In case you couldn’t tell, I’m hardly the biggest fan of the Insurance Institute For Highway Safety. Corporate-backed safety nannies posing as quasi-governmental bodies with an ends-justify-the-means vendetta against speed, light weight and other admirable car qualities just rub me the wrong way somehow. But the enemy of my enemy is my friend (for at least a legislative session or two), and it turns out the IIHS and I can agree on something to hate: Neighborhood Electric Vehicles. Now, you might think that limiting an entire class of cars to 25 MPH is something the IIHS would consider a good first step, but you’d be wrong. A Wall Street Journal piece on the rise of these annoying little vehicles quotes an IIHS spokesman calling NEVs “souped-up golf carts,” and warning of the safety consequences of allowing them on public roads. In fact, the IIHS is threatening to perform another round of its patented “no shit, Sherlock” crash tests, “proving” that NEVs aren’t capable of protecting passengers in a collision with a real car. Despite the pointlessness of this gesture, TTAC wholeheartedly embraces the idea of NEV crash testing, purely for entertainment and schadenfreude-related reasons. If the portion of the video above (showing what appears to be a Chrysler GEM NEV) is anything to go on, this could be epic. Meanwhile, our suggestion to eco-freak “early adopters” is to skip the NEVs and buy a motorcycle-category three wheeler. You’re still going to die in a crash, but at least we won’t get stuck behind you going 25 miles per hour. Check out TTAC’s review of the Miles ZX40 NEV here.

Chinese T-bill buyers may have provided the capital for GM’s bailout (and by extension, GM’s bailout of Delphi) but American taxpayers will have to pay them back eventually. Meanwhile, the Chinese government gets to yea-or-nay GM’s rescue of its spun-off supplier. And the yeas have it. Automotive News [sub] reports that GM will assume more than $1b worth of Delphi’s debt, while waiving $2b in claims against its largest supplier. Additionally, GM will invest $1.75b in Delphi and provide an unspecified amount of new debt. China’s only concern was that Delphi set up firewalls between GM and its other Chinese clients in order to protect the intellectual property of Chinese firms. With that measure taken, and Chinese approval secured, Delphi appears on track to end its four year sojourn in bankruptcy by month’s end. Can GM afford this kind of outlay to keep Delphi alive? Shouldn’t Delphi have been given its own separate bailout to keep costs transparent? No matter, it’s fait accompli at this point. At least the Chinese government was kind enough to approve the deal (oh, and back its financing in the first place).

The EPA’s goal of encouraging production of 100m gallons per year (gpy) of cellulosic (i.e. non-corn-based) took a bit of a hit recently, when it was found that the firm responsible for producing 70m gpy was actually showing investors petroleum-based fuels and lying about its production capacity. Whoops! But instead of drawing the conclusion that ethanol is the modern equivalent of snake oil, attracting hucksters and scams like mainstream car blogs to a special-edition Mustang, the government is keeping the sector well-stocked with taxpayer cash. Green Car Congress reports that the Department of Energy has awarded ethanol firm POET a $6.85m increase over its already-delivered $76m grant, with another $13.15m on the way. The funds were awarded through Project LIBERTY (Launch of an Integrated Bio-refinery with Eco-sustainable and Renewable Technologies in Y2009), which seeks to move ethanol past the tortilla riot-era bad press while keeping it chained to big agribusiness. The method? Ethanol from corn cobs!

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This pitch for a car sales seminar is based on one single assumption: car buyers today are better informed than ever before. Mr. Rodgers even raises the specter of 83-year-olds armed with information they found on the Internet, in hopes of convincing dealership sales staffs that it’s a whole new world out there. Of course the fact that car sales are at their worst levels in years probably helps his argument, but is it true? After all, as TTAC commenter Mike In Canada points out in our most recent Sebring/Avenger bashing post:

Here at TTAC we all love badmouthing these two hunks of junk (God knows I do). But, we are missing the trees for the forest.

Someone is actually buying these things….!

So there are still suckers born every minute, but on balance are car buyers better informed than they used to be? Is that coincidental to the car market’s recent downturn, or did one phenomenon cause the other? Personally, I don’t see a lot of “civilians” making particularly well-informed car-buying decisions because they usually believe a quick decision will be less stressful than taking the time to make the right decision. What are you seeing?

The IIHS still can’t believe A) how far safety features have come and B) how it cool it was for them to destroy a perfectly good car. Oh, and may you meet the Bel Air’s fate if you don’t get the headline reference. [via Autoblog]

Everyone knows that killing a hangover with hair of the dog is an impermanent solution at best, but that’s just what Britain’s government has done. With the British version of Cash for Clunkers winding down early, Business Secretary Peter Mandelson has extended the scheme by an extra £100 million ($160 million), which should be good for another 100,000 car sales. And then what? British car output fell almost a third year-on-year in August, which indicates that the hangover at the end of the latest extension should be a nasty one. The US should know the extent of its own clunker hangover in a few days when September sales are released. Here’s hoping our leaders just pop an aspirin and watch cartoons until they’re feeling better.

Project Better Place founder Shai Agassi tells Auto Motor und Sport that his firm’s EV versions of the Renault Fluence will cost €3,000- €5,000 less than the gas-powered Renault versions. The only downside is that you have to live in Israel or Denmark to qualify. Oh yeah, and then there’s the “batteries not included” issue. To actually use the car you need to lease a battery (“The batteries belong to us,” scowls Agassi) which will run you about €250/month for about 1,500 miles (30k km/year). Unlimited mileage costs about €350/month. “Try to make a deal like that with Shell,” dares Agassi. But behind the posturing remains the fact that Better Place’s battery-swap scheme wouldn’t work if the Israeli and Danish governments hadn’t bought in. Agassi admits that his cars would cost more than Renault’s gas-burners if they backing governments didn’t heavily subsidize them. But Agassi figures these incentives will merely bridge the gap to higher volumes. “Electric cars are like other electronic devices: every two or three years the price will go down by half.” Hey, if that’s what it says on the business plan . . . .

