[Graph courtesy:opensecrets.org]

Newly freed from the government’s controlling interest, GM is turning the tables back on the government by accelerating its lobbying efforts some 83 percent in the third quarter of this year. GM spent $2.72m on lobbying in the second quarter of this year, and $2.49m in the third quarter, a massive increase over the $1.36m GM spent in the third quarter of last year (Chrysler spent $846k last quarter). Bloomberg reports

The Detroit automaker had nine registered lobbyists speaking with federal agencies and Congress on free trade agreements, distracted driver legislation, tax credits for electric vehicles, pension legislation, climate change bills [as well as] Wall Street reform; fuel economy regulations; U.S.-Asia trade; pending free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama; funding for renewable fuel research; defense spending; emergency response privacy regulation; event data recorders; pedestrian safety and other issues

But let’s be real about something: some of these issues are just a little more important than others….

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The recent “Carpocalypse” has not been kind to automotive engineers, as automakers cut back on Research and Development and fired white collar workers with abandon. Now, with sales regaining some momentum, OEMs and suppliers are hiring engineers again… and they’re having to work to make the hires. The supplier Ricardo recently had to take out billboards and radio ads in order to hire qualified automotive engineers… and this in a state with 12.8% unemployment. CEO Kent Niederhoffer tells Bloomberg

We’re all playing in the same sandbox, competing for some of the same talent. It isn’t as simple as throwing a shingle out there and saying ‘Job Opening.’ Attracting this kind of talent has gotten absolutely tougher and we’re trying to raise our head above the crowd.

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When you think of cars and Saudi Arabia, you’d be forgiven for thinking of incredibly expensive European cars, typically modified in a particularly distasteful fashion by one of the more crass tuning houses. And indeed, the first Saudi-designed vehicle was a fairly garish SUV known as the Ghazal. But the second-ever Saudi-developed vehicle is actually a very modest, entry-level compact car, known as the Aseela (“Original” in Arabic). This strange little vehicle was developed by the King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology’s National Program for Automobile Technology, and debuted this week at the Riyad Auto Show. According to themedialine.com

officials said it was to serve as the basis for a domestic auto manufacturing industry that Saudi Arabia is trying to develop

Yes Virginia, Saudi Arabia is trying to develop an auto manufacturing industry. Well, sort of. According to the report, the Saudis plan on building a $16m production line which will build between 2,000 and 5,000 of the $13,000 Aseelas per year… which makes this more of a “hobby project” than a true “industry.” By contrast, the plan is to build 20k of the ghastly Ghazals over the next three years, at a cost of about half a billion dollars. But then, Saudi Arabia might be one of the few countries where an ugly SUV would fare better than an inoffensive little compact.

TTAC has been keeping an eye on China’s near-monopoly on the rare earth compounds required to build hybrid and electric cars for some time now, and we’ve seen the materials become an increasingly controversial issue, culminating in this year’s diplomatic tiff between China and Japan. But, as Bertel has pointed out,

That the Chinese have a stranglehold on rare earth is not because they are the only ones who are are sitting on it. It’s due to laziness and lack of money.

Now, Toyota Tsusho (a partially-owned subsidiary of Toyota Motor Company), has announced plans to stop being lazy and spend money on a rare earth materials plant in the Indian state of Orissa. Tsusho says the factory should come online in 2012, and should produce 3,000-4,000 metric tons of the magnet-hardening materials. Meanwhile, Japanese firms aren’t limiting their search for rare earth materials to India. Bloomberg notes

The shortage in rare earths has brought delegations from Canada, Mongolia and Bolivia to Japan in the past two weeks as these countries promote themselves as alternative sources to China.

Though the US auto market is up 11 percent this year, Honda’s sales are up only 3.6 percent compared to last year’s weak performance. That means the Motor Company isn’t even keeping up with the growth rates of such maligned brands as Lincoln (+7.4%), Chrysler (+16%) and Mazda (+9.8%). But Team Honda isn’t sweating the details. After all, the Civic and CR-V are nearing the end of their model cycles, while the Accord is a year and a half from its replacement. And, as Honda USA’s Executive VP John Mendel tells Automotive News [sub], at Honda

The debate over Detroit’s bailout was dominated by a narrative that portrayed the automakers as victims of Wall Street excess, and placed blame for their collapse on the frozen credit market. And though the credit crunch certainly hurt GM and Chrysler as well as their customers, Detroit was a victim of the credit crunch in the same way an addict is a victim of his dealer. By leveraging easy credit to fuel the SUV boom which covered for unprofitability in passenger cars (or didn’t, as the case may be), Detroit binged on zero-percent financing as the market road confidently to 16m annual sales. And then, finally, the music stopped and the Domestics crumpled, victims of their own greed, but with a convenient scapegoat in the hated Wall Street bankers. But if the bailout was intended to not only get GM and Chrysler back on their feet but also to prevent future collapses, there’s some troubling news in the offing: subprime auto lending is starting to roar back, and if it goes unchecked, it could reach pre-recession levels in short order…

