First President Obama said the Senate may forego passing cap-and-trade, by far the most critical piece of the energy legislation that’s brewing on Capitol Hill. And now, the Environmental Protection Agency is suddenly pushing snake-oil, uh, corn-based ethanol in the latest iteration of the renewable fuel standard [proposed rule PDF], claiming that its substitution for gasoline will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This contradicts an earlier renewable fuel standard iteration, and most studies of the matter, including a 2008 study in Science, which found that “corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings [as per typical life-cycle studies], nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years.” [Ed: for more on the corn ethanol sham check out TTAC’s E85BOTD archives]
Category: News Blog
Oy, will they get slaughtered for that: So Toyota Prez. Akio Toyoda met the press late in the Japanese evening in Nagoya. And what did he say? Basically nothing. He said he “ordered swift action” to get a grip on the reported brake problems of the (in Japan) wildly popular Prius hybrid. But he didn’t say anything else. Recall? Shirimasen. (I don’t know.) Free repair if customer requests it? Shirimasen. Computer reflash? Shirimasen. Does Toyota know what’s going on? Shirimasen. Apparently, LaHood’s threat of bodily harm was lost in translation. Read More >
Toyota’s President Akio Toyoda will do something highly unusual tonight: The usually reclusive CEO will meet the press in Nagoya on Friday night at 9 p.m. Japanese time to discuss product quality, says the Nikkei [sub]. Toyoda won’t face the Fourth Estate all alone. Executive Vice President Shinichi Sasaki will also attend, and hopefully deflect the worst.
The press conference is not for Japanese consumption. Friday night at 9, most papers are put to bed, and the evening news are over. The meeting is for U.S. consumption. Friday night at 9 in Nagoya is 7 a.m. in New York. Read More >
No one guessed the 1971 Ford grille. That sure doesn’t happen often. So I’ll shut up (which doesn’t happen very often either) and just let this picture do the talking.
We can get ourselves in a tizzy about the defects and quality issues in new cars, but it’s sometimes good to have a little perspective. How would like to try to keep this Maserati Quattroporte stretch limo running? No e-pedals on this baby, but look at that bank of Webers to keep tuned and synchronized. Read More >
Ford says emphatically no, but the evidence (such as it is) indicates certain similarities. Let’s take a look…
According to MSNBC, Toyota’s US-based spokesfolks are refusing to confirm a Nikkei report that Toyota has issued a recall of 270,000 2010 model-year Priuses for brake issues the company has already acknowledged. “We have no information on any decision to recall the Prius,” said Toyota Motor Sales USA spokesman John Hanson, who said the company is working with the NHTSA on a “preliminary evaluation” of the problem. According to another report, the recall (which will be filed “shortly”) involves 100k Priuses in the US market, with the remaining 176k in Japan.
While Toyota may or may not recall the Prius, Ford is not recalling its Fusion and Mercury Milan Hybrids for what appears to be a similar issue (poor transitions between regenerative and conventional brakes). Instead, Ford is instituting a “Customer Satisfaction Program” involving free software upgrades it says will fix the problem, which was first reported by Consumer Reports.
UPDATE: Ford responds with a press release after the jump.
UPDATE 2: While we sort some of these late-breaking developments out, here’s another spurious log for the fire: ABC News impugns “federal investigations were extremely limited in scope, after negotiations involving former safety investigators who had been recruited to work for Toyota’s Washington, D.C. office.”
UPDATE 3: Oy!
Car enthusiasts are an odd bunch. They don’t understand why people buy “bland-mobiles” like Toyotas & Hondas, they can’t see why anyone would choose an automatic gearbox over a manuals, and they still can’t figure out why all cars aren’t RWD. For them, the smell of burning petrol (or oil, if you’re in Europe) combined with smouldering rubber, is somewhere between, a freshly baked apple pie and cooked bacon in the spectrum of heavenly smells. Well, there’s one other thing that car enthusiasts may have to combine with those smells, the hum of an electric motor… and it might just mean the end of their sweeping disdain for anything with the word “hybrid” in its name.
TTAC has reported on VW’s plans to become the global number one. Looking at Toyota’s current quality problems, one could be excused for thinking that there just might be some substance to Wolfsburg’s plans. After all, Toyota’s days of glory seem to be over, while VW is on a roll, with sales growing and quality improving. Right?
Rich writes:
I drive a 1999 Nissan Altima SE equipped with a manual transmission and ABS. The Altima has only 89K miles and is in excellent mechanical and cosmetic condition. I purchased it new and have followed a rigorous maintenance schedule. The car has excellent fuel economy, very good handling and braking and adequate acceleration. It is comfortable and has sufficient cargo capacity for me, my wife and infant son. I enjoy driving the Altima, and gladly would run it well over 100K miles, as I have done with each of my previous cars.
