The Ford Fusion (above) and Toyota Prius help propel hybrid sales gains despite weak economy and credit woes.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Led by strong showings from both third-generation Prius and the gas-electric version of Ford's Fusion, hybrid car sales in June were up 9 percent from a year earlier and rose 2 percent form May's tally to mark the sixth consecutive monthly increase in sales volume for the segment.
Hybrids, which gained traction from the June introduction of the new 2010 Prius and continued consumer interest in the well-reviewed Fusion hybrid that was introduced in March, outperformed the new-car market as a whole - which was down 28 percent from June of 2008 and off 7 percent from May.
It's too early to declare a recovery in the segment, but rising gasoline prices and renewed public awareness of the importance of improved fuel economy in addressing climate change issues seem to be underlying a gradual strengthening of market performance.
"The most important thing is that there have been a couple of new models that are putting some excitement into the segment, said Edmunds.com industry analyst Jessica Caldwell.
"Then there's all the news of government fuel efficiency and emissions initiatives, and some pretty generous incentives in a segment that really hasn't seen many incentives in the past."
Caldwell doesn't think gas prices were a significant factor in June's hybrid market, but says "they certainly are on people's radar, with a broad expectation that they'll keep going up."
California's air-quality authorities are an innovative bunch, and this month they took an unprecedented step toward making the Golden State less hazy by requiring automakers to place a reflective coating on the windshields of cars and trucks purchased in California.
The requirement is one of several that the California Air Resources Board has considered under its Cool Cars program, which is designed, as you likely guessed, to keep vehicles in the sunny state cooler.
By doing that, they reason, Californians won't need to use their vehicles' air conditioners as much, which will reduce the strain on automotive engines, which will decrease the speed with which we gobble up fossil fuels, which in turn will reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we release into the atmosphere.
Green Car Advisor first reported on the program in February, when CARB was focusing on having paint-makers tweak their automotive paints so they'd be more light reflective - as opposed to more light absorbing.
Light-absorbing paints, the king of which is black, contribute significantly to a vehicle's cabin temperature when parked in direct sunlight. Hot parked cars tend to cause their owners to reach for A-C controls the moment they enter their vehicles. Running the air conditioners adds to the workload of the vehicles, which in turn results in higher fuel consumption - you know the story.
The same is true with regard to windshields. When you consider at how much of the surface area of a car's sunny side consists of windshields, you can appreciate how important it is for the glass to be sunlight-reflective to help keep a vehicle's interior cool when parked in sunlight.
The technology used by glass manufacturers to make more reflective car windows has been around for nearly 20 years, said Mukesh Rustagi, director of strategic product management at Pittsburgh Glass Works, the largest automotive glass supplier in North America.
The technology exists and it's not particularly costly compared to, say, wiping out entire species and watching the world's glaciers - water sources for more than a billion people - melt away.
With that in mind, California's air regulators voted unanimously last week for a mandate requiring automakers to include sun-reflecting windshields on all vehicles sold within the state by 2014.
Yesterday we reported that Nissan, Ford and Tesla will be the first auto companies to receive factory retooling loans under the $25 billion federal program to speed production of fuel-efficient vehicles in the U.S.
Today, President Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu confirmed that the administration has granted $8 billion in conditional loan commitments to the three automakers for the development of vehicle technologies that, as the president put it, "will create thousands of green jobs while helping reduce the nation's dangerous dependence on foreign oil."
The loan commitments include $5.9 billion for Ford to transform factories across Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio to produce 13 more fuel-efficient models; $1.6 billion to Nissan to retool its Smyrna, Tennessee, factory to build electric automobiles and an advanced-battery manufacturing facility; and $465 million to Tesla to manufacture electric drivetrains and EVs in California.
The loans represent the first in a series of conditional loan commitments reached as part of the Energy Department's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program. Chu said the department plans to make additional loans under this program over the next several months to large and small automakers as well as parts suppliers.
In a statement, Ford said it plans to invest nearly $14 billion in advanced-technology vehicles over the next seven years. "Our partnership with the Department of Energy also will help retool our U.S. plants more quickly to produce fuel-efficient vehicles and help meet the new, rigorous fuel-economy requirements," it said.
In its statement, Nissan said construction at Smyrna was scheduled to begin by the end of this year, with production slated to start in late 2012. It said modifications at the plant include a new battery-production facility and changes in the existing structure for electric-vehicle assembly.
"When fully operational, the vehicle assembly plant will have the capacity to build 150,000 zero-emissions vehicles a year and the new plant will have an annual capacity of 200,000 batteries," it said, adding that Nissan's EV "will comfortably seat five people, drive on any American road or highway, and have an initial range of 100 miles before recharging."
Model S News
And Tesla said it will use $365 million of the $465 million it received for production engineering and assembly of the Model S, an all-electric family sedan that will supposedly carry seven people and travel up to 300 miles per charge.
The Model S has an anticipated base price of $49,900 after a $7,500 U.S. federal tax credit. According to Tesla, it will have lifetime ownership costs equivalent to a conventional car with a sticker price of $35,000, thanks to the lower cost of electricity versus gasoline and a relative lack of service and maintenance.
Ford, Nissan and upstart electric car maker Tesla Motors will be the first auto companies to receive factory retooling loans under the $25 billion federal program to speed production of fuel-efficient vehicles in the U.S., the Detroit Free Press reported late Monday.
Ford, which had applied for $11 billion in loans under the program, is likely to receive the largest loan. The company wants to retool an SUV factory to use for a new electric vehicle it plans to launch in 2011.
Nissan has asked for $1.1 billion to help retool its Smyrna, Tenn. plant to build electric vehicles that it has said will go on sale in selected areas of the U.S. next year.
Tesla has asked for $350 million to refurbish a Southern California factory, believed to be a recently emptied aerospace plant, for production of its upcoming Model S electric sedan.
General Motors corp. and Chrysler are not eligible for loans from the program until they emerge from their Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. The loan program is only open to companies that can show they are "financially viable."
In all, 75 companies have asked for $38 billion in loans from the program, exceeding the available funds by 52 percent. A proposal to double the loan pool to $50 billion is pending in Congress.
The global economic crisis may force Jaguar to postpone production of its XE two-seat roadster beyond its hoped-for 2011 Geneva show debut, but the sports car will be fitted with a Chevy Volt-like powerplant when it does make an appearance.
That according to a report by Motor Trend, which says an electric motor with an extended-range three-cylinder gas engine is being engineered for the new-age E-Type.
Whether that powerplant would be in addition to Jaguar's conventional 5.0-liter and supercharged 5.0-liter V8s is unknown, as is whether the extended-range XE will make it beyond the concept stage.
Also unclear is whether the electric XE would be in addition to an extended-range electric XJ said to be scheduled for introduction in late 2011 (a year after the conventional XJ's release).
Ratan Tata, whose company bought Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor Company, is said to support the XE's development. His father once owned a Jaguar XK120, and Tata told Autocar earlier this year, "We need to emerge with something shiny and new, which is why we are reprioritizing the roadster right now."
In addition to the Volt, an extended-range electric XJ would likely give the Fisker Karma some competition.
Like every other alternative fuel, hydrogen has its fans and foes, its pluses and minuses, its ups and, recently, its downs.
After being the favored ground transportation fuel of the future for most of the last eight years as the Bush administration pushed development of hydrogen fuel cells for automotive use, nature's most abundant - albeit hard to isolate - element has been cast aside by the Obama administration.
The new president's Nobel-winning energy secretary, Steven Chu, has proposed in his 2010 departmental budget to eliminate funding for automotive hydrogen programs - that's $100 million - and instead to focus hydrogen research on fuel cells to generate power for homes, businesses and other stationary power users.
For transportation, his choice of fuel research programs to back is no surprise, he's long been a supporter of biofuels and electric cars.
----------- Honda says its FCX Clarity (below, right) is production-ready, lacking only a fueling infrastructure and lower-priced components that can only come with increased production of such cars. ----------
That's got the hydrogen car crowd - and we confess to a great fondness for fuel cell vehicles ourselves - up in arms and questioning the validity of Chu's apparent decision to "pick winners" by concentrating DOE research finding on biofuels and battery-electric, or plug-in, cars while announcing that his team doesn't see any short-term chance for hydrogen to emerge as a widely available and used fuel.
But Chu, powerful as he is sitting atop the nation's official energy policy agency and operating with the endorsement and backing of the president, isn't all-powerful. He has to answer to Congress, and Congress is subject to lobbying.
So the pressure politics have begun.
Short-Sighted?
With DOE budget hearings about to start, the chairman of the Senate's energy and Water Appropriations Committee - the committee that sits in judgment over the energy Department budget - has come out swinging.
A fan of hydrogen, Sen. Byron Dorgan recently called the DOE's budget recommendation to eliminate automotive hydrogen research funding "a very short-sighted recommendation." Hydrogen and fuel cells "are part of this country's future," said the North Dakota Democrat.
Backing Dorgan in support of restoring at lest some hydrogen programs funding for automotive research are automakers with huge investments in the technology.
They include Toyota and Honda, no slouches when it comes to making informed choices about technologies, as well as Daimler and our own General Motors Corp.
(We say "our own" because as part of the taxpaying public, we now share ownership of the faltering car company with the rest of America.)
Unlikely Allies
GM, in case you've been living in a cave or up in space for the past few weeks, is in bankruptcy now and the government, as its majority owner, has a rather big stake in the company's survival and future success.
Granted, GM hasn't been all that great at picking the proper trends and technologies as it looked to the future.
But this time the General is on the same team as Toyota and Honda rather than turning up its nose and sniffing that the Japanese car companies don't know what they are talking about.
Mazda Motor Corp., already in a partnership with part-owner Ford Motor Co. to develop a hybrid vehicle, says it is looking at more alliances, with Ford and others, to develop electric cars and other "electric devices" that will help boost fuel economy.
---------- Mazda, seeking to boost its overall fuel efficiency, recently began commercial leases of this hydrogen-powered Premacy vant in Japan. ----------
Those devices could run the gamut from electric power steering, brake and climate systems to hybrid, hydrogen and fully battery-electric drive systems for cars and SUVs.
Ford, which once controlled Mazda, now holds a 13.8 percent stake in the company. The two already share some vehicle platforms (such as the Mazda 3 and Ford's European Focus) and Mazda's president said Wednesday that they intend to continue to develop shared vehicle platforms.
The company announced in April that it would develop a new Mazda hybrid as it seeks to increase its overall fleet fuel economy by 30 percent in the next six years.
To accelerate development of fuel efficiency technologies, the company now is considering multiple alliances, Mazda Senior Managing Director Seita Kanai said at a Wednesday press conference in Japan.
Ford Motor Co. this week delivered an Escape SUV plug-in hybrid electric vehicle to Canada's largest electricity producer, Hydro-Quebec, as part of the automaker's North American demonstration and research program on PHEVs.
Ford, in collaboration with the Electric Power Research Institute, which conducts research and development relating to the delivery and use of electricity for public good, is undertaking a three-year test program on the Escape PHEV designed to evaluate how the vehicle might best be integrated into existing electric grids.
In all, Ford will provide 21 vehicles for the real-world trials. EPRI has identified nine utilities across North America to test drive the vehicles and collect data on battery technology, vehicle systems, customer use and grid infrastructure. Hydro-Quebec is the only Canadian company participating in the North American program.
The standard Escape Hybrid is EPA rated at 34 miles per gallon in the city and 31 on the highway. However, the PHEV version can achieve up to 120 mpg during the first 30 miles following a recharge. After that, it behaves like a standard Escape Hybrid, consuming gasoline for energy.
The Ford Escape PHEV is a research vehicle that uses high voltage, lithium-ion batteries and common household current (120 volts) for charging. Full charge of the battery takes six to eight hours.
This week's annoucement came one week after Toyota announced that it would begin leasing 500 PHEVs globally by the end of this year as part of a test program, and less than three months since President Obama announced a $2.4-billion plug-in stimulus package to promote research into and develop of PHEVs.
Annual Purchase Total Now $287 Million; $15 Million More Committed For Buses and EVs
The federal General Services Administration said late Tuesday that it purchased $210 million worth of "fuel efficient" vehicles from Ford, GM and Chrysler last week.
