Business

(NEW YORK) — In May 2020, as protests over the death of George Floyd raged across the country, federal security officer Dave Patrick Underwood was shot and killed while protecting the federal courthouse in Oakland, California.

The alleged shooter, Steven Carrillo, an active-duty Air Force staff sergeant, carried a ballistic vest with a patch that featured an igloo and a Hawaiian-style print that are both associated with the far-right anti-government boogaloo movement, according to the federal criminal complaint.

The criminal complaint also said Carrillo — who was charged with murder and pleaded not guilty — used his own blood to scrawl “boog” on the hood of a vehicle and met an accomplice online through a Facebook group centered on the boogaloo movement.

Now, Underwood’s sister, Angela, is suing Facebook in California Superior Court, alleging the company used its algorithms and group function to actively recruit members for far-right extremist groups and promote dangerous content. Her lawsuit also alleges Facebook ignored the foreseeable risk of violence in order to maximize profits and united Carrillo and his alleged accomplice — two people it says would otherwise have not known each other.

Promoting extremist activity, the lawsuit said, contributed to Underwood’s death.

“The shooting was not a random act of violence. It was the culmination of an extremist plot hatched and planned on Facebook by two men who Meta [Facebook’s new company name] connected through Facebook’s groups infrastructure and its use of algorithms designed and intended to increase user engagement and, correspondingly, Meta’s profits,” the civil complaint, filed in Alameda County, said.

“Facebook bears responsibility for the murder of my brother,” Angela Underwood Jacobs said in a statement. “Facebook knowingly promoted inflammatory and violent content and connected extremists who plotted and carried out the killing of my brother. Facebook must be held responsible for the harm it has caused not just my family, but so many others through its promotion of extremist content and by promoting algorithms to actively recruit members to its web platform.”

Her attorney, Ted Leopold, cited whistleblower testimony before Congress that accused Facebook of knowingly encouraging and promoting extremist content.

“We believe and intend to show that Facebook’s conduct has led to a rise in extremism throughout the world and acts of real-world violence, including the murder of Officer Underwood,” Leopold said.

Earlier this year, Facebook said it has taken measures to counter hate and extremism online.

And in testimony before Congress in March, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said “the vast majority of what people see on Facebook is neither political nor hateful” and that “we work hard to prevent abuse of our platform.”

“Facebook’s mission is to bring people together, and we stand firmly against hate and the incitement of violence,” Zuckerberg testified. “We have industry-leading policies that prohibit such content on our platforms, and we invest billions of dollars and work tirelessly to improve and enforce these policies.”

In June 2020, Facebook said it removed more than 200 accounts associated with a “violent US-based anti-government network” that “uses the term boogaloo but is distinct from the broader and loosely-affiliated boogaloo movement.”

“For months, we have removed boogaloo content when there is a clear connection to violence or a credible threat to public safety, and today’s designation will mean we remove more content going forward, including Facebook Groups and Pages,” the statement said.

In Boogaloo Facebook groups, the suspect, Carrillo, mused about taking advantage of protests to stir up unrest and violence against police, according to the civil complaint which quoted his post: “Go to the riots and support our own cause. Show them the real targets. Use their anger to fuel our fire. Think outside the box. We have mobs of angry people to use to our advantage.”

Carrillo believed that the Boogaloo, or second civil war, was “kicking off now and if its not kicking off in your hood then start it,” according to the civil complaint.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Two tickets sold in California and Wisconsin were the lucky winners of the Powerball jackpot on Wednesday night.

Both tickets matched all six numbers in Powerball’s drawing and the winners will split the $632.6 million jackpot — the seventh largest in the American lottery game’s history. The grand prize had climbed beyond earlier estimates of $630 million due to “strong ticket sales,” according to a press release from Powerball.

Each of the winning tickets is worth an annuitized $316.3 million or $225.1 million cash. Both prize options are prior to taxes, according to Powerball.

The winning California ticket was sold at a 7-Eleven in Sacramento, according to the California State Lottery.

Wednesday night’s drawing was the 40th in the Powerball jackpot run, according to Powerball. The winning numbers were 6, 14, 25, 33, 46 and the Powerball was 17.

The last time someone won a Powerball jackpot was on Oct. 4, 2021, when a single ticket sold in California matched the winning numbers for the $699.8 million grand prize.

