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CCC Intelligent Solutions Inc. named John Goodson senior vice president and chief technology officer.

Goodson joined CCC in 2020, successfully driving innovation across the business, accelerating application of AI throughout solutions and expanding industries served by the CCC Cloud platform, which today serves 30,000 businesses.

Goodson succeeds Pete Morowski, who is retiring after eight years with the company.

As chief technology officer, Goodson will lead research and development, product development, architecture, security, IT operations and infrastructure, business applications and data science. This will enable CCC to continue powering mission critical workflows, intelligent automation and better experiences for clients and the millions of drivers they serve.

Source: CCC As the business world continues to operate nearly a year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, The Boyd Group announced Aug. 11 sales are up and demand has increased in the U.S. for the company’s services to the point more staff is needed, and the company acquired more locations.

The Boyd Group is one of the largest operators of non-franchised collision repair centers in North America, operating under various brand names in Canada and the U.S. The company owns Gerber Collision & Glass, Gerber National Claims Processing, Glass America, Boyd Auto Body & Glass and Assured Collision Repair Professionals.

“Comparing the second quarter of 2021 to the same period of 2020 demonstrates how significantly the business was impacted by the pandemic one year ago and how far we have come since that time,” Timothy O’Day, the Boyd Group president and CEO, said in an announcement Aug. 11 about the company’s second quarter of 2021 results. “During the second quarter, we saw infection numbers and restrictions decrease, while vaccination levels increased.”

The company “achieved strong same-store sales growth in the quarter,” which ended June 30.

“Although we continued to experience reduced demand in certain markets at the beginning of the second quarter, demand accelerated in most U.S. markets as the quarter progressed, O’Day said in the announcement. “By the end of the second quarter, demand in the U.S. was at meaningfully higher levels than we experienced in the first quarter of 2021.” According to O’Day, the company still has work to do to meet the increasing level of demand when it comes to staff and technicians.

While still at below pre-pandemic levels, demand for collision repair accelerated in the U.S. during the second quarter of 2021 “in stark contrast with the second quarter of 2020 where demand was significantly diminished due to the COVID-19 pandemic and expenses were aggressively reduced accordingly,” the announcement said.

Boyd’s sales increased by 44.4% in the second quarter of 2021, to $444.6 million from $308 million during the same period in 2020. The company’s cash balance was $35.6 million.

Boyd acquired 39 locations, including 16 locations previously operated as John Harris Body Shops in Georgia and South Carolina. Just after the second quarter ended, Boyd followed up and acquired 39 additional locations, 35 of which operated as Collision Works in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri.

O’Day said, as demand continues to increase in 2021 and sales are still below pre-pandemic levels, “demand is exceeding our capacity in all U.S. markets.” The company is working on adding more staff.

In Canada, however, demand remains significantly lower than before the pandemic.

“Looking to the balance of 2021 and beyond, we continue to be confident that we will maintain progress toward our long-term growth targets and operational plans,” O’Day said. (C) 2021 by glassbytes.com. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. For more information contact www.glassbytes.com.

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GM Has Two New All-Electric Commercial Vehicles In Development

by Anthony Alaniz, Motor1�com

BrightDrop, GM’s new commercial vehicle endeavor, is still on schedule to deliver its first model, the EV600, this fall. It’ll launch alongside the GMC Hummer EV pickup and before the all-electric Cadillac Lyriq crossover arrives in early 2022.

However, General Motors has even bigger commercial plans as company CEO Mary Barra announced Aug. 4 it’s planning to introduce two new EVs designed to target commercial and small-business customers. Aug. 4, GM reported its second-quarter sales results, and Barra revealed the two new EVs during a conference call with analysts afterward, according to Automotive News. One will be a full-size all-electric cargo van that will wear the Chevy bowtie.

The other, which Barra didn’t link to a specific GM brand, will be a medium-duty truck, though it won’t be just all-electric. The truck will pack GM’s Ultium battery technology and offer its Hydrotec hydrogen fuel-cell powertrain.

Barra told analysts the two new commercial vehicles would “complement BrightDrop,” while growing its commercial fleet market share. According to Barra, GM will have an EV “for almost any hauling or towing job you can imagine.”

GM has ambitious plans to offer a plethora of electric vehicles in North America and China—30 models by 2025. It’s not clear when the two commercial EVs will hit the market, but we don’t expect it’ll be too long of a wait. The two new commercial vehicles are just the latest in a string of soft reveals from GM. Earlier this year, Chevy confirmed there’ll be an all-electric version of its Silverado pickup that’ll be built alongside the Hummer EV. Both will use GM’s Ultium platform and battery tech, which will also underpin the new commercial models.

Electric vehicles may not be mainstream yet, but one sector that could benefit from them is commercial businesses, which will be critical to GM’s overall electrification strategy.