Employee retention is the ability to keep employees from leaving. Dealerships care because turnover disrupts training and can hurt service quality and sales consistency.
Buick is a car brand from General Motors. They’re talking about making a new sedan, which connects to whether people are starting to want sedans again.
They’re using a funny “test” to see how popular a brand really is. If you can’t find the brand’s stuff where you’d expect it, it suggests the brand isn’t a big player yet.
Market share tells you how much of the total sales in a category a particular truck takes. A higher number means it’s selling more than competitors in that same group.
Brand loyalty means people stick with the same truck brand because they’ve had good experiences. In trucks, that can make it harder for a new brand to win customers.
The “powertrain” is the main set of parts that make the car move. It includes the engine or electric motors and the system that sends that power to the wheels.
“Franchise dealers” are local car dealerships that sell a specific brand’s cars. The point is that Kia and Hyundai can use their established dealer network to get cars in front of buyers quickly.
The chip shortage was when the computer chips cars need weren’t available in enough quantity. That slowed down car production and changed how many cars automakers could sell.
“Knock-on effects” are secondary impacts that ripple from an initial event through the supply chain or market. Here, a supplier disruption earlier in the year can continue to affect inventory and availability later.
Floor planning is the money dealers borrow to buy cars before they sell them. If the cars sit longer, the dealer keeps paying interest, which costs more.
Tighter margins means the dealership makes less money on each car. When the market changes quickly, it’s easier to lose money if the pricing or inventory choices aren’t right.
This means the dealership doesn’t have clear reporting on what’s leading to sales. Without that, it’s tough to know which cars and pricing strategies are truly working.
Market data is information about what’s happening in the car market—like what people are buying and what similar cars cost. Dealerships use it to avoid overpaying for inventory and to price cars so they move faster.
Demand signals are clues that tell you what cars people actually want. If a model is getting lots of interest or sales, that’s a signal to stock more of it and price accordingly.
General Motors (GM) is a major U.S. automaker that owns multiple brands, including Buick. The segment says GM is bringing a sedan back to Buick’s North American lineup, framing it as part of a broader sedan comeback discussion.
A “sedan segment” just means the category of sedans—cars with a trunk. The conversation is about whether companies will put more effort into that type of car again.
GM is short for General Motors, one of the biggest car companies in the U.S. The discussion is basically about whether GM will start selling sedans again after moving away from them.
“Detroit three” means the big three American car companies—Ford, GM, and Stellantis. The phrase is used because they’re historically based in the Detroit area.
This is an industry group that represents car companies and parts makers in the U.S. Here, they’re asking the government to change the federal gas tax to help with fuel prices.
Tires wear faster when roads are rough because impacts and vibration increase tread and sidewall damage. The speaker is arguing that underfunded road maintenance raises tire replacement costs.
The NTSB is a U.S. safety agency that investigates crashes and tries to prevent similar incidents in the future. Here, they’re investigating crashes connected to a driver-assist system.
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Welcome to this weekend drive edition of Daily Drive
for the second week in April, 2026.
I'm Helen Walker in Las Vegas.
We're breaking down some of the biggest stories
in the auto industry from the past week
and looking forward to what's in store in the days ahead.
We'll talk about Kia jumping into the pickup segment,
new vehicle inventories hitting their lowest point in months,
Buick planning a new sedan
and whether that could signal a broader comeback
for sedans in the US market.
Plus, is it time to repeal the federal gas tax?
Joining me as always to dig into all this
is Larry Velikwet who covers Toyota, Subaru and Mazda for us
at Automotive News.
Larry Legend, welcome back, sir.
Kel, wonderful to be here.
From a car parked in the northern suburbs of Detroit today.
All right.
And Michael Martinez who covers Ford
in the UAW for Automotive News.
Mike, great to have you back.
Thanks for having me.
So Larry, Kia announced this week
it's getting into the pickup trucks.
CEO Ho Sung Song says they'll launch a mid-sized truck
in both electric and range extender versions by 2030.
You've got a column about this on autonews.com.
You talk about whether this can pass the Calvin test,
something you've mentioned here on the show before.
Remind us, what's the Calvin test?
