Everyone knows that killing a hangover with hair of the dog is an impermanent solution at best, but that’s just what Britain’s government has done. With the British version of Cash for Clunkers winding down early, Business Secretary Peter Mandelson has extended the scheme by an extra £100 million ($160 million), which should be good for another 100,000 car sales. And then what? British car output fell almost a third year-on-year in August, which indicates that the hangover at the end of the latest extension should be a nasty one. The US should know the extent of its own clunker hangover in a few days when September sales are released. Here’s hoping our leaders just pop an aspirin and watch cartoons until they’re feeling better.
Project Better Place founder Shai Agassi tellsAuto Motor und Sport that his firm’s EV versions of the Renault Fluence will cost €3,000- €5,000 less than the gas-powered Renault versions. The only downside is that you have to live in Israel or Denmark to qualify. Oh yeah, and then there’s the “batteries not included” issue. To actually use the car you need to lease a battery (“The batteries belong to us,” scowls Agassi) which will run you about €250/month for about 1,500 miles (30k km/year). Unlimited mileage costs about €350/month. “Try to make a deal like that with Shell,” dares Agassi. But behind the posturing remains the fact that Better Place’s battery-swap scheme wouldn’t work if the Israeli and Danish governments hadn’t bought in. Agassi admits that his cars would cost more than Renault’s gas-burners if they backing governments didn’t heavily subsidize them. But Agassi figures these incentives will merely bridge the gap to higher volumes. “Electric cars are like other electronic devices: every two or three years the price will go down by half.” Hey, if that’s what it says on the business plan . . . .
In the past two years I have spent more time with (VW group CEO) Dr. Winterkorn than with my wife
So sayeth VW Group Design Boss Walter De Silva in Automotive News [sub]. “When I think about the Golf VII, I do not sleep at night,” he adds. Considering that, as head of styling for Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Seat, Skoda and Volkswagen, De Silva manages about 100 projects at a time, so it’s no wonder Mrs. De Silva takes second place to Herr Winterkorn.
A major criteria for spending funds from the recent stimulus bill was that qualifying projects had to be “shovel ready.” Though that stricture was put in place to speed up the stimulus’s impact on the economy, it’s preventing the replacement of many of the worst roads in the nation. USA Today reports that only 20 percent of the $10 billion in stimulus money being spent on road repairs will go to the 74 counties that host half of the country’s worst roads. According to USA Today‘s analysis, those 74 (mostly-urban) counties will split $1.9 billion in stimulus road repair funds. Counties with no roads in need of major repairs mysteriously ended up with $1.5 billion. “Objective reviews show that Recovery Act dollars are going to the communities that need it the most to repair roads and bridges in need of help,” say Federal Highway Administration spokesfolks. However, USA Today‘s study is based on FHA data from 2007. USA Today has an interactive map comparing miles of “unacceptable” roads and amounts of stimulus dollars allocated. Check it out here.
We all want to leave a legacy to the world. Nelson Mandela tore down apartheid, Mohandas K Gandhi brought independence to India and William Wilberforce abolished slavery in the UK. When “New GM” was formed we were told that this company would be free from its legacies. Well, there’s one legacy it can’t shake.
Chrysler’s rolling punchline may have received the least-deserved stay of execution in automotive history, as Automotive News [sub] reports that the Sebring/Avenger duo may not die until “late 2012.” The gruesome twosome were supposed to be put out to pasture by the end of next year under plans made when Chrysler was owned by Cerberus Capital Management. Instead it appears they’ll be receiving facelifts and soldiering on. The Avenger will be freshened first in what is rumored to be the milder of the two reskins. The Sebring will receive a more thorough going-over with the new look set to be debuted in 2011. In the meantime, Chrysler hopes you’ve noticed that new Sebrings are missing their unnecessarily frumpy hood strakes. Don’t count on any of this making a difference though. Chrysler’s products should continue to be backmarkers for at least another two years, with only Grand Cherokee/Durango and 300/Charger redesigns bringing anything new to a table otherwise set with microwaved leftovers. Someday there will be Fiats and Alfas to choose from. In the meantime, lazy auto journalists looking for a cheap shot will keep getting by on a ‘bring and a prayer.
Careful! Double check your guess before hitting the submit button. If you really need some help with this one, there’s a couple buried in the text for last Thursday’s CC Clue.
