Chinese construction workers settled an argument about a parking spot with dynamite. The altercation left four people dead and 16 injured. Read More >
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Category: News Blog
Last week, we brought you the news that the Nissan-Dongfeng joint venture will build an EV in China, that it will be ready by 2015, and that it will not be the Nissan Leaf. The Made-in-China plug-in will be offered by Nissan-Dongfeng’s “Chinese” brand, Venucia. This most likely in compliance with yet-to-be-released, but much-rumored regulations which will shower Chinese EV subsidies only on indigenous vehicles.
Barely a week after the news, there already are pictures of the future Chinese EV. Read More >
OICA, the international umbrella organization for all automakers, has finally published its 2010 ranking of the world’s largest automakers. TTAC readers are not surprised by the results. They had known the outcome (at least for the top ten) half a year ago.
The race for bragging rights amongst the top three promises to stay interesting throughout the year. Toyota just issued new forecasts which pegs global production across all Toyota Motor Corp. brands at 8.04 million. This should worry Wolfsburg. Volkswagen was seen as the clear number 2 after GM in the 2011 race. Now matters are not so sure. Read More >
The auto world was rocked — ROCKED, I tell you! — yesterday by allegations that Carroll Shelby did all sorts of bad stuff recently. We here at TTAC have no opinion about this kind of thing. We don’t know any of the people involved, we don’t have access to any inside information, and we’re really not qualified to dive into the deep waters of rape, privacy, violation, money, power, lawsuits, and whatnot.
Luckily, our friends at Autoblog aren’t so shy.
Who should lease? Some folks believe that short term non-ownership is the perfect fit for the über-rich and nouveau riche. The rich can afford to drive whatever strikes their fancy after all… and who wants to own a Taurus when you can lease a Bentley?
As for the new rich or the soon to be rich; they also need a taste of their success. So why not a lease? Well, because I have gone nearly blue in my face over the years telling aspiring lessees that the math doesn’t work. Convenience… perhaps… worry-free ownership… maybe. But moneywise? Nein. Nyet. No.
Reason can only go so far in life. Even enthusiasts have a thing for the automotive fling. So here are seven types of lease happy shoppers I’ve met in my travels. In their own words of course.
With full sales numbers reported for July, TTAC is proud to announce its first-ever auto analyst grades [analyst estimates via Bloomberg]. For now we’re simply grading SAAR projections, but we’ve included OEM projections where applicable, for your own comparison. For July, the top-rated analyst was Edmunds.com’s Jessica Caldwell, whose SAAR prediction was an uncanny .5% off the actual number. Congratulations to Jessica and the Edmunds team, as well as our other A-rated analysts, Rod Lache of Deutsche Bank and Peter Nesvold of Jefferies (who squeaked in with an A-). Hit the jump to see how we calculated our grades.
New car sales in Japan, excluding minivehicles, were down 27.6 percent on the year to 241,472 in July, while Japan slowly recovers from the effect of the March 11 tsunami, but continues to suffer from a contracting market. Data released today by the Japan Automobile Dealers Association shows that this is the 11th month straight down. Gory details after the jump … Read More >
With the luxury market defying sluggish economic conditions, Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche doesn’t want the upstarts at BMW and Audi to slip past it… which they are. Six months through 2011, the Mercedes brand found itself in third place among the German global luxury brands, at 610,531 units. A surging BMW captured 689,861 sales in the half, while Audi took second with 652,970. This, for Zetsche, is an unthinkable state of affairs. In a letter to his employees, excerpted by Automotive News Europe [sub], Zetsche makes it clear that leadership in the luxury space is a Daimler birthright.
Some of our competitors are now growing faster and more profitably than we are. Granted, those are just snapshots in time and should not be overestimated. After all, many of our best new products are yet to come… In the long run we can’t be content to be in a “solid second” or even “third” place: We are Daimler – we should be far ahead of the pack! And if that requires something that we don’t currently have, then we’ll identify and develop it.
Enjoy your summer and refill your tanks. Because in the second half of this year we’re going to continue to play some hard offense!
But does a sense of entitlement actually motivate workers?