In the past two years I have spent more time with (VW group CEO) Dr. Winterkorn than with my wife

So sayeth VW Group Design Boss Walter De Silva in Automotive News [sub]. “When I think about the Golf VII, I do not sleep at night,” he adds. Considering that, as head of styling for Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Seat, Skoda and Volkswagen, De Silva manages about 100 projects at a time, so it’s no wonder Mrs. De Silva takes second place to Herr Winterkorn.

A major criteria for spending funds from the recent stimulus bill was that qualifying projects had to be “shovel ready.” Though that stricture was put in place to speed up the stimulus’s impact on the economy, it’s preventing the replacement of many of the worst roads in the nation. USA Today reports that only 20 percent of the $10 billion in stimulus money being spent on road repairs will go to the 74 counties that host half of the country’s worst roads. According to USA Today‘s analysis, those 74 (mostly-urban) counties will split $1.9 billion in stimulus road repair funds. Counties with no roads in need of major repairs mysteriously ended up with $1.5 billion. “Objective reviews show that Recovery Act dollars are going to the communities that need it the most to repair roads and bridges in need of help,” say Federal Highway Administration spokesfolks. However, USA Today‘s study is based on FHA data from 2007. USA Today has an interactive map comparing miles of “unacceptable” roads and amounts of stimulus dollars  allocated. Check it out here.

Chrysler’s rolling punchline may have received the least-deserved stay of execution in automotive history, as Automotive News [sub] reports that the Sebring/Avenger duo may not die until “late 2012.” The gruesome twosome were supposed to be put out to pasture by the end of next year under plans made when Chrysler was owned by Cerberus Capital Management. Instead it appears they’ll be receiving facelifts and soldiering on. The Avenger will be freshened first in what is rumored to be the milder of the two reskins. The Sebring will receive a more thorough going-over with the new look set to be debuted in 2011. In the meantime, Chrysler hopes you’ve noticed that new Sebrings are missing their unnecessarily frumpy hood strakes. Don’t count on any of this making a difference though. Chrysler’s products should continue to be backmarkers for at least another two years, with only Grand Cherokee/Durango and 300/Charger redesigns bringing anything new to a table otherwise set with microwaved leftovers. Someday there will be Fiats and Alfas to choose from. In the meantime, lazy auto journalists looking for a cheap shot will keep getting by on a ‘bring and a prayer.

Let’s assume for a moment that Hybrid Kinetic Motors and its planned Alabama assembly plant are not just a visa scam. Say, for example, it’s a visa scam that will actually build cars at some point. Can anyone make sense of the limited powertrain specs we have to work with? We’re told the vehicles will have a 1.5-liter combustion engine, capable of running gasoline or compressed natural gas. The curious part is the “hybrid kinetic” element, which will include a battery-electric hybrid system and, one assumes, some form of kinetic energy storage. Brilliance, the Chinese company whose former executives are behind HK Motors have only shown mild hybrids, leading one to assume this drivetrain technology was not developed there. However, Brilliance does build BMWs in China, and the Bavarians have adapted a “Kinetic Energy Recovery System” (KERS), which was created for Formula 1, for the road. That system uses regenerative braking to store small amounts of electricity which can be used to boost power for short periods. HK Motors’ claim that it will get 45 mpg out of a 1.5-liter ICE sounds reasonable, but the “up to 400 hp” spec sounds like pie in the sky. Unless that kind of power is only available for short bursts in a BMW KERS-style system. And though BMW’s F1 team has abandoned KERS, there’s talk of it coming to road cars like the next-gen M5. So has HK Motors licensed/stolen “flybrid” technology, or is there another system that could plausibly produce these specs? Or, are we wasting our time discussing vapor?

GM’s executives are well-known for their optimism, a tradition that has been maintained throughout nearly 40 years of sales and market share decline. But in an interview with Reuters, GM CEO Fritz Henderson curbed his enthusiasm, predicting US sales in 2010 will be “between 10m and 10.5m units” this year, and reaching 13m to 13.5m units in 2011. That prediction is considerably less than Ford CEO Alan Mulally’s recent assessment that 2009 sales will hit 11m, and climb to 14.5m by 2011. Henderson blames a weak projection for September sales for his seasonally adjusted annual sales rate (SAAR) realism, telling Reuters the September SAAR would not top 9m units. But GM’s relative pessimism doesn’t mean GM couldn’t be in for a nasty surprise once annual financial information is tabulated.

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Wards Auto World reports that Hyundai won’t be offering a V6 in its much-hyped, next-generation Sonata sedan. A direct-injection version of its Theta four-cylinder is expected to be the only engine option, making Sonata the first DI four-pot midsized sedan on the market. The V6 option will also be yanked from the Tucson cute-ute. Though the Sonata will be one of the few mid-sized sedans on the US market without a V6 option, don’t expect it to be a problem even for ostensibly torque-obsessed Americans. According to Wards, 85 percent of the current generation of Sonatas are built with four cylinder engines. 76 percent of Accords and 90 percent of Camrys on the market are four-bangers as well. With CAFE standards climbing rapidly, the era of the four-cylinder family sedan is clearly upon us.