Welcome to today's edition of the Daily 5.
The auto industry is loaded with joint ventures, alliances and cooperation agreements, but there are certain rivalries that rarely yield anything more than competitive venom. General Motors and Ford come to mind.
Toyota and Hyundai also would have fit that description until recently. Today's story and photos by Hans Greimel from a Hyundai-Toyota racing event in Korea this week give us dramatic evidence that these two archrivals are getting friendly. To see Euisun Chung and Akio Toyoda hugging each other on stage sends a vivid symbolic message to the rest of the world's auto industry — particularly China.
Hyundai and Toyota compete around the world, especially in North America, where they both routinely challenge the Detroit 3 in multiple segments.
Despite the historical conflicts between Korea and Japan, Greimel's story points out common ground between Hyundai and Toyota. Notably, both Chung and Toyoda are third-generation leaders of their family-dominated corporations.
But perhaps most importantly, both companies face a very real competitive threat from Chinese automakers. The prospect of seeing Hyundai and Toyota cooperate beyond a friendly racing event is fascinating.
In other news today, Bloomberg reports that UAW President Shawn Fain's move to strike Stellantis suffered an embarrassing defeat at his home local in Kokomo, Ind. A vote held Oct. 25 by UAW Local 1166, which represents workers at the company's Kokomo casting plant, failed to get the two-thirds support required to authorize a strike, Bloomberg reported. The UAW needs its Stellantis locals to support a strike to pressure the automaker to expedite its contractual commitment to reopen its plant in Belvidere, Ill. This vote doesn't look good for Fain's efforts.
On the Tesla beat today, Laurence Iliff digs deeper into the EV maker's third-quarter report, which has some eye-opening developments about the company's nonautomotive business lines, such as energy storage.
In the retail segment, U.S. auto dealers are gearing up for the fight against Volkswagen and its startup Scout unit to prevent the new enterprise from selling direct to consumers. They are promising to defend VW dealerships' franchises in all 50 states. One must wonder just how many lawyers will be hired and how many millions of dollars in legal fees are going to be spent on this effort.
Finally, as promised yesterday, we are reporting on Group 1 Automotive's third-quarter results, which showed a 29 percent slide in net income. Like many of its peers, Group 1′s results suffered from "weather events" as well as higher interest expenses.
Looking ahead to Thursday, we're going to be taking a look at the growing popularity of dash cams. Who is going to benefit from this demand — automakers installing them at the assembly line or aftermarket vendors that can offer cheap and flexible devices?
That's it for today. Have a great rest of your afternoon.
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— Philip Nussel, online editor
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