When Lotus showed five new cars at the Paris Auto Show last summer, the British Sports Car brand raised a number of eyebrows amongst the motoring press. Not only was Lotus abandoning its lovable but hugely unprofitable enthusiast/trackday niche, but it was also reaching for Ferrari and Porsche-style brand recognition while offering an ambitious but underwhelming (on paper anyway) vision of its future product lineup. Five new vehicles (three mid-engine, two front-engine, four two-door coupes, one four-door sports sedan) is a lot of development work, and initial reports that Lotus would use Toyota power including hybrid drivetrains didn’t create much for enthusiasts to get worked up over. Lotus has since backed away from using Toyota power, but developing engines for five new vehicles creates a whole new set of challenges. And, as it turns out, Lotus has wuietly backed away from the most ambitious elements of its plan, and the firm now plans to launch only two cars at first. Has Lotus turned the corner from hype machine to credible competitor?

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It started as a flippant Twitter comment, in which GM Global Marketing Officer Joel Ewanick agreed to champion a return for the “El Camino” if 100,000 potential buyers raised their hands for it. Smelling an opportunity for some publicity, Jalopnik quickly picked up on the “challenge” and urged readers to leave a comment in support of the trucklet. At first Ewanick tried to hedge, saying he needed 100k deposits, rather than blog comments, to approve an El Camino for the US market. But now the former Hyundai marketer has taken Jalopnik’s challenge to Chevy’s Facebook page, giving a surprising amount of credibility for a “challenge” that began with a throwaway tweet. What makes Chevy’s endorsement of the “El Camino Challenge” even more surprising: the total lack of apparent enthusiasm.

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TTAC has paid close attention to the fortunes of ethanol in the United States, where grossly wasteful subsidies have forced the corn-derived fuel into the fuel supply in growing percentages, drawing backlash from small but vocal portions of the population. But much of the ethanol ire is directed at higher blends like the recently-approved E15 and the increasingly-unpopular E85 mixtures. Meanwhile, most Americans regularly fill up their tanks with E10, which has become standard at pumps across the nation. But in Germany, where E10 was only just introduced, people are rejecting the low-ethanol blend that even the most vocal American ethanol opponents use every day. Initially, the biofuel industry in Germany blamed a lack of education for suspicion of E10, but according to Autobild, some 75 percent of German drivers now know whether their vehicle takes E10 (and most do)… but still, only 17 percent actually chose E10 for their last fill-up. And only 39 percent who know for a fact that their car can take E10 have ever used the ten-percent ethanol fuel. Why? Despite the high level of education, 52 percent of respondents still feared motor damage from the ethanol. Another 50 are opposed to “filling up with food.” Sometimes the more you know about something, the less you like it.

The war of words over a possible 62 MPG 2025 CAFE standard is accelerating this week, as letters in support of the standard [sub] are vying with industry responses against the proposal for media attention. And though environmentalists are quick to point out the often-misunderstood difference between EPA and CAFE mileage ratings (a fact that even the industry-friendly Automotive News [sub] concedes, if only in a blog post], the industry’s response is miles away from any kind of compromise, saying

The alliance believes it is inappropriate to be promoting any specific fuel economy/greenhouse gas at this point

How’s that for some old-school, don’t-tread-on-me corporate attitude? No room for compromise, no sense of nuance… and yet, that doesn’t actually represent the industry’s position at all.

