POLLUTION SHROUDS BEIJING SKY 投稿者 tvnportal
When we think of China, we think of massive pollution and CO2-belching cars. Get with the program. China moves ahead at warp speed, and so do emission standards. The China 4 emission standards will become mandatory for all cars sold across China from July 1st, says China Car Times. The Chinese 4 emission standard is pretty much the same as the strict Euro 4 standard (with Chinese characteristics and a separate certification regimen.) (Read More…)
Say what you want about Tesla, but people are buying. Not so much the cars, more so shares in the company. According to a regulatory filing, Tesla plans to sell 5.3 million new shares to the public, and up to 795,000 more to the underwriter, at $26 each. That would raise up to $158.5 million. According to Businessweek, “CEO and co-founder Elon Musk will also buy 1.5 million shares at the same price in a private sale. Blackstar Investco LLC, an affiliate of Daimler AG, will buy 644,475 shares directly from Tesla at the public offering price. That would bring total proceeds of $214.3 million.” The proceeds are mostly for developing a crossover Tesla. (Read More…)
TrueCar released its May 2011 sales forecast. At this time in the calendar, these forecasts, based on real transactional data, usually come close to reality. For May 2011, TrueCar expects new light vehicle sales in the U.S. to be 1,060,392 units, down 3.7 percent from May 2010 and down 8.3 percent from April 2011(unadjusted basis for sales days). This would be a Seasonally Adjusted Annualized Rate (SAAR) of 11.85 million new car sales, down from 13.18 million in April 2011 and only slightly up from 11.63 million in May 2010. Why the sudden reluctance? (Read More…)
In conclusion of today’s Volkswagen-heavy fare, a peek into the future of Volkswagen’s most boring, but nonetheless highly successful car: The Passat.
Germany’s Auto Bild thinks it knows what the 8th generation Passat will look like when it hits the showrooms sometime in 2014. While their renderings most likely don’t reveal the exact likeness of the future Passat, Auto Bild’s Passat companion story probably has more than a few grains of truth. (Read More…)
Come June, Toyota “plans to bring domestic auto production back to as much as 90 percent of targets set before the March earthquake hit, thanks to faster-than-expected improvements in parts supplies,” The Nikkei [sub] writes today. At the annual results conference in Tokyo, Akio Toyoda had said Toyota Toyoda would be on its way back to normal beginning in June, with hopefully 70 percent of production reinstated in summer. This was already a two month improvement over previous plans. Two weeks later, the outlook seems to be even better. If The Nikkei heard correctly. (Read More…)
Yesterday, Volkswagen finally inaugurated its new plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee and ended the 23 year hiatus since its New Stanton, Pennsylvania factory was closed in 1988. At the Chattanooga plant, more than 2,000 employees will be able to produce up to 150,000 vehicles per year. (Read More…)
Today, Volkswagen officially showed its new, well, “perfected” Tiguan to the press. VeeDub unabashedly calls it an “SUV with design parallels to the larger Touareg.” Unlike its larger sibling, the Tiguan can be driven guilt-free: With a 2.0 TDI engine, the SUV needs only 5.3 liters per 100 km. Which converts to a non-EPA mileage of 44.4 mpg. Not bad for a trucklet. Volkswagen humbly calls it “one of the most fuel-efficient SUVs in the world.” Gallery after the jump … (Read More…)
Isn’t the idea of President Barack Obama’s truck-turned-limo that it can get out of a situation real fast? Instead, it caused howls of laughter all over Europe by getting stuck as it emerged from the gates of the US embassy in Dublin. (Read More…)
If you are a large company in Germany, there is no government agency that you fear more than the Bundeskartellamt. It’s the anti-monopoly police. Being audited by the Finanzamt, the German equivalent of the IRS, is considered paradise compared to being in the cross-hairs of the Monopol-Polizei. Europe’s large oil companies are in the cross hairs and are just about to be shot. (Read More…)
Taobao is China’s Ebay. After Geely had kicked-off the craze, other brands, such as BMW, Audi, and Volvo followed. Yesterday, Lamborghini created quite a stir in China by mentioning to Beijing Times that they would also create a webstore for their 3 to 6 million yuan ($ 460,000 to about a million U.S.) supercars. Yesterday, the site went up. Depending on who’s writing, the site created between 5,000 and 8,000 orders in a single day. Not bad for a brand that moved 260 Lambos in all of 2010. New and old media (see new item from Hong Kong above) praised the site where you can “peruse the 17 models on offer, which go from 3.5 million RMB right up to 6.5 million RMB for the fantastically sinister and shouty Aventador LP700-4.” However … (Read More…)
According to one car guy, global warming is a crock of excrement. Toyota wants to get to the bottom of it. Toyota Motor Corporation and Toyota Central R&D Labs have developed a simulator able to predict tropospheric ozone concentrations across the whole of South and East Asia. (Read More…)
Ever since Patrick Pelata took the fall at Renault after the botched spy scandal, the position of COO and deputy of Carlos Ghosn had been vacant. Now, there are strong indications from Paris that the job will go to Carlos Tavares, currently chief of Nissan’s Americas unit. (Read More…)
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.
“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…)
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…)
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