Ian Callum, designer of the Aston-Martin DB7 (along with the new Jaguars and numerous other gorgeous things) is a really, genuinely nice guy. But even nice guys have their limits, and having seen his groundbreaking Aston design evolve with the morphological dynamism of a sturgeon over the last 17 years, Callum appears to have reached his. Bloomberg reports:
It’s still that same old basic design,” Ian McCallum, who designed the DB9 and is now design director at Tata Motors Ltd. (TTMT)’s Jaguar Land Rover unit, said in a July 27 interview. “Some will argue that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But you do get to a time when you have to move on.”
Sadly, there are a few factual distractions to deal with here before we dig further into Aston’s predicament. First of all, though a Scot, the man’s name is Callum, not McCallum. Also, it’s not clear how much of the DB9 was styled by Callum, and how much was finished by his successor, Heinrik Fisker. Clear? OK, back to Aston…
New car sales were up 9.9 percent in July in Germany, says the German Kraftfahrtbundesamt. As the picture above shows, sales are slightly above 2010 (red line) and below the Abwrackprämien-addled 2009. Normalcy ensues in Deutschland, which is mostly on vacation anyway. The summer months are not for car buying, they are for car driving. Read More >
Sales volume grew slowly in July, as economic uncertainty and supply interruptions continued to foil a full turnaround in US sales volume. On the other hand, TrueCar reports that the consumers that did buy cars spent record amounts on average, as transaction prices soared to their highest levels in history and incentives fell. According to our developing table, the Detroit automakers are coming through July ahead of their year-ago numbers, but the Japanese automakers (who are still releasing their numbers) are expected to take a bit of punishment as they struggle to recover from the industry-crippling tsunami. Hit the jump for a full table of July sales results (developing).
Every month, Bloomberg publishes monthly auto sales estimates from the leading analysts… and as this month’s survey proves, they’re all over the place. With SAAR estimates running from 11.4m units to 12.1m units, and with Ford’s growth estimates ranging from 4.2% to 11%, it’s clear that we will have some winners and losers from the bunch. In short, the analyst community needs a little truth injection… which, of course, is where TTAC comes in. This month, and every month in the future, TTAC will be grading analysts on the accuracy of their forecasts. By comparing analyses from month to month, we hope to build a case for which analysts are the most consistently accurate. Industry analysts beware: TTAC has put you on notice!
Ever since the power went out in large parts of Japan after a massive Tsunami slammed into the country on March 11, the big question no longer is “will I be able to charge my EV at home.” It is: “Will I be able to power my house with my car?” This may seem alien to you, but a Tsunami has certain effects, and this is one of them. At a press conference in Yokohama, reporters asked Nissan’s CEO Carlos Ghosn: “When will it discharge?” Meaning the Leaf into the house. A few days later, Toyota showed a house that can be powered by a plug-in Prius should the lights go out. Now Nissan finally shows its great chargeback solution. Read More >
Autocar reports that the new “Baby Jag” roadster, will hit the European market by late 2012, cost £40,000 (about the same as a Boxster S) and “will blow the rest of the industry away.” According to the British buff book
The styling of the XE, Autocar understands, follows the company’s philosophy of “expressing lightness”. This is a new Jaguar styling principle that should result in the shape of future models “visually reflecting” the fact that they are made entirely of aluminium.
Unfortunately, because it shares its all-alu platform with the next-gen XK, it won’t be quite as light as a Boxster, with production weight estimated at 3,300 lbs. But, because this video only shows the “XE” (the name is still a matter of hot debate inside Jaguar) test mule, the most relevant detail is the drivetrain: a V6 of unrevealed displacement, in naturally-aspirated and supercharged forms, and hitched to an eight-speed automatic. The engine in this test video exhibits a nice, “emotional” raspy edge that is sure to satisfy in top-down driving, but the final clip of the video gives me the slushbox blues. Skip ahead to the 3:50 mark, when the mule accelerates from a stop, and it’s clear that (at least in mule form) this car shifts softly enough to sound almost like a CVT. Let’s hope they were just testing “touring” or “eco” mode or somesuch, because if you aren’t going to offer a manual transmission in a roadster, the slushbox needs to at least be able to bang some hard shifts when necessary.
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