In response to charges that it’s California electric bus building operation has been violating that state’s labor and minimum wage laws in the way it employs Chinese nationals, the company issued a statement saying that it is  “dedicated to ensuring that its employees are treated fairly” and that it would be hiring more American employees at its California electric bus factory. BYD explained that the Chinese nationals in question were engineers and experts that had been loaned by the parent company to transfer technology and train local employees and that they are not displacing any American workers. California labor officials had hit BYD with a $100,000 fine, charging that the company was paying its Chinese employees only $1.50/hr. The company is appealing that fine. BYD currently employs about 40 local workers at the plant. The state investigation was the result of charges by labor rights group Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy of minimum wage and other labor violations. Last week, BYD had said that the group was spreading “misinformation”.

BYD is stepping up efforts to sell electric vehicles overseas. The California facility is intended to supply contracts for electric buses for the Los Angeles and Long Beach municipalities. In Europe, BYD’s electric buses are in trial service in a number of cities and Amsterdam’s  Schiphol airport has ordered 35. The company plans to build those buses somewhere in Europe.  “We need to have around 100 sales in Europe to justify a plant and we believe that day is really near now,” Isbrand Ho, BYD Europe’s managing director, said in a statement. As yet no location has been chosen.

BYD electric buses have been tried out in Paris, Bremen, Bonn, Madrid, Barcelona, Salzburg, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Brussels and Budapest, and trials will begin in London as well. The electric bus is 12 meters (37 feet) long and is claimed to have a range of 250 kilometers (150 miles) in urban use, powered by lithium iron phosphate battery cells.

At the opening of his company’s London store, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk had some comments about the company’s upcoming falcon-winged crossover, the Model X. He said that it will offered only in an all wheel drive configuration that features electric motors in both the front and back of the car, and that it’s starting price will be slightly more than that of the Model S, which starts at $60,000.

The Model X’s price will be very similar to the Model S. It might be slightly higher, but… I can’t imagine that it will be… It’s probably going to be a slightly higher starting price because the Model X will only be offered as all-wheel drive. It will be dual motor, all-wheel drive.

[The relevant remarks start at ~24:00 of the video]

That mysterious sedan spied by Ronnie Schreiber might really be a Ford after all. Numerous sources have told TTAC that the sedan is indeed a Ford, based on certain tell-tale clues.  A TTAC reader from Brazil also sent us this note

 “…it is the sedan version of the new Ford Ka, or Escort, as some are saying it is going to be named.

 

The car will be powered by a 1.0 three cylinder engine. Similar to the 1.0 EcoBoost, but with no boost, or else, with no turbocharger, in order for it to be cheaper. This car will also be sold in India (as Figo), China and other emerging countries. Even Europe will receive it to replace the current Ka and work as a sort of Sandero from Ford. This sedan will have a nice trunk capacity (around 500 litres) and probably a stronger engine, the 1.5 that is currently used in the New Fiesta in Brazil.”

If you want to see the future of Holden in Australia, this is it. Yes, it’s the same car that Jack Baruth took to the woodshed in today’s edition of TTAC, but it’s also a harbinger of things to come for the iconic Australian marque, with the announcement that Holden’s Elizabeth, Australia plant will be tooling up to produce the first ever front-wheel drive Commodore. And even that looks doubtful.

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Two of the newest Lexus products got an early reveal prior to their Tokyo Motor Show debut. The Lexus RC (above) is a coupe version of the new IS, with the IS350’s 3.5L V6 carrying over. World markets will get a hybrid version, dubbed the RC300h. Also debuting is the LF-NX concept, expected to preview a sub-RX sized crossover.

1974 Audi photo

The United States was supposed to be an important part of the Volkswagen Group becoming the world’s biggest automaker by 2018, with sales of 800,000 units in the U.S. by then, but it’s finding the U.S. market a tough nut to crack. “We understand Europe, we understand China and we understand Brazil,” VW Chairman Ferdinand Piech told Bloomberg this month. “But we only understand the United States to a certain degree so far.”

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Carlos Ghosn has shuffled Nissan Motor Co.’s top management, elevating Jose Munoz to head the company in North America, while eliminating the Chief Operating Officer position in the home office. COO Toshiyuki Shiga is becoming vice chairman and the responsibilities of his former job will be split between Hiroto Saikawa, Andy Palmer and Trevor Mann.

