Fisker’s first car, the Karma, is being assembled by Valmet in Finland, but Fisker is already looking ahead. Following the Tesla model of offering a second sedan at around half the price of the brand’s flagship nameplate, Fisker is negotiating the purchase of the former Solstice/Sky plant where it plans on building a $48k “family-oriented” hybrid. The WSJ report Fisker is eying up to 100,000 units of production, employing 1,500 workers. Fisker is also following the Tesla example for funding; the EV company will spend most of its $528m in DOE ATVM loans developing its new lower-cost model (the Karma will retail for around $90k) and retooling the Delaware plant. Though companies like Fisker and Tesla surely appreciate these loans, one can’t help but wonder if they encourage an unhealthy level of optimism in a company that has yet to bring a vehicle to market, let alone record a sale. Though it’s understandable that fledgling EV companies would begin with a luxury model and work towards mainstream offerings, shouldn’t there be some indication of the flagship’s success (especially if it involves a more-complicated range-extending ICE) before going full-speed ahead for a 50 percent cheaper model?
The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) announced last week that the experimental increase in the state’s maximum speed limit to 80 MPH has been a success in terms of safety. UDOT Deputy Director Carlos Braceras testified before the state Interim Committee on Transportation that that there has been no increase in accidents as a result of the higher number printed on the speed limit signs on certain stretches of Interstate 15. In 2008, the state legislature granted UDOT permission to test higher limits on rural sections of the road. Using crash histories, engineering studies, UDOT carefully selected the areas that it believed would best handle the increased limit. The department then conducted before and after surveys of speeds and traffic volume on the three sections where the limit was changed. Although the signs permitted another 5 MPH in speed, the results showed that drivers did not ‘take advantage’ of the new limit to drive significantly faster.
We’ve seen the signs coming for some time: rumors from Japan, declining car sales at home, advertisments selling cars as “the ultimate mobile device.” And the picture that’s beginning to reveal itself is a challenging one for fans of four-wheeled transport. Young people, once a deep well of enthusiasm and sales growth for the car industry, are no longer as auto-obsessed as they once were. And their vibrant presence in the automotive world does not seem likely to return any time soon, either. How do I know? Because, like an increasing number of people in their twenties, I don’t own a car.
We now know that OnStar is a PITA if you’re doing a quarter mile in a 700hp+ Hennessey-tuned Cadillac CTS-V (a.k.a. V700). The service doesn’t know the difference between a performance run and an accident. Har har. Even so, this incident raises some questions about GM’s Big Brother division. (Read More…)
Prepare yourself for an increasing number of „good news“ along the following lines:
„October U.S. auto sales should be down about 6 percent from a year ago, marking the first single-digit monthly decline since May 2008, industry forecasting firm J.D. Power and Associates said on Friday.” Glad tidings, brought to you by Reuters.
Times must be really bad when single digit declines are feted as an improvement.
In reality, things stay as bad as they have been all year. In September 2008, the bottom fell out of the light vehicle market. From now on out, monthly sales will be compared to hell.
Thanks to the laws regarding “fair use,” TTAC can blog on your behalf. Obviously, we don’t cut and paste entire articles. Except when we do. This is one of those cases where a misleading headline deserves the full monty [via ekathimerini.com]. Or, as the Greek sage/storyteller Aesop said, “We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.”
Our politicians’ obsession with their public personae and the emphasis that they put on public relations stunts often causes serious problems for public policy and prevents political staff from doing their job properly.
The most recent example of this phenomenon was the government decision to replace public officials’ luxury gas-guzzling automobiles with smaller, more environment-friendly hybrid vehicles.
The decision has obviously not been thought through properly.
There is always going to be a generation gap. The term “generation gap” was coined in the 60s when it became evident that Baby Boomers had developed a whole new set of rules for themselves that put a significant chasm between them and their parents in terms of interests and values. Generation gaps will always define new generations and every generation will march to the beat of their own drum. For me, the gap got Grand Canyon wide when I read the LA Times piece by Martin Zimmerman that cited a J D Power study which indicated that Generation Y has less interest in cars. As a lifelong car guy who built an entire social world around cars I would have to ask; “Generation why?”
Out of 200 Ford Motor Credit cars at the auction yesterday I bought 10. Seven that I designated for retail, three for wholesale. I was second to last bidder on appoximately 30 more. Which means from a sellers perspective, I was crucial to him driving his overall prices up. The truck in question is an ’04 F150 4×4 reg cab with 60k on it. Terrible paint, needs a solid grand spent on a strip down and repaint. But it was cheap, I mean silly cheap. I gave $5,000 for this little pearl, and ready to go it’s worth 9-10 grand. The why is simple. It’s a 4×4 with under 80k miles in a recent body style. That’s the why on the value part. The why on, how did I get it for 5,000 is not as simple.
What’s the first thing you notice when you step inside a car? Some folks look at the seats. Others will set their eyes on the carpet or the far side of the dashboard. For me… it’s smell. I swear at times I can actually tell what auction a car came from given the smell on the inside. Brands also give forth their own odorous emanations. Fur starters . . .
When the history of the 2008/2009 federal bailouts is finally written, the chapters on Cerberus’ federal teat suckage will contain some of the best/worst examples of insider sweetheart deals between failed financiers and Uncle Sam. Deals that protected their protagonists from genuine accountability for their actions, and inaction. Case in point: Cerberus-owned GMAC’s eleventh-hour, Christmas Eve exemption from FDIC banking laws. GMAC’s Board Member, former U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow, brokered the get-out-of-C11-free card and subsequent $6 billion bailout. Dirty? How about the fact that GMAC’s then-Chairman’s J. Ezra Merkin’s was up to his eyeballs in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. OK, so, here we are. When federal Pay Czar Kenneth J. Feinberg announced that executives at ChryCo Financial wouldn’t get as close a haircut as their colleagues everywhere else, his explanation let the C11 cat out of the bag.
When the Detroit uses the word “misunderstanding” in the lede graph of a story about The United Auto Workers (UAW), you just know there is some serious negotiation, posturing, ass-covering and ass-kicking going on behind the scenes. In this case, it seems that the union’s members are not happy about a no-strike clause in their proposed contract with Ford. “The Detroit News has learned that the [no-strike] language, which was included in recent contract changes the UAW negotiated with General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC, was mandated by the Obama administration as a condition of its bailout of the two companies. It was designed to ensure the competitive gains that were forced through by the White House could not be reversed in 2011 contract negotiations between GM and Chrysler and the UAW, according to people familiar with the situation.” What’s this got to do with Ford? Can you say “pattern bargaining?” It seems that the UAW, who practically invented the term, can’t quite bring themselves to use it now. Or keep their members in the loop.
Stop typing in the comments section about how another BMW won another comparison. If the BMW came second fiddle to the Audi or the Jaguar, you would be typing that the BMW got second only because it got first so many times before, and we were wrong. So first, second or last, the BMW gets […]
The GM-Opel-Magna-Sperbank deal is on its last gasp. On Friday, GM’s chief Opel negotiator, John Smith, said that nothing will happen until the GM BOD will get around to reconsider the sale at its next regular meeting on November 3, says Reuters. In the meantime, the matter turns into a chain letter exercise. Chain letters everybody wants to receive, but nobody wants to write.
As reported by TTAC, EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes wants letters from all parties involved, certifying that the deal had not been reached under political pressure. All parties involved, meaning GM, the Opel Trust that officially owns Opel, and the German government. Except a vague note from Berlin to Brussels, no letters have been written. Nobody wants to write, everybody wants to receive a letter: (Read More…)
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