At a meeting of the Automotive Press Association at the old-money, establishment Detroit Athletic Club in downtown Detroit, a stone’s throw from GM’s headquarters, UAW President Bob King warned Detroit auto journalists not to listen to “extremists in the Republican Party,” just like people in Germany and Italy should not have fallen for Hitler and Mussolini. Read More >
Speaking from Shanghai, NHTSA Administrator David Strickland tells Bloomberg that “a number” of Chinese automakers have expressed interest in selling their products in the US, to which the auto safety regulator says:
When they offer their vehicle for sale, we will treat them like we will treat any company whether it is a Detroit company or a Japanese company or a Chinese company.
Strickland identified GM’s partner SAIC as one company that was interested in US sales, although the automaker says it’s waiting until it has “more suitable product” for the market. Chinese auto exports currently make up only 3 percent of production, a number the Chinese government wants to increase to 20 percent by 2012-2015. Separately, SAIC announced this week that it plans to invest some $1.85b into its hybrid, electric and fuel-cell technologies.
“Is it a war when only one guy is fighting and the other guy is laughing? Just askin’… because I’m all smiles.”
Quoth Thilo Koslowski [via AN [sub]], principal automotive analyst at Gartner Research (and coiner of TTAC’s favorite new phrase, “the trough of disappointment”):
First of all, the car doesn’t really make a good personal computer, and, secondly, consumers don’t have to have a PC on four wheels. Ultimately, any type of Internet access in the future has to support the ownership experience of the vehicle; this is not about enabling me to have the same experience I have on my laptop
Which is precisely why we find Nokia’s “Terminal Mode” protocol so compelling: it “lets cars be cars again.”
“After Fukushima, I am not sure how any politician in any modestly democratic republic is going to sell a new nuclear power plant to any general population.”
“Would you like the job of trying to sell a new nuclear plant to your electorate?”
“There is one terrible casualty in all of this: The electric car. When they make part 2 of Who Killed the Electric Car? the answer is going to be plain and clear: Fukushima killed the electric car.”
From the LogicalOptimizer blog, just one of many that currently say the same. Read More >
It’s been a good day for drama, what with GM losing its CFO, Saab’s principals turning on each other, Carlos Ghosn showing the first signs of losing his grip on his global empire, and Rs and Ds battling over GHGs. But what today was missing in the drama department was a spat between two legitimate stars, a throwdown featuring the hot young celebs of the automotive world. Well, thanks to ASCA.it [via Carscoop], we have it. Speaking to the Italian press, Ford CEO and industry darling Alan Mulally took on Fiat-Chrysler’s up-and-coming global starlet, the Fiat 500, bashing its chances of success in the US.
Mulally also talks of competing with Chrysler and about the market prospects of the Fiat 500 in the United States, provides: ”I do not see big market space for one car in the U.S. more ‘smaller Fiesta.” He added: ”Who has tried has failed.”
Presumably Mulally was comparing the 500 to Daimler’s Smart brand effort, in which an established automaker attempted to bring a new brand and a premium A-segment city car to the US and failed badly. And Mulally isn’t just idly speculating either: if he thought a sub-sub-compact car would sell profitably in America he’d bring Ford’s Ka, which is built on the same platform as the Cinquecento, here and make a fight of it (hell, it’s already appeared in a Bond movie). And with Chrysler’s plan to sell 55k Fiat 500s in the US this year already “a little bit behind,” it seems Mulally’s skepticism may be well-placed.
“Why would you even ask that question? Do you think the Chinese want to kill people on the road?”
Volvo CEO Stefan Jacoby after a reporter had asked him in Geneva whether Chinese ownership could hurt Volvo’s safety image.
From Automotive News [sub]
The Detroit News reports that top White House economic adviser Austan Goolsby indicated today that the government would be exiting its equity position in GM in the short term. The DetN’s David Shepardson quotes Goolsby as saying
The writing is clearly on the wall that the government is getting out of the GM position. The government never wanted to be in the business of being majority shareholder of GM. It was only to prevent a wider spillover, negative event on the economy. So we’re trying to get out of that. We’re not trying to be Warren Buffet and figure out what the market is doing
And he’s not kidding: GM’s stock just closed at its lowest level since the IPO, after GM’s Q4 results came in below analyst expectations and the overall market experienced turmoil due to Middle East unrest.
