Good morning! It’s Friday June 21, 2024, and it’s The morning shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, all in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know.
1st gear: cyberattacks continue to disrupt car sales in the United States
I know it’s tricky, but this week we have to spare a thought for American car dealers as if they were all busy apply dizzying increases to the cars they sell, they were the victim of a massive cyber attack. The problem affected IT services provider CDK Global and left dealers in the United States and Canada dealing with its fallout over the past two days.
The attack hit CDK Global on Wednesday, June 19 and restricted dealers across the country to using pen and paper for all their administrative tasks, reports the Wall Street Journal. The attack restricted the ability of many dealerships to sell and repair cars for customers across America:
“We remain vigilant in our efforts to restore our services and return our dealerships to their usual operations as quickly as possible,” a CDK spokeswoman said. The company provides nearly 15,000 dealers with software to manage their sales, payroll and general office operations, according to the company’s website.
Meanwhile, dealers have had to deal with the consequences, in some cases using pen and paper to record sales.
Dealers are “actively seeking information from CDK to determine the nature and scope of the cyber incident so they can respond appropriately,” Mike Stanton, chief executive officer of the National Automobile Dealers Association, said in a written statement.
Today, it seems there is no silver bullet to the problems plaguing America’s dealerships. The problem they are currently facing due to the IT outage is expected to last “several days” while CDK gets to the bottom of the problem, reports Automotive News.
As the systems vendor races to find a patch to address the attack, questions are now being asked.safety focused from the computer supplier:
“Cyber incidents are a constant threat and we take it extremely seriously,” said Nikhil Kalani, chief information security officer at Reynolds and Reynolds. “Cybersecurity has been a top priority for our business for many years, as demonstrated by our acquisition of Proton Dealership IT, the industry’s leading cybersecurity services provider, and the construction of our state-of-the-art security operations center.
“The events reported this week reinforce the need to keep cybersecurity at the forefront of our entire industry. »
Problems at dealerships are expected to persist today, with automakers encouraging customers to remain patient with dealerships as they battle the problems.
2nd gear: Ford will take a profit to resolve quality issues
As sales fall due to systems breaking down at U.S. dealerships, Ford said it could face another blow to its profits, but this time it’s self-inflicted. The Mustang maker has made headlines in recent years for a large number of reminders it was forced to issue on its models, and now the Blue Oval says it will take a hit on its profits in order to finally resolve the problem.
In an interview with Bloombergcompany boss Jim Farley said he’s “so sick of” the constant reminders his company faces that he’s willing to lose money to fix the problems:
For the foreseeable future, Farley says, the company will hold the newly redesigned models for up to six weeks to conduct additional quality checks that go beyond the extensive testing Ford does at its factories.
Over time, the automaker hopes to reduce warranty reserves which have more than doubled in five years. In the short term, however, this means Ford will suffer a drop in revenue by not shipping models to dealers immediately.
“Our earnings might be a little bit uneven,” Farley told analysts during Ford’s first-quarter earnings conference call in April. “What we’re going to see in the long run is fewer recalls and lower warranty costs because of this new process.”
Just this year, Ford faced recalls and stop-sale orders for its F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck, the Bronco Sport SUV and the Maverick pickup truck. This year’s recalls follow a three-year period in which the automaker was the most recalled car manufacturer in America.
3rd gear: airbag issues Toyota stop sales order
In terms of quality control, Toyota was forced to issue an order this week to stop sales on two of its models. The Japanese automaker has halted deliveries of the Toyota Grand Highlander And the Lexus TX on problems encountered with the side airbags of both cars.
The order comes with a recall of both three-row SUVs, which affects about 145,000 cars sold in the United States. reports Automotive News. Now, the Japanese automaker has issued a stop-sale order for the cars while it investigates issues with the driver’s side curtain airbag:
Toyota announced the recall and discontinuation of sales on June 20 and said it would notify customers through a campaign by mid-August. It has yet to find a solution to the problem and has temporarily halted production of the crossovers “until a solution can be found.”
Both crossovers are in their first model year and are built at Toyota’s assembly plant in Princeton, Indiana. Through May, Toyota sold 48,840 Grand Highlanders and 18,965 TXs in the United States.
If you own a Lexus or Toyota that you think was affected by the recall, there is some simple things you can do to check. First, NHTSA has a handy app you can use to check if your vehicle is affected, or you can go to the regulator’s website and plug your VIN into its recall search tool.
4th gear: American Airlines agents prepare to strike
And now for something completely different because it’s time to registration with American Airlines. The American carrier is currently caught up in contractual negotiations with its flight attendants and things don’t seem to be going well.
This week, negotiators failed to reach agreement on a new contract for attendants, paving the way for a strike at American, reports Reuters. The union representing the airline’s flight attendants has been stuck in negotiations for weeks, but negotiations broke down on Thursday:
A union representing American Airlines flight attendants said Thursday that the latest round of negotiations with the carrier failed to reach an agreement this week.
The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents about 28,000 American Airlines flight attendants, said it was moving closer to a strike as the airline failed to present a favorable agreement.
The airline’s flight attendants, however, cannot leave their jobs until the National Mediation Council grants them permission.
Before strike action can be approved, the Mediation Council will need to determine whether or not an impasse has been reached. If further negotiations fail to reach a conclusion, then action could begin to intensify. However, American said that he remains determined to negotiate with the union.