United Auto Workers at the Kansas City, Missouri plant that produces Ford F-150s may strike as early as Sunday if the automaker doesn’t “negotiate in good faith,” according to Jimmy Settles, UAW vice president:

The challenges we face may not be easy, and I certainly cannot predict the future, but I would rather die fighting than to do an injustice to this membership or our institution.

Settles wrote to union members that issues such as “manpower provisions, the national heat stress program, and skilled trades scheduling amongst others” prompted the threatened strike at the Kansas City plant.
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… it’s probably dead.

The Detroit Free Press reported that the deal appears to be mathematically impossible after several large locals voted down the proposed contract this week.

The margins of defeat have been growing since Mopar and axle operators workers voted down the proposal by just over 50 percent and 65 percent last week, according to reports. Workers in Toledo, which builds the Jeep Wrangler and may lose the Cherokee to Sterling Heights, Michigan in order to build more Wranglers, voted overwhelmingly against the proposal; 87 percent declined the contract according to the Free Press.

Union workers at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles plants say that the contract, which does not specify production sites or moving plans — such as shifting truck and car production — doesn’t assuage concerns that more jobs will be lost to Mexico.

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Honda took the wraps off its hydrogen-powered FCV sedan Wednesday. It that will pick up from where the FCX Clarity left off last year.

The FCV will be shown Oct. 28 at the Tokyo Motor Show this year, alongside the automaker’s NSX and Civic Type R. (Any bets on what goes on sale first?) However, it probably won’t be called the FCV when it goes on sale next March in Japan in sometime after in the U.S. Like the FCX Clarity, the FCV may not have much of a life outside California — that’s really the only state with a semblance of hydrogen fuel infrastructure.

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Mazda on Wednesday released a teaser image for a sports car it will show off at the Tokyo Motor Show on Oct. 28.

The automaker divulged few details about the car, other than to say it would “almost condense Mazda’s entire history of sports car development into a single model,” which means nothing in itself. What may be more significant is that the car will be shown alongside a 1967 Cosmo Sport, which was rotary powered. Or maybe that doesn’t matter at all.

We’ve all but given up on rotary powered engines being fuel-efficient and commercially viable so calling this an RX concept would be a long throw.

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Fiat Chrysler Automobiles admitted Tuesday it hasn’t accurately reported required early warning report data to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The safety administration said that warning data includes “significant under-reported notices and claims of death, injuries and other information.”

According to the automaker, FCA self-reported its violations to NHTSA as part of its increased scrutiny after a record $105 million fine and consent order that FCA agreed to in July. Under the order, FCA agreed to have an independent monitor review its recalls for at least two years. (Read More…)

The diesel versions of the Chevrolet Colorado/GMC Canyon will be the first to undergo increased scrutiny from the Environmental Protection Agency after the recent Volkswagen scandal turned emissions reporting on its head.

According to Automotive News, a spokesman for GM said the testing could slightly delay the truck’s fourth-quarter release.

“The EPA and CARB told us they are going to do on-road testing,” Chevrolet Trucks assistant chief engineer Scott Yackley told Automotive News.

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A report by the New York Times estimates that Volkswagen cars that illegally polluted up to 40 times more nitrogen oxides may have contributed to more than 100 premature deaths in the U.S., nearly equal to the faulty GM ignition switch that has been linked to 124 deaths.

The researchers calculated the effects of the increased nitrogen oxides by using numbers derived from U.S. counties where power plant emissions had been reduced. Those counties removed 350 tons of nitrogen dioxides per year and had 5 fewer deaths per 100,000 people. Calculating the number of VW diesels and their average emissions at 39 times the legal limit, the writers concluded that the cars could be responsible for 106 premature deaths nationwide.

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Speaking to Auto Express ahead of Tesla’s first European factory opening, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said internal combustion engines have hit their physical limit for efficiency and that Volkswagen engineers may have resorted to lying out of necessity.