---------- Ford's Fusion is part of the government's purchase of more than 17,000 new fuel-efficient vehicles from domestic automakers this year. ----------
The June 1 acquisition follows the previously announced purchase of 3,100 gas-electric hybrid cars and SUVs from Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. in April.; The purchases are part of the government's economic stimulus program. Chrysler wasn't included in the initial round because it has no hybrids in its retail fleet.
This month's order for 14,105 cars, SUVs and, presumably, pickups, competed the GSA's assignment from President Obama to spend $285 million this fiscal year on new, fuel efficient vehicles for various federal agency - the total actually hit $287 million.
Additionally, the GSA is slated to spend $15 million for an undetermined number of advanced technology buses and electric vehicles by the end of September for use in the federal fleet.
The agency, which does about a quarter of all the federal government's purchasing, is funding the vehicle acquisitions from the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - that's 0.0003 percent of the total, if you are keeping score.
It's still 18 months before California's revised zero emissions vehicle requirements kick in, but the lobbying, has quietly begun.
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Cars such as this plugin Toyota Prius are needed to meet California ZEV mandate, but increase automakers' operating costs.
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Toyota Motor Co. will be most impacted by the rules requiring major antomakers to provide electric and plug-in vehicles for at least 3 percent of their sales in the state from 2012 through 2014, and in an interview with Bloomberg reporter Alan Ohnsman last week a Toyota insider said the company faces $1 billion in new costs to comply.
There's no overt complaining in the article, published today on Bloomberg.com, but Toyota's meassage is clear: $1 billion is a lot of money anytime, and is a particularly sizeable pile of cash to come up with in the midst of a recession that is hurting the entire auto industry including the world's biggest car company.
In addition Toyota, which has the biggest share of the California new-car makert, the mandate would apply to Honda Motor Co., Ford Motor Co., Nissan Motor Co. and pre-bankruptcy General Motors Corp, and Chrysler LLC.
The two domestics have said that major production cuts are part of their recovery plans and if their sales in California drop below 60,000 a year as a result, they would no longer be bound by the mandate
Toyota, according to Bloomgerg's calculations, would have to produce 16,000 plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles to by 2014 to comply with the rules, which require major automakers to make non-polluting vehicles equal at least 3 percent of their sales for the 3-year period.
Sales of hybrid cars and trucks outperformed the market in May, giving lie to the belief, popular among mainstream industry analysts and pundits, that Americans are only interested in the gas-electric vehicles when fuel prices are stratospheric.
---------- 2009 Prius was top hybrid with best sales in 7 months. ----------
In a month when sales of non-hybrid vehicles rose 12.9 percent from the prior month, hybrid sales were up 18.2 percent. Incentives were applied liberally to hybrids and conventional vehicles alike during May, reducing the likelihood that cash-back offers or cheap interest rates unfairly boosted hybrid sales.
And while sales of both hybrids and conventional vehicles fell far short of matching year-earlier tallies, hybrid sales were off only 26.7 percent from May, 20008, compared to a 33.5 percent decline for non-hybrids.
At the same time, conventional small car sales fell short of overall market performance, indicating that shoppers had more than just fuel economy on their minds. The hybrid market may be benefiting from increased concern that fuel prices, which have been below $3 a gallon for nearly a year after approaching the $4-per-gallon mark last summer, are on the rise again and may be heading for new highs.
In all, dealers sold 25,693 hybrids last month, up from 21,735 in April but down from 35,042 in May 2008.
With the exception of Toyota's Camry hybrid, the top-selling Prius - which continues to dominate the U.S. hybrid market - and Honda's Civic hybrid, sales of individual models are low enough that it doesn't take much to cause a large jump in percent of increase or decline.
That said, Ford's new Fusion sedan hybrid scored an impressive 75 percent gain from April while sales of the Ford Escape SUV hybrid were up 62.2 percent for the same period.
In yet another effort to overturn laissez-faire decisions by the Bush-era Environmental Protection Agency, a number of environmental groups are petitioning the agency to ban use of lead in the weights used to balance automobile wheels.
The petitioners, lead by the Sierra Club and Michigan-based Ecology Center, are hoping that the EPA under President Obama will be more favorable to their arguments.
Although lead has long been identified as highly toxic, the EPA in 2005 rejected a similar call for a ban, ruling that petitioners hadn't sufficiently documented the risks associated with exposure to lead from tire weights. In humans, lead particles can cause brain damage, birth defects and death.
Instead of a ban, the agency adopted a program of encouraging automakers and tire shops to voluntarily stop using wheel weights made of lead.
The new petition claims that the weights often fall off and onto road surfaces and then are ground to lead dust by passing vehicles. The dust -- an estimated 3.5 million pounds a year -- can easily be washed off the roads in rainstorms and enter the underground water supply.
The petition follows a 2008 California court ruling in which Chrysler and the nation's three largest tire weight manufacturers agreed to stop using lead weights in that state.
Volkswagen AG will consider forming a partnership with China's BYD Auto in the area of hybrids and zero-emissions all-electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries, Europe's largest carmaker said on Monday.
The announcement comes exactly one month after we reported that BYD and VW confirmed that they will cooperate on the development of lithium iron phosphate batteries.
Volkswagen is the first major industrial partner for BYD, a battery specialist and the fledgling maker of the F6DM plug-in hybrid. Last September, BYD sold a 10 percent stake to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway for $230 million.
"Particularly for the Chinese market, potential partners such as BYD could support us in quickly expanding our activities," Ulrich Hackenberg, head of research and development at the VW brand, said in a statement.
In addition to Volkswagen, BYD is also talking to Ford Motor Co. and another European automaker about similar arrangements, The Wall Street Journal reported today (subscription required), citing people familiar with the VW-BYD negotiations.
The status of those negotiations, however, was not immediately clear. "We are always in discussions with many suppliers as a standard course of our business, but we have nothing to share at this time," Whitney Small, a Ford spokeswoman in Bangkok, told the Journal.
Once again, Ford has lucked out in terms of timing.
As President Obama was announcing stricter fuel economy and emissions standards in Washington, D.C., Ford was celebrating the production of its new EcoBoost engine in Cleveland.
The opportunity to promote Ford, which has tried to set itself apart from General Motors and Chrysler by not taking government assistance -- and staying away from bankruptcy -- was not lost on company CEO Alan Mulally, who flanked Obama at today's White House press conference.
By 2013, Mulally told the assembled Washington press corps, Ford will offer the EcoBoost engine in 90 percent of its models. That amounts to 700,000 vehicles annually in North America and 1.3 million globally.
EcoBoost combines turbocharging and direct injection to deliver the power of a V8 and the fuel economy of a smaller V6. Mulally said the fuel savings is about 20 percent.
Go to our sister site AutoObserver.com for more information on today's celebration.
Auto Industry Lines Up To Praise National Program Idea, Now the Hard Work Begins
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
The auto industry, tired of being seen as the bad guy whenever fuel economy and emissions regulation is on the table, is wasting no time lining up in support of tomorrow's White House announcement on development of a national carbon emissions and fuel efficiency program.
A cynic might think this doesn't bode well for the ultimate result of the rulemaking process that President Obama will outline at a press conference in Washington Tuesday morning: That the auto industry figures it has enough clout left to wring the life out of any effort to significantly improve fuel economy.
But we think it simply shows that an industry on life support and dependent on government largess here and overseas has finally read the writing on the wall and realizes that this is as good as it is ever going to get and that if it doesn't play ball it will have no say in the rules it eventually will have to live by.
Automakers also have been caught in a trap of their own making. They've been fighting California, the national leader in establishing greenhouse gas controls on motor vehicles, insisting that individual states shouldn't be able to set carbon emissions rules and that a national standard is needed.
Now the Obama administration has stepped to the table and said, as the president is wont to: "Okay, let's develop a national rule."
To oppose that would be political suicide.
In that vein, the two lobbying groups representing almost every car maker that does business in the U.S. have jumped on board and are voicing support for the so-called National Program for Autos.
Nonprofit groups and government officials in Minneapolis and St. Paul are working with Ford Motor Co. and Xcel Energy to bring electric cars to the area, the Detroit News reported today.
This is latest in a string of welcome green developments for the troubled automaker. Earlier this month we reported that Ford said it will spend $550 million to transform its Michigan Assembly Plant into a lean, green and flexible manufacturing facility that will build the company's new, gasoline-powered global Ford Focus and a battery-electric version of that vehicle.
Ford is hoping to get federal stimulus money for the Minnesota project, which could be one of 34 projects to receive the money.
As part of the proposal, local governments would field a fleet of 66 electric or hybrid cars in Minneapolis and St. Paul by the end of next year. Xcel Energy would set up special stations where the cars could charge up. That could include two solar-powered stations.
If it's approved, officials hope the project would help Minneapolis and St. Paul cut down on gas use and demonstrate a new energy-saving system to the public.
Confession: I can understand, maybe even cogently explain, how an internal combustion engine works, how hybrids function and how a fuel cell functions, but automobile transmissions have always left me scratching my head in wonder.
---------- What's not to understand? Cutaway of GM Hydra-Matic six-speed for rear-wheel drive vehiclesmakes it all so clear! (click on illustration to enlarge.) ----------
I know what they do, but am confounded at every turn when I try to understand all the technical stuff.
I'm not even good at following visual aids, so I let the guys at the shop fiddle with my cars' trannies, manual or automatic, when work is needed.
I do know, however, that if done correctly, transmissions get more efficient with more "speeds" or gear ratios, which is why automakers are coming out with six, seven and eight-speed manuals and automatics, and even with gearless "continually variable transmissions," or CVTs.
We recently had frequent contributor Robert E.Calem take an in-depth look at transmissions and fuel efficiency for us, and if you are car shopping I highly recommend reading his piece before hitting the showrooms.
If you are a visual type, though, there's a decent (albeit quite promotional) video available now on General Motors Corp.'s FastLane blog that explains, with some neat 3-D action graphics, how the company's six-speed transmissions work.
They've got 9 variations and use 'em in a total of em in 40 models now, with more to come. (Equal time clause: Ford Motor co. has 6-speeds in about 15 models and says they'll be 98 percent of its cars and trucks by 2012.)
The short GM video illustrates an article by the automaker's global chief engineer for transmissions, Jeff Lux and after viewing you can hop over to Fastlane to read Lux's text.
Ford Motor Co. says an e-mail claiming that it is offering 500 lucky buyers a 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid for just $15,500 is, indeed, to good to be true.
The e-mail purports to be from a Ford sales manager, but isn't, the company says, adding that anyone who receives the Fusion Hybrid hoax message should delete it without opening any attachments.
The real base price for the 39 mpg (city and highway combined) Fusion hybrid is $27,270.
(Note: Updated 5 p.m. 5/7/09 to include link to Hydrogen and Fuel Cell groups' joint statement.)
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
In a huge blow to backers of fuel-cell electric vehicles, the nation's top energy official said today he sees little promise of the technology becoming a significant player in the nation's transportation system within the next two decades.
---------- Honda's FCX Clarity, now being tested in Southern California, uses a hydrogen fuel cell to provide electric power. ----------
As a result, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu is proposing that more than $100 million be cut from the Energy Department hydrogen program in the 2010 budget the administration is submitting to Congress.
The proposed budget slashes hydrogen fuel cell spending by 59 percent to just $68 million and focuses on programs for stationary power generation rather than for transportation.
"We asked ourselves, 'Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will covert to a hydrogen car economy?' The answer, we felt, was 'no,'" Chu said in a briefing today.
The National Hydrogen Association and the U.S. Fuel Cell Coalition quickly issued a joint statement criticizing the program cuts.
Ford Motor Co. today said that it will spend $550 million to transform its Michigan Assembly Plant into a lean, green and flexible manufacturing facility that will build the company's new, gasoline-powered global Ford Focus and a battery-electric version of that vehicle. The conventional Focus will begin rolling off of the assembly lines in 2010 with the Ford Focus battery electric vehicle to follow in 2011.