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Spurred by tax breaks, free recharging stations, free parking and other benefits for EV drivers worth up to $8,100 (about 6,000 euros) a year per car, electric cars are doing very well in Norway. Reuters reports that Tesla’s Model S was the best selling car in Norway in September and Nissan’s Leaf was the market leader in October. Last month 716 Leafs were sold, a 6% market share, beating out the Toyota Auris and the VW Golf. For the year, the Leaf is the fourth best selling car in Norway with 3.2% of the total market. Read More >

With a sales tax increase of 3% looming next year and the Japanese economy on an upswing, October retail sales of cars and light trucks in Japan were up over 17% from the same month last year, with both regular and mini “kei” cars doing well. Honda led all companies with a 50% increase from 2012 and Toyota taking first place in overall sales with a little over 140,000 units sold, up 13%. Read More >

It’s been a long time since the Acura Legend or its successors had much mojo. The second-generation model, most notably the six-speed manual-shifted coupe, had a certain amount of street presence and enthusiast credibility, but the two generations that came after that didn’t impress anyone. The current car is perceived by the public as a bigger TL, even if it isn’t one, not totally.

It’s probably safe to say that most buyers in the segment don’t even consider an RL when they’re shopping. But the ones who do like the RL tend to put some serious mileage on them. How serious? Well…

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My overambitious 8:30 departure plan becomes nine-something. But we are parked and on the shuttle bus by 9:45. Unlike yesterday, the bus stops in front of our grandstands. As we clear security and proceed to the building, the GP2 cars scream by on their warm up. We all exchange smiles.

Our seats are freaking awesome. The south grandstands, at the end of the straight. The cars literally turn in front of us and accelerate away. We get situated to take some pictures and here they come. After 10 minutes, their tires are warm and the drivers start pushing it. They lock up on the gators. Overshoot the turn and drive into the runoff. They bounce and spin out. We all have earplugs and don’t use them. The little open wheel machines scream, then backfire and burble for the downshift, then scream away.
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Photo Courtesy of Cardomain.com

Today, my wacky morning DJ, right after he said democracy was a joke and called me “dude,” hit us with this fun fact: 39% of young people choose the same brand of car their parents drove. I’m not sure if that is impressive as the previous day’s fact, that 20 million pounds of candy corn are sold annually in the United States, but it made me think about my father’s preference in vehicles and whether or not I had followed suit. Despite the fact that my old man had pretty good taste in cars, the answer, oddly enough, is “no.” Read More >

Don’t call me Ishmael, but it seems to me that stories of failure are perhaps more engaging than those of success. Sure, we all love a good Horatio Alger story of someone pulling their socks up and making something of themselves, but they’ve made a lot more movies about the Titanic than stories about the Queens Mary and Elizabeth, both 1 and 2 all combined. The same is true of the automotive world. As far as I’ve been able to determine, there’s never been a theatrical movie dramatizing the life of Henry Ford (Cliff Robertson played him in a television mini-series and PBS’s *The American Experience recently profiled Ford on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth) but I bet you remember Jeff Bridges as Preston Tucker. Maybe there’s more dramatic meat to work with, the inherent tragedy of one’s reach exceeding one’s grasp, in a notable failure. Perhaps that’s why there have been a number of documentaries produced about John Zachary DeLorean’s eponymous company and the car that it produced (and why there was even a Bricklin musical). It needs saying, also, that a lot of the interest in the DeLorean can be attributed to the car’s starring role in the Back To The Future movie franchise. Combine a pop culture icon and the dramatic failure of a bravura personality and there’s bound to be interest. Read More >

Many automotive companies test cars and components for resistance to radio frequency interference not far from where I live in suburban Detroit. There are a number of radio and television broadcast antennas in the area, so it’s not uncommon to see camouflaged preproduction cars driving in the neighborhood or parked in the shadow of one of the radio or tv towers. Read More >

Late breaking news from Los Angeles – this month’s LA Auto Show will herald the debut of the RLX Sport Hybrid All-Wheel Drive, nearly a year after the front-drive V6 RLX debuted.

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