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Traffic deaths in the United Stated jump to 38,680 in 2020. This is the highest total since 2007 and it is up 7.2%, nearly 2,600 more than 2019. This also comes in a year where the total miles driven were down 13% because of the pandemic. The NHTSA claims that the largest factors for this increase were: impaired driving, speeding, and not wearing a seatbelt. This is consistent with drastic increases in alcohol and substance abuse in 2020. The NHTSA wrote an open letter to drivers in January stating, “fewer Americans drove but those who did took more risks and had more fatal crashes. … It’s irresponsible and illegal to drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol, which not only puts your life at risk but the lives of others.” I’m not sure what an open letter that no one reads is going to do for the situation but I hope we can get this problem under control.
Ford Motor Company said Thursday that they could be looking at $1.3 billion in possible penalties from the US Customs and Border Protection concerning duties owed on Ford Transit Connects. The Supreme Court declined to hear Ford’s appeal in 2020, Ford stating they had overpaid for previous imports, plus interest. They are still fighting this and said anything paid out “would be based on our level of culpability as determined by the courts.”
Ford CEO Jim Farley rolled out a new growth plan he is calling Ford+. In this plan Ford is separating the part of the business that is aimed at commercial and fleet customers into a unit called Ford Pro. Ford hopes this will help them secure an even bigger portion of the commercial van and truck market in the US. They currently have a 43% market share of this segment. This new unit will be run by Ted Cannis who has held many different positions at Ford over the years, most recently as the Global Director of Electrification and then General Manager for North American commercial business. With his new title as CEO of Ford Pro, Ford is banking on fleet and commercial customers to lead the way in the electrification of american vehicles. Ted has said “More than any other customer segment, our commercial customers will lead the connected and electric vehicle tech transformation”. It seems like Wall Street agrees with Ford’s stock up 9% in the last week and almost 40% in the last 30 days. I hope to have a lot more information on this soon as it has the ability to greatly affect our customer base of companies that own commercial vehicles.
A new $12 billion microchip plant in Phoenix Arizona is being built by chip manufacturer TSMC. The city of Phoenix approved financial incentives to the tune of $200 million to develop roads and improve infrastructure around the site in November. TSMC’s CEO C.C. Wei had a pre-recorded presentation on Tuesday for the company’s annual tech symposium stating that the project is “well under way”. TSMC is the world’s most advanced producer of chips and serves customers like Apple, Nvidia, and Qualcomm.
GM stated that many vehicles previously put on hold from microchip shortages will be shipping to dealerships in June and July. GM’s Flint Michigan plant has made plans to increase production by 1000 vehicles per month in mid July. Let’s hope that this starts to turn things around because as of Friday GM has lost more than 272,000 vehicles from its North American production schedules.
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