The zero-emission Focus BEV, which is being developed in partnership with Magna International, will have a high-voltage electric motor powered by a high-capacity Lithium Ion battery pack that will plug into 110-volt or 220-volt outlets. Ford today described the vehicle as part of its plan to "develop electric vehicles for North America quickly and affordably by leveraging its global platform capability."
"We're changing from a company focused mainly on trucks and SUVs to a company with a balanced product lineup that includes even more high-quality, fuel-efficient small cars, hybrids and all-electric vehicles," said Mark Fields, president of Ford's American operations. "As customers move to more fuel-efficient vehicles, we'll be there with more of the products they really want."
The state of Michigan, Wayne County and the city of Wayne contributed more than $160 million in tax credits and grants to support Ford's renovation project. Ford credited UAW officials for "establishing a strong, progressive culture at Michigan Assembly Plant that is based on teamwork, joint problem solving and continuous improvement."
Today's diesel-powered automobiles aren't your father's diesel-powered automobiles.
That's one of the core messages Volkswagen Group of America Inc. hopes to deliver in a new (and sufficiently quirky, given the company's advertising heritage) marking effort that includes a website where light-footed VW owners are boasting about extreme mileage accomplishments.
The pro-diesel push comes at the same time as a new "Meet the Volkswagens" ad campaign that pairs Max, the restored black VW Beetle that speaks with a German accent, with "Bus," an immaculately restored white and red 1968 Microbus (whose voice is supplied by actor Thomas Haden Church).
VW has a simple message in each instance: its autos are fuel-efficient, green and safe vehicles that won't break the household budget. And, to ensure that the message has a chance of being heard, VW plans to keep its 2009 advertising budget at the same level it was in 2008.
That is a serious commitment given that VW reportedly raised last year's spend by 45.7 percent over the 2007 level. The Nielsen Company reports that the overall automotive sector cut overall 2008 advertising spending by 15.5 percent to just over $10 billion.
VW's U.S. marketing chief, Tim Ellis, told USAToday that "When we invest in marketing, things happen. We think it's important to stick to our roots and stick to our value message. We're getting a higher percentage of the dwindling marketplace. And when this crazy situation comes straight side up again, we'll be positioned to increase our share even further."
VW isn't escaping the auto industry carnage. The Herndon, Va.-based company saw April sales tumble by 16.1 percent to 16,289 vehicles. Full year sales for 2008 declined by 3.2 percent to 223,128.
The automobile industry's global slump underscores the bold nature of VW's American gambit. Last year it announced plans for a $1 billion production plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. that will produce 150,000 vehicles annually - 30 percent of which will be powered by VW's TDI (turbo direct injection) engines.
On top of that, VW has boldly set a U.S. sales goal of one million vehicles by 2018.
To reach its lofty sales goal VW knows that it must persuade Americans (the emphasis is on younger consumers) that diesels aren't the clunky, smoky and noisy engines of yesteryear.
Hybrid sales in the U.S. rose in April for the fourth consecutive month and posted the highest monthly volume since October 2008.
---------- Honda's 2010 Insight was one of the bright spots in the U.S. hybrid market in April. ----------
The bump illustrates the influence that novelty and price still have on the market: Honda's new Insight, Ford's new Fusion and a heavily incentivized Honda Civic hybrid overcame slumping sales of many other gas-electric models to account for the gain.
But in a month when car and light truck sales overall still fell well below the one-million mark, the performance of the hybrid segment wasn't much to get excited about.
The month-over-month increase wasn't strong enough, for example, to put April's hybrid sales in contention with April 2008, when gasoline prices averaged above $3.50 a gallon, car buyers were scouring the market for fuel-efficient models and recession hadn't begun wreaking havoc with the economy.
As the once-favored hydrogen highway becomes a mere side road on the route to oil independence with the Obama administration's push for rechargeable hybrid powertrains as the new favored alternative to the conventional gasoline engine, hydrogen pioneer Honda Motor Co. says it, too, will begin to pursue the way of the plug.
In an interview with Bloomberg news last week, Honda Motor Co. President Takeo Fukui said his company still sees hydrogen as the best long-term replacement for gasoline in the effort to slash automotive emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases tied to global arming.
Fukui, who is stepping down in June as part of Honda's regular executive shuffle, has in the past has been outspoken in his disdain for plug-in technology, calling it an unnecessary intermediate step form gasoline to pure electric power.
Honda has developed a hydrogen fuel-cell sedan, the FCX Clarity, that it leases to select customers in a Los Angeles-area test program, and isn't planning to abandon the effort.
But, Fukui said in a Bloomberg news wire article published this morning, the automaker also will accommodate the perceived preference of the U.S. government for plug-in hybrid-electric cars and trucks.
Unlike a conventional gas-electric hybrid that charges its batteries from on-board power sources such as regenerative braking, a plug-in hybrid gets its initial charge from the commercial grid, by "plugging in" to a wall socket or a special rapid-charging station
Plug-ins use larger battery pack than a conventional hybrids. They store enough power to permit the vehicle to be driven for an extended amount of time on all-electric drive before the grid charge is depleted and the gas engine kicks in.
Although others, including General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and Volkswagen are developing fuel-cell vehicles, Honda has been the only major automaker championing hydrogen above other technologies and so far has stayed out of the rapidly developing race to bring plug-ins to market.
While federal support of hydrogen development has all-but evaporated in the U.S., the government is providing billions of dollars for battery development programs and for federal tax credits of up to $7,500 for purchasers of plug-ins.
We've been trying for months now to get some face time with entrepreneur Shai Agassi, founder of EV charging infrastructure pioneer Better Place, so far to no avail.
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Exchanging large hybrid and EV battery packs such as this form a Ford electric vehicle test model, won't be easy, automakers say.
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We want to ask him about his business model and how he intends to get the world's contentious and competitive automakers to sign on to a plan that would make it possible for an independent such as Better Place to set up shops to easily and economically swap depleted battery packs for fresh ones in various brands of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
It seems to us this would take a degree of cooperation and commonality (where to put the packs so they could be pulled and exchanged quickly would require some common design features, battery attachment points and even size and weight ranges) that automakers so far have been loath to agree to.
Our paths almost crossed this week as Agassi attended a forum on battery development near out home base in Southern California - unfortunately, though, we were on the other side of the country in Florida at an alternative fuels and vehicles conference.
But several major automakers were there, as part of a panel, and according to E&E News' coverage of the Fortune magazine-sponsored event, were pretty united in their opposition to the idea of swappable batteries.
While patting Agassi on the back for his vision - a network of roadside "service stations" where the fuel is electric and the main service the swapping of depleted batteries for fully charged ones - executives from Toyota Motor Co., BMW and Ford Motor Co. all were doubtful it would work.
E&E News reports that Bill Reinart, national manager of Toyota's advanced technology group, said lithium-ion batteries and the highly charged plugs that power are not designed for constant switching and that a number of safety hazards could be created
Tom Baloga, vice president of U.S. engineering at BMW, agreed, according o the report , explaining that constant damage to batteries is likely during switching.
"Anytime you have a rapid connect and disconnect, you have to think about stability," Baloga said. "We have to be concerned about that."
Baloga added that Better Place's battery swap model is worth studying, but raised the same concern we have with battery pack uniformity and whether a battery exchange station could afford to stock a variety of packs to meet the needs of motorists who, some day, might be driving a dozen or more makes and styles of electric vehicles.
We're talking about the need to stock lots of various designs of 400- to 1,000-pound assemblages that cost $5,000 to $25,000 each, not a bunch of 50-pound, $120 lead-acid batteries.
To hear Ford Motor Co. Executive Chairman William Clay Ford Jr. tell it, developing the green vehicles that will be needed to break this country's dependence upon foreign oil will be the easy part.
The really tough stuff will involve gaining consensus on such touchy subjects as instituting a new federal gasoline tax and determining which technologies will get the nod as new electric-generating plants are designed, permitted and brought online.
"I actually think that the least disruptive piece will be the car piece," Ford said during a half-hour Q&A during a Fortune magazine green ideas conference on Monday at the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif. "We can get there relatively easy, but a lot of these other pieces are going to be big issues that we're going to have to solve as a nation."
"One thing that I'm encouraged about is that the [Obama] administration really wants to lead that discussion on a national basis," Ford said. "I am optimistic ... we can't go on with fossil fuel burning the way we are ... it's just not a path that this country wants to go down."
Plan Includes 2,500 Hybrids and $15 million for EVs, CGN Vehicles and Hybrid Buses
Despite giving Chrysler just a month and General Motors Corp. only 60 days to finish figuring out how to save themselves without potentially devastating bankruptcy filings, the Obama administration continues showing its commitment to the U.S. auto industry by agreeing to spend $285 million to purchase 17,600 fuel-efficient vehicles from the domestic three by the end of May.
The federal vehicle purchases will include 2,500 gas-electric hybrid cars that are to be acquired by Wednesday (the same day federal income taxes are due).
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Ford Fusion (top) and Chevrolet Malibu (bottom) hybrids are among the vehicles the federal government will be purchasing in coming weeks.
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In announcing the plan, President Obama said that the Government Services Agency also will spend $15 million on a pilot program to purchase and test an undisclosed number of new alternative fuel vehicles including compressed-natural gas vehicles, electric vehicles and hybrid buses.
The total isn't huge, representing only about 2 percent of last year's U.S. new car sales total and 29 percent of the government's average annual new vehicle purchases, but it will help brighten an otherwise woeful 2009 sales picture for GM, Chrysler and Ford Motor Co., the only carmakers eligible to participate in the plan.
The hybrid purchase marks the largest government order of gas-electric vehicles to date and will benefit both GM and Ford.
Ford's SmartGauge features a multitude of displays to help people become more fuel-efficient drivers.
By Robert E. Calem, Contributor
Regardless of the kind of car you drive, one of the keys to improving fuel economy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is to drive smarter - don't hammer the accelerator pedal, don't brake harshly and do steadily maintain just enough speed to keep up with the flow of traffic without passing everyone in sight.
These often are not easy tasks.
To help, automakers have begun rolling out new features and technologies that call attention to uneconomical driving behavior and offer "rewards" for fuel-efficient driving.
Some of these features are passive, like instrument panels that change color as fuel economy improves.
Others more actively engage with the driver, such as an accelerator pedal that pushes back when pressed too aggressively.
Some automakers are even working on technologies that will be able to take the driver out of the fuel economy equation by allowing the car to practically drive itself with best mileage in mind.
Read on to learn more about the driver training features and technologies in cars you can buy today, and be able to buy tomorrow.
Smart Gauges Make Smarter Drivers
"The whole idea is coaching the driver, but as a good coach you don't want to preach," says Sonya Nematollahi, driver information engineering supervisor at Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, Mich., while describing the "SmartGauge with EcoGuide" instrument cluster in the 2010 Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrids.
Conceived by Ford in collaboration with IDEO, the design and innovation consultancy that also devised the Swivel 'n Go seating in Chrysler minivans, SmartGauge consists of two 4.3-inch, high-resolution color LCD screens - one on either side of the analog speedometer - that display a collection of digitally rendered gauges accessed through multi-layered menus.
SmartGauge with EcoGuide, fashioned by Ford Design Studio with features input from the industrial design firm Smart Design, uses the menus and gauges to offer increasingly detailed information in four modes: Inform, Enlighten, Engage and Empower.
"Like a good coach, we designed modes into SmartGauge to engage drivers at their experience levels and then guide them to new energy-efficient behavior," says Steve Bishop, global lead for sustainability at IDEO in Palo Alto, Calif.
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Green leaves 'grow' on fusion instrument panel as visual reward when fuel economy improves.
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"Video games engage their users in a similar fashion with levels. In fact, when we observed hybrid drivers, we found they were going for high scores, a gaming behavior that has never existed in cars before. We designed to accommodate it."
Steering-wheel mounted directional buttons are used to navigate through the modes, and the driver can customize the displays in each mode by adding or removing gauges.
It's no secret, hybrids haven't been doing well lately, on dealers' lots, in the media, or in a lot of political arguments. Sales data that comes in on a monthly basis shows hybrid sales sinking faster than auto sales as a whole. And there's nothing pretty about auto sales as a whole.
