Hurrah! BMW has finally taken a step back from the abyss of bloat, feature creep, and investment-banker-centric dynamics with the introduction of the bargain-priced 1M. The men from Munich have already provided the Bimmer-blogs pictures of the little coupe running down a road with the beloved E30 M3, and for the Roundel-tramp-stamp crowd, the line to place a deposit forms to the left, at your local X3/X5/X6 dealer.
The rest of us needn’t get so excited. Here’s why.
“There have been companies that have gone belly-up for carrying excess capacity, but no company has gone bankrupt for not being able to produce, We now realize humbly that we shouldn’t make cars until we’re absolutely certain they will sell.”
Toyota’s Executive Vice President Atsushi Niimi to Bloomberg. Read More >
The alleged Renault spy case is getting curiouser and curiouser. Renault is in full reverse. Renault CEO Patrick Pelata said information may have been leaked about the costs and economic model of the program, but all technical secrets are safe. “Not the smallest nugget of technical or strategic information on the innovation plan has filtered out of the enterprise.” So what, they are missing a spreadsheet? Read More >
We don’t know who gave which state secrets to whom at Renault. But now we know what everybody already suspected: “The Elysee has charged the DCRI (intelligence services) with an investigation. It is following a Chinese lead,” a French government source told Reuters.
If they find a smoking gun in China, then it’s war: Yesterday, France’s industry minister Eric Besson called the scandal “economic warfare.”
Reuters doesn’t know more, but found some highly suspicious activity: Read More >
New car sales around the world are mostly rebounding – except in the markets where they had been artificially stimulated last year. This list will be continuously updated as new data becomes available. Read More >
All I can tell you is that the matter seems serious, that it illustrates once again the risks our companies face in terms of industrial espionage, and economic intelligence, as we call it today. It is an overall risk for French industry. The expression ‘economic warfare’, sometimes extreme, is appropriate and this is something we should monitor in future.
France has for some years been worried about potential attacks on its industrial secrets and even has a “school of economic warfare” aimed at rooting out economic subversion.
Scotia Bank in Toronto has an insightful and resourceful car analyst, Carlos Gomes. Whatever he writes is worth reading. He expects car sales to rise and the “United States and the euro zone to climb out of their deep hole.” He also expects that the developed nations are ripe to be plucked and eaten by an upstart, roughhewn crowd:
“In 2011, new car sales in China and the other BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) will surpass the combined volumes of Western Europe and Japan, and account for roughly 30 per cent of global car sales.”
Here is his case: Read More >
Automotive News [sub] reports that three Renault executives, including one who works for the automaker’s electric vehicle development program, have been suspended without pay pending an industrial espionage investigation. According to a Renault source
[The investigation] involves people who were caught red-handed for industrial espionage. Renault is a victim in this story. The group is a bit worried about its electric vehicle program — it hopes that its leadership in this technology won’t be threatened.
Imaginary acceleration or measurable inattention to quality aside, Toyota’s delightfully arrogant march to world domination continues with the expected introduction of a “wagon-like” Prius at next week’s Detroit Auto Show and a bold statement from the company’s VP of sales.
We will end the decade with Prius being the number one nameplate in the industry… [Camry] will be a close second, and that’s not because there will be a drop in Camry sales.
It’s that time of year: the media dead zone between Christmas and the New Year, when traditional “news” and “content” gets laid aside in favor of lists of things that happened last year and might happen next year. We’re not great list-makers here at TTAC, and we’re still waiting on December sales data to sum up last year’s industry performances, so rather than offer our “top ten moments” and “trends to watch,” we’ll simply ask you, our Best And Brightest, to whip out your crystal balls (in a safe-for-work manner, please) and make a wild prediction about next year. Will gas prices spike or recede? Will trucks outsell cars again? Will GM’s stock hit the $53/share price needed to pay back taxpayers, or will more tax money be funneled to the automakers? Will the Chinese market collapse or carry on? Will Chrysler’s rushed updates like the 200 sell significantly better than last year’s equivalent models? Will the return of Fiat to the US market be cheered or ignored? Can we expect another big recall scandal next year, and if so, from whom? Will the Motor Vehicle Safety Act be exhumed and passed, or will it rest in peace? So many questions… time to start predicting!
If there’s a face of Toyota’s overinvestment in the United States market, it’s the company’s Blue Springs, Mississippi assembly plant. Construction on the billion-dollar plant was begun in 2007, but was halted in 2008, when plummeting demand for new automobiles forced Toyota to cut back on is US manufacturing capacity. For the past two years, Toyota’s 170 workers at the Mississippi plant have been doing their best to stay busy, but the Wall Street Journal reports that hiring has now been restarted and the plant will begin producing Corollas next fall. But will demand be high enough for Toyota to justify its eighth production plant in the US? Not everyone seems to think so…
Read More >
It’s a few million square feet. More than sixty football fields. And even on this holiday weekend, it’s not silent. In one corner, a group of men congregate around a folded-up seating assembly. Elsewhere, a tractor-trailer backs up to a dock and a green light flashes on as sensors click and an unattended door rolls up. Electric carts and small tractors whiz by me during my long walk through the darkened, cavernous interior spaces. A persistent, high-pitched whine emits from a timeclock. A poster details the instrument panel changes in a 2011 model.
In a society which has largely forgotten the divine and chosen to worship commerce, production, and marketing, this is a cathedral; still, I’m walking quickly without a genuflection to the rows of engine-transmission assemblies suspended above me, because I need to rush home and observe the same rituals. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine closet.
Usually, at this time of the year, Germany would already be closed down, to reopen some time after the first week of January. Not so this time around. The calendar punishes Deutschland by putting the 25th and 26th of December and 1st of January – all legal holidays – on weekends. Ouch. And if you are working at a German car manufacturer, you might be asked to come in “between the holidays” to make some badly needed cars. Read More >
“”By partnering with Volkswagen on the Fender Premium Audio System, we are creating a unique partnership with a truly innovative company allowing us to deliver a product that is as unique, expressive and dynamic as the customers who use it,” said Mark Van Vleet, Senior Vice President, Business Affairs for Fender.
Well, that may be… but do Volkswagen and Fender really want to be associated with each other? I can think of one solid reason why the two brands should have mucho distancia, hombre…
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