Welcome to today's edition of the Daily 5.
Ford Motor Co.'s October U.S. sales report marked the 12th straight month of improved results from its long-troubled Lincoln luxury brand. Lincoln deliveries surged 36 percent to 9,349 during the month. And for the first 10 months, sales grew 27 percent to 83,879 vehicles.
Unless something major goes wrong, the brand should top 100,000 annual U.S. deliveries for the first time since 2020.
Perhaps it's not such a troubled brand any more?
The big driver for Lincoln this year has been the redesigned 2024 Nautilus midsize crossover, which is made in China. Reviews of the vehicle have been positive. Deliveries rose 44 percent through October to 29,155 vehicles — making it easily the brand's bestseller this year.
The automaker put some serious marketing dollars into this vehicle with a unique and successful advertising and social media campaign this year, earning honors from Automotive News affiliate Ad Age.
Lincoln's success, of course, is a small part of Ford's overall effort to boost earnings and its stock price. As emphasized in its third-quarter earnings report last week, the company still must overcome high warranty costs on the expense side of its ledger.
This story today illustrates those ongoing struggles with recalls and warranty expenses. In this case, a faulty intake valve resulted in 91,000 recalled Ford vehicles, some of which will require an engine replacement. Ford is also launching a warranty campaign that extends coverage for these vehicles to 10 years or 150,000 miles.
In other news today, Toyota said it is expanding the Grand Highlander lineup for 2025 with a new base trim that is more than $2,000 below the current model year. The base model has a starting price of $42,310, including delivery. It's a wise move for the automaker after it restarted output of the 2024 Grand Highlander, finally ending a damaging monthslong stop-sale order.
In the technology segment, we've got a couple interesting stories. The first delves into a Canadian company that is recycling magnet materials for EVs. The other story, from Japan, focuses on a startup that is teaming up with technology giant Nvidia to develop an artificial intelligence-based autonomous driving system by 2030.
We'll have more technology news out of Japan tomorrow morning with a story about U.S. air taxi startup Joby Aviation's growing relationship with Toyota, which committed $500 million to the venture last month.
That's it for today. Have a great rest of your day.
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— Philip Nussel, online editor
