“Exterior vehicle parts that have been replaced with plastic materials include front-end modules, beams and brackets, trunk lids, deck lids, body panels and floor panels. More plastics are being used in air-bag containers, pedals and seat components. Plastics are applied to the powertrain in the air inlet manifolds, air ducts and resonators, chain tensioners and belt pulleys, oil pans and sumps, cylinder head covers, and mechanical torsion damper components. Some gears and pump components are also becoming more plastic-friendly.”
From “Plastics outperform metal in automotive applications,” ICIS.com
“On my drive home yesterday, an advertisement over my car radio told me how much the Cancer Society needed old cars donated to help them fight cancer. Then I remembered watching the Youtube video where cars were turned in for the government program called “Cash for Clunkers.” Read More >
“Hyundai Motor Co. and its affiliate Kia Motors Corp. sold a combined 1.1 million vehicles in China last year, becoming the second largest auto seller in Asia’s biggest car market, the companies said yesterday.”
This today in the Korea JoongAng Daily, and in case you’ve never heard of them, they are an associate of the Herald Tribune. Now why should this be a slap in the face of GM? Read More >
“You have about 5 percent of the market that is green and committed to fuel efficiency,” said Mike Jackson, the chief executive of AutoNation, the largest auto retailer in the country. “But the other 95 percent will give up an extra 5 mpg in fuel economy for a better cup holder.”
GM’s famed Willow Run plant closed for good at the close of business yesterday, reports Automotive News [sub], and will revert to a Motors Liquidation trust unless it finds a buyer in the next week. To memorialize the closing of one of Michigan’s most iconic assembly plants, and a symbol of the “Arsenal of Democracy” we present the following passage from Michael Elliott’s book “The Day Before Yesterday” [via Time]:
Did unions, management, civic leaders and just about everyone else in Michigan mismanage the postwar years? Of course. But the real point about Detroit is not that it fell so far, but that it once rose so high. Its economic success during World War II and the immediate aftermath was a freak of geopolitics. With most of the rest of the world (including some regions that were as technologically advanced as Michigan) consumed by war, only the U.S. and Canada were able to develop the high-tech industries of scale that were needed to fight the Axis powers. So successful were those North American industries in developing a mass middle-class standard of living that three generations of Americans were seduced into assuming that the prosperity of Detroit’s golden age was normal and how America should be. It was nothing of the sort. It was an accident of world war, and the sooner we recognize its transitory, contingent nature, the shorter will be our mourning for its passing.
Now that Bob Lutz is lounging on the beach and catching early-bird specials (between Lotus board meetings and GM dog-and-pony shows), it’s good to know that there are still a few good men left to sprinkle The Detroit News with a few double-take-inspiring quotes. Jim Hall of 2953 Analytics is a reliable source of controversial gems, and thanks to one particularly context-free quotation, he’s provided the perfect place to kick off an age-old debate: Vette or Viper. But Hall wasn’t talking about either car’s performance, instead forwarding the thesis that:
Dodge used the Viper better as a halo vehicle for the brand than Chevy ever did with the Corvette
Which is an interesting assertion indeed, given that the ‘vette is bathed in pedigree and sells 10k-30k more units each year. And though the Viper makes sense as a halo for the Ram pickup line, Dodge’s second-best-seller is the Caravan… and the Viper helps minivan sales how exactly? But the debate doesn’t end there…
It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first generation ethanol. First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small… One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president
Al Gore reveals [via MSNBC] that politics, not science, made an ethanol believer out of him. More than anything else, the admission underlines how badly ethanol can lose the war of ideas and still be heavily subsidized without fear of political attack. After all, what Presidential hopeful (read:every member of Congress) wants to shut down the biggest pork trough in Iowa, a state that just happens to be the first primary of the race for the White House? Heck, Al Gore probably had to lose his favorite weedwhacker to ethanol gum before he came out against the stuff. But just because your representative won’t vote against ethanol, doesn’t mean you can’t… surf over to pure-gas.org for a list of ethanol-free gas pumps near you.
You have to imagine that plenty of Lamborghini Gallardo owners have been hauled in front their local magistrate for daring to allow their Italian stallion to stretch its legs… but surely none of them were ever treated as well as Leone Antonino Magistro of Perth, Australia.
We don’t yet have understanding and expertise when it comes to mass production or even limited mass production. There is so much to learn, I don’t know quite where to start.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has finally figured out that making lots of cars is a tough business to get into. Humbling himself before Toyota and Automotive News [sub] Musk presented Akio Toyoda with a red Roadster 2.5, and admitted he needed help. And why not? It isn’t hard to see that without Toyota, all of Musk’s future plans (20k Model S units per year by 2013… then 200k annual production for the company’s next model) are as good as vapor. Which is funny, because Musk hasn’t always been quite this humble. In fact, at the height of the Auto Bailout, Musk told Wired
When the mess gets sorted out, I’d like to have a conversation with whoever’s in charge at the time — the car czar or whoever — and say “I’d like to run your plants, if you don’t mind”
With Ford’s Ranger scheduled to expire sometime in 2011, Ford’s Derrick Kuzak spends most of a recent interview with Pickuptrucks.com proclaiming the death of the American compact pickup market. But after trotting out the numbers, and talking up the F-150 Ecoboost, Kuzak finally gets to the real reason Ford won’t be selling the new Ranger in the US market.
