One of my favorite measures in the car world is “buyer loyalty.” The data isn’t based on sentiment or an inference but on a consumer putting their money where their mouth is and purchasing a vehicle. It’s clean and presumably accurate. The results, though, are a bit surprising.
The news is so shocking and unexpected that, for the rest of today’s The Morning Dump, I’m going to take it easy and focus on news that probably won’t cause your bow-tie to comically spin around or your tophat to suddenly pop off your head.
Canada has matched America’s 100% tariff on Chinese-made EVs, and we’re now learning there was a big pushback from at least one American EV-maker. I’m guessing you know who it is. I’m also going to assume that you’ll be able to correctly decide whether or not GM’s new battery tie-up with Samsung is going to be accelerated or delayed.
And, finally, it won’t be a big shock to discover where CDK Global thinks it needs to make future investments.
The… Lincoln Nautilus Has America’s Most Loyal Non-Tesla Buyers?
I drove the Lincoln Nautilus earlier this year and found it to be a comfortable, capable vehicle with a captivating screen design. Other than where it’s built, it’s hard to make any argument against the mid-size crossover-y luxury-ish Lincoln Nautilus.
At the same time, I didn’t get a strong feeling that my life would be bereft if there was somehow never a Nautilus in it again. Apparently, that’s how many Nautilus owners feel because it is the most popular non-Tesla vehicle for buyer loyalty according to S&P Global Mobility.
And this is in a market that’s becoming more loyal:
More than half of all brands in the industry saw a year-over-year increase of 1 percentage point or better. This group included both mainstream and luxury brands, which saw increases of 1.9 and 1.4 percentage points, respectively. Growing inventory levels and a strong pipeline of return-to- market households were the primary factors in loyalty gains for the first half of 2024.
“Last year we saw a big jump in the number of households returning to market for a new vehicle, but the inventory was lacking,” said Vince Palomarez, associate director, loyalty product management at S&P Global Mobility. “This year, return-to-market volume remains consistent; however, inventory levels are up more than 40%, so households have more opportunity to remain loyal to their previous brand.”
People often move up or down from models within a brand, so model loyalty tends to be a relatively small number for everything that isn’t a pickup truck. Right now, brand loyalty overall is about 52.5%. The most loyal brand owners, by far, have been Tesla owners (67.8%). This makes sense as prices for its vehicles have dropped and little else has been particularly competitive with Tesla until very recently.
The fastest-growing brands in terms of loyalty this year have been Lincoln, Jaguar, and Land Rover. Land Rover makes a lot of sense to me, Jaguar a little less so, but Lincoln is kind of amazing. Overall, the Lincoln Nautilus has a model loyalty of 46.7%, which is an improvement over last year, when the Nautilus had a 42% return rate. The Corsair, too, has extremely loyal customers.
I think it would be easy to say that all Lincoln owners are old and thus are getting the same thing they’ve always gotten, and there’s probably some truth to that, but it’s not like Lincoln sales are slumping. Overall, brand sales were up 25% year-over-year. The one weakness in the lineup is the Lincoln Navigator, but that’s about to be replaced with a new and improved 2025 Lincoln Navigator.
Ultimately, I think this goes to prove that people will buy Chinese-built cars so long as it isn’t super obvious they are buying Chinese-built cars. My guess is a lot of owners had the Candian-built Nautilus before and are now replacing them with the Chinese-built model. Either they don’t know the Nautilus is built in China now or they don’t care.
Tesla Reportedly Wanted Canada To Backoff On Chinese EV Threat… Because Tesla Sells A Lot Of Chinese EVs In Canada
One of the quirks of Tesla is that two theoretically identical models from the same model year might have an enormous number of differences. Specifically, ongoing iterative changes, different battery cells and chemistries, and global production means that you could have a 2022 Tesla Model Y with one type of battery built in Texas and your buddy could have a 2022 Tesla Model Y with a different battery built in China.
That’s less likely in the United States, where Inflation Reduction Act-related rules disincentivize certain batteries and certain production. But Canada is a little different. The IRA had the unintended side effect of sending more Chinese-built cars to our northern neighbors. Specifically, a bunch of Chinese-built Teslas landed there.
The news that Canada was thinking about joining the USA with a 100% tariff on Chinese-built cars reportedly led Tesla to protest.
