A few weeks ago, GM’s spokesman Greg Martin said:
“There will be no exports of these cars built in China. Cars that are built in China are sold in China.”
No true, said GM China head Bob Socia to Reuters today, reiterating former statements that GM’s Chinese export machine is in full swing: “GM plans to export as many as 130,000 China-made vehicles this year, up from 77,000 vehicles in 2012, driven by demand for its Chevrolet Sail in other emerging markets,” Reuters writes. (Read More…)
Volvo’s global sales are on a downward trajectory. The Geely-owned Swedish marker saw its 2012 global sales drop 6%. In the first four months of the year, sales were down 6.4 percent. Two new factories in China are supposed to bring the turn-around, a feature in Reuters says. (Read More…)
Haerter goes to court
Porsche’s former high-flying finance chief Holger Härter was been fined 630,000 euros ($820,000) for misleading French bank BNP Paribas in loan negotiations in early 2009. This despite testimonies by bank representatives who said BNP did not feel misled. (Read More…)
Our intrepid technical team will perform hardware maintenance tomorrow, Tuesday between 8am and 11am Eastern. TTAC will move to a standby server, while they replace hardware on the main server, vacuum the dust mites, lubricate the hard-drives, and whatever scheduled maintenance a server needs. (Read More…)
Carsqa.com, the para-site pilloried by TTAC for more than blatant copyright infringement, appears to be off-line. Good riddance. There is more work to do.
(Read More…)
May sales were down in Japan, and this time around, small kei cars could not bail out their bigger brethren. Imports into the allegedly closed market Japan on the other hand are zooming, despite the weaker yen that makes imports more expensive. (Read More…)
Nissan, Ford and Chrysler led the way in April. GM and Toyota made smaller gains. Mitsubishi was this month’s loser, down 15 percent.
Chrysler sets the tone for a most likely very happy sales day, reporting an 11 percent increase in its May U.S. light vehicle sales to Reuters. (Read More…)
The death of an Australian woman who was rear-ended two years ago is making new headlines. In 2011, 32-year-old Melissa Ryan was killed when a truck with two trailers hit her Volkswagen Golf from behind. A coroner is looking into the matter. The report is expected to be completed in July. In the meantime, Australian media does not let simple technical facts get in the way of a bad story. (Read More…)
“Carsqa.com is a bunch of rotten thieves – and we admit it,” wrote carsqa.com editor Chuck Kerkarian yesterday. However, this surprising confession did not stop his publication from committing further egregious acts of intellectual property robbery. The written admission of guilt was followed by an article stolen by carsqua’s Alex Johanssen from Murilee Martin at caranddriver.com, and another one purloined from Alex Dykes at TTAC. Even after admitting guilt, Carsqua’s Chuck Kerkarian steals a Chevrolet Impala 2.5 review from Caranddriver, and a 2013 Volkswagen Jetta TDI vs. Hybrid comparo from Mike Solowiow from TTAC. (I wouldn’t steal from an F16 driver, but that’s just me.)
To make the robbery complete, Carsqa asserts copyright for the stolen stories.
Para-site 2.0
Web 2.0 brought with it somewhat novel interpretations of the copyright. We are used to the fact that our stories show up in all kinds of places. As long as they are within the bounds of fair use, and as long as they link back to us, we don’t mind. We often pick up inspiration for stories elsewhere, but we try to always say where we found them, and we give ample links, the new currency of Web 2.0. Some people are less polite. Recently, matters took a turn to the weird.
(Note: Before you complain about headline or picture, read to the end.) (Read More…)
Fiat’s top men promised that they will not cut jobs in Italy, despite Italian sales levels at 40 year lows. Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne and Chairman John Elkann met Italy’s newly-appointed minister Flavio Zanonato, and delivered “assurances that Fiat intends to maintain employment,” Reuters says. (Read More…)
I’m driven
Everybody seems to be on the bandwagon for self-driving cars, everybody except the NHTSA. In new guidelines, the NHTSA urges states to allow use of self-driving cars “only for testing and requiring safeguards to ensure they can be taken over by a driver in the case of malfunction,” the Detroit News writes. (Read More…)
Toyota has a “good chance” of selling a record number of luxury Lexus vehicles this year, Mark Templin, executive vice president of Lexus International, told Reuters. With a weaker yen, those mostly made-in-Japan cars might actually turn a profit. (Read More…)
Export, ho!
Can’t blame them for having a lack of ambitions: Great Wall’s Chairman and Chinese billionaire Wei Jianjun “has set a target for Great Wall’s Haval marque to surpass Chrysler Group LLC’s Jeep and become the world’s best selling SUV-dedicated brand in three to four years,” Bloomberg writes. (Read More…)
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