Indeed, looking at March's tally shows that the 21,433 hybrid cars and trucks sold in the U.S. last month represents a 43.9 percent drop from hybrid sales in March of 2008, while sales of all other types of new passenger vehicles, on a March-vs-March basis, were off "just" 36.5 percent.
So, the argument goes, hybrids can't hold their own, they cost too much and people don't really want them.
---------- Nissan Altima hybrid was one of only two models posting a first quarter gain. ----------
But we've never been big on the idea that a trend can be made, or broken, in a single month.
One could also argue, for instance, that March hybrid sales were up substantially from February and recovered more than did all other segments combined.
On a sales-per-day basis, to account for the shorter February selling period, March hybrid sales were up 20.9 percent, versus an 11.6 percent increase from February in sales of other types of new cars and trucks.
Does that mean that March sales show that people have changed their minds and are flocking to hybrids in droves?
Note: The quote about Ford and Honda in the third paragraph was from an article in The Los Angeles Times, and was incorrectly attributed to Rush Limbaugh.
The gospel according to Rush Limbaugh now includes another chapter in what we'll call the green car conspiracy.
Here (from a transcript on the Excellence in Broadcasting network Web site) is what Limbaugh had to say on Tuesday about why vehicle manufacturers are scrambling to design and produce fuel-efficient, cleaner vehicles:
"The Ford and Honda hybrids due out this month are among dozens planned for the coming years as automakers try to meet new fuel-efficiency standards and please politicians overseeing the industry's multibillion-dollar bailout."
(That's probably news to Ford, which has just said 'no' to bailouts, and Honda, which doesn't qualify. And it might be news to the million motorists worldwide who've purchased Priuses and prodded Ford to introduce the Fusion Hybrid (left) and Honda to market the Insight Hybrid.)
And why are the auto companies kowtowing? Because the president is in cahoots with environmentalists who stay awake nights trying to figure out how to get us back to the good, old days when a gallon of gas cost more than $4.
Ah, but the evil-doers in Washington, D.C. (and their cronies in Sacramento) can't fool steely-eyed consumers when it comes to hybrids.
"Nobody's buying 'em," Limbaugh said. "Nobody wants them! The manufacturers are making them in droves to satisfy Obama! Sorry for yelling. Nobody wants them!"
(As of March 30, Americans had purchased 1.3 million hybrids since the first one -- a two-seat Honda Insight -- was sold in December 1999. Hybrids accounted for 2.51 percent of the market in March. That's the fourth-best monthly market-share showing ever, even with the lower gasoline prices. To be fair, though, hybrid sales did fall by 44 percent in March from a year earlier, and that's a worse showing than the 37 percent drop in the overall market.)
Taxi owners and drivers didn't really know what to expect early in 2005 when 10 Ford Escape Hybrids joined San Francisco's taxi fleet.
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A doorman at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco with a Ford Escape Hybrid
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Neither, for that matter, did Ford Motor Co.
"We didn't do anything special to these cars to get them ready to be used as taxis," said Gil Portalatin, Ford's hybrid systems application manager. "They just drove them off of the dealer lot."
Doubters undoubtedly expected an "aha" moment or two as the hybrids took to the mean streets of San Francisco.
But the vehicles and their hybrid technology seem to have met the challenge of hustling fares and their luggage around town. More than a dozen Ford Escape Hybrids that joined the San Francisco taxi fleet now are approaching retirement -- but only because city regulations require vehicles to be taken out of service when their odometers hit 300,000 miles.
What's more, Portalatin expects the retired vehicles to resurface in other California cities and towns that don't set odometer limits.
Black is back in the Golden State - whether it's cool or not.
The Los Angeles Times' Up To Speed blog reported on March 27 that the California Air Resources Board has no plans "at this time" to regulate car paint as part of its plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. CARB spokesman Stanley Young told the blog that "we are by no means interested in banning or restricting car colors."
Young was referring to controversy fueled by reports that California regulators were considering a ban on black cars as part of the state's ongoing bid to improve fuel efficiency and reduce tailpipe emissions.
A recent headline on Rush Limbaugh's website went as far as to state that "Tyrants Want to Ban Black Cars." The radio talk show host delighted in the prospect of those wacky Californians considering a ban that would directly impact President Obama, who regularly travels in a black limousine that is escorted by security forces riding in black SUVs.
Back on Feb. 4, we gave you an update on CARB's ongoing push to find "cool paints" and window treatments that use advanced technology to reflect or reduce the infrared and near-infrared light that causes the interiors of cars with dark paint to really heat up on sunny days.
And you thought it was tough trying to figure out which fuel-efficient car to drive off the dealer lot.
Ichiro Sakai, assistant vice president of American Honda Motor Co., said earlier this week that vehicle manufacturers face similar challenges when it comes to allocating limited R&D dollars among competing (and expensive) green technologies.
"We suffer from market preference," Sakai said during a transportation program sponsored by the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.
That's a polite way of saying Honda doesn't want to get too far ahead of the green automobile pack -- only to discover that consumers aren't interested in buying what it has to sell. A case in point: the ongoing debate over whether lower gasoline prices have dulled consumer demand for smaller, fuel-efficient cars.
Honda sees the wisdom of advancing such technologies as pure-electric vehicles and increased use of biofuels. But EE Publishing's ClimateWire (a subscription-only news service) reports that Sakai also told the audience that such market realities as fuel economy regulations force it to concentrate on picking "lots of low-hanging fruit for the future of internal combustion engines."
AutoPacific projects a significant increase in sales of compact and mid-size cars, with compacts the volume leader.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Automakers, most of them anyway, have been telling American consumers for years that they didn't want small cars, the bigger was better, and safer, and sexier and more fun to drive.
That, said the likes of Ford, GM, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Chrysler, is why they weren't making them - that and the problems they had making small cars that could compete in price and quality with those coming over from Japan.
After a while, even the Japanese pretty much gave up on small cars, shifting their attention to the big SUVs, pickups and luxury and quasi-luxe sedans that the American public had been persuaded were safer and brought more status to the table than compacts.
That started changing as fuel prices began soaring a few years ago, and the pace of change has accelerated as the economy has sunk into a deep recession.
Compacts have replaced mid-sized cars as the volume leader in new car sales, and many analysts believe that's not going to change even when the economy turns around.
California-based AutoPacific, for instance, is projecting that compact sales volume will grow much faster than mid-size volume through 2010 and then maintain an annual lead of 250,000 or so sales over midsized cars well into the next decade.
Edmunds.com analyst Jessica Caldwell agrees, adding that while fuel economy and lower purchase prices are a big reason for the growth in the segment, today's compacts also come loaded with standard equipment and options packages that were unheard of in the segment a few years ago.
Redefining Small
But wait!
There's a complication in the small car vs midsized car analysis, and a reason other than economy that American car buyers have begun favoring compacts.
"Today's compacts are as big as yesterday's midsized cars," says Dan Hall, AutoPacific's marketing vice president.
"While today's Honda Civic is definitely smaller than an Accord, it is about the same size as a mid-'90s Honda Accord," says Ed Kim, AutoPacific's industry analysis director.
The wheelbase of the present-generation Civic - the area in which the passenger cabin fits - is less than half-an-inch smaller than the 1997 Accord. Overall lengths of today's compacts are shorter than previous-generation mid-sized cars, but that's mainly because design changes have made engine compartments and trunk overhangs much shorter.
It's not so much that we've overcome our national preference for mid-sized cars and begun gravitation to the small car, Kim says, its just that the nomenclature has changed.
Auto company marketing mavens have good reason to keep their ears close to the blogs these days.
---------- Give us a Prius without the expensive hybrid system, one blogger suggests. ----------
Those who have been following the chatter on Edmunds.com's hybrid forum in recent weeks have heard from car enthusiasts who fret that, during a gritty recession, many consumers can't afford the steep premium it takes to drive home in a really green machine that returns 40 miles or more per gallon.
These hybrid-savvy consumers maintain that a hefty percentage of car buyers would be content with a more-affordable, conventionally powered car, no matter its slightly lighter shade of green, if it could provide fuel economy in the 40 mpg-range. The discussions, not surprisingly, focus on the Toyota Prius and the Ford Fusion Hybrid. Both have been in the news a lot lately.
One blogger praised the Prius for its miserly ways. But then he complained that, with a $22,720 starting price it is "too expensive for a lot of people. Many people just don't have money to burn ... Most just want a cheaper car that performs better...."
The blogger suggested that Toyota offer a non-hybrid Prius - for the aerodynamic body style, no doubt - that eschews the batteries and electric motors that add to the weight and cost, but incorporate such fuel-efficient technology as direct injection, proper engine sizing, six-speed automatic transmissions and start/stop technology.
(Actually, beefier batteries are required for stop/start systems, which shut the gas engine down when the car comes to a stop and instantly restart it when pressure on the brake pedal is released. The gas engines also require some extra engineering to work that way. Nothing that improves fuel economy comes cheaply.)
Some of the online chatterers sound as if they're standing on a grassy knoll outside of Ford's headquarters and aiming a parabolic microphone at the building.
Hopes for widespread introduction of clean, fuel-efficient diesel cars and light trucks in the U.S. over the next few year are diminishing as quickly as most of our 401ks.
---------- Diesels such as Ford's 65 mpg Fiesta ECOnetic aren't seen as marketable in the U.S. ----------
The latest casualty seems to be the once-promised Nissan Maxima diesel sedan, Senior Editor Billl Visnic reports in our sister blog, Edmunds' AutoObserver.
The 3-liter V6 turbodiesel originally slated to launch here later this year is most likely on hold and well could be canceled, Visnic says, victim of the economic meltdown that has made spending on pricey technologies such as clean diesel a difficult decision for both automakers and consumers.
General Motors Corp. last week said it has shelved plans for a new diesel V8 for its pickups and SUVs, Ford Motor Co. has been grim about the outlook for diesel cars here, Toyota has canceled a diesel engine development program and Honda Motor Co. last year said it was ditching plans to launch a diesel Acura model in the U.S.
As Visnic points out, only the Europeans - heavily invested in diesel technology because of fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions policies over there - are still big backers of diesels for the U.S
Volkswagen already sells the new diesel Jetta here; Audi launches the diesel-powered Q7 late this spring, followed by the diesel A3 in the fall as a 2010 model; Mercedes-Benz has three diesel-powered U.S. models, the ML-, GL- and R-Class, and BMW currently offers a diesel-engine 3-Series sedan and a diesel-powered X5 crossover here.
AT&T says it plans to spend more than half a billion dollars over the next decade purchasing hybrids and alternative fuel vehicles for its corporate fleet.
More than half the 15,000 vehicles the communications giant intends to acquire would be Ford vans - 8,000 of them - that would be converted to compressed natural gas by a so-called "upfitter" that would install the new CNG fuel systems.
The sales would not require any production increase at Ford. "We can meet this demand within our current plans," a spokeswoman for the automaker said.
In all, Reuters news service reported, AT&T is budgeting $565 million on the project, aimed at making its fleet on of the greenest in corporate America.
Ford Motor Co., which would likely be the biggest financial beneficiary of the plan, said in a statement provided to Green Car Advisor today that it "is pleased to support AT&T with their Green Fleet strategy."
A spokeswoman Ford, which has seen sales plummet as the global economy continues to weaken, confirmed that the automaker would not build the CNG vehicles itself but would merely sell AT&T the full-size Econoline vans with 5.4-liter V8 engines prepared with special valves that are compatible with natural gas.
Ford Motor Co. said today that the 100,000th hybrid SUV has rolled off of the line at its Kansas City assembly plant. The milestone was reached five years after the Ford Escape (right) and Mercury Mariner hybrids were introduced.
"As we celebrate our 100,000th hybrid, America's interest in hybrid vehicles keeps growing, as does Ford's commitment to advanced powertrain technologies that deliver greater fuel economy, lower emissions and help enhance our country's energy security," Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford said in a statement.
As we recently reported, the Escape hybrid posted 1,172 sales during February, a 55.6 percent increase from January. Sales were down 22 percent from February '08, but in this market, with new vehicle sales as a whole down 41 percent, even that is something to brag about.
The next zero-to-100,000 celebration in Ford's green car future will be for the new 2010 Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrid sedans, which Ford is aggressively advertising as "America's most fuel-efficient midsize sedans at 41 mpg city driving."