“There must have been lots of VW engineers under pressure — they’ve run into a physical wall of what might be possible so trickery was the only option,” he told the publication. (Read More…)

Officials in New South Wales, Australia are banning UberX cars from their roads for three months after failing to prosecute their drivers, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Authorities charged 24 drivers with violating the state’s taxi laws, saying the UberX car-sharing service couldn’t properly monitor and vet its 4,000 drivers in Sydney. Those charges were dropped due to “evidentiary issues” and the drivers avoided fines up to $70,000.

Now the state says it’ll ban private UberX cars from the road instead. (Read More…)

New Volkswagen CEO Matthias Müller told about 1,000 high-level managers Monday that the company had a “comprehensive” fix for its cars, and that the solution would be forthcoming.

“We are facing a long trudge and a lot of hard work,” Müller said, according to Reuters.”We will only be able to make progress in steps and there will be setbacks.”

Müller said the company would ask consumers “in the next few days” to bring their cars in to be refitted. It’s unclear if the recall program would be a software or ECU fix, or if it would include a selective catalytic reduction system (urea or AdBlue) to bring the diesel Volkswagens down to a legal emissions level. (Read More…)

The preliminary list of semifinalists of the 2015 North American Car & Truck of the Year is out and oddly, Volkswagen didn’t make the list.

General Motors sports four car of the year nominees, including the Cadillac CT6, Chevrolet Camaro, Malibu and Volt while Tesla’s Model X is up for Truck/Utility of the year. Automotive journalists — 57 of them, in fact — will vote on the cars in October.

The winners will be announced in January at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

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An environmental group in Europe is saying most of the world’s automakers are lying about misreporting emissions and fuel economy on tests that are intentionally unclear and designed with several loopholes for carmakers to exploit.

“Like the air pollution test, the European system of testing cars to measure fuel economy and CO₂ emissions is utterly discredited. The Volkswagen scandal was just the tip of the iceberg and what lies beneath is widespread abuse by carmakers of testing rules enabling cars to swallow more than 50 (percent) more fuel than is claimed,” Greg Archer, clean vehicles manager at Transport and Environment, said in a statement.

Specifically, the Brussels-based group says that Mercedes A, C and E class and BMW’s 5 Series cars pollute up to 50 percent more than the automakers report. Emissions claims and real-world emissions for most cars could differ by up to 50 percent by 2020, the group says. (Read More…)

According to German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, Bosch engineers told Volkswagen in 2007 that software the supplier had offered for the cars in testing, which made it into road cars, was illegal and should not be used.

The newspaper, which did not cite any sources in the story, said a spokesperson for Bosch did not comment on the report.

If true, the report shows a quick push from the supplier — who admitted it supplied Volkswagen with the parts used to circumvent emissions standards — to isolate the automaker’s responsibility for the scandal. Bosch issued a statement last week saying as much (emphasis mine):

As is usual in the automotive supply industry, Bosch supplies these components to the automaker’s specifications. How these components are calibrated and integrated into complete vehicle systems is the responsibility of each automaker.

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Cars were banned from the city center of Paris for seven hours Sunday as that city finds ways to manage its growing pollution and congestion problems, Time reported. A group called Paris sans Voiture organized the event in an effort to bring attention to climate policy.

Buses, ambulances and other public transportation were allowed on city streets during the ban, however private vehicles were forbidden from city streets in a broad swath of neighborhoods and tourist destinations including the Champs Élysées, Place Stalingrad, Place de la Republique, the Left Bank, the Place de la Bastille, the area around the Eiffel Tower and the Bois de Vincennes and Boulogne.

The city will be hosting a UN Climate Change conference in December.

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United Auto Workers at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ Jefferson North Assembly Plant and its Kokomo Transmission Plant voted down a contract proposal over the weekend, marking the latest and perhaps the most significant defeat to the union’s proposal, the Detroit Free Press reported.

According to reports, 66 percent of the workers, who build Jeep Grand Cherokees and Dodge Durangos at the Jefferson facility, vetoed the contract.

The contract faces an uncertain future with the rest of UAW workers at FCA, and while overall passage is mathematically possible, the growing rate of rejection doesn’t look particularly promising.

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