So the Calvin test is if you look at trucks
at the back window of many, many, many trucks,
you'll see a photo of my hero, Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes
usually relieving himself on a logo of a competing brand.
This is how you arrive in the realm of pickup trucks
when your brand is on either end of that stream, right?
That's how you know you've arrived.
Right now, I could only find one Calvin,
Kia sticker anywhere in the world.
It was in France, has nothing to do with trucks.
And it was a way to explain
that they are just not a player right now.
They wanna be and they have very ambitious goals.
And I wish them tremendous luck
because they're gonna need it.
This is a very competitive segment.
It's a very crowded segment.
There are seven vehicles in that segment.
The way we cut it,
only two of them have over 100,000 units a year.
That's the Chevy Colorado and the Toyota Tacoma.
And the Tacoma has a 42% market share
in the midsize truck segment.
It is a beast in that segment.
And Mike can explain why,
but they have the work cut out for it
to make a mark in the segment.
Now, Mike, Kia is betting on 90,000 trucks a year
and 7% of the segment by 2034.
Is that realistic given how competitive
the midsize truck market already is?
I'm not sure it's realistic,
but they need to set a goal like that, right?
If we're talking 90,000 units,
that would put them third behind the Tacoma in the Colorado.
If we're talking 7% share,
that would also put them about third or fourth.
I think fourth actually behind the Ranger as well.
So is that realistic even within your first,
was it three or four years they said
they would be on the market?
Maybe, maybe not, but you need to set that goal post.
And Larry's Calvin test observation is really important
because they're entering a fiercely competitive segment
where brand loyalty is through the roof.
If you're a truck owner and you own a Tacoma
and you have for years,
you're probably not defecting to a Ranger or a Colorado
or whatever Hyundai Kia puts out.
Unless it's priced really well
and it delivers some type of capability
that's either directly on par
or exceeding what you have today.
So it's gonna be tough for them to crack that,
tough for them to reach those goals.
But if they come out with the right product
that's priced affordably, they could become a player.
There is still room for another one in that segment
and another major competitor.
So we'll see, am I expecting 90,000, 7% share?
Probably not though.
I pointed this out in my column
and if you looked at what Kia and Hyundai are proposing,
right, the actual dynamics of what they wanna come out with,
it looks a whole lot like what VW's scout business plan is.
Right, it's almost pound for pound,
the same in terms of the powertrain.
And knowing Kia and Hyundai, they will do so quicker,
they'll do so cheaper,
and they will do so with their franchise dealers in tow.
So I just wanna say to all our listeners
who are VW dealers, enjoy your serving of Schadenfreude
as Kia and Hyundai steal scouts business model going forward.
Oh man, now Larry, we're seeing more Japanese automakers
getting into this US body on frame market.
Why now?
You know, I wish I could answer that, Kel.
I don't understand the attraction.
I know.
I can answer that one.
Go ahead.
It's a really valuable market.
Americans want pickups, they have for years.
They were making money for the automakers
that sell them hand over fist.
So of course, you want a slice of that pie.
Is it the right move?
I don't know, again, can they find their niche
in terms of brand loyalty?
I don't know, but of course they would want in now.
It's a completely profitable segment.
The thing I don't get is why they went
into the midsize segment
when the compact segment is just sitting there.
And that is where Hyundai and Kia excel.
The only vehicle there right now is the Maverick,
the only one that has any relevant volume.
And there's demand.
If they built a body on frame pickup
that had capability that was a compact,
there's money to be made there.
I just think this, what they show,
especially what they showed in New York, it's just too big.
All right, well, let's shift to inventory.
Larry, you reported this week
that new vehicle inventories dropped to 2.98 million units
and day supply fell sharply.
What's driving that decline?
So the decline actually wasn't a whole lot.
We've been bouncing right around
3 million units up and down
for the better part of a year now.
What's really remarkable is that we've stayed right there.
Despite every automaker trying to push inventory onto dealers,
they've actually maintained, and for decades,
they've actually maintained some discipline this time.
We used to get easily as high as 4 million all the time.
And it would get really bad
and they would have to lob up and send them
to get rid of vehicles.
Automakers and dealers now it's coming out of the pandemic
and the supply disruptions that we had
are maintaining inventory discipline.