The source, who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation, said Tesla approached Canada before the official announcement. The automaker asked for a rate similar to what it received in the European Union, the source said.
Tesla does not disclose its Chinese exports to Canada. However, vehicle-identification codes showed that the Model 3 compact sedan and Model Y crossover models were being exported from Shanghai to Canada.
It was worth a shot!
GM And Samsung Ink Battery Deal, Immediately Delay It
Last year the industry was still deep into the EV hype train, and GM and South Korean battery maker Samsung SDI announced a plan to build a battery-making plant via a joint venture in New Carlisle, Indiana.
The deal has been finalized and the plan is coming, with the expectation that it’ll create about 1,600 jobs. Oh, and it’s immediately delayed a year according to The Detroit News. That means the plant will now open in 2027 instead of 2026.
Here’s what Kurt Kelty, GM’s VP in charge of all things battery, had to say in a LinkedIn post:
This new $3.5 billion plant will have an initial capacity of 27 GWh, with capability to expand up to 36 GWh, building prismatic cells, which will be added to our battery technology portfolio, helping us to continue to increase performance and lower costs in the future.
The Samsung SDI joint venture paves the way for our next-generation EVs to provide customers with the latest battery technology, improving EV performance, and the ownership experience. Our new venture with SDI supplements our successful Ultium Cells JV with LG Energy Solution.
Unlike Chinese-built Teslas, these batteries are likely to qualify for IRA tax incentives. In the grand scheme of things, a delay of a year probably isn’t a huge deal.
CDK CEO: Uhh… Let’s Make Our Tech Better
CDK Global is the main provider of Dealership Management Software (DMS) in the United States. It’s worked hard over the years to make sure all of its products were deeply integrated into the running of its partner dealerships.
This backfired to some degree when CDK Global found itself the victim of a major ransomware attack that caused operations to slow down or stop at about 15,000 dealers.
CDK Global is boosting its spending on innovation and IT infrastructure in the wake of two cyberattacks in June, CEO Brian MacDonald said.
“To demonstrate CDK’s commitment and CDK’s abilities, we’re actually increasing investment,” MacDonald told Automotive News on the Aug. 28 episode of the “Daily Drive” podcast.
CDK has invested $500 million in those efforts since July 2022, when Brookfield Business Partners took the company private in an $8.7 billion deal that same year.
Ah yes, Private Equity: the solution to and cause of most of life’s problems.
It’s here that I should probably note that The Autopian is updating its tech stack tonight so there might be some weirdness in the migration. I’m aware that a few things haven’t been working perfectly around here lately. We’ve been slow to fix them as we’ve been testing out a new backend (the front end will look roughly the same) to try and make the site faster. I’m hoping that if it’s successful we’ll be able to iterate and make some overdue improvements and maybe a few design tweaks.
If it doesn’t work, I guess it’s a four-day weekend.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
In honor of the Lincoln Nautilus, here’s Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” This is also a light Mark Tucker tribute since I know Mark is a fan. This song was also used as the intro sequence music for an extremely early-aughts ABC primetime comedy. Does anyone remember the show?
The Big Question
Are you brand and/or model loyal?
MH, legitimately seriously, if there’s something I can do to help with testing I’m offering my services again.
I think I’ll also go see if CDK is actually putting their money where their mouth is: there should be test positions – ideally remote so good candidates can apply from anywhere – open on their site yesterday. And look, there’s one!
Job ID: JR6385
Date: August 23, 2024
Category: Product Development
Job Function: Engineering
Business: CDKGlobal
Location: Hyderabad, Telangana
Same for SDET roles:
Business: CDKGlobal
Location: Pune, Maharashtra
Companies have repeatedly found that outsourcing fails not just as a matter of technical capability – there are plenty of very capable engineers around the entire world – but as a matter of culture.
The values held by the people doing the work are reflected in the work that they do, and when the questions begin and end at “does it work” (I want to note here that sometimes this isn’t even indicative of the skill of the individual contributor, but bad decisions forced into place by management), that will show out in the results. Not “is it robust?” “is it performant?” “is it competitive?” “is it scalable”? And you know what, you could run CDK software, for a time, and it did work, for a time.
In the end, though, you will always get what you pay (or not) for. Hire labor at fractions of cost with expectations of fast delivery and you kick the Good leg right out of the Good-Fast-Cheap triangle.
