UAW Strikes GM Where It Hurts Most -- in the ‘Bu
May 06, 2008

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.

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Chery Partners With Arizona Chipmaker for Hybrids, Fuel Technologies
May 06, 2008

Chinese automaker Chery Automobile Co. Ltd. is partnering with a Phoenix, Arizona-based high-tech company, Freescale Semiconductor, to build a research facility in China to develop hybrids and other fuel-efficiency technologies.

"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.

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Chrysler Opens Online Post for Listening to Customers
May 06, 2008

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.

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Nissan Reveals Light-Commercial Direction at Next Detroit Auto Show
May 05, 2008

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.

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MAZDA6 for America Arrives
May 05, 2008

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.

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April Car Sales: U.S. Consumers Flock to Cars, Gouging Detroit Three
May 02, 2008

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.

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Biofuels Stakes Rise for GM and the Nation
May 02, 2008

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.

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Gasoline Programs Could Be Next Wave of Incentives, Edmunds.com Predicts
April 30, 2008

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — As gas prices rise this summer, automakers may well turn to marketing programs that include free gasoline instead of or in addition to cash rebates and low-interest financing, Edmunds.com predicts.

“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.

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Chevrolet Malibu, Ford Fusion, Pontiac G6 Gain Traction in Crucial ‘C’ Segment
April 30, 2008

By Dale Buss

Chevrolet Malibu is helping put Detroit back on the map in the mid-size sedan segment. Even the three-year-old Pontiac G6 and Ford Fusion are helping out on that front as well.

Of course, the real Big Three of the so-called “C” segment of the market  remain solidly entrenched atop it: Honda Accord, Toyota Camry and Nissan Altima. Accord was the nation’s hottest-selling vehicle during the first quarter, according to Edmunds.com data, overcoming a sluggish start since the new model’s debut last fall to move 88,000 units from January through March. Camry, at 84,000 units, and Altima, with 76,000 sales, were right behind.

But domestic automakers nevertheless are encouraged by recent glimmers of hope in a crucial segment in which they haven’t been competitive for several years -- even though mid-size sedans used to be the Big Three’s bread and butter. At least the progress lately is a place to start.

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GM Partners With a Second Cellulosic Ethanol Maker
April 30, 2008

General Motors plans to announce Thursday a second partnership with a cellulosic ethanol maker. The automaker is providing no further details until GM President Fritz Henderson makes the announcement in Washington, D.C.

GM already has announced a partnership with an Illinois-based cellulosic ethanol maker, Coskata Inc., and last week said Coskata was establishing a pilot plant in Pennsylvania to demonstrate its innovative process of converting a variety of materials, from garbage to agricultural waste, into ethanol.

GM's partnerships for developing cellulosic ethanol come against a backdrop of increasing outcry for the industry to quit using corn-based ethanol, as food prices rise.

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