They're day supply down from 75 days last month
down to 62 this month.
That's a function, if you don't know,
that's measured by taking the selling rate
from the previous 30 days
and spreading it over the number of vehicles that are left
so that drops.
But what it does is it gives them an indication
of how long can I expect to hold these vehicles
before I sell them.
And really the ideal measurement is
you wanna be as close to 60 days as possible.
With pickups, that's a larger number
and as pickups become a larger portion
of the whole inventory, it kinda skews it a little bit.
But 60 days is what most automakers pay for
for dealers to carry their inventory.
It's what they subsidize before the dealers themselves
start picking up the floor planning costs themselves.
So what this shows, it's discipline within the industry,
within the retail sector of the auto industry,
which is something that for decades eluded us
and it also shows that maybe they're running about right.
We're running pretty efficiently right now.
Now, Mike, do you think this is a temporary dip
or are we looking at a long-term shift
in how automakers are managing their inventory?
Yeah, Larry spoke to it in terms of discipline.
I don't know if that discipline can last
because we've seen historically it hasn't,
even though they have tried to set those benchmarks
for themselves and when you have major events
that reset inventory, like we did a few years ago
with the chip shortage, they vowed up and down
to keep it at relatively lean levels,
but it did creep up again.
And now maybe it's falling a bit.
I'm not sure if it's sustainable just in terms
of the market right now because there's so much happening,
whether it's the supply chain disruptions
from the closure of the Strait of Ormuz
or the rising gas prices,
whatever may be affecting the industry,
the automakers may be forced to, you know,
fluctuate their inventory levels.
Take a look at the nation's best-selling vehicle line
right now, F-Series.
Those numbers are starting to get in,
creep into more dangerous territory on the low end
because of the knock-on effects from that supplier fire
all the way back last fall.
It's still affecting F-Series inventory,
the aluminum, Ford can't get the aluminum.
So just a one-off event like that
could have profound repercussions.
You look at EV inventory, suddenly if gas prices
remain high, maybe more people are buying EVs,
you can start to sell down some of that inventory
that has been languishing on dealer lots for a while.
So it's not really, not so much as,
well, there's two components, right?
One, whether or not the automakers
can maintain discipline in a normal market,
but two, if we're gonna have a normal market
and I'm not convinced that's the case,
there's always gonna be something,
we may be onto our next great crisis
right around the corner.
So there's a lot of factors there.
I have a feeling it's gonna continue
to sort of fluctuate like we've seen.
Yeah, we should note too that the EV inventory
has actually dropped in half over the last two,
almost in half over the last two months
from where it was two months ago to where it is today.
The day supply is now close to almost perfect,
about 60 days and might be a little higher than that
and it was up in the 130s.
So we're really starting to cut back.
I think you're seeing some of that
is obviously production shutdowns,
but there is still some demand out there for EVs
and some growing demand.
If gas prices, there'd be some growing demand
if gas prices continue to rise.
Now, Larry, what does lower inventory mean
for dealers and consumers right now?
So for dealers, it means pretty simply,
their costs stay low, stay lower.
They pay what's called floor planning on their inventory.
A lot of consumers don't realize this.
When a dealer buys a car from a manufacturer,
they start paying for it the moment
it drives through the factory door.
That's when the clock starts running.
They keep paying interest on that car until they sell it.
So automakers, they subsidize those first days
that allow the car to get to the dealer
where it can be retailed,
but the pressure is really on them,
on the franchise dealers, to then move that car.
And if they do so within the period that they subsidize,
then they make money on that.
If they don't, then they start losing money on a daily basis
as the longer that new vehicle sits on their lot.
So the lower inventory you have,
the more profitable you are as a dealer
because presumably you have continued demand,
you have lower supply than what you have, demand,
and you can keep pricing disciplined.
For consumers, higher inventories mean generally better deals
because dealers wanna get rid of vehicles,
automakers incentivize vehicles
if they're sitting and not selling.
It's kind of a double-edged sort.
Gotcha, good stuff, guys, coming up.
After the break, Buick is planning a new sedan.
We'll dig into whether that could signal a broader comeback
for the sedan segment in the U.S. market.
