An NHTSA report [PDF] on the “Incidence of Pedestrian and Bicyclist Crashes by Hybrid Electric Passenger Vehicles,” concludes that hybrid-electrics (HEVs) have a higher incidence rate of pedestrian and bicyclist crashes than do internal combustion-only (ICE) vehicles in certain scenarios. And based on the report’s conclusions, it looks like the relative silence of hybrids running in electric-only mode is to blame for the higher accident numbers.
. . . pedestrian and bicyclist crashes involving both HEVs and ICE vehicles commonly occurred on roadways, in zones with low speed limits, during daytime and in clear weather, with higher incidence rates for HEVs when compared to ICE vehicles. A variety of crash factors were examined to determine the relative incidence rates of HEVs versus ICE vehicles in a range of crash scenarios. For one group of scenarios, those in which a vehicle is slowing or stopping, backing up, or entering or leaving a parking space, a statistically significant effect was found due to engine type. The HEV was two times more likely to be involved in a pedestrian crash in these situations than was an ICE vehicle. Vehicle maneuvers such as slowing or stopping, backing up, or entering or leaving a parking space, were grouped in one category based on that these maneuvers are potentially have occurred at very low speeds where the difference between the sound levels produced by the hybrid versus ICE vehicle is the greatest.
As car guy moments go, spending three hours at the GM Heritage Center with Jaguar’s Chief Designer Ian Callum is about as good as it gets. In fact, I thought I had taken twice as many pictures as I had. Check back later for a full write-up of my interview with Ian, in which we learn (among many other things) that the designer of such vehicles as the Aston Martin DB7 is surprisingly obsessed with classic American cars.
We do have the ability, if it’s necessary, to provide support directly, but again that’s only if necessary… We are able to run a global business
GM CEO Fritz Henderson in the Detroit Free Press, explaining that GM is allowed to spend US -government bailout money on overseas operations, in this case, Opel. According to the Freep’s paraphrase of Henderson, “the terms of the prebankruptcy loans and the new government financing are different.” So why did GM insist just weeks ago that it wasn’t allowed to spend US taxpayer money on a $413m Daewoo rescue? Has GM been shuffling bailout cash to mismanaged overseas operations? Or would an Opel rescue mark the first time this had happened? In any case, wasn’t GM saved to prevent disaster in the US economy rather than stop job loss overseas? The unintended consequences of bailout keep marching on… and so will our search for answers to these questions.
Opel’s union boss and chief thorn-in-the-side for GM’s attempt at regaining control of its European division, Klaus Franz, recently met with CEO Fritz Henderson and is telling German media that “Henderson agrees that Opel should be led back to its traditional strengths in Europe, with a high level of independence and autonomy within the GM organization.” But Franz is looking for more than kind words from Fritz, namely a future Opel share offering. “This way, GM can prove that it’s serious about Opel’s independence,” Franz tells RTL. Franz and Opel’s employees want a complete business plan along the lines of the one they’ve been negotiating for the past year and a half. Meanwhile, GM has also said that it will pay back the remaining €600m ($900m) worth of German government’s bridge loans by the end of the month. Between the Moody’s report that GM needs $8.5b to turn Opel around and the division’s continued desire for independence, a solution to the situation won’t be easy or cheap. It may be in GM’s strategic interests to keep Opel under its wing, but to what extent and at what cost?
Ford’s announcement today that the new global Ranger won’t be coming to the US sure seems like a head-scratcher. Though Automotive News [sub] quotes Ford’s Alan Mulally as saying the Ford Ka won’t be sold stateside because “our view is that Fiesta is about the smallest vehicle that we think will be a real success in the United States,” there’s no similar reason given for the absence of a modern compact pickup from Ford’s lineup. Or anyone else’s lineup, for that matter. The Canyon/Colorado are going out of production since the Shreveport, LA, plant is part of Old GM liquidation Corp. The Dodge, er, make that Ram Dakota will die next year according to the new plans at Chrysler. The Tacoma is no longer properly compact, and Volkswagen’s Brazilian “Robust” won’t be coming here either. Hell, even the latter-day El Camino was stillborn. But if my flu-addled memory serves me correctly, didn’t compact pickups help pull the US market out of one of its last great downturns? Why is it that nobody is giving this segment the time of day?
According to the Detroit News, the Cadivolt is go! Not that the announcement comes as any huge surprise: when has GM ever invested heavily in a new platform and not built a Cadillac version? On the other hand, when was the last time GM built a $40k Chevrolet? More importantly, where does the Caddy version’s price go from there?
Look at Chrysler’s sales volume by model, and it’s clear that Ram is one of the few nameplates keeping Chrysler’s volume moving. Especially when you consider that pickups typically generate far more profit than car and crossover models. Which brings us to what may have been the most penetrating question of Wednesday’s question-and-answer period (which didn’t come from a journalist, but from investment bank Goldman Sachs). Namely: how does a retraction in the truck market would affect the linear relationship between volume and profit exhibited in Chrysler’s financial plan graphs? Oh yes, and what were Chrysler’s planning projections for energy costs? The answer was that every five percent shift from trucks to compact or mid-sized vehicles would result in a half-billion dollar reduction in EBITDA. Though the CFO added that in the future Chrysler would be better able to capture that shifting market, due to better offerings in the compact and mid-size segments, Marchionne made it clear that any losses in the truck market would be mitigated at best. Marchionne joked that his team would need a Ouija board to forecast energy prices, but the reply was that assumptions in the plan were for gas to be “somewhere in the $4 range.”
