January 2009
See the Whole Parade: 77 EVs and Plug-In Hybrids in Santa Monica March
By John O'Dell January 30, 2009We told you about the "Inaugural EV Parade West" event held Jan. 17 to demonstrate to incoming President Barack Obama and his energy and automotive policy teams that electric vehicles are real, not experimental pipe dreams. Now the organizer, Plug In America, and videographer Stefano Paris have made available a 38-minute video of the entire event. So if you want to see the historic march through Santa Monica earlier this month of one of the largest assemblies ever of electric vehicles, click here (most of the first 30 minutes is of pre-parade is speeches by EV enthusiasts including movie more
Few Auto Ads Air on Super Bowl
By Michelle Krebs January 30, 2009By Michelle Krebs Super Bowl audiences will see a dearth of car ads during Sunday's big game, and they will see none from Detroit's ailing automakers. Only Audi and Hyundai, back for the second year as they seek to increase market share in the game, and Toyota will advertise during the game. The cost of the ads, which hit the $3-million mark for a 30-second spot (of which there will be nearly 50) this year, is significant barriers to entry for automakers with auto sales slumping to their lowest levels since the early 1980s and most companies struggling to turn more
'What Auto Industry Collapse?' Electric-Drive Maker UQM Asks As Sales Soar
By John O'Dell January 30, 2009Company's Strong Year-End Showing Portends Significant Growth For EVs and Hybrids By John O'Dell, Senior Editor The mainstream auto industry is, well, sucking wind. But at least one company in the advanced powerplant industry says it is doing pretty well, thank you. As automakers big and little, and truck makers with incredibly fuel-conscious customers strive to boost their vehicles' fuel economy and move away from dependence on conventional internal combustion engines, electric propulsion system maker UQM Technologies has announced a 68 percent hike in its third-quarter revenue. The company, which started life in the late 1960s as a manufacturer of more
COMMENTARY Behind the Headlines: News and Maneuvers Get Weirder
By Michelle Krebs January 29, 2009By Bill Visnic The auto industry seemed to have reached agreement earlier this month to hunker down and allow the geared-down Detroit auto show to flicker on without anything as distracting as news to interfere. That all changed this week, as it seems everyone's talking, dealing, reporting, conjecturing and speculating. Plenty of this news is explicitly bizarre. A rundown of some of this week's happenings, along with the between-the-lines summary courtesy of AutoObserver's branded decoder ring: more
Tesla Modifying Ambitious Factory Plans As Competition for Federal $$ Grows
By John O'Dell January 29, 2009By John O'Dell, Senior Editor Tesla Motors' hopes for a $400 million-plus headquarters, electric-car assembly and battery manufacturing complex in the heart of California's Silicon Valley seem to fading. The company, which first floated the idea in September, when it thought it could raise the money though private investment, became dependent on federal low-cost loan guarantees when the global economy began melting down and venture funding evaporated. "We abandoned venture capital and instead focused on ... federal loans," said Tesla spokeswoman Rachel Konrad. But after applying for a federal loan guarantee from the government's $25 billion auto industry green-tech fund, more
BMW Plans An Envirnmentally Friendly Supercar; 400 HP and Fuel Economy?
By John O'Dell January 29, 2009There's an eco-friendly BMW supercar, the Z10 ED, under consideration to showcase Bayerische Motoren Werke's suit of fuel-efficient, low-emission technologies, reports Britain's Autocar . That's good news, but we wish sometimes that instead of packing all the good stuff into a $150,000 two-seat exotic, one of our major automakers would do so in an affordable family sedan. We know it would still be costly because a lot of the components used to improve fuel economy and cut emissions are one-a-kind, just-developed-in-the lab sorts of stuff that must be hand-built and hand-fitted into an existing vehicle. Still, it would be more
January Car Sales Drop From December on Fewer Fleet Sales, Edmunds.com Forecasts
By Michelle Krebs January 29, 2009SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- U.S. car and truck sales in January are expected to come in at a weak 730,000 units when automakers report them Tuesday. January sales are expected to be down 18.1 percent from very weak sales in December, Edmunds.com estimates, largely due to significantly lower rental-car and corporate fleet sales. Retail sales will be about flat with December's. "Our research indicates that retail sales are pretty much flat compared with December," said Jesse Toprak, Edmunds.com's executive director of Industry Analysis. "However, automakers' decision to cut fleet sales and make other production cuts will cause a large more
Volvo Loses $1.5 Billion in 2008; $736 Million Fourth Quarter
By Michelle Krebs January 29, 2009DEARBORN, Mich. -- Ford's Swedish brand, Volvo, posted a $1.5 billion loss in 2008, with $736 million of that loss coming in the fourth quarter. That compares with a loss of $164 million in 2007 and breaking even in the fourth quarter of 2007. Ford CEO Alan Mulally, in a conference call, blamed Volvo's significant loss largely on lower sales and exchange rates. He said Volvo remains under strategic review, which includes its possible sale, but said no further details would be provided at this time. more
UAW Jobs Banks Gone From Big Three
By Michelle Krebs January 29, 2009DEARBORN, Mich. -- Ford said Thursday the United Auto Workers (UAW) union agreed to end its Jobs Bank for laid-off employees as the union had done with General Motors and Chrysler. Elimination of the controversial Jobs Bank, which gives laid-off workers nearly full pay though they aren't working, was a requirement for GM and Chrysler to keep their loans from the U.S. government. Though Ford has not taken federal money, the automaker insisted it would not be disadvantaged and expected the same concessions the union granted to GM and Chrysler. more
No Accord After Automakers Meet With Enviros, Regulators on GHG Standards
By John O'Dell January 30, 2009By John O'Dell, Senior Editor While they've been publicly sniping at one another over California's controversial greenhouse gas reduction rules for automobiles, a group of automakers, environmentalists and regulators have been privately meeting to see if there's any common grounds for agreement. We're not getting our hopes up. The series of meetings, conducted at the invitation of the private, nonprofit Aspen Institute, took place over the past few months but have ended with no agreement and no plans for further meetings, according to a source with insider knowledge of the sessions. The meetings were attended by representatives of Ford more