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Week three of the 2023 Legislative Session comes to a close and we will be approaching a half way point of the session next week. Appropriation meetings will end next week giving way to committee meetings both in the morning and afternoon. The process will begin moving much faster next week. As for this week of automotive legislation, here are the updates.



Motor Vehicle Dealer Requirements (HB194):

The original bill language prohibits a motor vehicle dealer from requiring a purchaser to pay, as a condition of the sale, a fee or charge in addition to the negotiated purchase, other than sales and use taxes, temporary permit fees, required title fees, and required registration fees. One item among others not initially included in the bill is Dealer Documentary Fees.

Immediately after the National Automobile Dealer Association wrapped up NADA Show 2023, the National Independent Automobile Dealers Association made a major move.

On Monday morning, NIADA and Buckeye Dealership Consulting announced an integration of the NIADA 20 Groups with Buckeye’s Dealer Performance Groups.

According to a news release, all existing Dealer Performance Groups, including those focusing on retail, buy-here, pay-here, service and finance, will move under the leadership of NIADA’s Dealer 20 Group program.

As week two of the legislative session comes to a close, we saw the legislature move fast on some major legislation in the state. This included legislation on two hot topics; schools and teacher salaries, as well as transgender issues. These discussion often took up much floor time and even included the House scheduling floor time during their lunch hour of 12pm-2pm. This is something that I have never seen. What does this mean for the rest of the legislation still to come this year? It means that two of the major topics of leadership are nearly completion, giving ample time for other topics. The remaining large topics include the budget, taxes and tax cuts, as well as water and the Great Salt Lake. Appropriation meetings for money should be coming to an end next week, giving way to the fast and the furious of both House and Senate committee meetings.

Motor Vehicle Dealer Requirements (HB194):

The original bill language prohibits a motor vehicle dealer from requiring a purchaser to pay, as a condition of the sale, a fee or charge in addition to the negotiated purchase, other than sales and use taxes, temporary permit fees, required title fees, and required registration fees. One item among others not initially included in the bill is Dealer Documentary Fees.

New-vehicle sales in January are expected to show a surprising gain when announced next week, even though market conditions have not appreciably changed. The January 2023 auto sales pace, or seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR), is expected to finish near 15.6 million, a large increase from December’s 13.3 million pace, according to a forecast released today by Cox Automotive. However, some of the gain is due to statistical adjustments that correct for expected fewer sales in January and February.

Getting a $7,500 tax break for the purchase of a new electric vehicle will likely get harder in a few months — meaning prospective buyers who want the financial incentive may wish to speed up their timeline.  

The Inflation Reduction Act, a historic climate law President Biden signed in August, tweaked rules for an existing tax credit associated with the purchase of “clean” vehicles.

The law, which extended the tax break through 2031, changed some requirements to get the full $7,500 value of the “clean vehicle credit.”

Some tax and auto experts think the tweaks — largely intended to bring more manufacturing and supply chains within U.S. borders and those of allies — will temporarily make it more difficult to qualify for all or part of the credit.

Many households found that their financial fortunes changed during the pandemic, and these changes were often reflected in their credit scores. A recent CFPB analysis found that the distribution of credit scores shifted upward during the pandemic, suggesting that pandemic-era mortgage forbearances, the federal student loan repayment pauses, and federal cash transfers that improved some consumers’ financial wellbeing drove the overall increases in credit scores. 1 In this blog, we analyze increases in scores by looking at credit score tiers, labeling consumer credit scores as deep subprime, subprime, near-prime, prime, or superprime. These tiers are important to study because many lenders use them to make loan decisions and set the terms of credit. A higher credit score tier can allow a consumer access to more and cheaper credit, holding all else equal. We found that the deep subprime and subprime tiers experienced the biggest upward shift, though individuals in higher credit score tiers were also more likely to move up at least one tier than they were before the pandemic. Forty-three percent of consumers with subprime credit scores moved up at least one tier during the pandemic, whereas in the ten years prior to the pandemic, only 37 percent moved up at least one tier.