According to Powerball, the overall odds of winning a prize are one in 24.9, while the odds of winning the jackpot are one in 292.2 million. To date, Powerball holds the world record for largest jackpot. The record $1.586 billion grand prize was shared by winners in California, Florida and Tennessee in 2016.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Major retailers have increased the price of at-home COVID-19 tests now that an agreement with the White House to sell them at a fixed price has expired.

In September, Walmart, Kroger and Amazon agreed to sell the two-pack boxes of at-home rapid antigen tests for $14 for three months amid a surge in positive cases with the delta and omicron variants. The agreement has since expired, according to a White House official.

Walmart is now charging $19.88 per box, where available, and Kroger has raised the price to $23.99. The brand is currently unavailable on Amazon’s website.

Despite the price hike, the at-home tests remain sold out — both online and in stores across the country

When asked Wednesday whether the Biden administration is currently in talks with retailers to bring the price of the tests back down, White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to say.

“I can’t give you an update on any conversations,” Psaki said.

Instead, she pointed to other steps the administration is taking to make tests more available, including purchasing 500 million tests to distribute to Americans for free and requiring insurance companies to reimburse Americans for the tests starting next week.

The government will begin to receive the tests later this month and will then distribute them free of charge, Psaki told reporters on Tuesday, adding that she does not “have an update” on how long it will take to send out all 500 million tests and whether the distribution will occur over a certain period of time.

ABC News’ Mike Hernandez and Elliot Rubin contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Former President Trump’s eldest son and daughter have refused to comply with subpoenas issued by the New York State attorney general’s office as it conducts a civil investigation into the way the family real estate business valued its holdings.

“A dispute has arisen between the OAG and the Individual Trump Parties regarding the Subpoenas,” a document filed Monday said.

The document, filed jointly by New York Attorney General Letitia James and an attorney for the Trump Organization, said Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump will now be named as respondents in James’ ongoing inquiry, which parallels a criminal investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

“As her investigation into financial dealing of the Trump Organization continues, Attorney General James is seeking interviews under oath of Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump,” a spokesperson for the AG’s office said. “Despite numerous attempts to delay our investigation by the Trump Organization, we are confident that our questions will be answered and the truth will be uncovered because no one is above the law.”

Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump sought to quash the subpoenas Monday evening in a motion.

Alan Futerfas, an attorney representing both Trump children, questioned James’ motives: her office is also involved in the criminal investigation of the Trump Organization.

“The goal of the subpoenas is all too clear: Attorney General James seeks to circumvent the entire grand jury process and nullify Moving Parties’ most fundamental constitutional and statutory rights by requesting that they provide non-immunized testimony to the OAG — when the OAG/DANY is jointly conducting a grand jury investigation,” Futerfas wrote in a motion to quash the subpoenas, which he said violate the rules of criminal procedure.

The former president and his company have denied wrongdoing and have attacked the investigation as political.

The ongoing criminal investigation has so far resulted in indictments against the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg on tax charges.

Prosecutors said the company had been paying Weisselberg’s rent, living expenses, private school tuition and car lease without proper reporting on tax returns. Both pleaded not guilty.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(SAN DIEGO) — A California mom is entering 2022 debt-free after paying off more than $70,000 in student loan and credit card debt.

Amanda Courtney, 36, of San Diego, said she began falling into debt as soon as she entered college, nearly two decades ago.

“There was no way for me to go to college without taking out student loans, so I knew as I was applying for colleges that I was going to have to take out loans,” Courtney told Good Morning America. “I was kind of like, well, everyone takes out student loans, right? It’s fine.”

Courtney said she took out $15,000 in loans for her freshman year of college, and then also got into credit card debt when, at 18, she got a credit card without learning about how to budget and make her payments.

Over the next few years, Courtney said she transferred to two different colleges, including at one point living back at home and attending a community college, to try to lower her student loan debt.

When she graduated from college in 2008, the U.S. was in the midst of a financial crisis and Courtney said she could not find a job. Without a job, she could also not afford to pay off her student loans, she said.

“I continued to enroll in school just so I could defer my student loans because I couldn’t afford to make the minimum payments, all while continuing to accrue more credit card debt,” she said. “And I just fell deeper and deeper into debt.”

