The European Commission concluded that the sale of Volvo to China’s Geely would not significantly impede competition in Europe (well, that would have been a stretch), and approved the transaction, says Reuters. (Read More…)

Speaking of German car companies doing exceptionally well despite a tanking German car market, there is of course Volkswagen.

The Volkswagen group sold more than 3.5m units worldwide in the first six months of 2010, besting the pretty darn good numbers of the same period in 2009 by about 15 percent, Martin Winterkorn said to Reuters. He predicts (and that’s an easy call based on the half year results) that the Volkswagen group will see record car sales in 2010. What’s driving the new Wirtschaftswunder? The weak Euro, of course. And the strong position of Volkswagen in boom markets such as China.

Nevertheless, VW doesn’t want to rely on the vagaries of the foreign exchange. (Read More…)

There was a time, in summer of 2007, when a dollar bought more than 120 yen. Once you arrived in Tokyo, you quickly wished it would have bought more. Now, the dollar buys about a third less. The dollar/yen rate had been at a downward trajectory since that summer of 2007. What made the yen really expensive was a company called Lehman Brothers, and the fallout following their bankruptcy in 2008. For inexplicable reasons, the yen is seen as a safer currency than the greenback. Should you make the mistake of stepping off the plane with Euros in your pocket, you would be in for an even bigger shock. In July 2008, a Euro bought 170 yen. Now, it’s down to 109.  For even more inexplicable reasons, some mentally unstable people still talk about an undervalued yen.

You may not travel to Tokyo frequently enough to give a hoot. But Japanese auto manufacturers don’t want to take it any more. (Read More…)

Plugins are range anxiety on wheels. Hybrids are expensive, and usually come with a payback time longer than the average lease. In some cases, longer than your life. Lugging a big battery and two engines around can defeat the purpose. Hybrids are also expensive to develop. In Europe, the strategy has been to improve the old ICE as much as possible. Midsize automakers in Japan go the same route, with sometimes surprising results. Their gasoline-powered cars beg the question: Why go to the hybrid trouble at all? (Read More…)

Know what to do next time you see a higher price at the pump? Don’t buy gas on May 15? How lame. Learn from the folks in India. According to the BBC, India’s opposition parties have called a general strike against fuel price rises, and  “normal life has been disrupted in many parts of India.” (Read More…)

A hybrid version of the Nissan Fuga (better known as the Infiniti M35/45 on these shores) could deliver an up to 90 percent better fuel-efficiency than its  conventionally powered model, Nissan’s chief engineer for hybrid systems told The Nikkei [sub] today.

“We expect fuel economy to improve by 60 percent to 90 percent” over the conventional model, chief engineer Koichi Hayasaki said at a media briefing. (Read More…)

Now we know why Daimler’s Zetsche said that “2010 could become the best year in the history of the automobile.” Daimler is celebrating record numbers. Never in recorded history had Mercedes-Benz sold more cars in a June than in the last June, says DPA (via Ad Hoc News.) Due to high demand in China and the U.S., Daimler sold 122,900 passenger vehicles this June, that’s 10.6 percent more than in June 2009. (Read More…)

In June 2010, new car sales in Germany were down 28.7 percent from June 2009, reports the German Kraftfahrtbundesamt, the German government agency that is responsible for all things rolling on Germany’s roads. That may sound like a horrible number, but the graph tells a different story. June 2009 was the absolute peak of the Abwrackprämien-orgy (red line), and Germany seems to slowly get back to 2008 levels (blue line.) Once we are through the seasonally low July/August months, sales may actually exceed 2008 levels. It won’t be until next year before Germany will report real growth. (Read More…)

Last week, we reported some totally discombobulated June sales numbers from China. People’s Daily had reported that “China’s auto sales slumped by 17.4 percent in June from May, to less than 10 million vehicles.” Hooooo-kay. If you say so.

Now, state-run news agency Xinhua reports numbers that make a bit more sense. Still not the official CAAM data, but close enough. (Read More…)

Still convinced that the Yen is undervalued? Japanese carmakers beg to differ. They think the Japanese currency became so expensive that it gets cheaper for them to build abroad and to import to Japan. We’ve reported that Nissan is moving the production of their Micra (called March in Asia) to Thailand. When they did this, The Nikkei [sub] saw “huge implications for the future of the Japanese auto industry as a whole.” It certainly looks like Nissan’s exodus to the Land Of Smiles (and occasional riots) started a trend. (Read More…)

The car. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness inCARnate.  Let us celebrate our unalienable rights, in a TTAC kind of way. (Read More…)

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The Booth  Babe requests your indulgence. She announces that The Booth Babe Chronicles will be late, due to the fact that she’s at a beach somewhere. So if you see a hot babe furiously typing into an iPhone or similar at a beach, who knows, this could be her.

Easy to find out: Walk up to the lady, and say: “Do you come with the car?”

Blank stare: Fail.

Slap in the face and a kick in the privates: Bingo!

In what amounts to a landmark policy shift, NHTSA now recommends that customers take quality problems in their own hands, and perform recalls themselves. Take NHTSA Campaign ID number 10V305000. (Read More…)

When word of the BMW EV called „MegaCity“ first made the rounds, our Ed Niedermeyer called it  “BMW’s long-rumored Neo-Isetta EV.” Now, BMW opened the first button of their electric blouse. (Read More…)

Which part of the car of the future can cost more than half of the car, but has a lifespan a little better than a set of brake disks? The battery. No wonder that battery making is what suppliers focus on. If  EVs catch on, you want to be in the battery business. Toshiba and Mitsubishi Motors have ganged-up to produce batteries together, says The Nikkei [sub]. (Read More…)