Riding on strong pickup truck and sedan sales, Chrysler Group and Ford Motor Co. both posted 12% overall sales increases from last August. It was Chrysler’s 41st straight year to year monthly increase. A number of manufacturers’ sales were constrained by tight inventory of models in high demand.

(Read More…)

Analyzing data from Polk, Melissa Burden of the Detroit News reports that more than 35% of all new electric vehicle sales in the United States through June of this year have been in registered in the Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan regions and that a majority of EVs are being sold in just five cities. Joining LA and San Francisco on the list where EVs are popular are the Seattle, Atlanta and New York City areas.

EV market share in California climbed from 0.4% to 1.1% year to date, with over 9,700 deliveries. “A lot of the manufacturers have targeted California for the launch of their electric vehicle product,” said Brian Maas, president of the California auto dealers’ association, said. “Our consumers are cutting-edge and early adopters in this area.” (Read More…)

The European Union Commission has pushed back against reports from within the UK government that the EU was considering implementing devices in private cars that would prevent them from exceeding the speed limit, calling the reports “inaccurate beyond the limit”. In an unsigned statement on the EU’s official blog, the EU obliquely criticizing the British government and suggested that the British media deliberately misrepresented the EU’s position. The remarks denied that any such proposals or even non-binding recommendations are “in the pipeline”. The full statement is below the jump. (Read More…)

Body line at Nissan’s Aguascalientes, Mexico assembly plant

Reuters is reporting that his sources tell him that Daimler will join Nissan in building cars at Nissan’s $2-billion Aguascalientes plant in Mexico, which will start production in late 2014. The factory will assemble compact crossovers, the Infiniti Q30 and possibly the Mercedes-Benz GLA, which will share engines and other components with the Q30.

(Read More…)

Photos of the BMW i8 have appeared to emerge online prior to the hybrid sports car’s debut at the Frankfurt Auto Show.

(Read More…)

Negotiations between Volkswagen and the United Auto Workers over the UAW’s possible representation of workers at VW’s Chattanooga, Tennessee assembly plant began last Friday, according to the German newspaper, the Handelsblatt and Automotive News. The newspaper also reported that UAW president Bob King and VW board member for human resources, Horst Neumann discussed the establishment of a German style “works council” to represent factory workers at the plant. VW and the UAW both declined comment. (Read More…)

January 2013 NASA satellite image of air pollution near the Chinese capital of Beijing

The municipality of Beijing, China is going to be implementing traffic congestion fees on vehicles by 2017 to address increased air pollution. The plans were revealed as the city government published a five-year plan to deal with that pollution. Parking fees would also be increased and the areas where only locally registered cars and trucks are permitted to be used will be expanded. At the end of last year, Beijing had more than 5.2 million registered vehicles and city officials would like to keep that number below 6 million by 2017. Three other cities in China besides Beijing restrict new car and light truck sales, Shanghai, Gungzhou and Guiyang.

Post-bankruptcy Chrysler’s product plans have had more episodic changes than the Star Wars franchise, and Automotive News has the latest dirt on what’s going on at Auburn Hills.

(Read More…)

Years of unrelenting speculation via the British motoring press are finally coming to fruition: Jaguar is about to launch a crossover, and this concept, dubbed the C-X17, appears to be it.

(Read More…)

Designer Chris Bangle, who was strongly identified with BMW’s brand image and some controversial styling decisions before leaving the company four years ago to open up an independent design studio, says that today’s car designers are doing the same things over and over again, something he calls “mannerism”. In and interview with Automotive News Europe, Bangle said, “There is a real need for a change and that’s just not happening.”

Designers talk about innovation, but don’t really innovate, Bangle opined. “Even concept cars today simply anticipate the next production model coming down the line. Is this innovation? No. And at the end of the day this is what’s preventing car design from moving into a new era.”