Finally, those Lincoln SUVs are handsome right now. I don’t know if that’s what’s getting people to stick around since the redesigns haven’t even been out that long, but it’s worlds away from HERE IS AN
EXPLORERNavigator.I so much agree with this.
I work in Healthcare IT and all of our vendors have their IT people based out of India.
The quality of the work is generally middling to laughable.
It is all because the vendor (to name some names: Oracle/Cerner, EClinical Works, Phillips, Microsoft…) wants to maximize profits by hiring the cheapest labor.
It really seems that we the customer are responsible for QC of any product/app/update, especially when it comes to Microsoft.
You get what you pay for.
The average Lincoln owner probably doesn’t have a lot of car purchases in their future.
You can take that to the grave.
*insert drum sting gif here*
With Blue Cruise, you can take it to the grave hands free!
I wouldn’t say I have any brand loyalty when it comes to cars, though there have been some experiences that have turned me off certain brands. Outside that, I just buy what best meets my needs and wants at the time.
To answer your question, yep.
I am almost reverse brand/model loyal, at least when it comes to my daily drivers. I have had 7 daily drivers so far, all of which have been different brands. I like to try something new every few years, so it doesn’t make sense to buy an updated version of what I already have.
I guess I am loyal to Toyota as I tend to look at what they have to offer first, either Toyota or Lexus. I’d probably have bought two more in the past couple years if they had any to sell me.
After Toyota, I tend to consider Honda/Acura…and then it is very unclear what I do after that. I’ve had good luck with Subaru, but they offer nothing we want right now. Mazda, GM, Ford, Hyundai/Kia are probably clustered together there in the next tier.
No loyalty from me – i have tried just about everything out there. Instead of loyalty I am more on the side of trying them all.
At this point Italy is the only country i haven’t tried a car from (of the major producing countries)
I tend to go more for what interior appeals to me, both in terms of functional instrument layout and looks.
“Are you brand and/or model loyal?”
I used to be very much a GM man, but I’ve matured enough to realize I was right about some things, and a childish idiot about others. Also the new trucks have lost the plot (they are SOOOOOO ugly!), I wouldn’t touch anything with the 3.6 V6 with a 10′ pole, and they don’t really make any cars except the Corvette or Cadillacs anymore, which I cannot afford. I’m the opposite of an early adopter, so while I have no doubt that I will own an EV someday, that day will be no time soon.
Currently the newest vehicle in my fleet is a 2015 Mazda CX-5 that my wife drives. We bought it new, and it will be replaced no time soon. My daily duties alternate between the 2006 Sierra crew cab I bought new, and a ’99 Corolla I bought off a friend for $200. Oh, and a scooter when it’s nice out.
Definitely not model loyal. Aside from having a parts car I’ve never owned two models of the same vehicle regardless of generation.
I’ll gravitate towards certain companies with Honda and Toyota being tops for me. Other than owning a few Kias I’ve only owned Japanese branded cars.
For 60s and 70s models I am a Mopar guy. For cars from the last 40 years my family has had quite a few Honda/Acura models (at least seven) and they’ve always served us quite well while still managing to be interesting and fun.
I’m loyal to Audi in the sense that I own two. I bought one and I liked it so much we got one for my wife. That’s not to say we didn’t cross shop though. We drove an X5, some Benz and also an Infiniti and a Mazda. The Audi came out on top on it’s own merits. That’s not to say I won’t look anywhere but VAG for our next cars, though. I really have no loyalty when it comes to that. I’ll buy the best cars for us at the time regardless of who makes them. I owe Audi/VAG absolutely nothing and they surely cannot bank on me being an Audi Lifer just because I have two (which I do love) at this moment. I think brand loyalty is pretty absurd to an extent. “I’ve always driven XYZ and never considered anything else” is a shit way to decide how to make what’s likely the 2nd biggest purchase in your life, and “I’ll never buy XYZ” means you might be missing out on some great cars. If you’re OK with that, then fine, but I try to keep an open mind because things ain’t what they used to be. They’re all made out of the same parts from the same suppliers all over the planet and companies, generally speaking, just don’t care about you.
I’m looking around my house right now struggling to find a certain brand of anything that I would buy again with almost no research, and the only thing I’m coming up with is my Technivorm Moccamaster.