As our sister blog, Edmunds AutoObserver, reports, Ford has sold more hybrids than any of its domestic rivals, but still trails Honda and Toyota.
The subscription-only Kiplinger's Biofuels Market Alert newsletter is reporting this week that it has obtained a letter from Ford's sustainability and environmental chief, Susan Cischke, to the chief executive of Poet, the nation's largest ethanol producer, in which Cischke writes that:
"Ford endorses efforts to increase base level blends up to E15 and collaborate with key stakeholders to overcome challenges with introducing these higher levels of ethanol in the base fuel blend used by all vehicles in the near term ... Based on our biofuels discussions, it is clear that Ford and Poet share a common vision to accelerate renewable fuel use."
E15 is a blend of 15 percent ethanol and 85 percent gasoline.
Present U.S. law limits gasoline's ethanol content to 10 percent -E10 - except for blends made exclusively for flex-fuel vehicles made to run on blends of up to E85.
The Kiplinger report quotes an unidentified Ford executive saying that Ciscke's letter is meant "to drive consensus" and that Ford isn't making an outright endorsement of E15 although it is not demanding more extensive testing of the fuel, as are other automakers.
Sales of hybrid cars and SUVs continued falling in February but their plunge was slowed somewhat by a strong updraft of incentives.
---------- Camry hybrid sales were down 50 percent from February '08 but with incentive spending rose 82 percent from January ----------
While new car sales overall were down 41 percent from a year earlier, hybrid sales were off just 28.5 percent with 16,020 vehicles sold, down from 22,411 in February 2008.
The gas-electric cars cost more than their conventional counterparts and haven't been doing well as the economy tanks and gas prices remain relatively low.
Sales also have been slowed as interested consumers hold off in anticipation of the new Honda insight compact 5-passenger hybrid and the redesigned 2010 Toyota Prius, both due to hit showroom floors soon.
One Gainer
February saw only one gain - the Lexus RX400 hybrid crossover SUV was up 31 percent from a year earlier - but several models posted smaller declines than the segment as a whole.
The Lexus RX400 hybrid was helped by significant incentive spending, as Toyota's luxury division poured an average of $6,338 into each vehicle, according to Edmunds.com's True Cost of Incentives data. That was up from just $503 per vehicle incentive spending on the RX400 hybrid a year earlier and was $1,300 more than Lexus was spending on RX400 incentives in January.
Both the Ford Escape hybrid and the Toyota Camry posted big gains for the month. The Escape, with 1,172 sales, climbed 55.6 percent from January and the Camry, with 2,080 sales, was up 82.3 percent.
Camry sales really show the power of incentives: the car was among the worst performers in comparing February '08 and '09 sales, down almost 50 percent.To get the big January to February improvement, Toyota pumped up incentive spending on the model to $1,495 per vehicle from "virtually nothing in January," said Edmunds.com industry analyst Jessica Caldwell.
We have to wait another year, but here's a look at the 2009 Ford Fiesta sedan, which has just gone on sale in China - the first country to get the sedan version of the new global platform subcompact.
---------- Chinese-market Fiesta sedan rolls off assembly line. ----------
Ford launched the Fiesta as a hatchback in Europe, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand late last year and the car already has become one of Europe's the top-selling passenger vehicles, trailing only the VW Golf.
Since its August '08 launch, consumers on the three continents have purchased more than 110,000 Fiestas, Ford said.
It was recently named British car of the year by What Car?, the U.K.'s automotive version of Consumer Reports.
The sedan, initially designed specifically for the Chinese market, will be one of three Fiesta models - the others are the three- and five-door hatchbacks - sold worldwide when it launches outside of China next year.
The U.S. market will get the sedan - revised for North American tastes and safety standards - and the 5-door hatchback, both to be built at Ford's plant in Cuautitlan, Mexico.
No info yet on fuel economy or engine size, but What Car? tested the British version with a 1.25-liter engine at 50 miles per Imperial gallon, which works out to around 45 mpg in the U.S.
We'll likely get larger engine, though, so our mileage could - probably will - vary.
Ford Fusion billboard makes fuel economy rating as prominent as the hybrid car it is selling.
The top reason U.S. car shoppers don't buy a Ford is fuel economy; they think Ford makes only gas-guzzlers, the automaker's research shows.
The company is looking to dispel that notion with its massive new advertising campaign for the 2010 Ford Fusion and, most notably, the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid.
Quite simply, Ford bills all versions of the Fusion -- from the four-cylinder to the V6 to the gas-electric hybrid -- as the most fuel-efficient midsize sedans in America.
The first print ads were featured in newspapers Monday; the first television commercials air tonight on American Idol.
Ford Motor Co. is reopening a furloughed plant in Ohio to produce its turbocharged, direct-injected Ecoboost gasoline engine.
The automaker said Friday that its Cleveland Engine Plant No. 1, which was closed in 2007, will produce the six-cylinder Ecoboost engine that is at the heart of Ford's bid to enter the green game in a big way.
The 3.5-liter engine that initially will be paired with the 2010 Lincoln MKS, Lincoln MKT, Ford Taurus SHO and Ford Flex promises to deliver up to 20 percent better fuel economy with 15 percent fewer carbon-dioxide emissions than vehicles equipped with standard fuel-injected engines of similar output.
While the engine will debut in just a handful of models, Ford Global Product Chief Derrick Kuzak said late last year that, by 2013, the company hopes to ship more than 2.5 million Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles with six- and four-cylinder Ecoboost engines.
The 58-year-old engine plant had 600 employees working on two shifts when it closed nearly two years ago. Ford plans to reopen the facility with 250 employees working a single shift.
Staffing levels could rise as Ford pushes Ecoboost into more models and determines which plant will produce the four-cylinder version of the fuel-efficient engine.
Weight, Price Penalty for 40 Miles of All-Electric Range Is Prohibitive, Researchers Say
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
In a report sure to be a blow to GM's hopes for its upcoming plug-in hybrid, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have found that the extra cost and weight of the
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Researchers say vehicles like the the Chevy Volt may be too much of a good thing.
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batteries a vehicle such as the Chevrolet Volt must carry to achieve its targeted 40 miles of all-electric range make it too expensive to be cost-effective transportation for most people.
The report, to be published in a future issue of the journal "Energy Policy," doesn't identify the Volt by name but compares a plug-in hybrid with its basic characteristics to conventional hybrids, other plug-ins with less electric range, and even conventional vehicles.
"Large-capacity PHEVs sized for 40 or more miles of electric-only travel are not cost-effective in any scenario," the report's authors insist.
Bloomberg News issued the first report on the study today.
Fuel Savings Not There
General Motors Corp. has designed the Volt to travel up to 40 miles on a fully charged battery pack before its auxiliary gasoline engine-generator kicks in.
The automaker says that because the average American drives less the 40 miles a day when commuting or using the vehicle for normal household errands, the Volt will be highly fuel-efficient and will run as a zero-emissions vehicle for much of its time on the road.
That may be true, the Carnegie Mellon researchers say in their study of plug-in hybrid cost-effectiveness, but if an owner hopes to recoup ownership costs from fuel savings, a rechargeable hybrid vehicle capable of that much all-electric range isn't the answer.
"Forty miles might be a sweet spot for making sure a lot of people get to work without using gasoline, but you're doing it at a cost that will never be repaid in fuel savings," Jeremy Michalek, an engineering professor who led the study, told Bloomberg News in an interview.
Ford's 2010 Taurus SHO is a sportier, high-performance version of its flagship sedan.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
A confession: I like to go fast.
A sizeable slice of the driving population does. Automakers know this, so they make cars with powerful engines even though, by now, they (and we) know that powerful and fuel economy don't go together (unless it's a powerful electric motor).
You can't fault them for it - these so-called halo cars draw attention to their brands and usually pull people into their showrooms - even if the people don't buy or end up driving away in something a lot less powerful, and a lot less expensive, then the car that brought them in.
All of which leads to this: Ford Motor Co., operating a little farther back from the precipice than its domestic rivals and thus a little better able to experiment - is bringing back its performance sedan, the Taurus SHO. It will debut this week at the Chicago Auto Show.
But Ford's bringing back the "Super High Output" sedan with a twist.
It is claiming green credentials for the car, which won't use a V8, usually the engine of choice for hot Detroit metal and the engine type used by the last generation Taurus SHO sold from 1996-1999.
Instead, the 2010 Taurus SHO, like the original, introduced in 1989, will use a V6 - although quite a different V6 than that first model's 3-liter, 200-horsepower mill.
And like the original, it will be a pricey Taurus: starting price is $37,995, versus $25,170 for the base'09 Taurus and $32,520 for the top-of-the-line Taurus Limited with all-wheel drive.
The new SHO gets one of Ford's ballyhooed 3.5-liter, direct-injection, twin-turbocharged "EcoBoost" V6s, this one tuned up to a 365 horsepower rating, 10 ponies more than the 355-horsepower versions being fitted into top-of-the-line 2010 Ford Flex and Lincoln MKS sedan and MKT crossover models.
The new engine probably is greener than its predecessor models in terms of smog-causing tailpipe emissions - engines are a lot cleaner now than they were a decade ago.
But without knowing the expected fuel economy (and Ford hasn't released that yet), it's hard to say whether the new SHO will best its predecessor in the fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas categories.
The '99 SHO, with a 3.4-liter, 235 horsepower V8, was rated by the EPA at 19 miles per gallon in the city and 27 mpg on the highway. That's the equivalent of about 17 city and 25 highway under the revised EPA ratings system that took effect in 2007.
All Ford has said so far about the new SHO is that its supercharged V6 will deliver V8 power with 6-cylinder fuel economy.
It happened, just as we said it would earlier today: General Motors Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner (right) met with Democratic Representative Henry Waxman of California, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which among other things can make life sweet or bitter for automakers doing business in the U.S.A.
GM - and Ford and Chrysler, probably all automakers come to think of it - hate being heavily regulated. For at least the past couple of decades, the Big 3 have fought efforts to regulate automotive emissions and fuel-economy standards that would force them to make cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars and trucks.
Chief among the members of Congress who've wanted tough tailpipe-emissions and fuel-economy laws is Waxman, who is a strong proponent of letting California and other states set emissions and efficiency standards, for automobiles sold in their states, that are much higher than those of the federal government.
We'd hope we'd get some colorful description of the Wagoner-Waxman sitdown, but following the meeting Waxman and his staff zippered their lips on the subject.
Wagoner spoke briefly to reporters after meeting, saying it lasted about 30 minutes in Waxman's Capitol Hill office. The discussion included talks about climate issues and other auto issues, he said.
"I appreciated the chance to sit down," Wagoner said. "Obviously, the chairman is very well-informed on the issues."
To Ford, Mei, which means "beautiful" in Chinese, represents the twenty-something, college-educated single women who form the bull's eye in its target market in China for the Ford Fiesta (pictured). The compact hatchback is the first in a planned series of cars that the company has designed to sell, with minor variations, in markets around the world.
Connecting with Mei, who earns $880 to $1,500 a month and wants her first car, and persuading her to buy a Fiesta, are increasingly important missions for Ford, as the it tries to offset sagging sales in North America. By unit sales, China is the world's second-largest vehicle market after the U.S., and Ford has struggled here recently.
While overall passenger-vehicle sales in China rose nearly 7 percent last year, sales of Ford brand cars fell 10 percent, according to J.D. Power & Associates. A Ford spokeswoman says the company's sales decline wasn't as sharp as that, according to the Journal.
Ford says it plans to roll out an ad campaign for the Fiesta next month that will be aimed at Mei and her peers. It will largely bypass television and newspapers to catch them where they spend much of their time: online and reading lifestyle magazines.
For more than half a century, Democratic Representative John Dingell of Michigan (right) has been the Big 3's biggest lobbyist in Washington.
He has fought virtually every bill the automakers have opposed, from seatbelts and airbags to tailpipe emissions and fuel-efficiency standards.
Dingell's position as chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce for 14 years - to say nothing of his other 38 years on the committee - has given him enormous influence over such matters.
Not by sheer coincidence, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler donated at least $650,000 toward his re-election efforts during his term as chairman.
