Say you’re a small electric car maker in bankruptcy restructuring. You have no current production, you’ve only ever built a couple thousand street-legal cars and you’re operating on $6M in interim financing. With credit markets in turmoil and the car biz taking a beating, what’s a game changer to do? Luckily for you, the various governments of the United States seem to have acquired the reputation of being run by the kind of people PT Barnum would have loved. And as Autoweek reports, this opportunity has even the tiniest mice in global auto game warming up their vocal cords, hoping to pull off an American taxpayer-assisted roar.

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Apologists for business-as-usual in the car game often took to blaming unnaturally high gas prices for last year’s trends towards smaller car sales and fewer vehicle miles traveled. When gas prices go back down, went the argument, Americans will go right back to buying thirsty SUVs and Crossovers and driving more miles. Not true, it seems. The New York Times reports that vehicle miles traveled (VMT) has declined for 14 months in a row now, despite the fact that gas prices are now hovering at about half of their peak levels from last June. “When the decline in American driving was first identified in late 2007, fuel prices were beginning to increase. The prevailing wisdom at the time was that the drop was due to increased fuel prices,” says Doug Hecox of the Federal Highway Administration which monitors traffic on America’s roads. The FHA estimates that VMT has declined by 115 billion miles in the period between November 2007 and December 2008.

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Do we want to place bets on how soon Chrysler will shift its sales strategy back towards fleet sales? Unfortunately for Americas struggling automakers, $565M in low-profit sales probably isn’t enough to make much of a difference to anyone’s bottom line. Especially considering that the expenditure is set to take place over the next ten years. On the other hand, AT&T is only replacing about 15,000 vehicles, meaning the average price per vehicle is budgeted at about $37K, which is pretty decent for fleet costs. So who will benefit? Ford, hybrids and natural gas, says Automotive News [sub]. The Telecom giant plans on buying about 8,000 compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles from Ford, and will fill out its portfolio with hybrid and “other advanced technology power system” vehicles. Sorry, ChryCo!

Looks like we may have retired the Tesla Deathwatch a bit prematurely. Valleywag reports that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has launched a Nixonian “plumber” offensive aimed at eliminating leaks from the Silicon Valley startup. And boy are the employees happy about it. The plumb-and-purge strategy was launched when Tesla engineer Peng Zhou told Valleywag that the company’s cash reserves had dropped to $9M. According to the blog, Musk “hired an outside IT contractor go through the company’s email and instant messages, and then had an investigator take fingerprints off a printout discarded near a copier used to leak the email.” That investigation implicated Zhou who was asked to confess, apologize and leave the company. This was just the beginning.

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Think bankruptcy might be an option worth exploring for General Motors? Worried that the Volt might have been a tad too ambitious? Clearly you must be sick in the head. Reasonable people just don’t think that way. After all, why listen to bankruptcy lawyers and university researchers when you can get the truth straight from GM. You think those eggheads know more about GM than GM? Think about it. And while you’re suspending your disbelief, head down to GM’s Fastlane blog. You’ll get your facts straightened out faster than you can say “Stockholm Syndrome.”

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While California breaks away from the national emissions standards, Canada is headed in the opposite direction towards unified efficiency regulations. “At this point in the United States, it would appear that they are headed towards a 35-mile-per-gallon standard by 2020 and that would start to come into effect in the 2011 model year,” says Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice. “We’ve essentially been prepared to go in that same direction . . . what we’re striving for is a North American standard because we know there’s only one North American automobile industry.” Prentice is in Washington DC discussing energy and environmental policy with the Obama administration. “The first thing that has to happen, however, is that the United States has to land with their own domestic policy,” Prentice tells Automotive News [sub]. “It’s by no means clear how this will emerge from Congress over the course of the next year.” Or whether California will play along. From an industry perspective, consistent regulations from the US to Canada would be welcome, although average fleet economy is not a favored regulatory metric.

Gasgoo reports that China’s Jinan (Shandong) BaoYa are seeing US demand for its electric cars jump dramatically. BaoYa sold 500 of its electric sedans last year, and despite a weak export market, this year’s US-market orders have already topped 4,800. BaoYa sedans are Zap Xebra-like Low Speed Vehicles, with a top speed capability of 50 mph (limited to 25mph in the US) and a range of about 90 miles on a 5-8 hour charge.  We’re not entirely sure that the factory and production of BaoYa vehicles documented by Repubblica here is the same Jinan-based plant of Shandong BaoYa, but there’s little doubt that the nearly 5k BaoYas sold in the US were built in similar conditions. So Americans could gaze pityingly at their neighbors’ carbon emitting planet destroyers. Savor the irony.

Nissan is determined to sell electric cars in the US beginning in 2012, but the problem of building a charging infrastructure continues to bedevil product planners. Charging stations must be plentiful, convenient, and most importantly EV owners must be willing to wait there at least half an hour to complete a fast-charge of their EV’s batteries. Having added it all up and thrown in just a dash of condecension towards American culture (or lack thereof), Nissan’s boffins reckon that fast food joints are the perfect location for EV charging station, reports Automotive News [sub]. Of course the idea of sitting around a fast food joint for a half-hour while your car recharges for another 80 miles of driving kind of defeats the idea of fast food, but no matter.

