Automotive News Canada - April 2021-v2 - 1

COMPLETE QUARTERLY SALES RESULTS/P24-25

APRIL 2021 | VOL. 5, NO. 4 | AUTOMOTIVENEWS.CA FOR BREAKING NEWS AND DIGITAL EDITION

Crashing inventory means 'it's Mad Max right now'

VOLVO
DEALER
UNEASE

By GREG LAYSON

D I G I TA L A N D M O B I L E E D I T O R

Rewriting franchise
agreements
in an era of
online sales

A SALES REBOUND IN March
and solid first quarter of 2021
are reasons for industry optimism, but new-vehicle inventory shortages across the country because of the continuing
microchip shortage are going

The situation is so
dire that dealers
can't get vehicles
from other dealers
from bad to worse, with no end
in sight.
Jeremy Koch, general manager of Koch Ford-Lincoln

in Edmonton, said his F-150
inventory is down 60 to 70 per
cent from what's normally on
the lot.
" I have
SALES ANALYSIS
100 retail
trucks supposed to come in, but I don't
know if I'll get any of them. I
have close to 300 fleet order
trucks, and again, I have no

clue if they'll arrive on my
lot. "
And " dealer transfers are
impossible " at the moment.
" It's Mad Max right now, "
he said, referencing the
1979 post-apocalyptic film.
" Everyone has their own barrel of oil and they're trying to

SEE CUSTOMER PAGE 23

How does
fuel tax
shift to EVs?

The chips
are down

Zero-emission vehicles
don't consume gasoline,
which means their owners
aren't helping to fund
roads and infrastructure

Thousands of vehicles
that would have been built
in Canada never will be

By STEVE MERTL

VA N C O U V E R C O R R E S P O N D E N T

By JOHN IRWIN

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS CANADA

MORE THAN 91,000 UNITS OF
annual production are expected to be permanently lost in Canada this
Ford's Oakville, Ont.,
year because of the
assembly plant, which builds
ongoing global microthe Lincoln Nautilus and Ford
chip shortage, accordEdge, is among the hardest
ing to a leading vehiFord Oakville: 40,138
hit factories. P H O T O : F O R D
cle-forecasting firm.
GM CAMI: 37,059
" It's going
year. That would repreto take us into
Stellantis Windsor: 13,922
sent about 6.3 per cent
the summer
of all vehicle producbefore there
SOURCE:
tion in the country in
are any signs that we're
AUTOFORECAST
2020 and 4.8 per cent in
turning this around, "
SOLUTIONS
2019, before the COVIDsaid Sam Fiorani,
19 pandemic halted auto
vice-president of globmanufacturing for two
al vehicle forecasting at
months the following
Fiorani:
AutoForecast Solutions
Automakers year.
LLC. " We have indicaMany of those units
tions of plants being down could boost
are projected to be lost
microchip
around the world until
from Ford Motor Co.'s
output by
August at this moment,
Oakville, Ont., assembly
and we fully expect that to forming a
joint venture plant, which builds the
continue into the fourth
or buying
Ford Edge and Lincoln
quarter. "
an existing
Nautilus crossovers. The
As of April 13,
company.
plant, which was down
AutoForecast Solutions
FILE PHOTO
earlier this year, is
projected that production of 91,119 vehicles in Canada
would be unrecoverable this
SEE CHIP PAGE 20

Unrecoverable
production

Stellantis'
Brampton, Ont.,
factory - which
builds the Dodge
Challenger and
Charger - is
among the plants
that could recover
lost production
over the course of
the year.
PHOTO: STELLANTIS

C A L L IN G
LERS
ALL DEA

IT COULD TAKE DECADES FOR
electric vehicles to supplant fossil
fuel-powered cars and trucks, but politicians in some jurisdictions in Canada and
the United States are already considering
ways to tax them.
In its budget unveiled April 6,
Saskatchewan proposed
a $150 annual registration tax for EVs, over and
above vehicle registration
fees. The province is also
studying the idea of taxing
electric charging.
Such measures are
being panned by industry Kingston: A
stakeholders who say it's
surcharge
too soon for the taxman
on EV
to target the fledgling EV
charging
market.
" doesn't
" I think at this point,
make
it doesn't make sense
sense. "
from our perspective to
FILE PHOTO
do that through a fuel
surcharge on the charger, " said Brian
Kingston, head of the Canadian Vehicle
Manufacturers' Association (CVMA),
which represents the interests of the
Detroit Three in Canada.
When EV adoption hits 40 to 70 per
cent, " there has to be a discussion to offset revenue from the gas tax. We've yet to

SEE TAXATION PAGE 22

EXCLUSIVE
LEAD SPONSOR

see p. 20

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Automotive News Canada - April 2021-v2

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