As gasoline prices go higher, many hybrid-electric vehicles currently on sale are proving to be even wiser investments, say new data from Edmunds.com.

Considerable past discussion about hybrids has focused on "payback" time, or the period required for savings from a hybrid's enhanced fuel economy to recoup the initial higher purchase price a hybrid commands. Detractors often claimed that, from a strictly fiscal view of hybrids, most vehicle purchasers would never save enough in gasoline costs to recover their investment in expensive hybrid technology.

But with every increase in gas prices, the hybrid payback time becomes consequently shorter - to the point where some popularly-priced hybrid models can pay back their owners' investment in as little as 18 months, according to the new Edmunds.com study.

The dollar, which has traded at record lows against the euro throughout the past year, has made it costly for German automakers like Audi and Volkswagen to import cars to the U.S. Stadler told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting that he sees no let up in the currency situation.

Plus Audi plans to increase its global sales to more than 1 million vehicles this year, but is not growing as fast as it wants to in the U.S. “The growth that we have seen throughout the world has not translated into growth on the U.S. market to the extent that we would like,” Stadler told shareholders at Audi’s annual meeting. “We stand to benefit tremendously from having our own local production.''

Martens, who ran product development at Mazda and later Ford North America, was among a handful of executives who left Ford in a political battle that had Martens’ rival Mark Fields becoming Ford’s President of the Americas.

A Daimler spokesperson told various media outlets Tuesday that the office is intended to establish the German auto and truck maker’s corporate presence in Iraq more than generate immediate sales.

By Dale Buss

Chrysler’s advertising campaign for its new Dodge Journey crossover has greatly boosted initial online interest in the vehicle, according to an analysis by Edmunds.com. But the new omnibus marketing effort launched by Ford recently, Drive One, isn’t packing nearly the same punch.

Those are the conclusions of research by David Tompkins, executive director of business solutions for Edmunds.com, based in Santa Monica, Calif., using consumer visits to the New Vehicle Detail Pages (NVDPs) of the site in April, in the immediate wake of the launches of the two advertising campaigns.

By Michelle Krebs

DETROIT -- Chrysler announced Monday evening that it will launch a new incentive program, called “Let’s Refuel America,” that guarantees buyers of most of its vehicles can lock into $2.99 a gallon gasoline for the next three years. The program starts Wednesday and runs through June 2.

It comes as no surprise that Chrysler is offering a gas-related incentive: Chrysler’s sales were the worst of any automaker in April date. And even the current hefty cash incentives seem to be doing little to move the metal. Edmunds.com had predicted gas prices would be the next front for automaker incentives, as it has become in the presidential campaign.

It’ll also be no surprise that, as all politicians are getting into the act, other automakers surely will jump on this bandwagon.

“Much like GM’s Employee Pricing program spared like wildfire in the summer of 2005, it’s likely other manufacturers will follow Chrysler’s lead,” said Jessica Caldwell, manager of Edmunds.com’s pricing and industry analysis.

It was almost two years ago to the day that General Motors announced a fuel price protection program, much like the one Chrysler launches on Wednesday. GM offered buyers of certain vehicle models, mostly large SUVs, in Florida and California a guarantee of gasoline capped at $1.99 a gallon for a year.

The promotion didn’t move the needle on sales, and it opened the floodgate of criticism of GM, especially in a now-famous column by The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman.

We're betting GM won’t be following Chrysler’s lead -- and we're wondering if Friedman is dusting off his old column to blast Chrysler.

By Michelle Krebs

The United Auto Workers union struck -- literally -- General Motors where it hurts most -- at the automaker’s Kansas City, Kansas, factory that builds the fast-selling Chevrolet Malibu, already in tight supply.

The 2,600 UAW workers in Kansas walked off the job Monday morning after a strike deadline passed with no local contract. The supposed hangup is over seniority issues and work rules. However, many experts believe the strike -– and ones threatened at other GM plants –- has less to do with local GM issues than it does to show support of its union brothers at American Axle, on strike against the GM supplier for more than 70 days.

Whatever the case, a strike cutting Malibu production is damaging to GM, especially if it lingers.

