Last January, Toyota’s Prez Akio Toyoda visited Salesforce.com CEO and cloud computing proselytizer extraordinaire Mark Benioff in Benioff’s sprawling compound on the Big Island of Hawaii.

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In the last time we heard from Better Place – a little less than two months ago – we’ve witnessed the unfolding of the company’s first functional battery swap station. And yet we were left with one big question mark hovering over the entire project: the price for the end customer.

This question is particularly crucial for the Israeli market, where the vast majority of people owns a car and uses it for their daily commutes and where gas prices are amongst the highest in the world – about $8.3 per gallon. And while the company has already unveiled its prices for the Danish market, it hasn’t revealed the price of the car and monthly subscription for the Israeli market – until now.

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A judge with a history of overturning the will of Washington voters decided Friday to block the public from a say in the use of red light cameras. Chelan County Superior Court Judge John E. Bridges sided with traffic camera vendor American Traffic Solutions (ATS) which filed the suit to prevent a repeat of what happened in Mukilteo. In November, residents were allowed to vote on an anti-camera initiative, and 71 percent voted to ban the devices.

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“There is almost no chance for the government to approve Pangda’s purchase of Spyker’s stake, let alone their plan to set up a new joint venture in China,” so said Zhang Xin, an analyst at Beijing-based Guotai Junan Securities, to Bloomberg. “The deal doesn’t fit in the government’s plan for consolidation.” (Read More…)

GM cars start any 24 Hours of LeMons race with a big Index of Effluency advantage, and when you throw a big couch and handtruck in the bed of your Chevy S10 and spend the weekend hurling the thing around a twisty road course full of much faster vehicles… well, for the Greene County Moving Company, the end result was LeMons racing’s top trophy. (Read More…)

The temperature soared well into the 90s today, causing fearful mechanical carnage among the cars that had survived the first session of the 2011 ‘Shine Country Classic in South Carolina. Through all the busted engine blocks and vaporized head gaskets, one Screamin’ Chicken-bedecked Mazda just kept blasting out fast lap after fast lap, padding its lead and avoiding even a hint of a black flag. In the end, the Hong Norrth 1994 Mazda MX-3 took the checkered flag with a dominating 12-lap cushion separating it from the second-place car (the Team SOB VW Golf, a perennial South Region contender that’s way overdue for a LeMons win on laps). (Read More…)

I guess I became a blocker after my brother killed himself in his Challenger, back in the summer of 2041. No, I don’t mean he crashed. I know that’s why people hate us, because they say we kill people when we take action, and I guess that’s happened once or twice.

What I mean is this. My brother. My older brother. He joined the Army when I was still in grade school. He bought an old Challenger with his bonus pay. Drove it all around that fall, putting his whole check into gasoline and old retread tires, and then they sent him to Israel for the Suppression. Well, he killed those Jewish terrorists for three years I guess, and right when that was winding up, you know, we had the terrorists in Taiwan and we had to help China get rid of them before we had a fourth nine-eleven or something. For a long time he was just a face in my specs, bugging me about school, asking about news at home because our Internet was still “free” compared to the military one. Five years he spent in Taiwan, and he got sick, you know, like a lot of them did, with the bugs and the nightmares and the skin, but finally the good Chinese kinda won that thing and he came home.

He came home on a modbus. Late at night. Didn’t even come in and wake us up. He had gasoline. Don’t know where he got it. He took the Challenger out. And the cops stopped him outside the city limits. Told him he couldn’t drive himself. That he wasn’t in Taiwan, goin’ crazy with a MRAP and all. Told him about Modules and said they wouldn’t take him to jail because he was a hero and he’d served the country, and all that.

But they told him they would have to recycle the Challenger, so would he mind waiting in the back seat of the copmod until the crusher came, and he said, well Officer, I have to retrieve my personal effects, and they said yes, and he got in that old black Challenger, took a pistol out of the glove compartment, and shot himself in the head. I never saw him come home. Never met him for real, not as an adult, you know? I didn’t know what to do. I ran to my friend’s house, and he got me a beer, and he said, Brian, your brother didn’t kill himself, the system killed your brother, and you should do something back, and I know people.

Every blocker has a story, and that’s mine.
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Though an global Accenture study [via Green Car Congress] found that up to 68% of respondents would consider a plug-in electric vehicle for their next purchase, the issue of range continues to be the great unknown. And unfortunately for all the models and predictions of future EV sales, the issue of range points to some severely irrational consumer behavior. Namely, there’s a giant disconnect (nearly ten-fold in fact) between the actual number of kilometers driven each day and the range expectations for future EV purchases. Meanwhile, 62% of respondents rejected battery swapping, the most credible current solution for range anxiety, for reasons that are not immediately clear. In short, Energy Secretary Chu had beeter be right when he says EV range will triple and costs will be reduced over the next six years… otherwise, EVs will die a quick death at the hand of consumers’ outsized range expectations.

