesla Model 3 with extra for AutoPilot and Blue paint. After trading in a 2017 Prius Prime, my out of pocket was $24,000.
The 25 mi EV mode, 2017 Prius Prime was not being used because our 72 mi EV, 2014 BMW i3-REx was more affordable. Worse, the Toyota control laws ran the Prime gas engine when the temperature dropped to 55 F.
Regardless, like all who bought cars before this year, we’re sitting in the ‘cat bird seat.’ My sympathies to those who face today’s prices.
January 12th, 2022 at 2:22 pm
7 I hadn’t thought of that, but I guess the only cabin heat of the Prime is the regular heater using the engine coolant.
I did well with my Corvette, which I ordered in September 2020, and took delivery in October 2021. I paid MSRP plus tax, but with zero bogus $1000+ dealer add ons for “documentation” and other such stuff, like all Toyota dealers seem to charge, even in normal times.
January 12th, 2022 at 2:27 pm
6 Yeah, people buy macho trucks because they like the looks of them, and because they CAN go off-road. I buy sports cars because I like they way they look and drive, and because they CAN go very fast, even though my Corvette has yet to see triple digit speeds.
January 12th, 2022 at 3:17 pm
#2. Kit, another reason why the Lucid Air didn’t score better is that most of the Canadians on the jury were not able to travel to the US because of Covid restrictions. And they weren’t going to vote for a car that they had not driven. That doesn’t mean the Lucid Air would have won the award if they had been able to travel, but it almost certainly would have scored higher than it did.
January 12th, 2022 at 3:25 pm
10 Thanks, John, for that info.
January 12th, 2022 at 3:33 pm
Tomorrow’s AH show will be about Dealers. Today Sandy Munro has a special guest in Munro Live, they talk about Automotive history,@ 27:00 timestamp in the video they talk of where the dealers future might be headed to,listen to all of the video,very interesting things are about to happen , and towards the end Sandy shows one of the First Chinese mass market BEVs to land in the USA,, a brand nobody has probably never heard of,, I believe they do have a dealer in Quebec.If they can deliver this EV car for $40,000- $45,000 legacy auto is screwed.
January 12th, 2022 at 3:38 pm
#10 John McElroy, speaking of BEVs and Canadians ,Sandy Munro has an Imperium EV and will tear it down, and he bought it in the LA Autoshow, imported via Canada, please go and see his video of today, especially pertaining to tomorrow’s show about the Dealers , very interesting topic about the past and into tomorrow.
January 12th, 2022 at 3:39 pm
#9 Kit, no triple digits yet? You need to get that looked after asap
January 12th, 2022 at 3:47 pm
14 Yeah, I know.
January 12th, 2022 at 4:32 pm
7 Bob Wilson, if you see this. Did the Prius Prime always run the gas engine when below 55 degrees, even with the HVAC turned off?
January 12th, 2022 at 8:14 pm
16 – Even with HVAC off, it would start the ICE below 55 F. It was infuriating! Above 55 F, there were obscure conditions that could trigger ICE operation. In contrast, the BMW i3-REx never started the ICE until the battery SOC was low enough.
January 12th, 2022 at 8:30 pm
17 Thanks for info. I’m a little surprised that the Prius Prime would do that, but I guess it’s basically a regular hybrid with a bigger battery, while the i3 REx is basically an EV, but with the gas engine generator to keep it going after the battery is low. I knew the Prime would always start the ICE, like many plug-in hybrids, if you use much throttle, because the electric power is limited, but I wouldn’t have expected it to run the engine under light throttle until the battery is low.
January 13th, 2022 at 3:10 am
18 – The Prime was ‘good news’ and ‘bad news.’ On the good, it has a one-way clutch that means both MG1 and MG2 can be used for forward motion. Reverse is exclusive to MG2. It also had relatively light weight since there are no clutches or torque converter.
Bad news, it occupies about 1/3d of the engine compartment. It is sized for full ICE power over 90 mph versus the BMW i3-REx and generator that only handles the power needed for 70 mph.
January 13th, 2022 at 3:52 am
EVs have pushed manufacturers to more linear integration (see web link.) EV parts are not (or poorly) off the shelf.
We see this in the EV efficiency numbers of many traditional makers that are more modest than cutting edge.
January 13th, 2022 at 5:37 am
The i3 is such a quirky car in every way – I’m sad that production ended last year.
Come to think of it, a (green) hydrogen powered Wankel range-extender would have been a great replacement for its tiny, inefficient two-cylinder engine, and fully in synch with the car’s offbeat character.
Mazda might have appreciated a partner – and BMW already is in cahoots with the Toyota Motor Corporation by leveraging their inline six.
January 13th, 2022 at 5:58 am
Oops – I meant allowing Toyota to buy BMW’s six for use in the Supra. Apologies for any ruffled feathers!
January 13th, 2022 at 8:49 am
I was hoping there’d be a 2nd generation i3, still a little quirky, but with more electric range. The used what they had for the range extender, the engine used in the BMW C 650 scooter. Yeah, a Wankel, being light and compact would be great for a range extender, and they are apparently efficient when fueled with hydrogen, if you can get the hydrogen.
I see that the big BMW scooters have been discontinued, at least in the US market. There seem to be no big scooters left. I think they are great, having a Honda SilverWing 600 for about 17 years, but apparently few people want big scooters.