Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Monday, Jan. 13.
With online marketing and sales more important than ever in the digital world, Subaru, Lexus and Penske Automotive Group Inc. scored gains to reach No. 1 in their segments in an influential annual study of online customer sentiment.
As our Julie Walker reports today, Subaru punched its way back to the top of the nonluxury list, up from No. 2 last year, while Lexus broke into the top spot for luxury brands, also up one spot from 2023. Mitsubishi and Infiniti topped the nonluxury and luxury categories in 2023.
The study was produced by Reputation, a company that aids automakers and dealership groups in handling customer reviews, responses and more.
Among dealership groups, Penske Automotive topped the 2023 winner, AutoNation Inc., among public retailers. Hendrick Automotive Group won among privately held groups for the fourth straight year.
Notably, the report was delayed because of the CDK cyberattacks last summer, said Reputation CEO Joe Burton. He called the cyberattacks "a stark reminder of the interconnectedness of our industry and the critical importance of cybersecurity."
Meanwhile, Toyota Motor Corp. might have doused a whole lot of cold water on employees' future plans to limit time in the office. The automaker ordered all its North American office workers to be back in person four days a week starting Sept. 2, Bloomberg reported today. Toyota's not alone. Several other major U.S. employers are doing similar things in the post-pandemic world.
In other news today, there was a major development in the long takeover saga of key automotive supplier U.S. Steel Corp., which has been trying for a year to get acquired by Japan's Nippon Steel Corp. in a $14.1 billion transaction bottled up by U.S. election year politics. President Joe Biden blocked the deal a few weeks ago, most likely because of union opposition to the deal.
But today Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. — the union-favored suitor for U.S. Steel ― reportedly is planning a new bid with a key concession that would be of great interest to U.S. automakers. That concession would involve selling off U.S. Steel's Big River Steel unit, which produces electrical steel crucial for electric motors used in EVs, to rival Nucor. Such a move could address at least some of the antitrust concerns that the auto industry and others had when Cliffs made an unsuccessful bid for U.S. Steel in 2023. Automakers had signaled their preference for Nippon's bid because of those worries.
This story broke last week but has continued to grab a lot of interest from our readers over the last few days. Oshkosh Corp. is prepared to provide the U.S. Postal Service more gasoline-powered mail trucks if the agency cuts back orders for electric vehicles, which benefit from funding President-elect Donald Trump has criticized.
"We'll do what they want us to do — supplying either gas or electric," Oshkosh CEO John Pfeifer said in an interview at the CES trade show in Las Vegas.
The debates over the Postal Service's new fleet being electric or gasoline, or whether the trucks should be produced by union or nonunion workers, lingered for several years because of partisan political bickering. Perhaps, just maybe, the new administration can get this much-needed Postal fleet on the road.
Finally, Tesla may have reported its first annual sales decline, but still hit another major milestone in 2024: It topped Audi in global sales. Tesla delivered 1.79 million vehicles to Audi's 1.67 million, according to Bloomberg.
That's it for now. Have a great rest of your day.
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— Philip Nussel, online editor
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