"Through joint research and development, Freescale and Chery intend to drive breakthroughs in next-generation automotive system designs," Paul Grimme, Freescale senior vice president, told the Arizona Republic.

Chery also has an affiliation with Chrysler that is moving forward. Freescale supplies, among other things, advanced automotive chips for the 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon 2-Mode hybrids. Chrysler is about to launch the same 2-Mode technology, cooperatively developed by General Motors, Daimler and Chrysler with BMW, in its 2009 Chrysler Aspen and Dodge Durango.

By Dale Buss

As the auto industry headed into this downturn, Chrysler faced severe competitive disadvantages in crucial areas ranging from product breadth to financial wherewithal to management depth.

But there is at least one strategic arena where the privately held new Chrysler has demonstrated a determination to take a back seat to no competitor: listening and adjusting to what its customers want. Chrysler has just demonstrated that edge, for instance, by launching its gas-price "protection" plan, the first of a potential wave of similar incentives that was predicted last week by Edmunds.com.

Chrysler’s new online Customer Advisory Board (CAB) is the latest manifestation of the automaker’s decision to develop a greater capacity for gauging and then quickly responding to the expressed desires of its customers and prospective customers – one of the few potential industry-leading advantages that is immediately available to the beleaguered automaker.

By Bill Visnic

CASCAIS, Portugal – Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., eager to enter North America’s rapidly transforming light-commercial vehicle (LCV) market, will signal type of vehicles it intends to offer with an unveiling at the Detroit auto show in January, said William J. Krueger, Nissan North America Inc.’s senior vice president-manufacturing, purchasing and supply chain management for The Americas.

Nissan announced in early April it will produce and sell three LCVs for North America beginning in the first half of 2010. The plan accomplishes two Nissan goals: adds the U.S. to its markets for its commercial vehicles and fills up its Canton, Miss., plant.

By Peter Nunn

TOKYO -- When it didn’t turn up at the New York auto show back in March, some began to wonder when Mazda would finally get around to unveiling the long awaited, unique-to-the-U.S. 2009 Mazda6 sports sedan.

The answer came last week, in time for Mazda’s conference in Japan to announce its 2007-08 business year results.

As Mazda executives sat down to give details of another year’s turbocharged performance from the self-styled Zoom Zoom company (net profit up 25 percent to a record $916 million on a best-ever turnover of $3.5 billion, with global vehicle sales up nearly 5 percent to 1.36 million units), this new American Mazda6 sedan was the icing on the cake.

By Dale Buss

Americans rushed to swap their thirsty trucks and SUVs for fuel-efficient cars in April, making the month a turning point for the industry’s biggest segment shift in memory.

The stampede to cars left in the dust a Detroit Three that simply weren’t ready for its magnitude because of their reliance on truck-based vehicles, while it lifted Japanese automakers whose traditional strength has remained in small cars.

As U.S. consumers definitively reacted to $3.50-a-gallon gasoline, passenger cars outsold truck-based vehicles for the first time in at least 20 years. The move comprised a shift of six percentage points for the industry compared with last April, to 54 percent car sales.

By Dale Buss

With its second major equity investment in a biofuels startup company in the space of five just months, General Motors is moving front and center in what may become a pivotal global economic development of our time: the rapid rise of the cellulosic-ethanol industry.

GM’s announcement on Thursday that it has made an equity investment in a Boston-based company, Mascoma Corp., is a bookend to its January deal to help fund Coskata Inc., based in Warrendale, Ill. The two companies, partially nurtured by academics, use two different processes to yield similar crucial results: the production of ethanol for fuel from non-grain, essentially waste sources.

“Gas prices are having a profound effect on the psychology of car-buyers, so we expect that automaker and dealer marketing tactics may include free gasoline programs this summer,” stated Jesse Toprak, executive director of Industry Analysis for Edmunds.com. "As indicated in Edmunds’ True Market Value Predictive Alerts, transaction prices of gas-guzzling large SUVs and trucks will likely continue to fall.”

Meantime, Edmunds.com estimated Thursday that the average automotive manufacturer incentive in the U.S. was $2,449 per vehicle sold in April 2008, up $13, or 0.5 percent, from March 2008, and up $39, or 1.6 percent, from April 2007.