At age 25, Courtney, who now works as an administrative assistant at a San Diego high school, got a job working in education that allowed her to start to pay off her debt, but only with the minimum payments each month. She said she quickly learned that though she had deferred making payments on her student loans by taking low-cost community college classes for several years, the interest on her debt had continued to add up.

“I was deferring my loans, but I wasn’t deferring the interest, so though I was deferring making those payments, I was adding to my balance,” she said. “I didn’t have the financial literacy to understand what I was doing and the full implications of what I was doing.”

Courtney said that because federal loans and grants did not cover her full college tuition, she got a loan through a private loan company that carried what she described as an “insane interest rate.”

In the United States, Americans owe nearly $1.8 trillion in student loans, according to the Federal Reserve.

Coming from a family that did not discuss finances or budgeting, Courtney said she “truly did not know” what she was getting herself into when she signed up for student loans.

“I didn’t understand the economics of it and the commitment of it,” she said. “I think I just had this false sense of security that I’m working and I’m going to get a degree and then I’m going to have a job that can pay off the debt so it won’t be a big problem.”

“Then reality hits and you realize that’s not how any of this works and my $15,000 in loans very quickly becomes $30,000,” she said.

Things started to change for Courtney when she started dating her now-husband and they had conversations about their finances.

“I, very innocently, early in our relationship, was like so, ‘How much debt do you have?,'” she recalled. “He looked at me very plainly and said, ‘I don’t have any debt. How much do you have?'”

Courtney said she made a decision in that moment to be honest about her financial woes, and her now-husband worked with her to build a budget, the first time Courtney had done that in her life.

“I truly lived with this mindset that everybody lives with debt. Everybody has student loan debt. Everybody has credit card debt,” she said. “Having had that conversation with my now-husband, I started to think of money differently.”

With that foundation in place, Courtney spent the next nearly eight years paying off $50,000 in student loan debt and $12,000 in credit card debt.

She made her final student loan payment in September 2021.

“It took that long because I did it while still living my life,” said Courtney, who got married and gave birth to her first child and was at one point the sole income earner for her family in those eight years. “We built things into the budget so I felt this freedom to still live my life.”

Here are Courtney’s three tips for paying off debt.

1. Create a budget that works for you.

“The first thing you have to do is you have to be honest with yourself,” said Courtney. “So for me, that meant pulling out all of my credit card statements and all of my student loan balances, and really looking at where I was at, and making a plan.”

Courtney works on what she calls a zero-balance budget, which means that she directs each dollar in her paycheck to a specific location.

“Every month, a week before payday, I can actually view my paycheck, so on that day, I rebuild my budget every single month,” she said. “I look at what I have coming in versus what I have going out and I tell every dollar where to go.”

Courtney said she made sure that even while she was focused on paying off her debt, she allowed herself to continue to live her life.

“I was honest with myself, and I made a plan, but I made a realistic plan,” she said. “You have to allow yourself to go to that lunch celebration with friends. You have to allow yourself to buy yourself a new top every now and again.”

Courtney loves to travel, for example, so she created a special travel savings account that she directed money to each month. She said this allowed her to still travel while being financially responsible.

“If I want to go somewhere, I look at do I have enough in that travel account to go,” she said. “If I don’t, then I don’t get to go.”

2. Consolidate your loans, if possible.

A few years into her debt-paying journey, Courtney said she was able to consolidate her loans into one payment, which made it easier for her to track and pay off the loans.

“That was so freeing,” she said.

The U.S. Department of Education offers a Direct Consolidation loan with no fee.

3. Plan ahead instead of trying to catch up.

Courtney said she kept herself within her budget by learning to plan ahead for major events, like birthdays and holidays and vacations, instead of putting those expenses on credit cards.

“Whereas I always wanted to treat the holidays as an emergency and put it on my credit card and just make it rain in various stores, all of a sudden it was like, ‘Oh, I should be putting away money every month to get there and then look at what I have at the end of the year and look at what I can afford to do for people,'” she said. “One of the years, during my debt payoff, I made all of my Christmas presents for my friends and family.”

“I still felt like I got to give gifts, but I did so within my means,” she said.

4. Focus on small benchmarks at first.

Courtney said she at first focused on paying off her credit card with the lowest balance as a way to feel like she was making progress.

