Automobilwoche [sub] has it on good authority (Mini chief Wolfgang Armbrecht) that BMW plans a minier than Mini car. They want to show a prototype at the Detroit Auto Show next year. They probably can bring it as carry-on. (Read More…)

China’s BYD needs good news real bad. The Chinese market for EVs is … what Chinese market for EVs? And wasn’t their E6 coming to the U.S.? Whatever happened to that? That’s what we get from investors brought to California by the Governator. Oh well, Jerry Brown instead. In the meantime (as in “mean”), Nissan delivers its first real Leaf to California man. BYD will sink into irrelevance, unless they come up with something, fast.

Suddenly, they have a swell idea. Something way bigger than cars. (Read More…)

Having been cut off the lucrative (and in the end deadly) derivatives business, Porsche looks for other sidelines. And it seems very much like they have found one: Consulting.

“Just as car enthusiasts envy Porsche drivers,” reports Automotive News [sub] “company executives salivate over the carmaker’s profit margins, the highest in the industry.” Said salivation generates juicy business at Porsche. (Read More…)

While I was working for the German auto industry (and that wasn’t that long ago), I used to call it the last outpost of unabashed male chauvinism. From dealers (where female customers are treated with disdain) to the boardroom (where women serve coffee), the business remains a man’s world. BMW wants to do something about it. Come on, BMW? (Read More…)

The car industry is looking with envy and trepidation at the biggest bottom fisher in their market: AutoZone. Last week, AutoZone posted a 20 percent jump in quarterly earnings. And don’t look at their chart. You’d wish you would have bought AutoZone instead of the auto. But it’s not the financial results that has the industry worried. Everybody who knows the industry knows that the money is in fixing cars. The average expense per car for repair and maintenance is $1,200 per year, and if you multiply that with the 250 million cars and trucks on the street in the U.S., you’ve got yourself a nice $300 billion business. No, the industry is worried about why AutoZone suddenly is doing so well: America is in love with more mature models. (Read More…)

Last year in October, I predicted that China would overtake the U.S. in car sales in 2009. The comments could not haven been more uncomplimentary. By the end of 2009, China did beat the U.S. 13.6 to 10.4.

A while ago, I cautiously predicted that this year, China would break the U.S. all time record from the year 2000. The comments were far less incredulous this time around, the discussion instead turned into the tired fascist elephants against communist donkeys discourse. Now it is official what the attentive TTAC reader has known all along: China will break the current record of 17.4 million units from 2000 in the U.S. (Read More…)

Uh-oh. Septuagenarian Ferdinand Piech is expressing youthful impatience with octogenarian Osamo Suzuki. Volkswagen’s Chairman of the board “is reportedly irked at the slow progress of his firm’s alliance with Suzuki,” says The Nikkei [sub]. The reason? “A year after Suzuki and Volkswagen agreed on a capital and business tie-up, the track record of their partnership remains devoid of significant accomplishment.” (Read More…)

Audi will be developing all future larger SUVs offered by the many Volkswagen brands: The Porsche Cayenne, the Volkswagen Touareg, the Audi Q7 and whatever other larger 4x4s the other brands might offer (fat chance.) Audi was just handed the “Entwicklungshoheit” (design supremacy) for the brutes. Heretofore, they were designed by Porsche.  Don’t cry Porsche, they received another job as a trade. (Read More…)

Equal time: While Prez. Obama test-sat the Volt’s European sibling, the Ampera, in Lisbon, Nissan had its own celebrity test driver for the Leaf EV. “John Roos, U.S. ambassador to Japan, test-drove Nissan’s “Leaf” electric vehicle in Yokohama one afternoon in mid-November, just before the APEC summit got under way,” reports The Nikkei [sub]. Then the Ambassador deeply inserted his foot in his mouth. He said he was particularly intrigued by the way the Leaf was able to charge its battery with solar power, a feat he saw at a “smart-city” exhibition sponsored by the Yokohama city government. Roos then asked officials running the demonstration whether the technology could help reduce oil dependence in Hawaii. Oops, wrong question. (Read More…)

Passenger car sales in China jumped 29.3 in November as people rushed to lock in incentives set to expire at the end of the year. Demand will most likely be even stronger in December. In November, the end of the incentives was just a rumor. A few days ago, the end of government handouts became official, and  dealers already ran out of cars. (Read More…)

Tesla sometimes has been mocked as a bunch of hackers that simply wire-up a load of laptop batteries, whereas other serious and professional carmakers are looking into serious and professional batteries to power their future EVs. If egmcartech is not mistaken, then some of the serious and professional carmakers just had a sudden change of heart. (Read More…)

Domestic car sales in India rose 21 percent from a year earlier in November. India is no China yet. But as its per capita GDP has crossed the magical $1000, car sales are waking up with a vengeance. This is one rule I learned in this business, and it never fails. China has more than three times the per capita GDP of India, and you know what kind of a run that caused. (Read More…)

You-know-what-eating grins in Munich: BMW outsold rivals Audi and Mercedes-Benz around the world last month on strong sales of the new 5er and the new X1 SUV. (Read More…)

The bailout of GM and Chrysler was nothing compared to the giant TARP thrown to bankers and brokerages, or so the argument goes. A panel of constitutional experts, convened at a Stanford Law School conference about the constitution and bailouts, has a totally different opinion: Bank rescue o.k., car rescue not o.k. (Read More…)

Even the Detroit News, by some regarded as an extension of the Big 3 PR departments, can’t help but ask: “Are Detroit’s new automakers falling back into old habits?”

New automakers? Old habits?

Well, it sure looks like the Big 3 have drastically ramped-up production. Production of good numbers, that is. Especially one of them has been very busy in that department: GM. The General currently has a 95 day supply of cars sitting on dealer lots, up from 76 days in August.

The industry average stands at 67 days, says a Citi Investment Research report. A two month supply is considered normal. What’s more, carmakers are supposed to switch from rich to lean at this time of the year: “With December production poised for a typical seasonal slowdown, inventory should end the year around the 60-day norm,” Citi analyst Itay Michaeli wrote in his report.

GM’s answer? (Read More…)