CATA News

President Donald Trump on March 18 signed into law a coronavirus relief package that includes provisions for free testing for COVID-19 and paid emergency leave.

 

The law provides many workers at businesses with fewer than 500 employees with up to two weeks of paid sick leave if they are being tested or treated for coronavirus or have been diagnosed with it. Also eligible are those who have been told by a doctor or government official to stay home because of exposure or symptoms.

 

Businesses will be reimbursed for the full amount within three months, in the form of a payroll tax credit. The reimbursement will also cover the employer’s contribution to health insurance premiums during the leave. It’s fully refundable, which means that if the amount that employers pay workers who take leave is larger than what they owe in taxes, the government will send them a check for the remainder.

 

Under the law, those payments would be capped at $511 a day, roughly what someone paid $133,000 earns annually. The original measure called for workers to receive their full pay but limited federal reimbursement to employers to that amount.

 

Workers with family members affected by coronavirus and those whose children’s schools have closed still would receive up to two-thirds of their pay, though that benefit now would be limited to $200 a day.

 

The Senate had earlier on March 18 approved the House-originated bill. The move allowed the upper chamber to devote its full attention to passing the next relief package in response to the coronavirus crisis.

 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Senate Republicans had been critical of the House-passed legislation, but they emphasized that it is urgent to get relief to the American people amid the coronavirus crisis.

 

McConnell reiterated March 18 that he would not adjourn the Senate until it passed what lawmakers are describing as a "phase three" economic stimulus package in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

 

After an initial vote the previous week, the House approved a set of changes to the legislation on March 16, clearing the path for the Senate to take it up.

 

The House legislation was negotiated between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Trump administration and the President expressed support for it.

 

To aid in social distancing, McConnell announced ahead of the final vote that senators would take precautions during the vote.

 

"What we’ll do is have a 30-minute roll call vote. We want to avoid congregating here in the well," he said. "I would encourage our colleagues to come in and vote and depart the chamber so we don’t have gaggles of conversation here on the floor. That’s particularly important for our staff here and the front of the chamber, so I would encourage everyone to take full advantage of a full 30-minute roll call vote. Come in and vote, and leave."

 

He asked members to be aware of "social distancing" as they went to the chamber and departed it and said, "With that, I think we will be able to get through the voting that will occur without violating any of the safety precautions that have been recommended to us by the Capitol Physician and others."

 

In a March 17 letter to President Donald Trump, the leaders of the National Automobile Dealers Association and the Alliance for Automotive Innovation urged him, when considering any executive orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to classify dealerships as "essential" businesses exempt from forced closures.
 
"Given the importance of safe transportation in addressing the coronavirus outbreak, we have an obligation to ensure that motor vehicles remain safe and are properly maintained," NADA President Peter Welch and AAI President John Bozzella wrote.
 
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has been similarly approached, but a federal dictate would ensure uniform rules for dealerships across the U.S.
 
A significant number of states and cities have taken emergency action this month to force the closure of businesses deemed "nonessential," such as movie theatres, shopping malls and museums. By contrast, essential businesses, including healthcare facilities, pharmacies and grocery stories, are able to remain operational.
 
"Motor vehicles, both new and old," Welch and Bozzella wrote, "are critical to ensure that the public can get food and other necessities of life, as well as to continue to interact with one another in a manner consistent with public health officials’ recommendations.
 
"To that end, it is vital that vehicle repair, maintenance and sales facilities be considered essential operations when federal, state and local officials impose certain requirements due to the coronavirus outbreak."

 

Dear Fellow Dealer:
 
The CATA Board of Directors met March 17, and the prevailing spirit from the directors was, "We’re all in this together." A room full of competitors in the car business, and we were all united in feeling that cooperation and information-sharing will help us get through this National Emergency, as declared by the President.
 
There are more questions than answers right now but we want to provide you with a clearinghouse of updated information to keep your decisions informed to the greatest extent possible. Look to the CATA website, www.cata.info, for information to help you run your business during this unique time in our history.
 
Right now, it seems like most dealers in the Chicago market are trying to stay open while keeping employees and customers safe. Dealers are looking to cut costs wherever possible and persuading the OEMs to provide incentives and assistance to keep our businesses running.
 
The National Auto Dealers Association is lobbying in Washington to designate franchised dealers as essential businesses — especially considering our parts and service operations — and we will do the same in Illinois, to give you the option to stay open.
 