The new Ranger is 90 percent of the size of an F-150. In the rest of the world, compact trucks have grown over time. They’ve become dual-use [vehicles for work and family] and they’ve increased cab size, payload and towing.
This is a company that could not tell you, on any given day, within five hundred million dollars, how much cash it had… not only were they not prepared, but Rick Wagoner had very specifically said he didn’t want to prepare… frankly, it’s an irresponsible position [for a CEO to take].
What do you do when you’ve overseen a divisive bailout and an investment scandal all within the last year? Writing a book goes without saying, but it doesn’t hurt to bash on the executives you ousted while “Overhauling” the industry. That way, people who were (ahem) bearish on GM leading up to the bailout can at least be vindicated in their pessimism (and have the pleasure of imagining what might of happened if Ron Gettelfinger had been fired as Wagoner’s sacrificial lamb). In any case, that’s just what former auto bailout czar Steve Rattner has done in an interview with CBS News, and despite Rattner’s relentless striving to appear respectable and brave, it’s worth a watch. Especially in hindsight, pre-bankruptcy GM makes even Rattner look good.
We expect to be in profit in the market by 2013… I’m sure those statements were based on some sound analysis.
Volkswagen’s new US boss Jonathan Browning gives his company’s forecast of its future performance (which previously elicited TTAC’s coveted “flying pigs illustration award”)… before totally blowing his credibility by admitting he knows nothing about the matter [via MSNBC]. In front of the National Press Club, no less. Then, for good measure, the former GM and Ford man added
Not many people of my generation don’t have fond memories of the VW Beetle and the VW Microbus.
Which is not unlike saying that not many Americans don’t fail to remember whether Volkswagen has produced cars that may or may not have come up short of not failing in the marketplace. The irony of all this: English is Browning’s first language. The big lesson: German execs are far more endearing when they come across as out-of-touch and incomprehensible.
We are sorry you were inconvenienced and had to worry about where your car was parked while you covered the signing. The UAW member you encountered in the UAW Local 249 parking lot meant no personal disrespect to you. Accomodating [sic] vehicles not made by UAW brothers and sisters is a passionate subject for our members.
He and UAW members across the country know that foreign automakers that allow workers to freely join unions in their home countries while denying that same right to U.S. workers are denying the First Amendment right of American workers to freely organize. Yet foreign automakers accept U.S. taxpayers’ dollars in incentives to build assembly plants, jeopardizing the future of middle-class workers in the domestic auto industry.
UAW Boss Bob King half-apologizes to Kansas City Business Journal reporter James Dornbrook, who was forced to remove his American-built Toyota Camry from the parking lot of UAW Local 249 in Kansas City while reporting a story there. The DetNews notes that King’s predecessor Ron Gettelfinger had loosened the UAW’s long-standing ban on non-UAW-made cars in its parking lots five years ago, when he allowed Marine Corps reservists who report to a nearby office park at UAW headquarters. But King is on a mission to reconnect the UAW with its old-time religion, and his letter proceeds to lecture Dornbrook on the standard talking points concerning the anti-middle-class evils of non-union transplant factories, and the general sanctity of all things UAW-approved.
King’s letter is a tedious read, but it’s proof that self-righteousness trumps self-preservation at the UAW, even when it comes to something as (relatively) easy to control as press relations. Reporters may not be quite as popular as Marines, but they have immense influence over public perception of the UAW (which, incidentally, is not in great shape just now). Kicking one off UAW property because he drives a non-union, American-built car and then lecturing him with UAW dogma is just plain stupid.
The core consumers would be interested in technology and kind of early adopters
Coda Automotive senior VP for sales and distribution Mike Jackson (yes, the former GM marketing whiz) describes the market for his firm’s forthcoming electric car. So what is Jackson’s “kind-of-early-adopter” Californian consumer looking to get out of the Coda? A redesigned Mitsubishi platform, built and bodied in China for one thing. Chinese lithium-ion batteries delivering “90-120” miles of range, and guaranteed for eight years or 100k miles (3 years, or 36k miles for everything else) for another. 134 HP and 221 lb-ft, good for a top speed of 80 MPH. An 8-inch navigation screen with real-time traffic updates. And for you, they’ll throw in 17-inch alloy wheels. But the Coda EV’s most striking feature (at least in terms of appealing to tech-oriented Californians) is best summed up in the measured prose of AutoWeek
It has fairly bland, universal styling and is roughly the size of a Chevrolet Cobalt.
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