Jerry Garrett of The New York Times has “driven dozens of new cars each year for nearly 30 years.” Who knew? Even though I’m not familiar with Garrett’s car canon, it’s clear the writer’s time was well spent, in an Andy Rooney “Have you ever looked at a doorknob?” kinda way. “‘Does this bother you?'” Garrett’s rant begins. “Well, actually, shining a bright light in my eyes from out of the darkness does bother me; when I’m behind the wheel, it drives me nuts. It reminds me of an interrogation technique. This bright light in question is actually the map light. It is positioned above my rearview mirror. Of course, it renders the rearview mirror useless, but more than that, it blinds me when I drive. It is a real safety issue, but my passenger wants to read while I drive. Who would design such a thing?” Damn his eyes! Why doesn’t Garrett doesn’t name names? Anyway, the rest of his “Five Things I Hate About New Cars”? Too small sun visors, the lack of fish-eyed rear view mirrors, chimes that won’t shut up after ten dings and cars that don’t have a little arrow to show you upon which side of the car the fuel filler cap resides. And now, it’s your turn, overly-loud and cheap-sounding clicking noise or “how the Hell do I cancel these damn things” BMW signals included.
Category: News Blog
By taking a quid-pro-quo (cash for a new model) approach to its automaker bailout, the Australian government and Holden have opened themselves for significant criticism. And it’s starting to pile on. From The Australian we have reports of backlash from, among others, Australia’s Green party. And their scathing remarks are centered on the GM Cruze variant that received specific subsidization. Greens senator Christine Milne questioned why the “green car innovation fund” was being spent on something that was “neither particularly green, nor in any way innovative.” Says Milne of the SubsiCruze, “even if it is an efficient four-cylinder car, that is hardly green innovation. This is keeping the Australian car industry on life support instead of giving it a new lease of life.” Sound familiar? Getting tired of that question? Apparently Australia’s Greens expected something more revolutionary than a boring ICE compact. According to Senator Nick Xenophon, there is “nothing green about a petrol car. You can make it more efficient but that is just fiddling at the margins.” Incidentally, Xenephon goes on to destroy his credibility by suggesting Australia’s government subsidize a local version of GM’s Volt. Now we’re getting realistic! In other news from the exciting world of The New Mercantilism, Canadians are beginning to worry that their own bailout “is a very difficult situation, because we’ve got a financial plan without a business plan, and that’s the wrong way to do things,” according to Joe D’Cruz, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. How did nobody see this coming? Oh wait. (Thanks to JT for the tip)
Maximum Executive Bob Lutz is spreading the Christm, excuse me, Holiday cheer over at the GM Fastlane blog today. You see, Lutz is troubled by the amount of attention that his firm has attracted since going on the holiday handout dole. Yes, “the sheer volume of words written about the auto industry in the past month or two is enough to fill the Library of Congress (Yes, I’m employing irony),” writes Lutz, or some well-paid ghostwriter. “Some of the material generated has been ill-informed and off the mark. Some have used the same old and outdated anti-Detroit rhetoric and bias we’ve been seeing for years,” continues the man of maximum. And so, Lutz suggests a steady diet of Detroit appologia from the pantheon of bailout-backing pundits. Specifically…
Ford has a hit on their hands with the Ford Fusion Hybrid– at least from a media standpoint. The autobogosphere is abuzz with the announcement of the gas – electric fusion Fusion’s official EPA stat of 41mpg. Of course, that’s 41mpg in the city and 36mpg on the highway. But a headline’s a headline. More interesting yet, the Fusion hybrid can motor up to 47mph on battery-power. According to Hybrid program leader Praveen Cherian, the extended all-EV mode “allows drivers to maximize fuel efficiently in many driving situations. For example, this would allow drivers to travel around their subdivision and parking areas in all-electric mode.” What’s the speed limit in a subdivision these days? And doesn’t everybody switch off the engine and glide into a parking space (sarcastic driver, closed parking lot)? I know: I’m just being churlish. This is exactly the kind of evolutionary, incremental improvement we’ve been arguing for since the site began. Now, can I be churlish some more?