The CATA will remain functioning while we follow the guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Please call us whenever you have a question or concern that we can help with. We will work to stay on top of all developments and keep you informed. Check the CATA website, www.cata.info, often.

 

Bill Haggerty        
Chairman, Chicago Automobile Trade Association

 

David E. Sloan

President, Chicago Automobile Trade Association

 

The staff of the CATA had been working with a patchwork of email addresses. Until now. All suffixes henceforth are @drivechicago.com. Please adjust any correspondence:

 

Dave Sloan, president, dsloan@drivechicago.com
Chris Konecki, executive vice president, ckonecki@drivechicago.com
Mark Bilek, senior director of communications, mbilek@drivechicago.com
Erik Higgins, director of dealer affairs, ehiggins@drivechicago.com
Sandi Potempa, director of special events & exhibitor relations, spotempa@drivechicago.com
Jennifer Morand, director of public relations & social media, jmorand@drivechicago.com
Jim OBrill, director of marketing, jobrill@drivechicago.com
Donna Young, bookkeeper, dyoung@drivechicago.com
Roxanne Sammarco, administrative assistant, rsammarco@drivechicago.com
Pam Grace, meetings coordinator, receptionist, pgrace@drivechicago.com

 

The office’s main telephone number is (630) 495-2282.

The Better Business Bureau of Chicago & Northern Illinois recognized the CATA on March 5 for marking 85 years as an accredited BBB member.
 
"Our valued partnership with the CATA exemplifies a powerful partnership with the goals and principles of the Better Business Bureau," says Steve J. Bernas, president & CEO of the BBB’s Chicago office.
  
"We are honored to recognize the CATA as both organizations strive to support and foster an ethical marketplace benefiting both consumers and businesses."
  
Since 1996, in a step to better serve the consumer. New-car dealers, other automotive advertisers, the BBB and the CATA established an advertising review program to review possible deceptive automotive advertising. The program has been welcomed by the Illinois attorney general’s office for its self-regulatory approach.
  
The program levels the playing field for automotive advertisers while providing the public with the reassurance that automotive advertising is truthful.

New light-vehicle sales in January were close to flat compared to the same month in 2019. January’s SAAR of 16.84 million units represents an increase of 0.8%.
 
However, raw sales numbers of 1.130 million units represent a slight decline of 0.2%. Light trucks represented more than 75% of all new light vehicles sold, and the red-hot crossover segment claimed 43.4% of the total market.
 
Forecasters expect to see light-truck sales continue to account for three-quarters of the market for the rest of 2020. After an all-time record-breaking month of average incentive spending per unit in December 2019, incentive spending decreased in January.

 "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10," Bill Gates wrote in his 1996 book, "The Road Ahead."
 
In 2010, self-driving cars were barely on the radar of most automotive and technology enthusiasts. By the end of 2019, autonomous and connected vehicles were a billion-dollar industry and riding a wave of hype and disillusionment.
 
The next decade of autonomous-vehicle development will prove as unpredictable as the last. While charting this unknown territory, the automotive industry will have to face some fundamental questions.

 

WHO will autonomous vehicles benefit? In theory, self-driving technology can be applied to any vehicle: cars, taxis, trucks and buses. In reality, new technologies usually come at a premium and initially are adopted by a select few.
 
For the foreseeable future, the cost of producing and servicing self-driving cars will be expensive. Some people have expressed concern that autonomous vehicles will be accessible only to a small minority of people who will be able to afford the experience of personally owned AVs or self-driving robo-taxis.
 
On the other hand, some AV advocates have argued that self-driving cars would best serve vulnerable populations like the blind or disabled — groups that previously have been marginalized by their inability to drive.
 
Similarly, autonomous vehicles would be extremely useful for an aging population that may prefer a self-driving car or taxi to a privately owned car. Autonomous vehicles could become a socially transformative technology, or they simply could turn into another luxury item for the uber-wealthy.

 

WHAT will be the reaction to the first serious automotive hacking incident? To date, there have been no malicious cyber-attacks that have compromised the safety of either an autonomous or human-driven vehicle. The most well-known cybersecurity breach involved ethical hackers who were able to take control of a Jeep Cherokee by exploiting a vulnerability in the Uconnect system; that vulnerability was quickly patched.
 
