Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Tuesday, Jan. 13.
Dealers have had their resilience tested by economic shocks, shifting industry trends, new challengers and more. To their credit, they have largely weathered the many, many, many storms over the decades.
As automated driving slowly gains traction in the U.S. — as evidenced during last week's CES tech extravaganza — dealers could face a more subtle threat, writes Sheldon Sandler in a guest commentary.
Sandler, CEO of dealership advisory firm Bel Air Partners, writes:
"Conventional thinking was that mass-market self-driving cars were way off in the future, if ever. They would be too expensive and out of reach for personal ownership and limited to ride-hailing. After all, the cost of manufacturing at Waymo is estimated to be over $100,000 per vehicle.
"Ignored was the real threat to the traditional auto industry, coming not from EVs or even robotaxis but from the arrival of affordable, fully autonomous cars. Furthermore, they'll be marketed without traditional independent dealers before legacy manufacturers can catch up."
Sandler says Tesla appears to be "closest to mass-marketing relatively inexpensive autonomous cars direct to the public."
Read why he thinks Tesla is in the driver's seat, and his outlook for a market that could change much sooner than expected.
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— Omari Gardner, managing editor, operations
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