So what brings me into the market for another car? Newer autos have vastly improved passive safety features and crash test scores. While I place a premium on active safety, I cannot ignore the value of crashworthiness. Twice in the past few years, I have been hit by red light runners, barely evading serious injury. Most of my daily commute is on two lane secondary roads. Oncoming cars drift over the double yellow line and into my lane with alarming frequency. My Altima’s ability to turn on a dime will do little good when my choices are limited to slamming head-on into a minivan piloted by a cell-phone addled driver or wrapping myself around a telephone pole. Since it is impossible to upgrade my Altima’s crash safety, purchasing a car with modern safety features is the only alternative.
Read More >
Ford only just announced Twitter integration for future vehicles at the Consumer Electronics Show last month, and it’s still not available on any Ford vehicles yet. Eventually though, Ford says that you’ll be able to receive and send tweets from your car using the hands-free SYNC system, a development that apparently has lawyers already counting the money they’ll make suing Ford’s pants off. The Law Offices of Barry Levinson already has a presser warning that:
Ford’s development of technology to facilitate driver computer use runs counter to the national trend, which sees authorities cracking down on distracted driving… Ford defends its Twitter technology, claiming to be making existing driver behaviors safer. But Ford’s assertion may not hold up to scrutiny. The 2006 driver distraction study found that talking and listening to conversation via cell phone was as likely to cause a crash as dialing a cell phone; if this seemingly apt analogy for the distinction between typing on a computer and talking into one holds up, it would undermine Ford’s justification for installing Twitter technology in cars.
Though this is clearly a bit of premature (press) release, it shows that Ford is wading into some dangerous water, and the sharks are circling. Besides, who the hell needs to tweet while driving?
Fiat’s Sergio Marchionne looked like a pretty shrewd operator when he was able to snag a bailed-out Chrysler from the US government without paying a penny. Between that and the booming European sales on the back of government-funded scrappage schemes, Fiat pretty much spent 2009 proving that automakers should cater to governments almost as much as consumers. But as 2009 wound down, Fiat’s government affairs winning streak came to a halt as the Italian government started asking for a little quid for its quo, and it’s been going downhill from there. Now that Fiat wants to shut down its Sicilian Termini Imerese plant, and right-size Italian production, the love affair is officially over. “We are examining the possibility of renewing [consumer incentives],” Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told reporters from Automotive News [sub]. “But Fiat does not seem interested in them.”
Sergio Marchionne’s misguided obsession with the alleged brand equity of his recently-acquired Chrysler Group marques has deepened, as Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep launched new branded merchandise today [hilarious press release here]. The funniest part of the whole cross-branding effort is the very idea that significant portions of the population want their day-to-day goods slathered with Chrysler Group brand names. The second funniest? The products themselves. The Chrysler Collection features such “luxury gifts” as an $11.95 leather calculator, a $199.95 mahogany humidor, and a $21.95 mini umbrella, all tagged with Chrysler’s new Aston-alike logo and doubtless finished in the same fine materials as the Sebring’s interior. If Davos had a Wal-Mart, this is what they’d sell.
China’s car industry has big plans. According to the China Business Journal, cited by the Nikkei [sub], China’s top 14 automakers are planning and building for a combined output capacity of 23 million vehicles in 2012. “With other carmakers included, the total figure will likely top 25 million,” says the Nikkei.
Last year, China became the world’s largest auto market, with 13.64m vehicles sold. Demand is officially projected to grow by 10-15 percent a year, reaching 20m units in 2012. “Consequently, there is the possibility of excess capacity,“ worries the Nikkei. (They are ostensibly not worried about 20m cars being sold, an idea that makes peak oilers lose precious sleep while they are wearing out their – plastic – keyboards on the message boards.)
As far as this reporter is concerned, 5m excess capacity in 2012 would fall in the „nice problem to have“ category.
One, Chinese projections are notoriously lowballed. Read More >
I hate spending money. To me the act of letting go of my hard earned dollars is the equivalent of forced labor at a future point in my life. Not that I won’t pay for things that I really enjoy. Family, vacations (within reason), educational tools, and even good friends are on that radar. But cars are ‘things’ and most of them are used for the miseries of daily commuting. An activity I rank right up there with filling out paperwork and paying bills. How do I keep those dollars and time where it belongs? I simply plan for the future and invest when necessary.
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