Weeks after being appointed to the top of GM’s new product development team, Mary Barra remains something of an enigma to much of the automotive press. Like, what accomplishments earned Ms Barra her lofty spot on GM’s org chart? According to Newsweek‘s Doron Levin
When Mary Barra was a senior manufacturing executive a few years ago at General Motors, she spotted another maker’s car decked out in a rich metallic black color. It was unlike anything GM was offering, so she suggested the color be added to the company’s palette—and was promptly rebuffed by fellow engineers, who fretted about potential quality-control difficulties. But Barra wouldn’t take no for an answer, and before long buyers were able to get their Cadillac Escalades and Chevy Malibus in elegant “Carbon Flash.”
So, now we know.
No interview with a leader of the automotive industry is complete without the requisite question about electric plans. Porsche CEO Matthias Müller engineered a trick answer: Read More >
Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne has earned our last several quotes of the day with recent controversial statements, so today we present him with the honor for a few choice words that have nothing to do with the United States government. Volkswagen has been sniffing around Fiat’s Alfa-Romeo brand for some time, as Herr Piech reportedly has the hots for the Italian brand. VW CEO Martin Winterkorn even said recently that
Alfa’s a beautiful brand but there are quality issues with the engines and suspension systems for example. I’m quite sure we could make a beautiful brand out of Alfa again.
For a while it looked like Fiat might be playing along with the interest, but recently Marchionne shot down talk of selling Alfa to VW. And he did so with the kind of acid-edged verbal shanking that makes TTAC smile and nod approvingly, saying
As long as I am CEO of Chrysler and Fiat, Mr [Ferdinand] Piech will never have Alfa Romeo. It’s hands-off. I told him. I will call him and I will email him. I’m not the one who bought Seat. He’s the one who bought it. I don’t know if he can [fix it], but he needs to try.
What do you do when a much larger firm comes sniffing around your prized (if troubled) brand? Kick them right in their own struggling brand, and in this case, Marchionne went straight for VW’s “Spanish Pontiac.” The jury is still very much out on Fiat’s grand Chrysler alliance experiment, but if it fails, it won’t be because Sergio Marchionne was scared of a fight.The guy’s talent for confrontation couldn’t be more obvious.
You want the good news or the bad news first? OK, the good news is that Fiat/Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne told attendees at NADA’s annual convention that Fiat and Chrysler “may” be merged into a single company, possibly headquartered in the US. Which means the federal bailout may not have simply been a transfer of the firm to Italian ownership, news that many taxpayers likely find at least a little bit comforting. Now, about that bad news… while saying that he planned to “work his [rear end] off” to pay back taxpayers, Marchionne let slip a bit of the resentment he clearly feels at government ownership of Chrysler, saying
I am paying shyster rates. We had no choice… I am going to pay the shyster loans.
Jalopnik does a good job of covering the roots and associations of Marchionne’s choice of words (and clearly he could have chosen better), but we’re mostly irked by the victim complex embraced by executives of the bailed-out automakers, especially in Marchionne’s case. The Fiat CEO was given 15 percent in Chrysler for no cash down, and will be able to take control of the automaker for a tiny fraction of its actual value. All this was possible only because the government guided Chrysler through bankruptcy, crammed down its bondholders, demanded union concessions and injected tens of billions into the company… and now Marchionne wants to employ slurs to complain about the fact that some of that money must be paid back?
These comments cloak Marchionne in the gravitas and respectability of someone who believes he should be able to receive unemployment benefits without actually looking for a job. Especially considering that only yesterday Marchionne was slamming GM for turning down DOE loans, saying
I have neither the arrogance nor the cash to show any disdain toward the DOE process. It would be wiser to Chrysler to continue to try to secure that funding.
Given that public support for the bailout is still quite low, Marchionne’s comments could hardly have been more poorly chosen.
“Honda Reports First Profit Drop In Five Quarters”
Headline of a story about Honda’s October-December results, published in The Nikkei [sub].
And then, there is: Read More >
“First smart ED Delivered in America.” Read More >
Once again, the UAW-Transplant battle has produced the most memorable auto-related quote today, as union boss Bob King tells Reuters
If we don’t organize the transnationals, I don’t think there is a long-term future for the UAW
The stakes in the UAW’s crusade were already high, but with this latest gem, King confirms that that it’s all or nothing. Which is an interesting way to frame a campaign that even the objective reporters at Reuters are forced to conclude is something of a fool’s errand. After all, it’s not as if the UAW hasn’t tried to organize transplant factories before, and they have yet to come close to succeeding. But with the rhetoric turned up to “11,” the UAW is on a one-way trip to destiny… and King’s best last-minute pitch to the defiant transplants is
We want to be on the cutting edge of labor relations. That is the opportunity for all these companies.
A tempting idea, to be sure, but now that King has informed the world that the union’s alternative to success is death, the transplants have more incentive than ever to say “thanks, but no thanks.” And it’s already starting. Is this the beginning of the end of the United Auto Workers?
Recent Comments