This week saw the Volt’s price point issues return to the public eye, as GM’s Chairman and CEO made it clear that he takes the government’s $7,500 tax credit for granted. But Whitacre’s dissembling revealed once again GM’s fundamental problem with the Volt: getting people past the sticker shock. Though GM’s short-term viability doesn’t hinge on the Volt selling like gangbusters, it’s clear that the Volt’s initial success or lack thereof will be a crucial factor in GM’s ability to hold a successful IPO and extricate itself from government ownership. Which, according to The Big Money‘s Matt DeBord, is one of the reasons the government should expand the Volt’s credit of $10k. Another reason: the Volt’s competition is too good!
with the base Prius selling for just over $20,000 and the base Honda Insight hybrid for under $20,000, the feds may have to start thinking about how to enable innovative electric and gas-electric plug-ins to survive. The EPA mandate to raise fleet fuel-economy standards to average of 35.5 mpg by 2016 looms, and a component of that target should be EVs and plug-ins. Otherwise, carmakers may abandon the tech, leaving it stillborn to cynically massage their fleet numbers by importing small cars from foreign operations to North America—cars they know Americans will only grudgingly purchase and that may force the government to chuck the 35.5 requirement.
As we reported earlier, TTAC is a subscriber to Morgan and Co.’s industry sales statistics. This means that current and detailed stats going back to 1993 are available to us, and we’re going to figure out the best way to share them with you. Like most things in life, there are pros and cons. The detail and amount of information is staggering, but it’s very affordable to us. It will save us time we don’t have to pore over numbers from manufacturers and compile them. But we also have to accept the segment categories as Morgan compiles them, and as you’ll see, there are times that doesn’t always jibe with how we intuitively categorize cars. Frankly, that’s getting harder to do all the time anyway: is the Flex a mini van or a crossover? Morgan sends us Excel spreadsheets and some basic charts. They’re not exactly exciting to look at, which is why we often succumb to spicing up these sales snapshots with a bit of eye candy. We’re going to be playing with different ways to present this stuff, so please let us know what works better, or not. I know you will anyway. (Read More…)
The extent to which Honda has lost its mojo has been a hot topic in these pages of late. Though the big H has stumbled with Acura, hybrids, design and other crucial areas, one major positive seems to persist: the strength of the Honda name. Which is why it’s so strange to read Bloomberg report that Honda will launch a new brand in China next year. The new brand, named Li Nian meaning “ideal” or “spirit”, will be used for Honda’s new sub-Fit small car, designed to take advantage of China’s reduced tax on engines smaller than 1.6 liters. (Read More…)
Parts of TTAC were inaccessible due to maintenance in the morning. Our crack Canadian coder crew also found a bug that caused a lock-up after about 20-30 days of heavy use.
If you still have problems (such as pictures not showing,) please clear the cache in your browser and you should be fine. Worked for me!
In 2005, California opened its High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) or carpool lanes to hybrid drivers, as an incentive for Californians to purchase more fuel-efficient vehicles. Without a stickered hybrid, HOV lanes are only allowed to be used by vehicles with two or more occupants. But this hybrid perk expires at the end of this year, meaning California’s hybrid owners will no longer be able to drive in the HOV lane as a single-occupancy vehicle. In their anger, a few of the estimated 85k HOV pass holders are letting their ugly hybrid superiority complexes hang out for all to see in the San Jose Mercury News’s Roadshow column. One hybrid owner writes:
Some critics had a choice in buying their vehicle. Did you choose to buy a gas hog-pig SUV or truck, BMW 300 series [sic], a Mercedes-Benz E-class or a safety-first Volvo? You knew these cars didn’t qualify for the carpool lane because they are environmentally unfriendly. You made a conscious choice to be self-centered and materialistic and now you all are projecting your selfishness upon hybrid owners
I love the smell of entitlement in the morning… (Read More…)
Not surprisingly, the decision to close Antwerp is not sitting too well with Opel’s European Works Council. Their reply: Forget the wage concessions you wanted from us, and which are so critical for Opel’s survival.
Management at Opel wanted employees to contribute €265m annually to the cause. The unions were ready to deal, but wanted shares. Reilly reneged on the shares, which raised union hackles. Now, the offer is off the table. And with it, an essential piece of Opel’s future. (Read More…)
The first public-private partnership toll road established as a not-for-profit corporation has gone bust. The Connector 2000 Association, which operates a sixteen-mile, four-lane toll road linking Interstates 85 and 385 in southern Greenville County, South Carolina, announced last week that it was in default on its financial obligations.
“Traffic on the Southern Connector was inadequate to permit the association to collect sufficient toll revenues to pay debt service on the bonds which came due January 1, 2010,” a Connector 2000 Association statement explained. “The association has been advised that the trustee has made no payment of any such debt service. An event of default currently exists… The association is actively negotiating the restructuring of its bonded indebtedness with the trustee, the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT), and certain owners of large blocks of the bonds.”
