Western media widely reported (and still reports) that the Chinese government will only allow Chinese cars to be bought by its functionaries.

Not so. The rule exists in draft form only,and has been published to elicit public feedback.However, in a disturbing development, China Daily reports that “nearly 90 percent of respondents in a survey are in favor of China’s domestic independent-brand automobiles for governmental use.” It’s not that 90 percent said so. It’s the ominous fact that it is being published in a government-owned paper.

If the survey is correct, then Chinese citizens want to look down on the car choices of their rulers. The Chinese themselves are widely in favor of foreign cars. 70 percent of all cars bought in China are foreign branded. The appetite for foreign branded cars remains high,as the following tables show. (Read More…)

For quite some time, Fiat-Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne has been busy lamenting the dreadful overcapacity in the European auto industry.  He’s doing I so much that slowly, people begin thinking that Marchionne is honestly concerned. “If I would be in his shoes, I would be concerned too,” said an audibly unconcerned European auto exec, who requested anonymity. My friend thinks that when Marchionne talks about the European car industry, he is talking about Fiat.

Now, Marchionne has a plan how to fix the chronic overcapacity at Fiat in Europe. (Read More…)

From London’s Telegraph to Fox News, from Autoblog to Autoguide, the story this week is that the Chinese will turn against foreign carmakers by mandating that the Chinese government only buys Chinese cars. Why was TTAC not writing it? I learned to ignore that story. I have lived in China since 2005, and just about every year, there was an announcement that the Chinese government will from now on only buy Chinese. It never happened. Despite the annual announcements, foreign brands still account for 80 percent of the Chinese government motor pool. But maybe it’s different this time? (Read More…)

Today’s a big day for beleaguered automaker Fisker. The company announced that former Chrysler CEO Tom Lasorda would be joining the company as its new CEO, after joining Fisker’s board in December.

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Editor’s note: While our erstwhile Editor-in-Chief, Edward Niedermeyer, is on sabbatical, he will continue to weigh in on automotive issues in a (hopefully) weekly column entitled Blind Spot. This is the first installment.

Back in 2008, as the worlds of automobiles and politics headed towards a dramatic collision, the founder of this site and I had a series of conversations about political perspectives on automobiles. Though these conversations were wide-ranging, I kept coming back to the same conclusion: for all of the talk about guns as “tools of freedom,” it seemed to me that cars were even more worthy of the title. After all, most people use an automobile in the pursuit of freedom and mobility every day, whereas guns are (relatively) rarely used to secure individual rights.

But embracing the car’s role as a tool of freedom raises a number of troubling questions, most of them inherent to the very cause of liberty. Though cars make us more free as individuals, we must recognize that it comes at the cost of (among other things) dependence on gasoline, an “addiction” that many now seek freedom from. As new energy sources and mobility concepts become available, citizens will have to navigate a complex thicket of issues as they seek to maximize the freedom that personal mobility offers.

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Florida Congressman Allen West is blaming President Barack Obama for paying $70 every time he wants to fill up his Hummer H3. Not surprisingly, media outlets, as well as commenters on West’s Facebook page, are up in arms.

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Days after Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney penned an op-ed in the Detroit News over his thoughts on the bailout, UAW President Bob King is firing back.

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Chrysler alerted the Securities and Exchange Commission that they’d be withdrawing their request for as much as $3.5 billion in loans. The money was to be used for the development of unspecified “green” vehicles.

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Citing New York’s leadership in banning hand-held cell phone use in cars, NTSB Vice Chairman Christopher Hart urged the Empire State to become the first to ban all use of personal electronic devices while driving. Though careful to call it a state issue, Hart did hint that state compliance with forthcoming NTSB recommendations could be tied to federal highway funds (he has separately called for a national ban).

And indeed, New York’s legislators seemed to see the issue of distraction as an issue for federal action (but then, why not make the feds pay for it?). At the same time, everyone understands that the problem is near-ubiquitous and any full ban on personal device use in cars would be near-impossible to enforce (short of Assemblyman McDonough’s suggestion that automakers equip cars with cell-phone signal blockers)… which raises huge questions about federal-level action.
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David Mulroney, Canada’s ambassador to China, was mocked on a Chinese social networking site for committing a major social faux pas – according to commenters on Weibo, a Chinese social networking site, Mulroney’s Toyota Camry, his official car, lacked sufficient prestige for a man of his station.