The news of a self-driving Uber that struck and killed a pedestrian shook the AV industry to its core, grounding not only Uber’s autonomous pilot program but causing other companies to reevaluate their approach to real-world testing. An auto hacking incident that caused a fatal crash could create an even greater public relations backlash and scrutiny from lawmakers. If the autonomous-vehicle industry succeeds in gaining consumer trust, cybersecurity will need to maintain a near-perfect record.

 

WHEN will autonomous vehicles take over the roads? If commercial applications are the initial target market for automated vehicles, they may be driven primarily overnight when traffic is low and when utility for delivery of goods can be maximized. Nighttime driving results in far more accidents than daytime driving. Self-driving cars will not suffer from drowsiness or fatigue and sensors such as lidar can enable autonomous vehicles to manage the dangers of low visibility more reliably than humans.

 

With online commerce continuing to grow across all retail sectors, the country’s road system will be increasingly strained by delivery vans and trucks. There is a limit to the number of vehicles the current infrastructure can sustain. One solution could be to have fleets of electric autonomous trucks transport goods across our highways while people sleep and have humans overtake the roads during the day.

 

WHERE will autonomous vehicles be most widely deployed? Currently, self-driving car companies have focused their real-world testing in cities, envisioning that AVs will replace taxis and ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft. However, dense urban areas are considered the most challenging environment for self-driving cars to safely navigate. And large cities have other potential transportation solutions, ranging from traditional buses and trains to "new mobility" services such as on-demand bikes and scooters.

 

Instead, there is a strong case to be made that AVs are more appropriate in suburban and rural communities. Autonomous vehicles excel at navigating consistent, reliable roads and traffic patterns such as those designed in much of suburbia. And road fatalities are among the highest on rural roads with high speeds. While autonomous vehicles are built and tested in cities from Detroit to San Francisco, it may be the suburbs that become the safe haven for self-driving cars.

 

WHY should we care about autonomous vehicles when so much uncertainty remains? Conventional wisdom tells us that even the most advanced autonomous-vehicle companies are not yet ready for widespread deployment. And when it comes to self-driving technology, being 99% safe won’t be sufficient.

 

Beyond the safety challenges, autonomous vehicles will confront other social, cultural and economic hurdles. Operators of commercial vehicles like taxis, buses, and trucks do much more than just drive. For example, bus drivers collect fares, help people with disabilities and respond to emergency situations. Autonomous and connected vehicles will face many challenges beyond simply navigating the roads.
 
Despite these unknowns, self-driving cars carry tremendous promise for saving lives and increasing social welfare. As with other emergent social technologies, we have few answers about what the future holds for autonomous and connected vehicles. If automakers, urban planners and legislators are to meet the challenges ahead, they will need to ask the right questions.

 

Many drivers have no idea which safety systems their cars have, or what they can do, thanks to a confusing muddle of names automakers use. Buyers want to be safe, frequently paying thousands of dollars for optional advanced driver assistance systems, or ADAs, but the lack of standard names makes it hard to compare one vehicle to another.
 
"ADA features are increasingly common, but there’s lots of misinformation based on names that don’t make their purpose or function clear," said Greg Brannon, AAA’s director of automotive engineering and industry relations.
 
According to AAA, automakers use 20 different names for adaptive cruise control, which uses radar and other sensors to automatically maintain distance from the vehicle ahead, accelerate and brake on the highway. There are 40 different names for automatic emergency braking, which slows or stops a vehicle without the driver’s intervention when a collision is inevitable.
 
The profusion of names — some reasonably intuitive, others as spacey as "Distronic" — makes it hard for shoppers to compare safety systems. It also can lead people to overestimate their vehicle’s capabilities. Some people think help staying in their lanes means their car can drive itself. It doesn’t.
 
Organizations including automakers, Consumer Reports, AAA, JD Power, the National Safety Council, U.S. Department of Transportation and the Society of Automotive Engineers are working to end the confusion.

 

Distron-what?
The systems are increasingly common. AAA says 30.8% of 2018 model vehicles sold have automatic emergency braking, 13.9% lane-keeping assist and 11.8% adaptive cruise control — which Mercedes calls Distronic.
 
The different names, frequently trademarked, arise from marketers’ desire to make their systems sound unique and because engineers didn’t compare notes when developing them.

 

"Many manufactures use the same names to describe different things," said Kelly Funkhouser, Consumer Reports’ head of connected and automated vehicle testing.