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In times of crisis folks tend to look for radical change rather than steady improvement. Before you know it, Steve Jobs is being (wrongly) touted as the saviour of the auto industry, recent authors are expounding on the Googlification of the industry, and GM is staking everything on the Volt. And I’m not even going to get into the theological implications. But like the old fable of the rabbit and the hare, the steady improvements will be what saves the industry. A study by Carnegie Mellon at Green Car Congress shows that plug-ins with smaller capacity than the Volt’s 40-mile EV range are a more cost effective strategy than the Volt moonshot. Go figure.

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“Your camera can create clean cars.” That was the subject head on a mass mailing I received from the Sierra Club’s Greg Haegele. This was merely a gimmick—a “photo” petition to the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA is considering rescinding the Bush Administration’s decision to block California and other states from implementing CO₂ emissions standards for cars, and the Sierra Club is leading the cheering section. While I am all in favor of reducing CO₂ emissions and fast, while rescinding the Bush legislation might well be a good idea, I’m dismayed by the way so many advocates of reducing greenhouse gases focus on micromanaging automotive reductions rather than on the big picture. To be sure, Ann Mesnikoff of the Sierra Club says the group is also working on cap and trade, a big picture approach to greenhouse gas mitigation. But what is it with anti-anthropogenic global warming (AGW) crusaders and cars?

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Gawker reports that Tesla spinmeister Daryl Siry left the Silicon Valley startup because CEO Elon Musk (above) was pushing to accept deposits on the Model S sedan. The Model S (a.k.a. WhiteStar) exists only as a prototype. Tesla has no factory or financing with which to build it. When Musk announced that the DOE would approve Tesla’s loan application (they haven’t and likely won’t) and decided to accept $40K Model S deposits (next month), Siry smelled fraud and bailed. Valleywag calls Musk “The New Preston Tucker,” revealing that Musk told a recent Tesla “town hall” meeting that Tesla deposits were not guaranteed. This despite earlier assurances that Musk would personally guarantee deposits. With reports of Tesla asking for up to $75K in unescrowed “reservation payments,” and difficulty reclaiming deposits as small as $5K, Siry’s fears were probably well-founded. Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence from Tesla forums indicates that the real winner here: the Fisker Karma.

When developing new car gadgetry, automakers are faced with making a very basic assumption about their potential customers. Are we the consumers willing to trade our fundamental, if somewhat-anarchistic, assumptions of freedom for some wimpy, gas saving benefit? From accident black boxes to driver-behavior monitors, most red-blooded pistonheads say, hell no! Apparently BMW reckons that more people want toys than want (perceived) freedom. And they’re developing an intelligent navigation system that will learn your driving habits to prove it.

Via Green Car Congress comes word of China’s second plug-in electric car (after BYD’s Dual Mode plug-in, allegedly on sale now), the Chery S18. Chery’s website (In Mandarin, click here for Google translated hilarity) shows the tiny city car rolling off the assembly line, implying that China is taking a two-nil lead over the US in the race for production EVs. On the other hand, it’s probably safe to say that a carboard box has a higher chance of passing US crash test. Anyway, the S18 reportedly sports a 336 V, 40 KwH electric drivetrain featuring 40 Ah Lithium Iron-Phosphate batteries which recharge in 4-6 hours from a 220 V socket (a 30-minute quick charge provides 80 percent of battery capacity). Top speed is said to be 75 mph, and range is estimated at a modest 75-95 miles. Chery’s Yuan Tao claims (in Google translation) that the S18 not only boasts “the world’s most advanced technology” but “the price is also very suitable for families to buy.” Gasgoo says the S18 will go on sale in China later this year starting at less than 100K RMB ($15K), considerably less than even BYD’s F3DM which retails for 150K RMB.

Danny Westneat at the Seattle Times apparently wasn’t taken in by the “This Car Gets 100/150MPG!” signage on Seattle’s test fleet of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). And it seems that his journalistic incredulity was rewarded with some disappointing numbers from Seattle’s real-world testing of the much-vaunted PHEVs. Sure, a converted plug-in Prius might get 100 mpg in the hands of a fanatic hypermiler, but in daily use by untrained city drivers, the PHEVs return much more moderate results. Westneat reveals that Seattle’s 14 plug-in Priuses actually averaged about 51 mpg after driving a total of 17,636 miles in all kinds of conditions. And the Seattle case is no fluke.

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According to SEMA, legislation has been introduced in the Oregon House of Representatives at the request of Governor Ted Kulongoski to ban aftermarket parts if alternatives are available that “decrease greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.” In reality, Oregon H.B. 2186 (pdf) merely states that the “Environmental Quality Commission may adopt by rule the following to help this state achieve the greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.” The specific option that SEMA is steamed about states that “Restrictions and prohibitions on the sale and distribution of after-market motor vehicle parts, including but not limited to tires, if alternatives are available that decrease greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles,” may be enacted.

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