“I continued to make minimum payments on my other [credit cards], but I really focused on that one because I wanted to feel accomplished,” she said. “And when I paid off that first credit card, I remember, it felt so good.”

“It started to feel like, oh, I can do this I can make headway,” Courtney recalled. “Just with every little benchmark, it felt so great and so exciting.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Another week, another chance to become a bigger multi-millionaire.

No one had the winning numbers for Saturday’s half-billion-dollar Powerball jackpot, and the purse has now grown to over $522 million, according to the lottery officials.

There have been 38 drawings in a row without a jackpot winner. The last time someone won the Powerball was in October, when a California player matched the winning numbers for a $699.8 million jackpot.

The next Powerball drawing will be Monday night.

Although no one matched Saturday’s five lottery numbers and Powerball number — 6, 12, 39, 48, 50 and 7 — a few players did come up lucky with some runner-up prizes that had a hefty purse.

One player in Maryland won a $2 million prize for matching the five numbers and using the Power Play multiplier, while three players in Arizona, Florida and California each won $1 million for matching the five numbers, according to Powerball officials.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — COVID-19 cases among airline staff plus poor weather conditions resulted in 2,581 nationwide flight cancellations as of 4 p.m. on Saturday, according to Flight Aware.

The news comes after a week of mass flight cancellations, pushing the total number of flight cancellations this week to over 12,000.

The number of flights canceled on Saturday was the largest in a single day this week.

Airlines, which have been canceling hundreds of flights every day since Christmas Eve, canceled the largest number of flights on Saturday. On New Year’s Eve, there were 1,625 flights canceled.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a warning to travelers on Friday that flight cancellations will continue as it experiences staffing issues.

Southwest Airlines said it has canceled 473 New Year’s Day flights. The company announced it will suspend operations at its Chicago Midway hub on Saturday as of 1 p.m. CST due to weather.

“Our Planners proactively suspended operations at both Chicago airports as of 1pm CST today (we operate well more than 200 departures a day at Chicago Midway) anticipating the gusty winds and blowing snow that decades of our history operating in this airport show us will slow down the airspace and also make deicing and getting aircraft back into the air very challenging,” Southwest said to ABC News in a statement.

“No doubt, for passengers of all air carriers, Chicago travel will be tough today,” Southwest Airlines said.

Delta Airlines said it had canceled 196 flights on Saturday.

“A combination of issues, including but not limited to inclement weather in some areas of the country and the impact of the omicron variant, are driving cancellations,” the airline said on its website.

American Airlines said it canceled 207 flights on Saturday.

“The winter storm in Chicago is having an impact on our operations, accounting for a significant number of our mainline cancellations,” American said in a statement to ABC News. “t’s affecting both flights in and out of Chicago and other flight sequences for our crew. The number of COVID-related sick calls is consistent with what we have seen over the past few days. The vast majority of impacted flights were precanceled yesterday so we could proactively notify and accommodate our customers and avoid last-minute disruptions at the airport .”

American Airlines also said that it had “issued a travel notice to allow all customers whose travel plans are impacted by the Chicago storm to rebook without change fees. We apologize to our customers whose travel plans have been affected, and want thank to our team who have worked tirelessly to help us care for our customers.”

Skywest Airlines said it canceled 465 flights Saturday.

“We continue to experience the impact of weather and the omicron variant across several SkyWest hubs, and have proactively canceled a significant number of flights due to the weekend’s weather in Chicago, Denver, and Detroit,” Skywest Airlines said in a statement to ABC News.

Skywest also said that its teams “are working nonstop to minimize impact to customers and crew. Customers should check their carrier’s website or app for the latest information about their flight.”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — The travel chaos continues for an eighth consecutive day Friday, with almost 1,300 U.S. cancellations as of 11 a.m. ET. The airlines have been grappling with the one-two punch of bad winter weather and a surge in crew COVID cases that have left them short-staffed, and forced airlines to cancel nearly 10,000 flights since Christmas Eve.

Now the Federal Aviation Administration is warning of staffing issues of its own, such as sick air traffic controllers. In addition, the FAA warned on Thursday that weather, holiday traffic and COVID-19 “are likely to result in some travel delays in the coming days.”

“Like the rest of the U.S. population, an increased number of FAA employees have tested positive for COVID-19,” the FAA said in a statement. “To maintain safety, traffic volume at some facilities could be reduced, which might result in delays during busy periods.”

