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Honda has recalled over 700,000 Pilots, Passports, and Ridgelines because of a problem with the hood opening during driving. Honda stated that a gap in the front seal between the hood and grill that are used for air flow to the engine may be resulting in the hood vibrating at highway speeds. Over time the vibrations can cause stress fractures on the latch and may even separate the latch striker from the hood. If you own a 2019 Passport, 2016-2019 Pilot or a 2017-2020 Ridgeline or have any of these in your company’s fleet, make sure you get them to your local dealer asap to have this issue looked at unless you want to end up like Tommy Boy.
In a continuing story over the last few weeks, GM is announcing more downtime at their Bolt EV production plant in Orion Michigan. This plant is now scheduled to be down until Jan 28th and I expect to have this even pushed back further. The biggest reason is the huge recall over Bolt batteries catching fire and lack of new batteries to replace the recalled vehicles and produce new ones. I’m glad that GM is deciding to take care of the recalled vehicles first. I know this sounds like it would be a given that manufacturers would always take care of existing customers over producing new products but that is definitely not always the case. Many times these manufacturers have the parts needed to fix recalls on backorder for months all the while using the same parts to produce new vehicles. I have a feeling that this is an easy decision for GM on the Bolt because who in their right mind would purchase a new Chevrolet Bolt after this completely disastrous and dangerous recall. I imagine new orders are way down.
Tesla’s corporate headquarters are now in Austin TX after filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 1st. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk had a very public spat with Alameda CA bureaucrats over the handling of Covid protocols and lockdowns. This is yet another huge company leaving California over their taxes and over the top regulations. California used to be a mecca of auto manufacturing but over the last few decades almost everyone has left. Musk also stated that the death of affordable housing in the San Francisco Bay Area and long commute times were among factors in making this decision as well.
The UAW members recently voted to get rid of their old system of electing union representation. The UAW has been using a delegate system in which each branch is represented by a delegate, and the delegate is the person who has a vote. This new system would be where each member of the union no matter their status would have a vote. The one member one vote system seems like the way a “union” should be run anyway. The delegate system is obviously wrought with fraud as the UAW has proven with the recent corruption probe into the UAW sending 15 people to prison and including two former presidents and many high ranking officials. Neil Barofsky, the court ordered monitor, said that the members of the UAW voted to approve this new system almost 2 to 1 in favor. I hope this might help this terrible organization get going in the right direction.
Stellantis is rolling out a new dealership model in Europe. This will make their estimated 15,000+ franchises move to what they are calling a “retailer model”. This model will give Stellantis more control over how the vehicles are sold, this in turn will lower dealership margins hopefully at an exchange of the manufacturer taking on more costs like floorplan interest and insurance for vehicles that are sitting at dealerships. I can tell you from experience that dealerships pay millions of dollars per year to insure and floorplan the vehicles on their lot. I suspect manufacturers will go to a build to order process in which end users will order vehicles from the factory instead of choosing from inventory on the ground. Of course since they are now going to take the huge financial burden to house excess inventory I imagine there will be a lot less standing inventory.
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