Democratic Representative Henry Waxman of California has been on the same powerful committee since 1975, listening to Dingell decry efforts to regulate harmful tailpipe emissions and the like.
Waxman (left) bided his time until this past fall, when he was able ride a national surge for change and unseat Dingell from his perch atop the committee by a close but decisive House vote.
It was a major change at the top, to put it mildly. Waxman has been so at odds with Dingell and the Big 3 that he didn't receive so much as a dollar from the automakers in all the years he served on the committee.
It's probably a fair bet that Waxman is despised by the men who run the Big 3 - or rather, the Detroit 3 now. Certainly, Waxman doesn't hold the men in high regard.
So it would be wonderful to be a fly on the wall today, overhearing what GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner (lower right) and Waxman say to one another when Wagoner pays the new chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce a visit.
Word of the meeting was supposed to be hush-hush, but it leaked out. As for the subject matter, it remains confidential.
But one thing is certain: Waxman vehemently supports efforts by California and other states to impose emissions standards that are tougher than the federal government's.
GM, Ford and Chrysler paid millions of dollars lobbying members of Congress and the Bush administration trying to crush the states' efforts. Thus far they've succeeded, but the battle isn't over.
We'll relay whatever information we're able to glean from today's Waxman-Wagoner powwow.
Nissan Motor Co. announced today that it is seeking a federal loan under a U.S. program for fuel-efficient autos.
The decision means that it is competing for U.S. funds with numerous American companies, including General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and electric-car start-up Tesla Motors Inc.
The announcement came the same day as Nissan, Japan's third-largest automaker, said it intended to cut more than 20,000 jobs worldwide and shift production out of Japan as part of a broad new effort to weather the economic downturn.
Nissan, which suffered a net loss of $908 million for the quarter that ended in December, today projected a $1.92 billion operating loss for its year ending in March.
As for the federal loan, the U.S. Department of Energy may disburse some of the $25 billion in low-cost loans to successful applicants in coming weeks, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Friday.
Rules for the program were set in November and the agency received 75 applications for projects totaling $38 billion, Energy Department spokesman Phil West said. Of those, only 26 were "substantially complete," he said.
U.S. officials notified Nissan that its application met initial requirements, and the request entered the second of four approval stages, according to Alan Buddendeck, Nissan's U.S. vice president of communications.
Unlike the $17.4 billion in emergency federal loans GM and Chrysler LLC won to avoid bankruptcy, the $25 billion are part of 2007 legislation creating tougher fuel-efficiency rules. Any manufacturer can apply as long as the money is used to make autos at U.S. factories that produce cars with at least 25 percent better fuel economy.
Ending almost two months of speculation, Ford Motor Co. confirmed today that it will, indeed, base its first venture into the commercial electric vehicle market on the Ford Transit Connect van (right) that's already a best-seller throughout Europe in its conventional gasoline and diesel versions.
We don't get to do it as often as we'd like, so bear with us a moment: "Toot."
That's the sound of our own horn.
We predicted this back in December, when word first got out that Ford was planning a battery-electric cargo van for the U.S. commercial truck market.
Ford said today it will bring the electric delivery van to market here in partnership with Britain's Smith Electric Vehicles - which already makes its own battery-electric version of the Transit Connect for sale as the Smith Amphere (left) in Europe and just last week confirmed plans to introduce - and begin building - a much larger commercial truck, the Smith Newton, in the U.S. later this year.
The Ford Transit EV, slated to go on sale in 2010, will be the first in what Ford promise will be a family of electric vehicles that will include a battery-electric small car (possibly the Ford Focus) in 2011; and, in 2012, a new generation of Ford's hybrid powertrain in a number of vehicles including a plug-in hybrid (likely the Ford Escape SUV, a plug-in version of which is presently undergoing testing).
Company Says Time is Right to Begin Marketing Kits to Add Natural Gas Capability to Conventional Vehicles
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
A California-based company that has played a major role in popularizing bi-fuel cars and tucks in Europe and Latin America is bringing its technology home.
IMPCO Technologies, manufacturer of a bi-fuel conversion system that can enable cars to run on natural gas or propane as well as gasoline, plans to announce this morning that it is establishing a new U.S. automotive division to take advantage of what it sees as a growth market for technologies that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on petroleum.
The company's Automotive Alternative Fuels Division initially will concentrate of the fleet market with conversion kits for popular domestic pickup trucks and vans, said Tim Standke, IMPCO's director of automotive operations. The company also will show a converted Chevrolet Impala sedan - a popular government fleet car - at its press conference today.
IMPCO - a subsidiary of Fuel Systems Solutions - could expand its product line into the general passenger vehicle market if demand is there, Standke told Green Car Advisor in an interview earlier this week.
"Our goal is to open up to all markets," he said. "We want to be there, to be ready, when gas prices go up and the demand for alternative fuels grows."
The company already manufactures conversion kits for a wide variety of passenger cars sold in Europe and South America, including vehicles from Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp.
The big drawback to a widespread introduction in the U.S. passenger vehicle market is the cost of testing and certification, Standke said.
It costs about $50,000 to perform the tests needed to obtain federal Environmental Protection Agency certification for a kit for a specific model, he said, and almost $500,000 per model to gain certification from the California Air Resources Board, which requires far more testing than the EPA.
CARB certification is a necessity if the company wants to be able to sell its product in states that use California emissions rules rather than federal standards - the list includes many of the country's most populous states.
The company's system (left) consists of a separate fuel injector rail, a control valve, fuel filter, new fuel lines for the under-the-hood portion of the system, pressure and temperature sensors and an injector control module that works with the vehicle's original engine control computer to permit seamless switching from gasoline to natural gas or propane.
Customers also must purchase pressurized fuel tanks and tank-to-engine bay fuel lines, typically from a licensed IMPCO installer.
The entire system, which is added to the vehicle in parallel with the existing gasoline fuel system, can run from $7,000 to $8,000, with the cost of the fuel tanks and pressurized fuel lines representing more than half the price.
No surprise, hybrid sales in January went down the drain along with the rest of the industry.
The gas-electric cars, pricier than their conventional counterparts, typically don't do well when gas prices are cheapish, as they are these days.
---------- Lexus RX 400h was one of only two hybrids to post a gain over January '08 sales. ----------
Add in a recession teetering on the edge of depression and the picture is grimmer.
Piling on, Toyota and Honda -- the industry's hybrid sales leaders -- have new models coming out in a few months, a situation that doesn't do much to promote sales of models that are soon to be outdated.
The only good news is that, as a percentage of an overall abysmal market, hybrids gained in January, rising to a 2.33 percent market share from 1.97 percent in December and 2.14 percent a year earlier.
In terms of market share, January was the seventh-best month for hybrids since the first model went on sale in the U.S. in 1999.
Good market share in a bad market isn't much to cheer about, though. In terms of sales volume, January was the worst month for hybrids in almost three years.
Total sales of 15,393 hybrid cars and SUVs were down 12.8 percent from December and plunged 31.2 percent from a year earlier.
The last time sales were lower was February 2006, when only 14,957 hybrids were sold.
Gains
As usual, Toyota's Prius was the month's volume leader with 8,121 sales -- almost 53 percent of the total.
The Prius also was one of only five hybrid models of the 16 tracked by Edmunds.com to post a gain from December, up 3.3 percent. Prius sales were down 28.6 percent from a year earlier, though.
The other January gainers were:
The Lexus 400h crossover hybrid, up 6.3 percent with 1,556 sales;
Toyota's Highlander hybrid SUV, up 10.6 percent with 984 sales;
Honda's Civic Hybrid, up 3.8 percent with 1,076 sales; and
The Mercury Mariner Hybrid SUV from Ford Motor Co., up 19.8 percent with 127 sales.
Despite the one-month gains, the Civic Hybrid was down 38.3 percent from January '07, the Mariner was off 28.7 percent from a year earlier, and the Highlander was down 54.1 percent.
Potential buyers holding back in anticipation of the improved 2010 Prius and Honda's new 2010 Insight Hybrid, both due later this year, didn't help any of the January-over-January sales comparisons, said Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds.com's manager of industry analysis.
"Hefty price tags combined with the promise of newer, more-efficient models to come within the next few months have really hindered hybrid sales in January," she said.
Two hybrid models did post gains from their year-ago, marks, though.
---------- Nissan Altima Hybrid joined Lexus in winner's circle with an increase from January '08 sales. ----------
The Lexus 400h was up 28.3 percent from 1,211 sales a year earlier -- the only model to gain for the month and the year -- while Nissan's Altima Hybrid, with 644 sales last month, was up 36.1 percent from 473 sales in January '07.
Big Losses
The rest of the pack lost ground, although most are such low-volume sellers that the losses didn't make much impression on January's total sales picture.
General Motors Corp.'s hybrid cars and crossovers were the biggest losers, percentagewise, all but one falling more than 50 percent from December (none were in the market a year ago, so there are no January '07 numbers to compare to).
The Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid SUV was hit hardest, down 69.5 percent with 299 sold versus 981 in December.
The Chevy Malibu Hybrid sedan was a close second in the loser column, its 145 sales a 68.1 percent decline from 454 sales a month earlier.
The GMC Yukon Hybrid SUV (a twin to the Tahoe) was down 62 percent to 168 sales from 442 in December; Cadillac Escalade Hybrid SUV sales fell 56.8 percent to 132 from 306; the Saturn Vue Greenline Hybrid crossover was off 54.7 percent with 153 sales, down from 338; and the Saturn Aura Hybrid sedan was down 44.1 percent to 19 sales from 34 in December.
Sales of Ford's Escape Hybrid SUV fell 27.9 percent from December, to 753, and were off 41.9 percent from January '07, and Toyota's Camry Hybrid sedan dropped 39.6 percent from December, to 1,141 sales, and was down 49.7 percent from a year earlier.
In Toyota's luxury stable, the Lexus LS 600h L hybrid sedan posted 33 sales, down 34 percent from December and 68.6 percent below January '07 sales, and the Lexus GS 450h crossover hybrid dropped 19.6 percent from December, to 41 sales, and was off 35.9 percent from a year earlier.
Although the new models from Toyota and Honda could pump a little excitement into the hybrid market later this year, Caldwell and other analysts don't expect much improvement before the latter part of the year.
Ford has entered into a partnership with Johnson Controls-Saft to develop an advanced lithium-ion battery system to power the automaker's first production plug-in hybrid electric vehicles beginning in 2012.
Also announced today, Ford has partnered with seven regional electric utility companies and the Electric Power Research Institute to conduct real-world tests on an expanding fleet of Ford Escape plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).
The lithium-ion battery system that Johnson Controls-Saft is developing for Ford include cells and mechanical, electrical, electronic and thermal components. The cells will be produced at the JCS facility in France and the system assembled in the U.S.
The five-year supply agreement includes delivery for committed production in 2012 with a target of at least 5,000 units per year.
Ford's demonstration fleet of Escape PHEVs is using JCS lithium-ion packs and the automaker has been pleased with them, so today's announcement isn't surprising.
As for the real-world testing, Ford is in the process of providing Escape PHEVs to: New York Power Authority; Consolidated Edison of New York; American Electric Power of Columbus, Ohio; Alabama Power of Birmingham, Alabama; Progress Energy of Raleigh, N.C.; DTE Energy of Detroit; and, the National Grid of Waltham, Massachussets.
Ford formed its first utility partnership with Southern California Edison in 2007 and continues to work with the utility.
EPRI, which is providing financial and logistical support for the research, formed the collaboration of utilities for the program. This allows EPRI and Ford, which first entered into a three-year agreement in March, to study regional differences and the impact on the electric grid as well as the vehicles.
GM Gets Three Models on 'Greenest' List and Tops 'Meanest' Ranking With Hummer H2
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
In an anticlimactic repeat, Honda's natural-gas burning Civic GX topped the annual "greenest vehicles" of the year listing being published this morning by the non-profit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
It is the 12th year the Washington-based environmental and economic lobbying group has published its Green Book Online, which ranks passenger cars and light trucks for overall environmental impact.
