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Agenda

• Update on Mitchell KPI's
• A review of the Industry Trends feature article
• A deeper dive on what's happening with severity (particularly in Texas)
• New car sales rate update
• In the news
• New technology
• Chinese knock off update

The Sample Size

• I looked at a robust sample size of just under 1.5 million random estimates.
• I used aged estimates from our "data pool" that were more than 90 days old, so I could be reasonably certain that the estimates reviewed were "final‟ with all supplements applied.
• The estimates selected for the sample were for repairable vehicles only, because
  the cynic in me believes there are certain appraisers who will "load up" estimates so that an estimate for an obvious total loss adds up to the amount needed to total a vehicle.

The Findings

• A review of the detail of the hourly operations showed that frame labor averaged $54.05
  per hour, with Domestic vehicles having the highest hourly frame/unibody labor rate.
• The average hourly operation to pull and square the unibody after set up was just under 3.2 hours, indicating a fairly modest pull.
• Interestingly, when split out by vehicle type, traditional ladder frame light duty trucks averaged over 5 hours of pulling and squaring after set up.
• Asian vehicles had a straightening frequency 12 percent higher than European or Domestic makes.

New & used vehicle trends and the effect on total losses

New Vehicle Sales for 2011

• Globally, Car makers sold 77.7 Million vehicles
• That‟s 8,900 every hour!
• The largest fleet purchaser in the U.S.? Enterprise Holdings
• US sales finished the year at 2011 volume of about 13.4 million vehicles, 10 percent higher than 2010
• Robust new vehicle sales in March, 1.4 million for the month, highest since2007, means we are tracking close to a 15 million SAAR

The top selling luxury brand in the US

• BMW's U.S. sales rose 15 percent to 26,834 in December, for an annual total of 247,907
• Mercedes said its sales last month climbed 28 percent to 25,701, pushing its tally for the year to 245,192.
• U.S. sales at Lexus dropped 13 percent last year to 198,552 units - - the first time volume dropped below 200,000 units since 1999.

Used Vehicle

• Used vehicle sales totaled 38,792,169 for all of 2011, up 5.2 percent from the prior year.
• December volume surged 11.98 percent, to 3,142,513.
• The year, as a whole saw a surge in private party, or consumer-toconsumer, sales, especially in the final months of 2011.

Honda to recycle Hybrid battery parts

• Honda said on Tuesday it would start the world's first mass-production process
  to extract rare-earth metals from used car
• Honda has partnered Japan Metals & Chemicals to begin extracting rare earth metals from nickel-metal hydride batteries collected from used hybrid vehicles at its dealers around the world.
• China produces about 95 percent of global rare-earth supplies and has ratcheted up export controls, sending prices soaring.
• The newly developed process enables the extraction of more than 80 percent of rare-earth metals in nickel- metal hydride batteries.
• It plans to also use the process for other parts, feeding the extracted metals back to its products. Confidential and Proprietary

PA 12 resin shortage

• A explosion and fire in Marl, Germany disrupted supply of a critical resin used in brake components.
• The global automotive industry faces a "severe" shortage of a resin used to make fuel and brake components that may interrupt production "in the next few weeks," according to TI Automotive Ltd.25 Confidential and Proprietary.

New developments in vehicle technology

The new aluminum bodied SL

• The new Mercedes-Benz SL is 308 pounds lighter than its predecessor thanks to a brand new body design made almost entirely from aluminum.
• Expressed in numbers, the body shell weight is made up of: 44 percent cast aluminum, 17 percent aluminum sections, 28 percent aluminum sheet metal, 8 percent steel and 3 percent other materials.
• Only the A-pillars and the windshield frame are made of steel with high- strength steel tubing inside for rollover protection.

What is Sky Active Technology?

• Features a lowered temperature before combustion and increasing combustion speed, meaning less time for knock to develop.
• To make this happen, SKYACTIV uses very high compression ratios (in gasoline engines) to generate power efficiently.
• The technology so uses direct- injection under very high pressure, compared to most current engines, the previous 2.0L engine uses 43 lbs. of fuel pressure, while the new SKYACTIV 2.0L is at 2,900 psi.
• 15-percent lower fuel consumption and CO2 emissions while achieving 15-percent more torque at higher rpm

BMW thermal management A/C On an icy winter morning, your car‟s interior isn‟t always the most pleasant place to sit. Your hands and toes get cold, and the screen and side windows do their best to ice or steam up. Likewise, on a hot day, you want that interior as cool as possible. BMWs two-zone climate control system will help on both counts, concentrating heat to quickly defrost the windscreen and warm your feet when it‟s cold, and using solar compensation--which adjusts the airflow depending on the intensity and angle of the sun--to deliver cool blasts of air to where ever is most effective on those hot and humid days.

Bi-Xenon Headlamps

• Bi-Xenon Headlights refers to HID (High Intensity Discharge) Xenon headlights that offer both low and high beam lighting from a two headlight system
• A bi-xenon system eliminates the need for a separate halogen high beam bulb/lens by either moving the xenon bulb within the lens or by moving a shield up or down in front of the bulb
• A bi-xenon system typically features dynamic headlight leveling and on some vehicles direction adjustability.

The Toyota version of the Mood Ring

• Some of the actions the system can take include producing more safety reminders if the driver seems distracted or even directly controlling the car either by braking or steering to avoid an obstacle. An angry driver, for example, could be alerted of a potential hazard such as a child crossing the road much earlier than a driver who is in a calm or neutral state. The system can detect which direction the driver is facing so could warn of a hazard located in the opposite direction that the driver is looking in. The technology works by using sensors that take readings from 238 separate points all over the driver‟s face and calculates the emotions equally. Toyota engineers explained that the technology is still in its infancy though we could see some elements of it in Toyota‟s cars in around six years.

Driving by the seat of your pants! The Cadillac XTS Safety Alert Seat

• The XTS features industry first driver‟s seat that vibrates to warn drivers of crash threats while driving and parking.
• The patented Cadillac Safety Alert Seat generates vibrating pulse patterns on the left and/or right side of the lower bolster to alert the driver of potential dangers, such as drifting from a traffic lane or toward nearby objects while parking.
• Threats from the front and rear trigger pulses on both sides of the seat.

Volkswagen Electric Sun visor

• A sun status sensor and a sensor that determines the eye position of the driver both feed signals to the computer
• The computer calculates the point of sunlight entry within the viewing angle of the drivers eyes.
• The computer then produces a dark "spot" in the glass). The spot moves across the windshield as the car changes direction

Dodge Dart Wireless

Chinese market update

• Hyundai copy
• JAC 4R3