Saabsunited, once a gathering place for brand necrophiliacs and people with an-ignition-key-near-the-gearstick fetish, has morphed into a Vladmir Antonov fanzine. The banner on top of the site used to show the roof of the Saab plant in Trollhättan. Now it shows the roof of the Saab plant in Trollhättan with an “Approve Antonov” flag photoshopped-in.

There is a big blue square at the left of the homepage of Saabsunited that says “Support Vladimir Antonov” (according to Wikipedia, he is $ 300 million worth, how much more support does he need?) Clicking on the square leads you to a letter writing campaign that urges you in 9 languages to voice your displeasure with the Swedish government. You also are to DEMAND from the Swedish Prime Minister that he approves Antonov as a Saab shareholder. I’m sure a wave of Saab-spam will change the Prime Minister’s mind.

It is a mere coincidence that Saabsunited acronyms itself to ”SU,” an abbreviation previously reserved for the Soviet Union.

Recently, the tone on “SU” became shrill. (Read More…)

Though The Department of Energy has offered only the flimsiest of evidence for the practicability of President Obama’s electric vehicle goals, Energy Secretary Steven Chu is out writing checks about the future of EVs that the industry may not be able to cash. Speaking at the installation of the 500th ChargePointAmerica charging station in Southern California, Chu explained his vision for the future to the LA Times.

“Because of increased demand, we’ve got to think of all the other things we can do in transportation. The best is efficiency,” Chu said.

Batteries are the “heart” of electric vehicles, he said, adding that the Department of Energy is funding research that will drop the cost of electric-vehicle batteries 50% in the next three or four years and double or triple their energy density within six years so “you can go from Los Angeles to Las Vegas on a single charge,” he said. “These are magical distances. To buy a car that will cost $20,000 to $25,000 without a subsidy where you can go 350 miles is our goal.”

So, a 300+ mile car costing less than $25k without a subsidy, within the the 2017 time frame. Which essentially means that within six years, the Nissan Leaf would have to triple its range and lose the equivalent of the government subsidy’s $7,500 in costs. That’s not a wholly unreasonable goal, but what’s not clear is how it will be reached. After all, the Leaf is already behind on the government’s volume predictions, and starting next year the Volt will be too. A tripling of range in one long product cycle (or two short ones) seems as optimistic as the government’s EV volume projections, which imagine 120k Volts being produced next year, as well as 5,000 of the nonexistant Fisker “Nina” PHEV. Chu’s vision is commendable, but at this point the DOE’s credibility is more than a little strained when it comes to the future of EVs.

Not that many fashion models have worked in machine shops, but most people should know that loose clothing and rotating objects don’t mix, or rather they mix too well. The cape streaming off of her neck may make for a nice photo but it could easily have led to some seriously negative publicity had that cape been snagged by a spinner on those knockoff wheels. Dancer Isadora Duncan’s penchant for long flowing scarves led to her demise in 1927. Riding in a friend’s Bugatti, she was strangled when one of her signature boas got caught in a rear wheel. One would think that at least one person at BMW or their ad company would have known about Duncan’s fate when they started tossing around ideas for a photo shoot to promote their new concept, the 328 Hommage. Apparently that wasn’t the case.

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Explaining the many features of a car has always been a challenge. Manuals remain largely unread. When I was at Volkswagen, someone had the brilliant idea of making interactive CD-ROMs. I protested: “So that car stops with a cryptic trouble light, and now the poor customer is supposed to go home, find the CD, pop it into the computer and check what that light means?” My protests fell on deaf ears, and the CDs were made. Now, someone at Audi had a better idea … (Read More…)

Assembly lines at South Korea’s Hyundai Kia ground to a halt this weekend after the companies ran out of a needed engine parts. Production of Hyundai’s Tucson ix, Santa Fe and Veracruz and Kia’s Carnival has stopped. On Wednesday, production of most of  Hyundai’s and Kia’s cars will be affected unless the parts shortage is solved. The Korean units of GM and Renault will suffer, as well as Ssangyong. Do they all get their engines parts from Japan? (Read More…)

It was a hot, muggy, rod-throwin’ day here at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, South Carolina; when the checkered flag waved to end the session, only 36 of 68 starters were still moving under their own power. (Read More…)

Great Britain two weeks ago. Albania last week, enough of Europe. Pakistan has been in the center of world news for a little while now, so it is time to explore what are the best selling cars in that country.

Now if you don’t want to hear one more word about the (spoiler alert!) Toyota Corolla and would like to know about the best selling models in 154 other countries, you’ve come to the right place: you can explore these countries in my blog. Very enjoyable! Yes, I promise!

The Pakistan Automobile Manufacturers Association has been compiling sales of models produced locally since 1998. Not that long ago, I grant you, but it’s better than nothing! And given the tough restrictions imposed on all imported car, really, the locally produced models are the only ones that count so we’ll be staying pretty close to the truth…

If I only had 30 seconds to summarize the Pakistani car market structure it would still be ok because I’d only have to say Toyota Corolla and Suzuki Mehran…

But I have a bit more time so I can dwell on the details. (Read More…)