Ford may be trying to do their bit about overcapacity issues, but they’re having little success with it. The Freep reports that a buyout program by Ford, which was offered to 41,000 hourly workers, has few takers. Very few. The program was issued on December the 17th and due to expire on Friday the 22nd of January. “They’ve offered it so many times, the ones that wanted them already took them,” said Rocky Comito, president of UAW Local 862. The deal offers early retirement or a buyout lump sum of between $20,000 to $50,000 plus either a voucher for $25,000 or $20,000 for a new vehicle. Presumably, Mexican Fusions won’t be high on their shopping list. However, Ford may have a new problem surfacing. Due to Ford’s rising stock price, higher sales and substantial profits, workers will start to see the current buyout package as small and may hang on for a better deal. Couple that with the dour economic climate & low prospects of finding another job and that’s even less reason to take the buyout. “It doesn’t do much for people,” said Jeff Terry, president of UAW Local 228. Once again, the mere perception of relative success at Ford turns out to hurt as much as it helps.
Toyota plans to roughly double its global production of hybrid vehicles to 1 million units in 2011. On the surface, this plan doesn’t sound too ambitious. Hybrids are flying off dealer’s lots in Japan. About 350,000 hybrids were sold in Japan last year, accounting for 11.9 percent of total sales. Toyota’s Prius took the lion’s share with 209,000 units sold. Honda’s Insight made up for another 94,000 units. Less that 50,000 were “others.”
And herein lies problem number one for Japanese hybrids: (Read More…)
Osamu Suzuki said today he would probably refuse advances by Volkswagen if they would want to get deeper in bed with their new Japanese bride.
“When Suzuki becomes a bigger and more successful company, Volkswagen will probably want to buy more of our shares,” Suzuki said. “If that happens, Suzuki will probably respond by saying, ‘Let’s continue as we are.'”
Belgium’s Antwerp can focus on its core competencies as a hub of the diamond trade. Opel will close their plant in the port city of Belgium within the next months, reports Das Autohaus, citing an announcement by Opel. The plant will be closed “to safeguard the future of the company quickly and sustainably.”
Nick Reilly expressed his supposedly sincere condolences: (Read More…)
Enough with these pathetic little Briggs and Stratton powered sidewalk toys like the Rabbit and Starlet! We need us a real car to counterbalance that axis of Cozy Coupes. Hell, this Imperial weighs a half a ton more than both of them together. Its 7.2 liter engine is almost three times as big as their egg beaters combined. And its got enough torque to twist those little tin cans into shreds. This baby rocks, even if it is to a song that abruptly played out the year of its birth. Yes, this Imperial was born under a bad sign: the crescent moon. And it marks the end of the road for Chrysler’s pride and joy, save some pathetic efforts to revive it. But Chrysler’s loss is our gain today, because it isn’t every day we stumble onto one of these bitchin’ waterfall-grilled monstrosities with big twin exhausts to rumble our memories and fantasies far away to another time and place… (Read More…)
I don’t watch “24” but apparently GM’s dead brand Pontiac Pontiac “received $256,200 in exposure by 8 total sequences, including one verbal mention” on the season premiere of the Fox terror drama according to Front Row Marketing and TVbythenumbers.com. Your tax dollars hard at work building equity for dead brand? Out of morbid curiosity, are there any 24 fans out there who can tell us what these references were? [Hat Tip: Graham Smith]
Almost exactly a year ago, we heard that Ford wouldn’t be developing a global RWD platform in Australia. That came as sad, but obvious news back then… but check it out: Motor Trend just got a hot “scoop”!
Under the global rear-drive platform plan, the 2014 Mustang was to have shared its basic architecture with the next generation Australian Ford Falcon, and possibly a new flagship sedan for Lincoln. The Mustang would have been on the short wheelbase version of the platform, the Falcon on the mid-wheelbase, and the Lincoln on the long wheelbase. But that strategy has changed…
…By the time a new rear-drive Lincoln could appear, the Town Car will have been out of production for three to four years, and with high gas prices in Australia, no-one expects major growth in Falcon sales. These factors taken together seem to have conspired to torpedo the global rear-drive platform. “The [next generation rear-drive] Falcon is dead,” said one Ford insider bluntly, in apparent confirmation.
Shocker! The problem is that Ford’s just released a new Mustang, meaning the current model will be a bit long of tooth when the nameplate’s 50th anniversary rolls around in 2014. The good news? Motor Trend’s “scoop” isn’t that Ford will be slapping together a “very special edition” consisting of paint, wheels, badges and certificate of authenticity.
ADAC is who responds to essentially every automotive Panne (breakdown) in Germany. And with the Germanic proclivity for thorough record keeping, they have kept them all, and analyzed them more thoroughly than any of Freud’s patients ever were. Did your mother have a flat in 1983? ADAC knows. And they’ve been using it to publish annual best and worst reliability rankings since 1978. If you caught the Toyota Starlet CC, you’ll know that it was the queen of the ADAC numbers, and the bane of Mercedes and the other (once) proud builders of the world’s most presumably durable iron. Since ADAC doesn’t have an easy way to see all thirty year’s worth of the good and naughty, my Germanic side kicked in and I spent a chunk of last night transcribing them unto a spreadsheet, because…well, that’s just how Germanic I am. (Read More…)
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