The travel turbulence couldn’t have come at a worse time as millions of Americans travel during what could be the busiest travel period since the start of the pandemic. Roughly 8.5 million fliers are expected to pass through U.S. airports from now until Jan.3, according to estimates from the Transportation Security Administration.

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has been hit particularly hard this week — holding the No. 1 spot for the most cancellations in the world for three days in a row. Denver International took its place on Friday morning, topping the list with more than 250 cancellations.

Carriers are trying to proactively cancel flights to give travelers time to rebook.

JetBlue Airways, which has seen sick calls in some departments up 200-300% more than average, canceled more than 1,200 flights over the next few weeks.

“While the new CDC guidelines should help get crewmembers back to work sooner, and our schedule reduction and other efforts will further ease day-of cancellations, we expect the number of COVID cases in the northeast — where most of our crewmembers are based — to continue to surge for the next week or two,” the airline said in a statement. “This means there is a high likelihood of additional cancellations until case counts start to come down.”

Delta Air Lines is already planning to cancel 200 to 300 daily flights for the upcoming weekend, citing “increasing winter weather and the omicron variant.”

Thousands of travelers who have had to call the airlines to change their flights have been met with long wait times.

Alaska Airlines was reporting hold times of up to 20 hours on Thursday.

Delta and JetBlue are quoting hold times of one hour and 35 minutes and two hours and 16 minutes, respectively.

On Monday, airlines got their first sign of possible relief when the CDC shortened the isolation period for asymptomatic and fully vaccinated individuals who contract COVID-19 from 10 days to five.

JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes told CNBC Thursday that the new guidelines are definitely going to help, but that “the size of the problem really is just the number of people contracting it.”

“Things are likely to get worse before it gets better,” he said.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — The New Year’s Day Powerball jackpot rose to $500 million, up from $483 million. The new jackpot estimate has a cash equivalent of $355.9 million.

The jackpot was raised after no ticket matched all six numbers drawn in Wednesday’s drawing. There have been 37 drawings in a row without a jackpot winner.

“Ticket sales have been strong through the holidays, and we anticipate the majority of ticket purchases for the next drawing will happen on New Year’s Day,” said May Scheve Reardon, Powerball Product Group chair and Missouri Lottery executive director.

The Powerball jackpot was last hit on Oct. 4 in California when a single ticket won a $699.8 million grand prize. This was the fifth largest prize in Powerball history.

Game leaders urged players to check their tickets for one of the nine ways to win.

Wednesday’s drawing produced one winning Match 5 ticket worth $1 million in Georgia and two winning Double Play tickets, worth $500,000 each, sold in Michigan and Puerto Rico.

Powerball will also be holding a special $1 million drawing just after midnight, eastern time, on Jan. 1. The winner will be chosen from five finalists who entered the promotion through their local lottery.

The largest Powerball jackpot hit this year was on Jan. 20 for $731.1 million in Maryland.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Jeep evangelists listen up: Your rugged adventure mobile is going silent.

The gas-guzzling SUVs that have rolled off Jeep’s assembly lines for 80 years will be recast as “green” vehicles that live up to the brand’s off-roading reputation, according to Christian Meunier, the global CEO of Jeep.

Meunier’s ultimate goal? For Jeep to become a “zero-emission freedom brand.”

First up: The Wrangler 4xe, a plug-in hybrid that went on sale this year and already accounts for nearly 25% of Jeep’s volume. The 4xe makes 375 horsepower and has an EPA fuel economy of 49 MPGe (miles per gasoline-gallon equivalent, including electricity). Drivers get 21 miles of electric-only driving range when the 14.0-kWh lithium-ion battery is charged. Under the hood is a 2.0-liter turbocharged inline four-cylinder engine.

The Wrangler 4xe outsold the Prius in the first-quarter of 2021 and is now the No. 1 PHEV in the country. The Grand Cherokee 4xe arrives next year.

“The 4xe could make Jeep die-hards change their mind about leaving [internal combustion engines],” Meunier told ABC News. “When you drive electric Jeeps you fall in love with them.”

He added, “A lot of torque is awesome for off-road driving. It’s cool to be green.”