That's next on Weekend Drive.
The NTSB is digging deeper into fatal crashes
involving Ford's BlueCruise.
On this week's episode of the Automotive News Shift Podcast,
I'm joined by Kristin Poland,
Deputy Director of the NTSB's Office of Highway Safety.
When a crash does occur,
what's our awareness of these types of systems
because we're seeing those differences
across the manufacturers?
We talk about why the agency is investigating
the 2024 BlueCruise crashes,
including what's different about regulating
hands-free level two
and how camera-based driver monitoring
was inadequate in these cases.
I'm Molly Boygon, join me on Shift,
available this Sunday, wherever you get your podcasts.
Running a dealership today
isn't just about finding the right cars.
It's about finding the right cars consistently,
efficiently, and at the right price
while the market keeps shifting around you.
Inventory management has become more complex.
Vehicles come from more sources,
margins are tighter,
and every buying decision carries more risk than it used to.
Yet too often,
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Welcome back to Weekend Drive.
I'm Kellen Walker with Larry Bellacuette,
and Michael Martinez.
All right, guys, so let's talk about sedans.
Now, Mike, General Motors is bringing a sedan back
to Buick's North American lineup
for the first time since 2020.
Now, U.S. automakers have been abandoning sedans for years.
Why would GM jump back into that segment now?
Well, because it was a stupid decision
to get out of it in the first reach,
and I'm not just talking about GM.
I'm talking about GM.
Say a lot, or for the people in the back.
Mike, did the mean interrupt continue?
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I'm not just singling GM out here.
I'm talking about GM and Ford and the others
that abandoned the segment, because you look,
there is still plenty of consumer demand.
You look at the foreign automakers who never left,
who have continued to see strong sales in that market.
People want trunks.
They want lockable storage.
They want those more affordable models,
the lower riding profile.
Not everybody wants to drive a tank.
But in all fairness to those companies,
you do have to look at why they got out of that segment.
Their argument is that they simply
weren't making money on those vehicles.
They were unprofitable.
Even at the volumes they were selling them at.
And you look at a company like Ford,
you essentially swapped a focus for a Bronco and Arranger
in that plant in Wayne, Michigan.
You swapped Fiesta for Mustang Mach-E,
which ultimately wasn't a great move,
because that as an EV remained unprofitable for them.
But the idea was you're putting in more profitable models.
Even with the Ford Fusion, you got rid of that at Flat Rock.
You're making more Mustangs.
Mustangs you can make money on with the special editions,
all the accessories.
Same is true with the GM brands.
They just weren't popular.
So why are they looking at it now?
One, continued consumer demand.
Two, they might be able to turn a profit now,
especially if they're making them on a shared EV platform.
Again, look at Ford.
It's a matter of when, not if, they bring back sedans.
Jim Farley's been hinting at this almost every chance
he gets in interviews and podcasts for months.
He said on the floor of the Detroit Auto Show,
Ford would really consider bringing one back
if they could be built profitably.
They're about to launch a UEV platform
that can underpin multiple models.
They've shown dealers renderings of sedan silhouettes
on that UEV platform.
Now that was just an exercise to show what could be possible,
the breadth of that platform.
But it really seems like that's in the cards for them.
Seems like this is the case with Buick 2.
You're sharing components.
You're sharing platforms that can finally make money at it.
They know customers still want it.
Might as well bring them back.
Larry, talk about how cafe standards
push this retreat in the first place.
And now that cafe is kneecapped,
how does this affect the trend?
So, yeah, back in the day, about a decade ago,
the Detroit 3 automakers especially pulled out of sedans
because it makes very little sense.
But the way that the cafe regulations were designed,
you basically paid a penalty for having sedans in your lineup.
Trucks were given this very broad swath
to show improved fuel economy.
But because sedans were already so efficient,
you really paid a penalty if you had them.
And Toyota and Honda, they were willing to pay that penalty
because they had dominant sedans in that segment.
Detroit pulled out and I was covering Chrysler at the time,
or pardon me, Fiat Chrysler slash Stalantis,
whatever you want to call it.
Now, back then it was FCA.
They pulled out in 2015 because, A,
they couldn't make money at them.