A new CNN/Opinion Research poll brings Detroit one of those good news/bad news deals. The survey of 1000 voters reveals that “63% of Americans said they supported the government’s automaker bailout unveiled Friday. But if the companies ask the government for any more money, 70% said Washington should let the companies enter bankruptcy rather than give them any additional assistance.” To paraphrase the Temptations, get ready, ’cause here it comes! Uncle Sugar is set to dole out an additional $4b, already promised under the terms of the deal. Not to mention the $25b retooling loans– which seem to have disappeared off the outrage radar. And when the final final reckoning arrives in March… “With the current credit situation, it has been very hard getting debtor protection financing, so any automaker bankruptcy would have to be assisted by the government,” said David Weiss, chief economist at Standard and Poor’s. “If one of them enters Chapter 11, they would still need government funding to avoid failing.” CNN dutifully reports that “Some analysts estimate that the cost of an auto bailout will eventually run as high as $125 billion.” MORE? You want MORE? And there’s a twist to this tale…
You know the sinking price of gas has stopped the E85 industry in its tracks when the corn growers’ local government turns its back on the biofuel blend. Indiana’s jconline.com reports that “After a 60-day trial run this summer, the West Lafayette Police Department has decided to no longer fill half of its patrol fleet with E85… Chief Jason Dombkowski said last week that officers making the six-mile trip to fill up ended up cutting too much into what the department saved.” Even with the .50 a gallon federal blenders’ credit, E85 just couldn’t make the grade. “We compared it by cost per mile,” [fleet maintenance director Tim] Bullis said. “When regular unleaded and E85 were $1 apart, it was a tossup. The closer the prices became, the less effective the savings from E85.” Oh, as a quick aside, the ethanol industry’s year in review has coined a pet name to demonize retail organizations who claim that corn-based E85 drives up food prices: Big Grocery.
Well, not the test itself. The video of the test, which clearly shows the Top Gear crew pushing the Roadster back to base after, apparently, running out of juice. Only it didn’t. Wired reports that “According to Top Gear’s spokeswoman, footage showing the Roadster being pushed into the garage was filmed to show what would happen if the car’s lithium ion battery went dead.” So Top Gear didn’t drain the upteen hundred li-ion cells after 55 miles of hard-charging? “Top Gear stands by the findings in this film and is content that it offers a fair representation of the Tesla’s performance on the day it was tested,” the BBC said in a statement. Clear as mud, as the Brits would say. Does that mean we can trust Clarkson’s assertion that the Roadster requires 16 hours to charge? Or, indeed, anything he says? I’m all for infotainment, but Top Gear gets its street cred from telling the truth about cars. This is a major hit to the brand’s core.
Senators Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) have introduced Senate Bill 3737. You can read the full text of the “Sell Fuel Efficient Cars Act of 2008” after the jump. Suffice it to say that the bill is designed to stimulate new car sales by giving low-income ($40k family income) car buyers $10k worth of “federal assistance” towards the purchase of a new vehicle. Of course, not just ANY vehicle. The car, truck, CUV or SUV (of course) must come from a carmaker “with operations in the United States, the failure of which would have a systemic adverse effect on the overall economy of the United States or a significant loss of United States jobs, as determined by the Secretary; and operated a manufacturing facility that produced automobiles or automobile components in the United States throughout the 20-year period ending on the date of the enactment of this Act.” Guess who? And now, the greenwashing…
Thanks to soaring gasoline prices and the ongoing recession, motorists traveled 100b fewer miles in fiscal 2008. Transportation officials seized upon these facts to argue that the gas tax is unsustainable and that the country must quickly shift to tolling to save the highway trust fund. “As driving decreases and vehicle fuel efficiency continues to improve, the long term viability of the Highway Trust Fund grows weaker,” Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said in a December 12 statement. “The fact that the trend persists even as gas prices are dropping confirms that America’s travel habits are fundamentally changing. The way we finance America’s transportation network must also change to address this new reality, because banking on the gas tax is no longer a sustainable option.” Turns out it was an argument built on sand…
A short overview of what happened in other parts of the world while you were in bed. TTAC provides round-the-clock coverage of everything that has wheels. Or has its wheels coming off. For the next two weeks, WAS will be filed from Tokyo.