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If you love data almost as much as you love cars, you’re in for a real treat. The EPA has issued a report [PDF here] on the last 35 years of light-duty vehicle efficiency trends, and it’s jam-packed full of fun graphs detailing the evolution of America’s car market. For example, the fuel-efficiency record of the major US-market players is laid bare in one particularly compelling collection of graphs (above). More detail on by-manufacturer efficiency over the last three years can be found here. Other fun graphs: production breakdowns by vehicle size and type, a comparison of performance and efficiency by vehicle type, and a distribution of vehicles by weight for 1975, 1988 and 2010 (weights dropped from ’75 to ’88, and are now back to nearly 1975  levels). You can also check out production share by weight to find out that the sub-2,750 lb died sometime after the year 2000. You can even see the breakdown of FWD-RWD-AWD  by vehicle type and pinpoint the moment that Subaru started making an impact on the market. All told, it’s an automotive data-gasm that will leave you a lot better informed about the state of the US market. And the perfect opportunity to make sweeping generalizations about the American car market. Enjoy!

Initial stock offerings, bankruptcies, brands being shuttered, established manufacturers being taken over by other concerns, financial crises – a time of turmoil in the auto industry. The time I’m describing is not just the present, it could well describe just about any period in automotive history. With the possible exception of the 1960s, when the Big 3 consolidated market share gained after the independent automakers were reduced to American Motors, there really never has been a long period of stability in the domestic auto industry. Even in the 1960s, Chrysler Corp. stumbled badly.

About a month ago Wayne State University Press, one of the leading publishers of automotive history books, sent me a box full of their recent titles, most of which concern the earliest days of the American auto industry: David Buick’s Marvelous Motor Car by Lawrence Gustin, Maxwell Motor and the Making of the Chrysler Corporation by Anthony J. Yanik, The Dodge Brothers: The Men, the Motor Cars, and the Legacy by Charles K. Hyde, and Hyde’s latest book, Storied Independent Automakers: Nash, Hudson, and American Motors.

While reading up on early American automotive history and I couldn’t help being struck by a sense of the more things change, the more they stay the same.

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If you read one thing today, read “Ghosts Of The Old GM” by Paul Clemens in today’s NY Times. At a time of increasing triumphalism over the “success” of the Auto Bailout, Clemens unflinchingly reminds us of the terrible price we’ve paid to bring America’s auto industry back to halting life. From deserted plants, to the world of “surplus industry service providers” (yes, taking apart industry is an industry), Clemens chases down the the truth with tenacity:

For General Motors, divided into its “Old” and “New” halves, there’s an inescapable paradox: the only possible route to future profitability is to create, through plant closings, monuments to past unprofitability. Old G.M. may have gone away for the purposes of the stock offering, but it didn’t go away in what might rightfully be called actuality.

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As the global auto industry becomes ever more competitive, the pressure to deliver a high volume of products and sales per platform is driving companies to develop mega-platforms that underpin millions of global sales units. And sorry folks, but mass market cars aren’t going to become less homogeneous any time soon… in fact PriceWaterhouseCooper’s Anthony Pratt took a look into his magic crystal ball recently, and he forecasts that in just over five years, a mere ten platforms will account for over 27 million units of global sales volume. It’s just the next step on the way to the ultimate dystopia: a world in which every new car in the world is identical under the skin. Spooky! Hit the jump for more details on the (projected) top ten platforms of 2016.

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South Korea is a small country. With 48.6 million people crammed into an area roughly the size of Indiana, South Korea has one of the world’s highest population densities. It also has an amazing auto industry.  Like Germany in the 50s, and Japan in the 60s, Korea was the laughing stock of the 80s. That arrogant grin has frozen.  South Korea is a feared competitor the world over. Let’s have a look at the feisty little runt. (Read More…)

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.

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 news reports filtering in about an industry-mounted offensives against the Motor Vehicle Safety Act and proposed increases to CAFE standards, we thought we’d take a look at how much the industry spent in the recent midterm election cycle. According to Opensecrets.org, the chart above shows the biggest spenders in “Automotive,” and industry sector that includes OEMs, suppliers, rental companies and just about anything else related to four-wheeled motorized transport. Charged up by the bailout-era dealer cull, it’s not surprising that NADA took the top spot, and with a hotly-contested Korea free trade agreement under negotiation, the AFIT PAC is a logical number two. But Enterprise beating out Ford? Didn’t see that one coming. Still, the contributor breakdown for the “Auto Manufacturer” sector is even more interesting…

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California EV maker Tesla has reported its Q3 results, and they’re a sizable helping of not great. But before we dive into the messy reality, let’s check in with CEO Elon Musk for an unreasonably rosy take on the loss:

We are very pleased to report steady top-line growth and significant growth in gross margin, driven by the continued improvement in Roadster orders and our growing powertrain business. Roadster orders in this quarter hit a new high since the third quarter of 2008, having increased over 15% from last quarter. While some of this is due to seasonal effects associated with selling a convertible during the summer months, we are pleased with the global expansion of the Roadster business and the continued validation of Tesla’s technology leadership position evidenced by our new and expanding strategic relationships

Translation: Toyota is investing in us… now get out of here with your awkward questions. Unfortunately for Mr Musk, it isn’t quite that simple…
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