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Rated at between 21/28 (2.5l, manual) and 27/34 (2.0l, auto), the Nissan Sentra is a fairly efficient car, albeit rapidly falling out of contention with its new 40 MPG competitors. Using a computer simulation, the developers of the “split-cycle” Scuderi engine showed that their unique, downsized, turbocharged engine can improve up to a 35% improvement in a “stock” Sentra’s fuel economy, when paired with the firm’s AirHybrid system. It’s not clear, even after listening to a podcast with VP Steven Scuderi, which engine-transmission combination was simulated as the “stock” baseline, but for practical purposes the best-performing Scuderi engine (tuned to match the “stock” engine’s power) achieved between 40 MPG and 32 MPG combined (around 50 MPG CAFE combined, or approaching the 2025 standard). Or, not. The EPA city test reportedly does not show improvements with idle fuel shutoff (stop-start), but Scuderi’s simulated stop-start system shows a 14% improvement over the non-start-stop “stock” Sentra on the same FTP-75 test. Was Mazda bluffing (it’s since said it would bring stop-start to all its cars), or is Scuderi’s simulation off? Scuderi (which has nondisclosure agreements with 11 OEMs and is in discussions with 4-5 more) says it will release more information next week at the Engine Expo 2011 in Stuttgart, Germany.

As the graph above [via NHTSA’s latest CAFE data, in PDF here]  shows, passenger car fleet economy has actually leveled off after a brief spike in recent years. Possibly even more surprising is the fact that imports spent a portion of the last decade actually beating the imports in passenger car economy after a 20+ year slide in import CAFE performance [more long-term fuel economy charts here]. These trends illustrate that the sides in the emerging “Battle of 62 MPG” may not as easy to characterize as you might think… as does a new hint from NHTSA about the shape of future CAFE increases. According to the Detroit News, NHTSA is signaling that

it is researching the impact of raising fuel efficiency in the 2 percent to 7 percent annual range.

The agency said it has “tentatively concluded” that 7 percent annual increases is the maximum that is technically feasible.

Before it sets a requirement, NHTSA must take into account a number of factors, including the costs of the regulation and safety impacts.

NHTSA and the Environmental Protection Agency said previously they are working together on 3 percent to 6 percent annual increases.

The high end of that range would result in the much-discussed 62 MPG by 2025 standard, an achievement the government insists would only cost as much as $3,500 per vehicle. The industry points to cost estimates closer to $10,000 per vehicle for that level of CAFE increase. The battle continues…

President Obama devoted his weekly address to energy and transportation policy this week, speaking to the nation from an Allison hybrid bus transmission plant in Indiana. A White House blog post accompanying video of the President’s speech included a large infographic on “The Obama Energy Agenda And Gas Prices,” the transportation-oriented section I’ve excerpted above. This one section is actually a fairly good representation of Obama’s auto-related energy policy preferences, and illustrates why I often find myself criticizing the president here at TTAC.

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In TTAC’s early years, we spilled much digital ink over GM’s bloated brand portfolio, wondering again and again what brands should be cut, which should move upmarket and which should move downmarket. It’s a fun exercise, but one that history has largely passed by. Not only did GM cut Saab, Hummer and Pontiac in its bankruptcy, but Chrysler has more than doubled the potential number of brands to be sold through its distribution channels, shifting the brand-clutter center of gravity towards Auburn Hills. But GM isn’t done struggling with the legacy of the Sloan system, as GM North America boss Mark Reuss tells Automotive News [sub] that GM still has at least one major branding battle on its hands: Chevy versus GMC.

We need to make sure that we drive the differentiation in the product and the price to create that separation that we know we can on GMC and Chevrolet. I don’t think we have the margin opportunity set up quite right with GMC.

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A massive study by the Government Accountability Office into “Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication in Government Programs, Save Tax Dollars, and Enhance Revenue” has turned up an interesting finding. It seems that the government’s desire to buy more “alternative fuel vehicles” (AFVs) may actually increase the amount of gasoline used by government fleets. Why? Because agencies largely buy E85 ethanol-powered vehicles to fulfill their AFV requirements, and there aren’t enough E85 pumps to actually fuel the fleet, forcing agencies to obtain waivers to buy regular gasoline. Hit the jump for the report’s full findings on this, the latest unintended consequence of America’s ongoing ethanol-subsidy boondoggle.