Toyota doesn’t just sit there. They do something: Toyota is facing its first full-year loss ever, $1.68b for the whole fiscal 2008. Never mind that this is approximately the cash GM burns through in a bad month. For Toyota, it is a huge embarrassment. Toyota will do immediately what GM ignored: Embark on drastic production changes. “The speed, breadth and depth of the global economic downturn is beyond what we had imagined,” says Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe. Their measures will be likewise drastic. Toyota aims to revamp its operations so that it can turn a profit even if parent-only sales fall by 17% from 2007 results. All new production upgrades, including the opening of a plant in the U.S. state of Mississippi scheduled for 2010, will be postponed or scaled down. Capital spending planned for fiscal 2009 will be cut 30 percent to less than 1 trillion yen. For starters. By the way, directors will forgo their bonuses this fiscal year.
Nissan likewise: Nissan is reevaluating its plans for new factories and may postpone construction or scale back the size of some of them, Chief Operating Officer Toshiyuki Shiga said to The Nikkei (sub.) Nissan had plans to build a new factory in Russia in 2009 and new plants in India, Morocco and China in 2010. In addition, its subsidiary Nissan Shatai Co. had plans to build a new car body assembly plant next year in Kyushu. All of these plans are under review.
Well, someone had to do it. Automotive News [sub] reports that the Fed will use its $200b Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility to provide new-car dealers floorplan loans. It’s been understood since its November 25th spawning that TALF would “secure” auto loans, but a Fed FAQ released today reveals that “for TALF purposes, auto loans include retail loans and leases relating to cars, light trucks, or motorcycles and auto dealer floorplan loans.” In news that won’t thrill the small-town dealerships, the minimum TALF loan size is $10m with a three year maturity. Sorry, credit card debt is not eligible. Suzuki Motor Company announced that it would discontinue floorplan financing precisely (if you believe Automotive News [sub]) four minutes after the announcement. Coincidence?
Greetings from Pennsylvania! That’s right, I’ve left the warm (enough) confines of Southern California and journeyed east to meet the fiancee’s parents. It’s going fantastic, thanks for asking. Only thing is, they aren’t exactly what I’d call “car people.” Well, my future father in law’s OK enough. 2002 Jetta with a stick. Not a GLI with the VR6 but salty. Decent. Respectable. Her stepmother, however… Picture it: downtown Philadelphia, six people in the car. Me at the wheel because, “You drive cars (hic) for a living — you drive!” And after half a mile everyone starts noticing how poorly the car is riding. “These old streets are lousy in the winter.” Then it gets worse. “Well,” I say, “The Chevy Venture is one of the reasons why GM is circling the drain.” And when I park — yup — it’s a flat tire. And it’s 26 degrees out. And windy. And it takes 20 minutes to get the jack unstuck. So now there’s a mini-spare donut on the right front corner and the dash reads “AWD Disable.” But, we make it back, no sweat. The next morning (today!) we need to be in Quakertown and it’s 14 degrees and icy and the one tire shop has a “two hour plus” wait. We need to go, so we schlep 40 frosty miles in a hobbled minivan on one pretty alright tire. We live, but not my finest automotive hour. You?
The production version of the new Opel Meriva will keep the concept’s suicide doors, say Carscoop. Nope, no stylish, efficient people movers in the GM stable. Keep moving people. Nothing to see here.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper drafted former Molsons boss Jim Arnett less than three weeks ago to advise on auto industry policy. Now that Canada has commited $4b Canadian ($3.25b American) to Chrysler and GM, Arnett has resigned his position. The Star reports that “the Conservative government never really saw eye-to-eye with Arnett on what needed to be done,” but that Arnett will continue to advise the Ontario provincial government. Arnett, who advised the government on the 2004-2006 steel industry restructuring, was not available to comment on why he quit. Sources say Arnett “couldn’t reach the appropriate terms of reference” with the federal government. If we had to guess why Arnett might have left, we’d say it probably has something to do with Harper’s seemingly boundless enthusiasm for handing taxpayer money to Detroit. “I will not fool you. There is obviously money at risk here and there may be, well, more money as we go forward,” Harper told reporters when the Canadian bailout plan was announced.
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