Although the list for the 2009 model year contained no big surprises, it was marked by the reappearance of General Motors Corp., with trio of small cars among the dozen "greenest" vehicles in the market - the Chevrolet Cobalt compact and its Pontiac G5 twin placed eighth overall and the Chevrolet Aveo subcompact finished10th.
The GM cars, which were rated highly for their fuel economy, knocked Ford's Focus off the "greenest" list after its appearance there last year as the only domestic car in the top twelve.
The Ford didn't get a lower score - but the average scores in the top 12 were higher this year than last.
Evolution, Not Revolution
Generally, the 2009 list was marked by continued improvements in the fuel economy and reduced greenhouse gas emissions of scores of vehicles rather than by stellar performances from just one or two models.
Manufacturers are fine-tuning their engines and transmissions, improving materials, and adding emission control technologies, said ACEEE transportation program director Therese Langer.
To date, Ford has said little about the EV other than to say it will be developed in partnership with Canadian auto components supplier Magna International.
According to the newspaper, this past September executives at the Canadian supplier told Ford they had a surprise. They pulled up at the automaker's headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, in a Ford Focus they had bought and converted to battery power on their dime (pictured).
"It was a phenomenal car," Lisa Drake, Ford's chief engineer for hybrid programs, told the newspaper, adding that she couldn't help smiling when she saw it. "We were highly, highly impressed."
So impressed that just four months later, amid otherwise bleak times for the auto industry, Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. held a press conference at the Detroit Auto Show to announce plans to bring a car based on that prototype to market in 2011.
When gas prices peaked last summer, tipping the auto industry into its nastiest recession in a generation, Ford started gaming out what would happen if gas kept climbing.
"We were modeling $10 a gallon. We were modeling $12 a gallon," Drake to The Detroit News. "We decided we need to be ready the next time this comes around."
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 Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co., the California Air Resources Board, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
All of the participants signed an agreement to keep the content of the greenhouse gas meetings confidential.
Green Car Advisor is told that while the sessions did promote "greater understanding of the issues" by all parties, there were no changes of mind and no agreements to compromise.
But Cars Not Available Yet and Credit Falls to $1,700 on April 1 and Disappears Next Year
The 2010 Ford Fusion hybrid (left) - and its Mercury Milan twin - have been approved for the new $3,400 federal tax credit for hybrids, but the deal's only good for models sold through March 31.
That likely means there won't be many sold that qualify for the full credit because Ford won't be getting the cars to showrooms until sometime in the spring. That could be early March, said a company spokeswoman, but it could be later.
Ford says, though, that people who are interested in securing the full credit can qualify if they have a car ordered through a dealership by the end of March..
After that, the credit drops to $1,700 because Ford has hit the hybrid sales threshold that triggers a rapid phasing out of the hybrid tax credits.
The automaker, though, plans to take full advantage of the marketing advantage it gains by being able to advertise the biggest tax credit ever for a conventional hybrid.
That's because the feds only allowed a top credit of $3,000 for hybrids sold before the 2010 model year. Front-wheel drive versions of the Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner hybrid SUVs both still qualify for that credit until April 1. The SUV hybrids with four-wheel drive are eligible for a $1,950 credit through the end of March.
After falling 50 percent on April 1, Ford Motor Co.'s hybrid tax credits drop by 50 percent again on October 1 (the Fusion credit, for instance, will be $850 at that point) and disappear on April 1, 2010.
Ford already is hyping the Fusion-Milan tax credits as "the highest credit amount ever offered for hybrids purchased or placed into service after Dec. 31, 2005." You can expect some version of that claim to start showing up in advertising soon.
The reason, of course, is simply that Ford's the first manufacturer still eligible for the incentives to launch a 2010 model year hybrid that qualifies for the recently increased credit.
Toyota and Honda have already sold so many hybrids that they've used up the tax credits allocated to them, so neither the 2010 Honda Insight, although a new model, nor the 2010 Toyota Prius, an update, will be eligible for a federal credit.
It was the Fusion's EPA-estimated fuel economy of 41 miles per gallon in the city and 36 mpg on the highway that qualified it for the big credit, which is based on fuel efficiency.
Ford Motor Co.'s new Fiesta - a car we won't see until next year - has been named 2009 Car of The Year by Britain's automotive version of our Consumer Reports.
What Car? magazine said it selected the Fiesta, all new for 2009, for its design, performance and fuel economy and called it "the most complete small car we've ever tested."
Remember, Ford in Europe is a moderately upscale brand and its small cars there are outfitted well above the level of Ford's small cars in the U.S.
The Fiesta was introduced in Europe a few months ago and has been the best-selling car in Britain in November and December.
The car is the first from Ford's new global vehicle development system and was designed to be sold worldwide.
The version tested by What Car? achieved fuel economy of about 50 miles per gallon (that's Imperial gallons), which would equate to the mid-40s in the U.S. A specially tuned and aerodynamically improved ECOnetic version has been rated at more than 76 mpg in Britain, or about 62 mpg in the U.S.
Asian production of the Fiesta began last week and North American production is scheduled to begin late this year at Ford's plant in Cuautitlan, Mexico.
We'll get two models, a hatchback and a sedan, starting early next year, the company said.
Probably with a bigger engine than the "zingy 1.25-liter" four-banger that What Car? test drivers loved.
After what seems like years of lagging the industry in adopting new technologies, Ford Motor Co. appears to be adapting to the 21st Century with gusto.
---------- Ford says its dual-clutch, six-speed gearbox is smaller, lighter, more efficient and more fun than a standard four-speed automatic. ----------
A lot of that is driven by the company's survival instinct, but no matter, Ford has found the joy of fuel efficiency and is applying it most everywhere.
The latest, to be announced Wednesday morning at the Automotive News World Congress meeting in Detroit, is a dual-clutch, six-speed transmission for Ford's small car lineup in North America, starting in 2010.
The transmission, called PowerShift, is essentially an automatic manual. It uses electronically activated dry clutches, the same type found in manuals, to seamlessly change gears, eliminating the power loss - and wasted fuel - that occurs as a standard automatic momentarily disengages gears while shifting up or down.
The PowerShift's clutches each operate a separate "bank" of gears - one carrying 1st, 3rd and 5th speeds , the other 2nd, 4th and 6th. The transmission's computer matches revolutions and manages the clutches to pre-select the next gear so that each change is instantaneous with no waste of engine power.
Big Mileage Boost
Ford says the technology can improve a vehicle's fuerl econonmy by up to 9 percent. It already is in use in the European Ford Focus (right), although with a "wet" clutch system to better handle the higher output of the European Focus' four-cylinder turbo-diesel engine, and is beginning to be used by other mainstream automakers as well.
The fuel economy gain is several notches above the 4- to 7-percent fuel economy increases a standard six-speed automatic can realize when replacing a four-speed automatic.
Volkswagen, which has been selling its Polo subcompact in Europe since 1975, has decided to bring the supermini fuel-sipping car in the United States.
---------- A 2009 VW Polo gets the star treatment. ----------
VW development chief Ulrich Hackenberg says the automaker wants to take advantage of American buyers' increasing enthusiasm for smaller fuel-efficient cars.
"Oil prices will rise again and that will drive small-car sales up further," he said in an interview at the Detroit auto show last week.
Hackenberg said the U.S.-bound Polos may be produced in VW's assembly plant in Puebla, Mexico, where the original Beetle was made until a few years ago, to avoid an unfavorable Euro-dollar exchange rate. He did not say when U.S. sales of the Polo might start.
The Wolfsburg, Germany, company will debut its fifth-generation Polo -- the 2010 model -- at the Geneva auto show in March. Pricing and fuel economy have not been divulged.
The most fuel-efficient of the current, fourth-generation Polo variants sold in Europe get about 60 miles per gallon. The low-emissions version or versions sold in America would likely get between 40 and 60 mpg.
The decision to sell the Polo in the U.S. will give VW an entrant in the increasingly competitive subcompact market that exists there.
Currently, VW's smallest car in the U.S. is the Rabbit (or Golf, as the model is known elsewhere), which starts at $15,900. Its 2.5-liter five-cylinder engine puts out 170 horsepower, which is wonderful, but achieves only 24 miles per gallon in combined city-highway driving.
VW also sells a Jetta compact, which starts at $17,300. It and the Rabbit thus far have not competed favorably in the high-volume, affordable-car segment dominated by the 2009 Honda Civic, which starts at $15,200, and the 2009 Toyota Corolla, which starts at $16,700.
Stepping down a notch in size and price are the 2009 Toyota Yaris, starting at $12,200, and the Honda Fit, starting at $14,700. These -- or rather their 2010 successors, assuming the U.S.-bound Polo is a 2010 model -- would likely be the Polo's direct competition, as would Ford's new Fiesta global car.
GM Still a Big Backer, Even If Not as Publicly as in Past Years
By Dale Buss, Contributor
Of all the contrasts between this year's Detroit auto show and last year's -- most created by the intervening global economic melt-down and resulting car sales crash -- perhaps none is more striking than what happened to ethanol.
---------- Ethanol-capable vehicles such as GM's flex-fuel Yukon were common at last year's Detroit auto show, not so common this year. ----------
At the North American International Auto Show here a year ago, ethanol and ethanol-burning vehicles were the belles of the ball. Ethanol was promoted at almost every major automaker's press conferences and cropped up in interview after interview. Ethanol-using vehicles were everywhere.
This year, it's almost impossible to find mention of ethanol anywhere out on the 700,000-square foot auto show floor at Cobo Hall.
The talk has all been of electrification of the transportation system, electric vehicles, batteries for electric vehicles, and ventures to develop and build better batteries.
But ethanol hasn't gone away -- it is just lying low.
At least one automaker remains bullish on the long-term prospects for the fuel, especially the cellulosic variety.
General Motors, Chrysler and Ford bet on the wrong horses, so to speak, regarding the kind of vehicles they made in recent years. They made ones that, generally speaking, guzzled gas and left the automakers enormously vulnerable to a sudden rise in the price of gasoline.
But American politicians, being the reelection-driven creatures that they are, weren't about to let any of the Detroit automakers go under. GM and Chrysler received bailouts. Ford hasn't asked for funds, but it has submitted a request asking that funds be on hand should they want them.
The pitch American taxpayers have been expected to swallow in exchange for billions in taxpayer dollars is that GM, Chrysler and Ford are doing everything possible now to make cars and trucks that are fuel efficient or don't require gasoline or diesel at all.
If they do this, as they have promised, they'll produce vehicles that people will want to buy, which is good for the U.S. economy, and that are cleaner burning, which is good for the planet.
Whether it's a deal you or I wanted is immaterial now. It will be a good deal for us if the automakers live up to their promise. But an entry on GM's Fastlane BlogWednesday suggests that GM, Chrysler and Ford won't be doing everything possible to make those wonderful green cars.
When Ford Motor Co. launches its 2010 Flex all-purpose wagon and the 2010 Lincoln MKS luxury sedan and MKT crossover later this year, all three will be endowed with the company's new, fuel-efficient but powerful EcoBoost V6 engine (right).
The powerplant, which will later find its way into more Ford vehicles, is tuned to make a V8-like 355 horsepower and 350 foot-pounds of torque while delivering V6 fuel economy.
The automaker will discuss the engine technology at a press conference today as the North American International Auto Show kicks off the first of three media preview days, but provided this early look for those who don't like to follow strict schedules.
In the full-size Flex, all-wheel drive models equipped with the twin-turbo EcoBoost engine are expected to deliver 22 miles per gallon on the highway and combined highway-city mileage of about 18 mpg.
The Lincoln MKS sedan with the EcoBoost V6 delivered 25 miles a gallon on the highway and 16 mpg around town in Ford's preliminary testing and is expected to win federal EPA ratings that are the same, the company said.
Ford executives said the 2010 Lincoln MKT crossover with EcoBoost is expected to get a highway rating of about 20 mpg.
Ford's 2010 EcoBoost lineup: Ford Flex, Lincoln MKS and Lincoln MKT.
A Look Inside
All of Ford's twin-turbo EcoBoost V6s will be mated to a new 6-speed automatic with select shift, the company said. Increasing the number of gear ratios, or "speeds" in a transmission helps improve fuel economy by letting the engine operate in its most efficient range more often.