They were getting penalized in cafe.
And they were losing money
because they couldn't beat the Japanese
and now the Koreans at the game.
They just, they couldn't produce a quality product
that you could sell competitively in those segments.
Now, you know, I covered Toyota and I gotta tell you that,
I don't know if you've been in a Camry lately.
A Camry, it's 50 miles a gallon.
It's roomy.
There's a gentleman in DC, Brian Armistead,
who I drive with occasionally.
Brian is six, seven, and he and I drive in this thing
and fit wonderfully, right?
Neither one of us are uncomfortable.
It is a really nice package and it's relatively affordable.
They are actually exporting them back to Japan now
because how nice this package is.
It's a large garage band, just to note,
not a midsize word is here.
I think that you're seeing the Detroit automakers come back in.
Because that cafe penalty is gone.
And because, frankly, sedans are an entry point
for young consumers because they're more affordable, generally.
They're an entry point to the brand.
And if you can, what Toyota's strategy has been for 60 years is,
hey, bring them in young and then you have a smaller chance to lose them
if you keep satisfying your customers with vehicles
that they can afford and drive for a while.
So they walk them through the product lineup as somebody comes in.
They don't make very much money at all on the Corolla,
but they sell everyone that they make.
And they do so with very little incentive
because there's demand out there for them.
Real quick, Larry, isn't that like branding 101 though?
Shouldn't every automaker know that?
Every big business that I've ever been involved with
or business owner that I know, heck, even when I worked in radio,
it was always about you get them young so they grow up with you.
Yeah, but you got to go back to when this was occurring, right?
This was in 15, 16, 17.
We were selling everything that we could make
and the automakers were making record profits
and their shareholders were telling them they wanted more.
They weren't making very much money on these cars
and they thought, well, if we just convert to larger vehicles,
we can spend, we can command more money and get more profits.
So they willingly left the segments,
which as Mike and you both noted, was a huge mistake.
It was dumb on a number of levels.
It was strategically dumb.
It was tactically dumb, but they did it.
Now they're coming back in and just like in 2011,
back in 2011, they all left the midsize pickup market, right?
The Detroit three left the midsize pickup market.
For about three years, Toyota Tacoma at that point
had like a 56% market share in what was left.
About three or four years later, they're like,
oh, well, maybe we shouldn't have done that.
And they brought the Ranger back
and then they brought the Colorado and the Canyon back.
And we're still waiting for the Dakota to come back.
But that's been promised.
It's short-term thinking versus long-term thinking.
That's what I was about.
That's exactly what I was about to say.
I was like, I've learned like this is the industry
where no one cares about the lawn game
unless you're Japanese or Korean.
Very interesting.
They're playing entirely different games for different people.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, if any automakers are listening to this, watching this,
please bring back sedans and wagons, millennials.
We love those.
We will spend the money on the sedans and the wagons.
All right.
Now, before we end off, Mike,
the Alliance for Automotive Innovation
is calling for the repeal of the federal gas tax.
Now, we heard from Alliance CEO John Bozella
on Monday's daily drive about the gas price spike.
What's your reaction to that suggestion
that it's time to get rid of the gas tax?
It's certainly a sign of the times
that this is being proposed, right?
And in theory, if it was done,
it could bring some pretty immediate relief
to a current present-day problem, which is high gas prices,
four buck a gallon gas.
I think what we're talking about here is around $0.18 per gallon,
if I'm correct in terms of the gas tax right now.
So that could be some pretty big savings.
If you have one of these full-size or mid-size trucks
we've been talking about and you commute to work
and have to fill up regularly.
But it's an idea that's been proposed a lot in the past.
Obviously, the devil's in the details
of what your solution would be,
because if you're Washington,
you're not going to get rid of something
that generates significant revenue at a time
when the deficit continues to grow.
John suggested a really great idea
in terms of a registration fee of some sort
that would replace it,
and even more than make up for the funds it produces.
But that does run the risk of you're adding a large yearly cost
or a large upfront cost if you purchase a vehicle
at a time when consumers really can't afford
much more than what they're opting to buy.