Let’s assume for a moment that Hybrid Kinetic Motors and its planned Alabama assembly plant are not just a visa scam. Say, for example, it’s a visa scam that will actually build cars at some point. Can anyone make sense of the limited powertrain specs we have to work with? We’re told the vehicles will have a 1.5-liter combustion engine, capable of running gasoline or compressed natural gas. The curious part is the “hybrid kinetic” element, which will include a battery-electric hybrid system and, one assumes, some form of kinetic energy storage. Brilliance, the Chinese company whose former executives are behind HK Motors have only shown mild hybrids, leading one to assume this drivetrain technology was not developed there. However, Brilliance does build BMWs in China, and the Bavarians have adapted a “Kinetic Energy Recovery System” (KERS), which was created for Formula 1, for the road. That system uses regenerative braking to store small amounts of electricity which can be used to boost power for short periods. HK Motors’ claim that it will get 45 mpg out of a 1.5-liter ICE sounds reasonable, but the “up to 400 hp” spec sounds like pie in the sky. Unless that kind of power is only available for short bursts in a BMW KERS-style system. And though BMW’s F1 team has abandoned KERS, there’s talk of it coming to road cars like the next-gen M5. So has HK Motors licensed/stolen “flybrid” technology, or is there another system that could plausibly produce these specs? Or, are we wasting our time discussing vapor?
GM’s executives are well-known for their optimism, a tradition that has been maintained throughout nearly 40 years of sales and market share decline. But in an interview with Reuters, GM CEO Fritz Henderson curbed his enthusiasm, predicting US sales in 2010 will be “between 10m and 10.5m units” this year, and reaching 13m to 13.5m units in 2011. That prediction is considerably less than Ford CEO Alan Mulally’s recent assessment that 2009 sales will hit 11m, and climb to 14.5m by 2011. Henderson blames a weak projection for September sales for his seasonally adjusted annual sales rate (SAAR) realism, telling Reuters the September SAAR would not top 9m units. But GM’s relative pessimism doesn’t mean GM couldn’t be in for a nasty surprise once annual financial information is tabulated.
Wards Auto World reports that Hyundai won’t be offering a V6 in its much-hyped, next-generation Sonata sedan. A direct-injection version of its Theta four-cylinder is expected to be the only engine option, making Sonata the first DI four-pot midsized sedan on the market. The V6 option will also be yanked from the Tucson cute-ute. Though the Sonata will be one of the few mid-sized sedans on the US market without a V6 option, don’t expect it to be a problem even for ostensibly torque-obsessed Americans. According to Wards, 85 percent of the current generation of Sonatas are built with four cylinder engines. 76 percent of Accords and 90 percent of Camrys on the market are four-bangers as well. With CAFE standards climbing rapidly, the era of the four-cylinder family sedan is clearly upon us.
More than a year ago, the ethanol industry hit the “blend wall”: the difference between what they could produce and what the market wanted to use. This despite billions in tax credits: direct and indirect federal and state subsidies. All enabled by a federal mandate mandating that the ethanol boys brew nine billion gallons of renewable fuels in 2008, rising to 36 billion by 2022. And then the gas price bubble burst and environmental impact studies arrived, revealing corn-for-fuel as a carbon positive endeavor. The ethanol industry pretty much curled-up into the fetal position. The small players went belly-up. The big boys—including Archer Daniel Midlands (whose corporate jet ferried candidate Obama around the Midwest)—put their hopes into E20.
After checking out TTAC’s reviews and having a general distaste for sending a perfectly fine car to the clunker heap, I decided (even though I have a vehicle that qualifies for C4C) that the best car is a free car. I’ve been catching up on maintenance on the 1992 Lexus LS400 since I made that choice as I was letting the work slide. Saturday night’s project was a PCV valve replacement. Nothing major . . . unless you are clumsy. I dropped the PCV valve on what I’m assuming is my exhaust manifold (I’m kind of new at this). There is a metal . . . tray? created by the part and sure enough—3 point shot from downtown—the valve landed smack in that little trough. No biggie, right? Just get the magnetic grabber tool and fish it out.
OK, so GM launches a money-back guarantee for its cars and trucks. A kind of riff on the old “Try it! You’ll like it!” campaign. Except of course, those of us who actually remember the old Alka Seltzer ad (before Kathy Griffin murderized it) will recall that the exhortation to experimentation was ironic. The line—repeated by tens of millions of people ad nauseam—came from the waiter. The waiter, the bad guy of the piece, led the protagonist to try food which later made him want to hug the porcelain god. And that’s the key difference. The Alka ad was selling relief from remorse. The GM ad is selling the customer on the idea that they won’t need relief from buyer’s remorse. The GM ad highlights the possibility of buyer’s remorse, on the second biggest purchase of their customers’ financial lives (after their house). Which makes the nationalized automaker’s buyback campaign as dumb as rocks on toast. The man behind the plan, Maximum Bob Lutz, is completely oblivious to this analysis. In fact . . .
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