In my experience, a lot of brand loyalty is “XYZ Brand Dealer is competent and professional when I take my car in for service, I’d buy from them again”. I suspect that’s a large component of a lot of brands like Lexus, who routinely top dealership satisfaction surveys.
Nobody remembers “I’m With Her.” That’s as it should be for a sitcom loosely based upon being married to Brooke Shields. The only sorta good thing about the show was Teri Polo before her Hallmark Channel career decline, though this series could’ve been the harbinger for that descent. The Sugar Ray version of “Is She Really Going Out With Him” as the theme wasn’t bad.
Bingo! It’s the ultimate Trivia tiebreaker, though I’d say the Meet The Parents movies and The West Wing delayed the Hallmarks a bit. I do love a show whose whole premise is: Teri Polo is too pretty for a conventionally CW-handsome guy.
My favorite Teri Polo role was Robin Hand in “Aspen Extreme” with Paul Gross, Peter Berg and Finola Hughes. Two auto workers from Detroit move to Colorado to become ski instructors and move into an old caboose where their landlady is Teri Polo. It’s like someone stole my dream.
This has to be made up.
It’s real, or as real as Hollywood gets. Released in 1993 or there about.The Seattle Times described it as “Top Gun on the ski slopes” I shit you not.
I have been loyal, but not because I love the cars. I work on my own cars, and it’s just easier to buy a car I’m already familiar with.
I had a string of 80’s Firebirds / Camaros, then a handful of Nissans, now I guess I’m ‘loyal’ to Subaru with three in a row. I have promised myself that the remaining Subarus will be the last.
Ha, no, why should I be loyal to people I don’t know who haven’t done anything for me except sell me a product I wanted? I buy whatever makes sense to me at the time, don’t care who it comes from (caveat being that, yeah, of course I don’t want junk, so I am going to look for reputable names, but whether it turns out to be Toyota or Honda, or whatever, I don’t really care)
I’m surprised it’s not Subaru with the most loyal customers. And of course, Honda and Toyota
Good luck on the site migration!!
I am a Hyundai/Kia fan, but since the Kia boyz ruined it and caused insurance rates to skyrocket, I’ll probably get a different brand next.
I have become loyal to Toyota for appliance cars.
I am loyal to Ford in trucks for as long as they are the only ones using aluminum bodies.
I am loyal in my hatred of VW and will never waver from it.
For fun cars, no single automaker is consistent enough in making what I like to call myself loyal. You could pretty fairly say that I’m loyal to the traditional domestic automakers though; never having bought a new vehicle from anyone but them and Toyota.
Dual Ford/Toyota family here. Toyota does hybrids really well, and my last purchase was the last year of the Avalon, hybrid version. Also have a 2020 Explorer (passed on to one of the kids) and a 2023 Explorer SRT.
For now, Mazda. Myself and my direct family currently have 5 Mazdas (2 CX-30, CX-5, CX-9, and an ND2), and and aunt or uncle on either side of my family has an additional CX-5, and those were independent of our advice. It’s not even entirely intentional, but we’ve found they’re a great blend of premium experience, mainstream price, and near-Toyota/Honda reliable to be slam dunk purchases.
I grew up in a GM household, my grandpa worked for AC Delco for decades…so we always had some run of the mill GM product that we got with his discount.
Worked on Toyota accounts for years, and went that route for quite a while – then got so sick of working with them that I stopped buying their products.
Pretty agnostic at this point, though generally think Toyota/Honda are the best overall quality – if I’m planning to buy something and hang on to it for a while.
What went wrong with Toyota? I thought they had a good reputation with their suppliers.
Nothing really – after a certain amount of time, working with any customer turns into a grind (especially in a customer facing role). I’ve since had the opportunity to work with just about everyone, and appreciate Toyota more…they generally are pretty fair to work with.
Who’s the worst, you ask? Stellantis & Tesla! Stellantis is just nuts from top to bottom. I mean, plenty of good folks over there, but they’re just a mess.
Tesla is miserable to work with – everyone is overworked, the boss is a jerk, they’re all in fear of getting fired at any moment, and they’d actively look for ways to not pay their bills. Prior to working with them I was actually a huge Tesla fan…that was an eye-opener.
I must be some kind of masochist to keep buying VW/Audi products, but honestly they are not as bad as everyone says. Plus, I sure know where the dealers are! That being said, right now there are basically no VW products I want. The ID.Buzz looked cool until I saw the price. And since they ruined the interiors of basically every product they make with touchscreens, I’m really not into the VW lineup right now.