So I don't know what the solution is,
but you would have to really think long and hard
about how you would make up that revenue
and whether or not it would hurt customers on the front end,
because affordability remains one of the key issues of our times
and adding, I don't know what a registration,
yearly registration fee would be,
or a upfront cost when you purchase the vehicle.
I don't know what that would be,
but if it's in the hundreds of dollars,
even thousands, whatever that might be,
could be detrimental and could really impact
what a lot of buyers can or can't afford.
Larry, what would a gas tax repeal mean for the industry,
and do you see any chance of this actually happening?
No.
A, I think it's dumb,
and it's dumb because you're talking about 18 cents a gallon,
and if anybody's watched gas prices,
you think that 18 cents a gallon means anything to anybody?
I mean, just on my drive today,
I had to drive about an hour and 20 minutes
to have a meeting earlier before the show today,
and when I left, the gas price that I saw was still,
I think the lowest one I saw on the way up was 388,
and I just passed one that was 411, just in that space.
Now, take 18 cents off of both of those.
Is that going to matter?
Hell no, it's not going to matter.
It's going to get absorbed by the market,
and you're going to lose all that revenue,
or you want to put it on...
I mean, let's talk about where the gas tax revenue goes.
It goes to fund the Department of Transportation,
and it goes to highway improvements.
If you defund that, you either got to make up that revenue somewhere,
or you got to figure out how we're just going to drive
in pothole-filled highways for the rest of our lives,
and pay for suspensions and tires and everything else that comes
from not taking care of your roads.
I don't understand the thinking of this.
I know it seems attractive, especially when you have an administration
that started a war that resulted in higher gas prices,
and consumers are hurting because of it.
That gas tax is not going to make a lick of difference,
and I don't see it happening.
I don't think it was a smart suggestion anyway.
Well, Larry, I would say that not all of us drive fuel-efficient mavericks
like yourself.
So again, if you have a pretty big tank...
Why not?
Fair.
But if you have a pretty big tank and you're filling it up multiple times a week,
even 18 cents could make a difference.
But to your other point, if it's an idea that doesn't make sense,
a lot that happens in Washington doesn't make sense.
And you could definitely see the guy in the Oval Office
really liking the optics of an idea of lowering prices at the pump.
I don't care how much it is or what the real impact is.
Just to be able to put out the press release,
to put out the truth social, saying that he lowered prices
by getting his party to repeal that gas tax would go a long way in the messaging and the PR
campaign, which is what most of what happens these days is all about,
whether it makes sense or not.
You're not wrong, Mike, but I will say that moment that the 18 cents would get taken off
of gas prices, it would immediately be within weeks, it would be eclipsed by the rising price
of oil. So that 18 cents of revenue would be gone and that revenue would just then be going to
the oil companies instead of to the federal government for taking care of the roads.
You want to replace that money, let's talk about a carbon tax or a windfall profits tax.
I mean, they bought oil when it was cheap, they put it in tankers out on the ocean,
now it's very expensive, they're going to have a hell of a quarter because of this war.
You want to capture that revenue, start a windfall profit stacks.
Mike, Larry, thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks, Joe.
Thanks, Joe.
That's all for this weekend Drive edition of Daily Drive. I'm Kellen Walker.
Thanks to Automotive News executive producer Jake Nier for his help on today's podcast.
You can get the latest news on Buick's product plans, the sedan segment,
and everything happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com.
Come back on Monday for a conversation with Kristen Poland,
deputy director of the NTSB's Office of Highway Safety about why the agency is
investigating the 2024 BlueCruise crashes.
These two crashes were involving Ford BlueCruise, but also hands-free aspects.
So that was new to us where it's an L2 system operating hands-free.
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About this episode
Kia’s planned entry into the midsize pickup market sparks debate on whether it can ever pass the “Calvin test” of brand loyalty, with the panel noting the segment is already dominated by Tacoma and Colorado. They then dig into inventory, where new-vehicle stock is hovering near 3 million units and day supply is trending toward ~60 days—suggesting discipline, though volatility from supply-chain and pricing shocks remains. The crew also examines Buick’s sedan return and what it could mean for a broader U.S. sedan comeback, tying it to shifting economics and cafe rules. Finally, they argue over calls to repeal the federal gas tax.