(Read More…)

Is the American love affair with the automobile over? Total miles driven in the United States peaked in August of 2007, then dropped during the recession and has leveled off since then, though the economy is growing slightly and the population is increasing. According to the Detroit News, the Federal Highway Administration just reported that miles traveled during the first six months of 2013 continued the trend, being down slightly from 2012.

Individual miles traveled actually peaked in 2004, at about 900 miles per driver per month. By mid 2012, that had dropped to 820 miles per month. Per capita automobile use is now about where it was in the late 1990s. Until then, driving mileage generally tracked economic growth, according to U.S. Transportation Department economists Don Pickrell and David Pace (PDF presentation here). Since the late 1990s, though, the when the economy has grown, it has grown more rapidly than car use.

(Read More…)

While Americans have an image of Europe as the place of autobahns with unlimited speeds, if a new proposal by the European Commission’s Mobility and Transport Department is approved, all cars on the continent could be fitted with devices that limit top speed to 70 miles per hour. Cars would possibly be equipped with cameras that would read speed limit signs on roads and apply the brakes if the legal limit is exceeded. The goal is to reduce the 30,000 annual traffic deaths in Europe by a third. The regulations would not just apply to new cars sold in Europe. Used cars would have to be retrofitted. (Read More…)

Tesla recently released financial figures that the company says demonstrate profitability. According to Automotive News, analysts have pointed out that some of Tesla’s revenue comes not from selling cars but rather by selling zero-emission credits to other car companies that want to do business under California’s clean-air regulations. If they want to sell cars in California, companies have to comply by either producing ZEVs or by obtaining credits from companies that make those vehicles. Now Nissan Motor Co, whose Leaf is the best selling electric car of all time, has joined Tesla in selling those credits. Tesla was able to sell those credits because they only make electric vehicles. Makers of conventional cars and trucks buy the credits to theoretically offset the pollution caused by those cars. Since Tesla has no such conventionally polluting cars to offset, they can sell their credits. Nissan executive VP Andy Palmer told reporters earlier this week that at this point Nissan has sold enough Leafs to cover its own needs to comply with the California Air Resources Board‘s rules and will now start selling surplus credits to other automakers. “We’ve got carbon credits to sell, and we’re selling them — California ZEV credits.” No details were forthcoming on time, price or to whom Nissan will sell their credits.

(Read More…)

For the first time, yesterday Ford started assembling the midsize Fusion sedan in the United States as production began at their Flat Rock, Michigan facility. That move will add about 100,000 units a year to Fusion production, which was formerly only done in Hermosillo, Mexico. Ford is looking at options for expanding American capacity even more, should demand grow, and a Ford executive says that the Flat Rock plant could produce yet another model in addition to the Mustangs and Fusions that are currently assembled there.

“We certainly have the flexibility for the future to do more,” Ford president of the Americas, Joe Hinrichs told Reuters. “We’re trying to get our capacity set up to meet demand. With the growing demand for our trucks, growing demand for Fusion, other product lines, that’s what we’re focused on.”

(Read More…)

ZF Friedrichshafen AG and Levant Power Corp., a Woburn, Massachusetts technology company spun off from MIT, have announced what they call the first fully active suspension system that includes a regenerative function that recovers energy from the motion of the suspension. The system is branded GenShock. Active suspensions are not new, General Motors experimented with an actively suspended ZR-1 Corvette when the automaker owned Lotus, which had worked with active suspensions before the technology was banned in Formula One. Going back even farther, there were the hydropneumatic Citroens and the last true Packards’ “torsion level” suspension. With road cars the goal in using such a system would be to combine good ride with good handling, soft sometimes and stiff sometimes, depending on the driving circumstances. Early tries at developing what chassis engineers call a “high bandwidth active suspension”, capable of dealing with those varying circumstances, have run into cost, complexity and power consumption issues. The GenShock system is claimed to be affordable, simple to integrate in existing suspension designs, and not only have modest power consumption but also be able to recover energy from the suspension.

(Read More…)