Electrification may be Jeep’s future — with a few exceptions. EPA fuel economy estimates of the newly launched Rubicon 392, the most powerful Wrangler with a mighty 6.4-liter Hemi V8 engine that produces 470 hp and 470 lb.-ft. of torque, clock in at 13 mpg (city) and 17 mpg (highway).

“The 392 is more of a niche market — 3% of total Wrangler sales. So very limited in volume and very exclusive,” Meunier said.

Jeep also reintroduced its iconic Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer to compete in the increasingly cutthroat luxury three-row SUV category. Moreover, Meunier and his team are aggressively targeting drivers in key markets — Europe, China and Latin America — to expand Jeep’s customer base. North America makes up two-thirds of Jeep’s global sales.

“There is a very big product offensive across the globe … [our] reliance on North America is getting less and less every day,” Meunier said.

Meunier spoke to ABC News about where the brand is headed and how to get more Americans to accept EVs. The interview below has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Christian, you want to make Jeep the greenest SUV brand in the world.

A: Our vision is really to be the zero-emission freedom brand and we have a plan to get there. It’s clearly a commitment to say we’re the greenest SUV brand in the world. Twenty-five percent of our sales in the U.S. are 4xe. I think next year it will be more. The 4xe is the most capable Wrangler. We’re pretty confident that we’re going to be the greenest, the most electrified SUV brand at a global level, which is a big departure from where Jeep was a few years ago.

When are we going to see an all-electric Jeep in the U.S.?

A: That’s a good question. The only thing I can tell you is that by 2025 we’ll have a BEV [battery electric vehicle] in every single segment and pretty much across the globe. And the first [all electric] Jeep will be launched at the end of next year.

We brought the Magneto [Jeep’s BEV concept] and 4xe to the Easter Jeep Safari in Moab. A lot of the hardcore off-roaders told us that the torque … of the Magneto and 4xe could make them change their mind about leaving ICE [vehicles].

Does Jeep feel extra pressure to produce an all-electric Wrangler to compete in the off-roading space? There is the Rivian R1T, GMC Hummer EV and upcoming Ford F-150 Lightning.

A: We will do it. The question is when and how. We’re full speed ahead on electrification. It’s an obvious thing for Jeep to accelerate the electrification for Wrangler and the other models.

Magneto was really a concept test … we wanted to have an impression from our community. We value enormously the community input and feedback. We have a lot of interaction with them.

How do you get Americans to buy EVs?

A: I think it will take a little bit of time. It takes product to prove that it’s equivalent or better and it doesn’t create annoyance. I think Americans enjoy their freedom and want to be able to use their cars whenever they want. And they want to drive as many miles as they want. When the technology is good they’ll jump on it. Americans are very open to [EVs] as long as it makes their lifestyle equal or better.

Which model in your opinion is the most important for the brand?

A: The two most iconic products that exist today when you talk about Jeep are Wrangler and Grand Cherokee. The Grand Cherokee is a wildly civilized machine. The best-selling Jeep in the U.S. is the Grand Cherokee with 250,000 units. Wrangler is No. 2, with 213,000 units. We’re off to a strong start with Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer — a premium extension of what Jeep is about.

Ford and Land Rover are determined to steal market share from the Wrangler with the Bronco and Defender. Have Jeep owners defected from the company? How can the Wrangler keep ahead of the competition?

A: The Wrangler has never sold as quickly as right now. We have zero stock on the ground and dealer inventory. Competition is healthy — it creates more visibility to a segment and it puts Wrangler more on the radar as well. It forces us to become better, come up with new ideas, new technologies. We’re not afraid of competition, it’s good. Is there a little cross shopping? Maybe. We don’t see a lot of defection from the Jeepers to Ford or another brand.

What is the biggest challenge facing every automaker right now?

A: The biggest challenge is — I would say there are many of them. We have raw materials going through the roof. Steel prices. Precious metal. Inflation in the materials we use to build cars so that puts pressure on the cost side. We have the microchips shortage which is a challenge for everyone. It forces us to be innovative and engineer cars with alternative solutions. The cost of electrification is quite high. We cannot pass everything to the customer so that puts pressure on us. We’re working with a lot of economies of scale to mitigate these issues. A lot of headwinds on the cost side.

So does that mean Jeep will have to raise prices on all vehicles next year?

A: It’s not only about pricing. It’s also about making sure we’re more efficient in the way we build cars.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.