
TEN MOST SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENTS OF THE PAST WEEK IN 60 SECONDS
1. Car Financing: Ford Credit successfully does online financing with Ricart Ford, Ohio
2. Online Car Buying: AutoGravity delivers car buyers to dealers with four financing options to set up a complete online buying scenario; Question is; Can car shoppers get the financing approval first and then go back to the selected dealer?
3. Car Sales: Penske failed to make No Haggle practice work. Claims they were loosing deals.
4. Dealer Business Model: Dealers and Ford acknowledging that Autonomous cars are going to change the dealer business model. Some hint that maybe to be a source of various modes of transportation & services.
5. Walmart Competing with Dealers: Walmart selling cars under an affiliate program is another indication of people wanting to avoid the pricing and sales practices of dealers.
6. Managing Municipal Traffic; Traffic Technology Services seeks to be middleman between OEMs & Cities. Offers technology that enable cars to read Red lights & capture traffic data.
7. Diesel Emissions: Now it looks like FCA, Peugeot, Renault & other OEMs are being investigated for using software that messed with the measurement of diesel emissions in a dynamometer lab testing setup. Have not all OEMs misrepresented either mileage, emission levels, or performance standards at one time or other?
8. Leasing on Speed: Well done Edmunds Research says that 4.3M cars and trucks were funded with a lease in 2016. The entire sales distribution channel from OEMs to Captives to Dealers and even lessees do not seem to be ready to manage a controlled vehicle recycling process.
9. Being Intelligent about Artificial Intelligence: Leaders from IBM, Microsoft, & Vista Equity Partners sought to say that AI is and will not be a “job killer. $47B to be spent on AI ion next 3 years somehow suggests otherwise.
10. Call Centers Matching Up Calls – Affiniti Systems search 100 databases when caller dials and the seeks to match caller history with call center person, even if in Philippines.
Chuck Parker
Publisher
310 265‑2225
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