ATLANTA (Jan. 24, 2023) – Trust matters when it comes to car buying in both wholesale and retail. To drive confidence and transparency in the new and used electric vehicle (EV) market and help optimize EV battery first life, Cox Automotive today announced the next phase of its pioneering approach to EV Battery Health scoring and diagnostics. The company will set the foundation for the industry standard in EV battery inspection and valuation with its VIN-specific battery grading system that is unlike any other solution available today. The pilot of Cox Automotive’s EV Battery Health mobile app and Bluetooth® dongle will launch at 10 Manheim locations across the U.S. – Pennsylvania, Southern California, San Francisco, Riverside, Nevada, Dallas, Phoenix, Seattle, Nashville and Portland.

Week one of the 2023 legislative session has come to a close. In past years the legislature has moved slow and concise when it comes to many controversial issues. Last year the last day of the session ended with a lengthy discussion on trans-gender athletes in Utah schools that took over most of the last day of legislative bill processing. Many of those controversial bills are already moving quickly through the session, with some already half way through the process. This means many bills that previously were held up, should move forward easier. The first week of appropriation meetings are complete and a handful of committee meetings moved forward with many interim committee bills coming out of them.

Cox Automotive acknowledged that by nearly every measure, 2022 was a difficult year for independent dealers, who were challenged by historically low vehicle inventories, high prices and the ongoing risk of an economic recession.

With predicting the year ahead will be one of transition, as both consumers and the industry move past the remains of a global pandemic and set a new course for growth, the NextGear Capital field team compiled 10 tips to help independent dealers thrive in 2023.

ATLANTA, Jan. 18, 2023 – New research released today by Cox Automotive shows that satisfaction with the car buying process declined in 2022 for the second straight year. The 2022 Car Buyer Journey Study reveals vehicle buyers were frustrated with high prices, limited availability, and the amount of time required to complete the process. Used-vehicle buyers, who are often more price sensitive and face higher interest rates, were particularly unsatisfied with the experience in 2022, the research indicates.  

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (TND) — Wyoming lawmakers were considering bucking a national trend of embracing electric vehicles (EVs) by proposing a ban on EV sales by the year 2035, but that proposal has quickly died.

The “Phasing Out New Electric Vehicle Sales by 2035" resolution, sponsored by Sen. Jim Anderson, R-Casper, was apparently a response to other states, like California, banning the sale of gas-powered vehicles by the same year. The resolution, introduced on Friday, sought the banning of EV sales in Wyoming by 2035.

The resolution called electric vehicles "impracticable" in Wyoming, where a "lack of electric vehicle charging infrastructure" and "vast stretches of highway" combine to create a supposedly unfavorable environment for EVs.

All sorts of car-buying dynamics changed as a result of the pandemic. The way drivers acted when their car leases ended is no exception.

For more than two years, car-buyers faced low vehicle inventory and high new and used car prices. They might have gone to a dealershipand not been able to find what they wanted, or paid more than they wanted for something that had fewer features than they needed.

As a result, many consumers with ending leases decided to buy out their cars instead of returning them and facing the markups and limited options of a strapped market. 

More people are taking on 84-month auto loans when it comes time to finance new and used cars. By the end of 2022, consumer credit agency Experian found that 84-month loans were underwriting nearly one-fifth of all new-vehicle purchases and 11 percent of used-vehicle purchases, according to Automotive News.

The loan data shows that the popularity of these longer loans — which commit buyers to a loan that lasts seven years — has surged since 2018: at that time, only 10.5 percent of new car loans and 4.1 percent of used car loans had such terms. By the third quarter of 2022, the numbers nearly doubled to 19.1 percent for new car loans, and more than doubled to 10.8 percent for used car loans.

SUNSET, Utah — Imagine paying thousands of dollars for a car, only to find out you cannot get license plates to drive it legally.

When it happened to a Salt Lake City woman, she decided to Get Gephardt.

“This is the car that I was supposed to get, or that I did have for a week” Nataly Fontoura told KSL, as she pointed to a photo of a 2011 BMW sport utility vehicle that she purchased last spring from AutoPro Motors in Sunset.

Nataly Fontoura tells the KSL Investigators that she has not been able to get license plates for a 2011 BMW she purchased from a dealer because it cannot pass emissions.

Since the start of the pandemic and the resulting disruptions to new car supply chains first sent prices soaring, used car prices posted their largest annual increase on record — up 45% in the 12 months ending in June 2021, according to the Consumer Price Index — before swinging to a 12-month drop of 8.8% in the most recent reading for December.

That was the biggest 12-month plunge in prices for used cars since June 2009, when General Motors and Chrysler were both in bankruptcy proceedings and the economy was hemorrhaging a half-million jobs a month.