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Ford’s Australia branch is getting $34 million AUD (roughly $35 million U.S. dollars) plus an unspecified contribution from the government of Victoria (an Australian state), to sustain a Ford plant in Melbourne.  Total investment is said to be roughly $105 million USD. Holden, GM’s Australian division, is looking for some government funds too, and its raising questions about the viability of Australia’s domestic car industry.

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After spending thirty years and $45 billion dollars encouraging the use of ethanol the United States Congress has adjourned for the year without extending tax subsidies to the to ethanol industry. The subsidy currently costs taxpayers $6 billion a year. A related import tariff on Brazilian ethanol was also allowed to expire. With a wide group of critics, cutting across political and ideological lines, the tax break had become unpopular in Washington. Business interests in the food and cattle industry as well as environmentalists opposed the law which paid 45 cents per gallon to fuel blenders to subsidize their costs for producing E10 gasoline/ethanol blend. The subsidy resulting in corn being diverted from feedlots and food processors to ethanol production, raising the cost of many foodstuffs. The environmental movement now opposes corn ethanol as a fuel it because it considers the fuel and its production to be “dirty”, in the words of Friends of the Earth.

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Cops in Ohio may not rip a motorist out of his vehicle to “check on his welfare.” The state court of appeals handed down a decision earlier this month in a case involving a man parked on the side of the road in a quiet Columbus residential neighborhood who was “helped” out of his car with physical force.

Al E. Forrest sat in the driver’s seat of a 2003 Ford Explorer with another man in the passenger seat as two police officers came up on either side of the vehicle. According to Officer Kevin George’s testimony, he just wanted to see if the Explorer driver was okay. The officers had no suspicion of any criminal activity prior to approaching the Explorer. When George poked his head into the driver’s window, Forrest looked surprised to see a cop staring at him through the window. George said this was a sign of “nervousness.” When George saw money in Forrest’s left hand, he ordered the man out of the SUV. This was the beginning of the legal problem for the Columbus officer.

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A pair of senior police officers in Brindisi, Italy were arrested Tuesday in a speed camera bribery scheme. The owner of a BMW X6 blew the whistle on officers Giuseppe Manca and Antonio Briganti after a speed camera accused him of driving 160km/h (99 MPH) on state route 16, where the limit is 110km/h (68 MPH).

The driver faced a fine of between 500 to 2000 euros (US $650 to $2615) plus license points. The officers offered to make the conviction disappear for payment of 250 euros (US $327) in cash. The officers were able to erase the conviction from the speed camera logs to prevent detection of their tactics.

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Reasonable minds can disagree about the wisdom of the auto bailout, but according to analysis by the EPA and Department of Transportation (based on data from the Department of Energy and auto forecasters CSM), the Government’s rescue of GM and Chrysler may not have been the best idea (at least from a market perspective). According to data buried in the EPA/DOT proposed rule for 2017-2025 fuel economy standards [PDF here], Fiat-Chrysler is predicted to be the sick man of the auto industry by 2025, losing over half of its 2008 sales volume, while GM is expected to improve by only 3%, the second-worst projected performance (after Aston-Martin). In terms of percentages, even lowly Suzuki and Mitsubishi are projected to grow faster than The Mighty General. Ouch.

On the other hand, the proposed rule notes that data will be finalized before the final rule comes out. Besides, the agencies appropriately admit (in as many words) that projecting auto sales so far into the future is one hell of a crapshoot. Still, with the obvious exception of “Saab-Spyker” and with some skepticism about the projection’s optimism about overall market growth aside, these are not the craziest guesses I could imagine. Who knows what the future holds, but it certainly is a bit troubling that the government’s own data suggests the two automakers it bailed out may well have some of the weaker performances of the next 14 years. At least the Treasury could have sold off their remaining GM stock before this report was released…