 

Consumer Reports surveyed 72,000 people on the issue last year. "We heard from consumers who did their research, but couldn’t communicate with the salesperson because the automaker used different terms," Funkhouser said. "They left the dealership with cars that didn’t have the safety features they expected."

 

The list of safety and driver assistance features on price sheets for vehicles includes these nanes: ASCC, active emergency stop assist, lane keeping assist & lane following assist, LFA, DAW, BCA and HVA. It is hard to tell exactly what any of them mean without looking it up.

What hope do you have if you shop for a car every four to five years and just want to be sure your family is safe?

 

The solution is near
"It’s important that when a customer hears a system’s name, they understand what it does," said Chad Zagorski, GM safety and driver assistance lead engineer and chair of the SAE International task force on safety system standards and names. The task force includes automakers and the groups that called for the standards. A list of terms they agreed on is making the rounds for approval. They could be in use soon.

 

The standard won’t keep automakers from trademarking the packages in which they offer safety systems, as many do today. The goal is to use common terms everyone can understand for the basic feature, and allow manufactures to explain what makes their version special, including names like Toyota’s TSS-P, Subaru’s EyeSight and Volvo City Safety.

 

"We need to have a solid foundation so manufacturers can sell the features and consumer are sure of what they’re getting," Funkhouser said.

 

A new "Part of the Solution" initiative by the Collision Repair Education Foundation provides dealers and dealer groups with an opportunity to support future technicians by donating leftover parts that otherwise might be discarded, allowing students to train on current model vehicles.

 

"Our philosophy is a higher quality program will attract a higher quality student, which will make for a higher quality industry employee," said Christen Battaglia, director of strategic partnerships for the foundation. "When the technicians entering the industry are well-trained on current vehicles, using modern equipment and tools, the entire automotive industry benefits."
 
Parts are the most frequent need reported by schools with collision repair education programs, including fenders, hoods, bumper covers and a variety of other parts. Without access to the parts, many students learn on vehicles and parts that are at least a decade old. But with the frequent advances in technology, that leaves student unequipped for a successful career after graduation.
 
Recognizing that most dealers dispose of thousands of dollars’ worth of parts monthly, the foundation developed the "Part of the Solution" initiative in order to connect local schools with these dealers and dealer groups. The CREF has compiled a list of more than 500 schools across the U. S. in need of scrap parts that can be donated at little to no cost to the donor facility.
 
Locally, the repair foundation named four schools in the Chicago market with collision repair curricula: College of Lake County (Grayslake), Kennedy King College (Chicago), Thornton Fractional High School, (Calumet City), and York Community High School (Elmhurst).
 
Dealers and dealer groups also can support future technicians by donating professional uniforms through the Foundation’s Student Technician Shirt Project. Supporters purchase professional Cintas technician shirts for their local collision education programs, and receive a logo patch on the shirt in recognition of their dedication to the industry.
 
Said Battaglia: "Receiving professional uniforms fills students with a sense of pride and teaches them what it means to look professional in the workplace. It instills confidence in them, reminds them that plenty of us believe in them, and reaffirms that they will have support as they pursue their education and enter the automotive industry as well-trained professionals."
 
Dealers interested in supporting the Collision Repair Education Foundation’s efforts to assist secondary and post-secondary collision repair training programs should contact Battaglia at (302) 377-5202 or Christen.Battaglia@ed-foundation.org.
 
Founded in 1991, the Collision Repair Education Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting collision repair educational programs, schools, and students to create qualified, entry-level employees and connect them with an array of career opportunities.

 

Electric cars are bought only by "green addicts" and lack broader appeal needed to reach mainstream consumers, Peugeot Chief Executive Carlos Tavares said March 3.
 
"When some markets are cancelling some subsidies, demand collapses," Tavares said about electric car sales during a conference call arranged to replace a roundtable discussion at the Geneva car show, which was canceled.
 
"The battle from now on is that zero emission vehicles become affordable between now and 2025," Tavares said.
 
"We are selling our electric vehicles to green addicts. We didn’t move to the pragmatists," Tavares said, referring to Peugeot’s difficulties in selling electric cars to mainstream consumers.

 

The lack of a dense charging network, the limited operating range of electric cars as well as uncertainties surrounding the long-term price of electricity, are hindering a broader adoption of electric cars, Tavares said. That is why Peugeot decided to develop vehicle platforms which are capable of including fully electric, hybrid or just combustion engines.

 

"So that we can adapt in a very agile way what the consumers are asking," Tavares said.