Welcome one and all to the new TTAC. Take a moment to look around and you’ll see that in addition to a new logo and some graphical changes, we’ve made some functional upgrades as well. For one thing, we finally have a customizable Google search window. We have also integrated a Facebook Connect feature which will allow you to log in using your Facebook profile, and we’ve made it easier to share your favorite TTAC posts using Digg, Twitter, Facebook and more. You’ve probably also noticed our new “Featured Story” bar at the top of the page by now. We have more cool new functions coming down the pipe, so stay tuned. In the meantime, we’re back to deliver all the news, commentary and analysis you can handle. Thanks for bearing with us during the upgrade, and enjoy!
As we noted in our rundown of the New New Chrysler’s powertrain plans, the Pentastar’s ENVI electrification task force wasn’t mentioned once during seven hours of presentation. Well, by name anyway. Weirdly though, as the slide above shows, Fiat is making Chrysler the focal point for the alliance’s hybrid and electric technology development. Wouldn’t that make the bailout-baiting, vaporware-hawking ENVI crew the go-to guys for both Chrysler and Fiat’s long-term powertrain plans? Er, no.
If you’re like me, you spent most of the weekend huddled under a blanket, half-watching television and praying for the flu agony to be over. And nobody who watched a considerable amount television this weekend could have avoided the latest flight of heavy-handed ads from Jeep and Chrysler’s new Ram brand. “My Name Is Ram” and the E.E. Cummings-inspired “i am. Jeep” campaigns are blitzing airwaves across the country as the New, New Chrysler gears up to make its wildly optimistic sales goals. After five months of total silence coming out of bankruptcy, the ads are coming out in earnest, and they’ll be running non-stop in hopes of catching up with the $100 per retail sale ad spend goal for 2009. Next year, Chrysler’s ad spending will go up to $170 per projected sale, peaking in 2011 at $210 per planned retail sale. And this increase in ad spending appears to explain why Chrysler’s sales projection charts swing wildly upwards after a dismal 2009. After all, if throwing upward of a billion bucks per year won’t change consumer perceptions, what will? Well, besides new product, anyway. There’s many a slip twixt the PowerPoint and the profit.
Jay Leno wasn’t present for the roast of Bob Lutz, but he did check in via video with a few jokes about Bob’s age. Luckily, former Car and Driver editor Csaba Csere decided to mine a richer vein of humor, digging into Lutz for his Merkur branding debacle and his distaste for flying commercial. Maybe retirement allowed Csere to loosen up and deliver some of the evening’s better zingers. Whatever it was, the contrast to Automobile Magazine’s Jean Jennings couldn’t have been greater: Jennings’ contribution was less roast and more abject fawning. She couldn’t have been more toothless if her press fleet access depended on it. Apparently she thought it did.
The evening before Bob Lutz was named Chairman of Opel, he was roasted at an Arthritis Foundation benefit at the Ritz-Carlton in Dearborn. The lead-off hitter was none other than Lutz’s boss, Fritz Henderson, and the inherent awkwardness of a boss roasting his far more charismatic employee made Fritz’s jabs some of the evening’s best. Here is his tribute to a man called Maximum.
Chrysler is in desperate need of quick fixes. New versions of old nameplates (300, Grand Cherokee) and quick ‘n dirty refreshes, and modifications of existing, moribund nameplates are not going to keep showrooms busy while new, Fiat-based products wend their way to market over the next five years. And so, Fiat is bringing its 500 minicar to the US next year. At least that’s why Chrysler says it’s coming: to “attract a new customer to our showrooms.” Of course, that’s far from the whole story. (Read More…)
There are plenty of reasons to believe that Chrysler will not survive, let alone thrive the way the firm’s five-year plan foresees, but one of them does not appear to be Sergio Marchionne’s leadership. Though there’s doubtless a good deal of hubris in his plan, Marchionne’s depth of knowledge, personal experience and legendary workaholism seem to indicate that, if nothing else, Chrysler’s leadership is lightyears away from the Bob Nardelli years. Considering he oversaw a turnaround of Fiat that was only slightly less improbable than his current turnaround mission, he’s about as qualified to take on the mess in Auburn Hills as anyone else. Here are his closing remarks from the seven-hour product and business plan event.
One of Chrysler’s major problems in the powertrain department is a mass of V6 engines of varying ages and displacements. The lack of interchangeability between engines contributes to Chrysler’s unprofitability, and the advanced age of some hurts overall fuel efficiency considerably. The debut of a brand-new Pentastar V6, arriving with next year’s Grand Cherokee, will change all that. The 280 hp, 260 lb-ft engine will replace all of Chrysler’s V6s, and handily gives Fiat their only modern V6. Single and twin-turbo versions are being considered. Meanwhile V8s aren’t going away, with 5.7 and 6.4 liter versions planned.
An NHTSA report [PDF] on the “Incidence of Pedestrian and Bicyclist Crashes by Hybrid Electric Passenger Vehicles,” concludes that hybrid-electrics (HEVs) have a higher incidence rate of pedestrian and bicyclist crashes than do internal combustion-only (ICE) vehicles in certain scenarios. And based on the report’s conclusions, it looks like the relative silence of hybrids running in electric-only mode is to blame for the higher accident numbers.
Recent Comments