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With all the excitement brewing in the Compact segment, some may be ignoring a building problem at the other end of the market, in the full-sized truck segment. Automotive News [sub] reports that GM’s truck inventory currently stands at 111 days of surprise, or a whopping 275,000 trucks sitting on lots. In April, Silverado was more than 3,000 units off the previous month’s pace, while Sierra was just over 1,00 units off. GM’s US market boss Mark Reuss tells the industry paper

We’re going to do something about it, but we haven’t made those calls yet… no one month makes a trend, so we’ve got to see where this one holds

Meanwhile, we’d be more worried about Chrysler, which saw Ram sales drop from nearly 22k units in March to 17,680 units in April. And not only is Chrysler more dependent on truck profits than GM due to its tighter balance sheet, it also has fewer high-efficiency alternatives to offer consumers who seem to be slowly responding to rising gas prices and moving towards more efficient offerings. And given that Automotive News [sub] is already noting that Chrysler has fallen behind on its “ambitious” sales goal and quoting analysts bemoaning Chrysler’s “perception” issues, it seems that Auburn Hills should be trying to get ahead of the story the way GM is.

A number of plug-in hopeful firms have been testing their future products in fleets, keeping a close eye on the data coming back as they prepare for their consumer launches or wider availability. One such vehicle, Toyota’s plug-in Prius has been testing for some time now, and while the results of US and European testing hasn’t been publicized yet, Wards Auto reports that the company has disclosed the results of Japanese testing with some interesting conclusions. With BYD and Chevrolet releasing data from their own plug-in testing, we should have the basis for some interesting insights. Hit the jump for more on the lessons learned and the data gleaned from this testing of next-gen drivetrains.

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A lot has changed in the auto industry in the three years since I started writing here at TTAC, and one of the more heartening developments has been the move towards ever greater transparency for all kinds of data, from sales breakouts to incentives to sales-weighted fuel economy. Though I’d like to think that TTAC played a role in helping push towards greater transparency and disclosure, the real heroes of this story are Hyundai (which has begun to release its sales-weighted fuel economy each month and is moving towards quarterly fleet sales breakouts) and TrueCar, which has possibly done more to put information in the hands of auto consumers than anyone else (TTAC included). TTAC thanks everyone who is helping push the industry towards ever more disclosure, and invites you to take advantage of these newly-available data points in order to better understand the ever-evolving face of the US auto industry. Here we present TrueCar’s TrueMPG data for April, which shows a .2 MPG improvement across the industry since April 2010.

This video says it all.

The slide above shows Chrysler’s product plan for the 2010-2014 timeframe, and as it shows, after the new 300 and “refreshed” 200 and T&C, the next Chrysler was supposed to be a C-segment compact sedan. But, reports C&D’s Justin Berkowitz, the subcompact car (essentially a rebadged Lancia Ypsilon) has already been canceled for being positioned too close to the Fiat 500. Meanwhile, it seems that now only one of Chrysler Group’s brands will get a forthcoming compact sedan, and since Dodge has confirmed that it will get a Fiat-based Caliber replacement next year, it seems Chrysler won’t be getting any help in one of the most important segments in the market. So, without a subcompact or compact car coming down the pipe, what does Chrysler have to look forward to? Another crack at the D-segment, come 2013, and a crossover based on the same platform. Apparently the Chrysler brand, which is supposed to be a Lancia-style luxury brand in the Fiat empire, doesn’t need more than four products.

Hyundai updated its web-only “save the asterisks” video for the New York Auto Show, as it continues to highlight fuel economy as a key brand value. And the brand didn’t miss the opportunity to talk about future fuel-efficient products either, as InsideLine reports that Hyundai is promising two more vehicles rated at 40 MPG highway or above in the “next couple of years.” One is the Prius competitor, which was previewed with the Blue Will concept, and which appears to now be a dedicated hybrid-only model, after having been initially tipped as a plug-in hybrid. The other? Hyundai won’t say, but an exec does tell the Edmunds blog that

The strategy of further developing the internal-combustion engine, with significant increases in fuel economy, is where we see the market going

So, something non-hybrid… perhaps the i10 A-segment hatch that Hyundai USA recently let us drive? The Europe-only i40 wagon? What about the Euro-market ix20 subcompact MPV? Or are we waiting for something brand new?