The ID.Buzz would be on our list for our next vehicle if we would get the short-wheelbase model in North America. My wife and I love our 2019 Golf that we’ve had for four years, but everything else in the VW lineup here in Canada is entirely unappealing to us too.
Ooh, whatcha upgrading? Anything fun or exciting like load balancers or CDNs or redis or memcache, etc? Are you guys staying on WordPress?
I mean, if Jason can claim that shoving a poor unsuspecting eel up the business end of a horse is car related we can cover some tech stuff here too.
Jason is adding 4 KB of RAM to the Apple Lisa that powers this place.
That’s what I’m talking about!
Heck yeah!
Go 6502 or go home
I think they hired another monkey that works in a van down by the river. I thought that is how the servers for this site work? A monkey in a van plugging and unplugging wires like an old phone operator.
That monkey probably eats government cheese too
I’m not, but I look like I am because my last two cars were Pontiacs.
I have never owned two vehicles from the same brand: I’ve had a Hyundai, Ford, Toyota, Chrysler, and VW. These brand changes had as much to with changing life circumstances and availability of suitable solutions as much as anything though.
For eg, went from a Toyota to a Chrysler because we needed a minivan and wanted a plug-in. If Toyota offered that would probably have bought that, but the only option was a Pacifica, so here we are.
The other thing has been it’s easier to lose my loyalty than keep it. I figure there are plenty of good car makers out there; I’d buy another Toyota or VW in a heartbeat. Having driven a Chrysler for a few years with Chrysler reliability, if there’s another suitable option (for me with my wants) when we replace it I will not be brand loyal.
And don’t get me started with other semi-major purchases. People rave about their Bosch dishwashers but I will never buy another Bosch product after the crappy dishwasher we’ve had…
Off topic but which Bosch dishwasher do you hate? I need to get a new dishwasher and heard the Bosch ones were really good.
real talk; get a Miele
If I could afford a Miele I would!
We had a Miele before this. What I read was that this was almost as good for much less. It is not. When it dies I will go back to Miele.
I had a Miele, have a Fisher & Paykel now. I miss the Miele bad. The F&P dishwasher is beyond terrible. I like their oven/range and refers though.
We’ve been pretty happy with Whirlpool dishwashers. They’re quiet and get the dishes clean. Reliability has been fine too. LG and Samsung have not been as good for us.
I think there was a period where all dishwashers sucked. It was when new water usage and energy efficiency regulations hit. They ran twice as long and may not have done as good of a job.
We are milking every cycle out of our 25 year old energy star dishwasher. At least when we need to replace it, the new ones are whisper quiet so we won’t hear it run for 2+ hours.
If only run time and noise were my main concerns with ‘modern’ dishwashers. In last 15 yrs:
LG: worked great/quiet but had to replace the ‘digital’ motor twice, repair wiring at door joint, new door seal, final straw was some kind of leak at 5 yrs.
GE: worked well, but noisier than LG. 18 months in, sprung a leak onto my 1930s hardwood floor week of Thanksgiving. We always host whole family for Thanksgiving. Rubber elbow hose on pressure side of pump had split open. Degradation inside of hose looked like came off 40 yr old car. The hose was molded to a valve assembly that took 6 months for the replacement. Replaced hose (GE only gave me half off since out of 12mo warranty) and sold on Facebook since had already replaced with new DW.
Whirlpool: Works fine, except every 1-2yr, have to uninstall/disassemble the pump motor to clean out grit. The pump is an induction (?) type motor and free floating impeller gets stuck with couple pcs of grit. PITA. Getting about that time again.
Stop my rant now. Need to change wife’s brakes.
Not sure. Mid range 4 years old?
We had a Miele beforehand. Get a Miele.
I’m not loyal to any brands
But brands are your friends! They care about you! They are so quirky and funny on social media!
“They can’t possibly have my brand. It’s a special brand. I have special eyes. MY BRAND!”
https://i0.wp.com/i.imgur.com/mS8aKJv.gif
Reminds me of this
I can’t talk about this anymore, it’s giving me a headache. Do you have any Nuprin?
My absolute favorite scene of Wayne’s World. Especially with the full on track suite Garth is sporting from head to toe.