Workflow Management Solutions Speed Up Estimates and Repairs
When it comes to vehicle service, what are customers’ biggest complaints? Long repair times, and bills that unexpectedly come in higher than estimates are...
Auto Dealers See Challenges; Opportunities in Mobility
Most auto dealers realize there are changes coming in the way people purchase, lease, own and use vehicles, and that the tried-and-true business model...
Automakers Testing Vehicles That “Talk” to Traffic Lights; Other Vehicles
Ever have one of those days when it seems like every traffic light is against you? That you have a face that turns lights...
Has Driverless Car Hype Reached Its Pinnacle?
In the media coverage of every new technology, there comes a moment that could be called “peak absurdity.” It’s the moment when the news...
“Siri, Unlock My Volkswagen”
The ability to use Siri – the ubiquitous artificial intelligence associated with Apple devices – to unlock and lock your vehicle isn’t new to...
A Technology to Eliminate “New Car Smell”
The Detroit Free Press is reporting this week that Ford Motor Company has filed a patent application for an odor-removal process that eliminates the...
An Accurate Tool for Pricing in Online Car Shopping
“What will my total monthly car payment be?”
It’s a hard question to answer, and one that comes up a lot at dealerships. Often, it’s...
“I Wasn’t Driving the Car, Officer. My Autopilot Was.”
It was only a matter of time. Drivers have been looking for loopholes to get out of traffic tickets since the dawn of the...
Speech Tech Company Nuance Creates New Automotive Spinoff
If you’ve ever wondered who built the voice recognition technology behind Apple’s conversational personal assistant Siri, wonder no more: the company is Burlington, Massachusetts-based...
Turo Go Dongle Enables “Airbnb For Vehicles”
It would take a particularly Zen kind of person to be comfortable with allowing strangers to use their car, but this type of “Airbnb”...
The Disconnect Between Dealer Marketing and Technology
At a twenty-first century dealership, it’s hard to see sometimes where marketing ends, and technology begins. Most marketing is done via technology solutions such...
California Dealer Association Asks Volvo to Suspend Subscription Service
The start for vehicle subscriptions has been bumpy. Cadillac has indefinitely suspended its BOOK vehicle subscription service. According to the Wall Street Journal, the...
Vehicle Sellers and Buyers Increasingly Rely on Technology to Spot Fraud
The last two hurricane seasons have been rough for people and vehicles alike. In 2018 alone, between 20,000 to 40,000 vehicles were damaged by...
TrueCar Acquires DealerScience; Promises Better Experiences for Dealer-Customers
One of car buyers’ biggest historical complaints, after the fact, is the lack of transparency in the process. Fees seem to come from nowhere,...
Let’s Take the Dog: Vehicle Buyers Want Pet-Friendly Features
It’s not news that sales of smaller vehicles are going…well, small. We like our trucks, SUVs and crossovers, and the sales figures show it....
2019 Hyundai Santa Fe SUV Debuts with Fingerprint Scanner
While much of the world remains impressed by the idea of smart keys, at least one company is showing us how the technology is...
Tiremetrix Expands Partner Agreements for Tire Registration Plus
Since the passing of the FAST Act, tire shops have been taking on a bigger burden when it comes to registering tires. The law,...
2019’s Mind-Blowing Concept Cars on Exhibition at CES
As the world looks to develop vehicles that are smarter, greener and more autonomous, there’s been a noticeable change in the quantity and nature...
Demoting the Reindeer: Santa’s Dodge Redeye Express Sleigh
At the turn of the last century, citizens of the world marveled at the thought of horseless carriages. Now, in 2018, it’s time to...
Volvo’s All-Electric Polestar 2 Will Be the First to Feature Integrated Android Auto
When we sit down at a table in a group, it’s often the smartphones that hit the table before our backsides hit the chairs....
BlackBerry Returns…to the Vehicle Cockpit
Remember BlackBerry? While the popularity of the Canadian company’s iconic early smartphone may not be long in the past, in the digital age, it...
EV Sales, While Still Low in Numbers, Saw Triple-Digit Growth in 2018
Has the electric vehicle’s moment finally arrived? While it’s been predicted for decades, predictions have not yet turned to reality in the U.S. There...
BMW’s “Shy Tech” Makes Use of Smart Materials for Gesture Control
Attendees of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) saw something interesting in the BMW pavilion: the curious interior of the BMW Vision iNEXT, a fully...
NY Governor Cuomo to Extend State Testing of Autonomous Vehicles
When New York State began a program in the summer of 2017 to test autonomous vehicles, the plan was to have the tests finished...
Ford President Announces All-Electric F-150 Is in the Works
Ford’s F-150 pickup truck is the best-selling vehicle in the United States, and the company has now confirmed that an all-electric version of it...
Japan’s Technology Ministry Gets Serious About Flying Cars
Remember the original Blade Runner film, a dystopian story that (among other things) assured us we would have lab-grown replicant humans and flying cars...
EV Batteries and a Global Shortage of Cobalt
Cobalt is one of those elements we’ve all heard of, and we know it’s dug out of the ground, but we’re not really quite...
Ward’s Auto Reports Cease Publication After 96 Years
For nearly a century, Ward’s Auto Reports newsletters have been a staple of the automotive industry. The 96-year-old publication, which first debuted in 1924...
AI in the Dealership Can Boost Sales Contact Rates
Once a feature suited only to high-level processes like computing and research, or consumer applications like Siri, artificial intelligence (AI) is showing up in...
Toyota Launches KINTO Subscription Company in Japan
The latest auto maker to jump into the car subscription ring is Toyota, which this week announced that it’s forming a new subsidiary called...