Ford Motor Co. plans to jump into the electric vehicle word in a big way, chief executive Alan Mulally and other executives told reporters at the North American International Auto Show today.
---------- Ford is testing a plug-in hybrid version of its Escape SUV. ----------
The company already has announced plans to launch a battery-electric delivery van for the commercial vehicle market in 2010, and Mulally said a battery-EV small car for the retail market will follow in 2011.
Beyond that, Ford plans to hit the market with a new generation of hybrids - including its first plug-in - by 2012. (The company presently is testing a plug-in version of its Escape hybrid SUV.)
The 2010 Ford EV will be developed in partnership with Canadian auto components supplier Magna International, and Ford executives said the company would work with partners on other green vehicles and on lithium-ion battery development as well.
The company's high-volume global platforms for small and mid-size cars such as the Focus and the Fusion, will support battery-electric powertrains as well as conventional gas and diesel engines said Mark Fields, president of Ford's Americas division.
Ford's chairman, Bill Ford, said the company has formed a four-way partnership in China and the U.S. to help expand its electric vehicle expertise.
In addition to Ford, the partners are Changan Auto Group and the cities of Chongquing, China, and Denver, Colo.
The cities' cooperation is valuable because they can provide real-world test-beds for EVs by introducing them into city fleets and by facilitating tests of things such as public charging infrastructure, smart grid electrical hookups.
It may be a case of piling on, but Ford Motor Co. gleefully issued a press release today touting yet another fuel economy win over Japanese rivals - this time it's the conventionally powered Ford Fusion S beating the 4-cylinder Toyota Camry and Honda accord models.
The base model in the 2010 Fusion lineup has been rated by the federal Environmental Protection Agency at 23 miles per gallon in city driving and 34 mpg on the highway, Ford said.
The company has proudly been touting the EPA fuel efficiency rating for the 2010 Fusion hybrid - 41 mpg in the city and 36 on the highway - as best-in-class in the mid-size car segment, easily overshadowing Toyota's Camry hybrid and Nissan's Altima hybrid.
Toyota took umbrage at that claim, however, maintaining, as we reported earlier today, that despite being much smaller that the Fusion and the Camry, the Prius qualifies as a mid-size under federal rules and thus beats the Fusion hybrid with its 48 mpg city-45 mpg highway rating.
In today's announcement, Ford tried to fix that by proclaiming the Fusion, which goes on sale in the spring, as "American's most fuel-efficient mid-size sedan for both hybrid and conventional gasoline models."
The key word there is "sedan." Toyota's Prius is a hatchback and thus no longer part of the comparison set.
The Fusion S uses Ford's new 2.5-liter, 4-cylinder engine linked to the front wheels through a six-speed automatic transmission.
Its 23/34 mpg rating tops the 2.4-liter, 4-cylinder Camry's by 2 miles a gallon in the city cycle and 3 mpg on the highway. It bests the 2.4-liter, 4-cylinder Accord by just 1 mile per gallon in the city, but by 3 mpg in highway driving, according to the EPA.
We don't really care who is mileage champ, it's just good to see the automakers battling it out over fuel economy claims as well as doing the standard horsepower and 0-60 acceleration match-ups.
We hate to help them play the publicity game, but some things are too good to pass up.
Toyota apparently is miffed at Ford for claiming that it's new Fusion hybrid (left) will be the most fuel-efficient midsized car on the road when it goes on sale this spring.
Ford has gotten a lot of ink with the fuel economy claim, which it has aimed at the car it sees as the Fusion hybrid's major competitor -Toyota's mid-size Camry hybrid.
But Toyota, according to a piece in USA Today, says that Ford's claim is not correct because the more-efficient Prius (below, right), although 16-inches shorter, 4 inches narrower and 800 pounds lighter than the Fusion and quite a bit smaller than the Camry as well, turns out to be a midsized car as well!
Midsized, at least, per federal government measuring rules, which take into account passenger and cargo space, but not little things like the vehicle's overall size.
Under the government's rules, a midsized car has between 110 and 120 cubic feet of combined space.
The Fusion comes in at 111.6 cubic feet, easily meeting the mark, although at the small end of the mid-size range.
And the Prius (thanks to its tall ceiling) squeaks over the line at 110.6 cubic feet.
The fusion is EPA-rated at 41 miles per gallon in city driving, 36 mpg on the highway. The Camry is rated at 33 in the city, 34 on the highway.
The Prius, of course, beats everything else in the hybrid segment with an EPA rating of 48 mpg around town and 45 mpg on the highway.
And stories like this one, with the publicity they'll help generate for all three vehicles at a time when new-car sales are in the dumps, are just what Toyota was after, no doubt, when it decided to squawk about Ford's claim.
Ford, according to the USA Today article, says it thinks Toyota's complaint is groundless and that it has been clear all along that its mileage superiority claim for the Fusion is aimed directly at the Camry hybrid (right).
If Toyota presses its case and wins, Ford would be compelled under truth-in-advertising rules not to refer to the Fusion hybrid in its advertising as the most fuel-efficient midsized car in the market.
It could say, though, that the Fusion hybrid is the most-efficient mid-size sedan, because the Prius is a hatchback.
And, of course, it could say that mileage-wise, its midsized hybrid beats the snot out of the Camry.
(Note: Article updated after initial posting to include Lexus hybrid)
The upcoming North American International Auto Show in snowy Detroit - media preview days begin Sunday and the show opens to the public on Jan. 17 - is likely to be a pretty glum affair, what with the auto industry imploding and the prospect of many people really being interested in buying a new car right now ranking right up there with being interested in having wisdom teeth pulled sans anesthesia.
But carmakers are trying, and what most are trying hardest with is fuel efficiency and alternatives to the thirsty, greenhouse-gas spewing cars and trucks of the past.
Oh, there will be speedsters and factory-built hot rods on display at the show - Ford Motor Co., for example, will unveil the 540-horsepower 2010 Shelby GT500 Mustang and Audi will be showing a 525-horsepower, V10-version of its exotic R8 sports car.
But most attention will be focused on advanced technology cars such as the 2010 Prius hybrid (right) and the battery-electric city car concept that Toyota will show, Honda's Prius-fighting 2009 Insight hybrid and concepts such as the all-electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel -cell electric trio, collectively called Concept Zero, that Mercedes-Benz will unveil.
Beyond the cars, the show's media preview will spotlight industry executives who will be delivering news about their companies' green futures.
Most notably, Toyota is expected to outline its hybrid and electric-vehicle strategies for the next few years and Ford is expected to discuss its plans for a stable of future EVs, starting with a commercial truck it plans to launch in 2010.
Green Car Advsior, along with Edmunds Auto Observer, Edmunds Inside Line and Edmunds.com, will be covering the show 's media days and bringing you timely reports, but we thought we'd also offer a preview today of the major green vehicles that will be displayed and discussed.
Green Preview
So, by manufacturer, here they are:
Audi Volkswagen's upscale stablemate is expected to announce plans for its upcoming U.S. diesel lineup. So far, the company has said it will launch a 3-liter diesel version of its Q7 SUV (right) later this year and has broached the possibility of a diesel A4. We'll know more after Audi's Sunday afternoon press conference.
BMW The pride of Bavaria will discuss the X5 and 3-Series diesels it plans to bring to the U.S., perhaps supplying us with some performance and fuel economy numbers as well as a marketing time-line.
Chevrolet Nothing big here, unless the General decides to announce the upcoming Volt plug-in hybrid's pricing and/or the battery suppliers.
The Chevy vehicle that gets officially introduced at the show is the redesigned 2010 Equinox crossover (right), which will come with a new six-speed automatic and a fuel-efficient, direct-injection four-banger expected to deliver 182 horsepower (almost as much as the '08 model's base V6) and highway fuel economy of 30 miles per gallon.
Chrysler The company has three brands that it has tied together for car show purposes with a trio of concept electric vehicles.
Those to be displayed in Detroit are further refined versions of the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep EVs originally unveiled last September and first shown publicly at the Los Angeles International Auto Show in November.
By brand, they are the Chrysler EV, an extended-range electric version of the town and Country minivan; the Jeep EV, a gas-electric Wrangler; and the Dodge EV, a Lotus-based, bumblebee-striped battery-electric sports car that would look great in the garage next to an electric Tesla Roadster.
Chrysler has said that it will bring one of the cars to market in 2010, but hasn't said which or in what kind of numbers. Maybe that's what we'll hear at the show.
Fisker The nascent plug-in-hybrid company headed by, and named for, noted auto designer Henrik Fisker (BMW, Aston Martin, Fisker Coachbuild), will show the production version of it first proposed vehicle, the Fisker Karma sports sedan (right) that it unveiled to great interest at last year's Detroit show. Fisker also will unveil a new version - a convertible, we suspect - caled the Karma S.
Like the Chevy Volt, the Karma uses an on-board internal combustion engine to generate power to keep its electric motors turning the wheels.
Ford We expect a discussion of the company's electric vehicle strategy, perhaps with a teaser glimpse or two of potential future offerings and a look at the commercial truck the company has said it will launch in 2010.
Honda The news here will be the unveiling of the production version 2009 Insight hybrid (right), a sub $20,000, five-seater Honda hopes will finally, finally, pump its hybrid sales up into Prius territory.
We're expected to hear a lot of technical detail and, perhaps, even a firmer price for the car, which looks in pictures a bit like the Prius it's designed to battle.
Lexus Toyota's luxury unit will reveal its first stand-alone hybrid model, a small car that is based off the upcoming 2010 Prius.
Although it is not unusual - its pretty common, even - for photos of new models to leak out before their official unveiling, the best we've been able to come up with for the new Lexus hybrid is this rendering (left) published in a Japanese auto magazine a few months ago.
Mercedes-Benz The covers will come off a trio of EV concepts from Daimler's luxe brand. All use the same swoopy, sport wagon-ish body (below right) - a design that also shows where Mercedes is heading with the compact B-Class replacement due in 2010 and, perhaps, headed for the U.S.
The so-called Concept Zero family consists of the E-Cell, a battery-electric with a range of about 60 miles; the E-Cell Plus, a plug-in hybrid that uses a 3-cylinder gas engine-generator to extend the range of its batteries when the initial charge is depleted (think Chevy Volt), and the F-Cell, which uses a hydrogen fuel-cell to produce electricity on-board by combining hydrogen and oxygen in the fuel-cell stack. Range is about 125 miles. Mercedes says the E-Cell Plus can go almost 400 miles on an overnight battery charge and a tank of gas.
Toyota The company whose name has become synonymous with 'hybrid" is introducing the redesigned 2010 Prius at the show, but photos of the car leaked out weeks ago and you've got to believe that anyone who's interested has already seen it. What will be news, of course, are the specifications and performance numbers.
The other biggie on the product front from Toyota will be the unveiling of a concept electric vehicle, probably called the FT-EV if the company's previous auto show naming practices prevail (that would stand for "future technology-electric vehicle").
The car, believed to be built on a current Toyota subcompact chassis, is the company's effort to give us a look at what a Toyota-built battery-electric EV for short-range urban driving might look like if the company does, as it has said it would, put an EV into its retail fleet in 2012.
Not The End
And, of course - Detroit being Detroit - there likely will be a surprise or two. So consider this list a starter, not a definitive catalog.
China's BYD, for instance, will be there with the plug-in-hybrid (left) it launched in its home market a few weeks ago, beating the big boys like GM and Toyota to the punch by a matter of, oh, a year or two. Who knows what the company - whose name is an acronym for Build Your Dreams and whose future is being backed by investment whiz Warren Buffett - will do next? We might find out as the Detroit show rolls along.
We'll be back when media days begin on Sunday to keep you up-to-date.
Garmin International announced today that it's offering a free software update for the company's stand-alone Nuvi 205- and 705-series personal travel assistants that allows drivers to select the most fuel-efficient route and to track their fuel usage.
The announcement, made at the 2009 International Consumer and Electronics Show in Las Vegas, follows recent announcements by Honda and Ford that some of their vehicles will soon be fitted with in-dash eco-driving navigational systems.
But unlike those systems, Garmin's ecoRoute software update takes a look at all of various routes from starting point to destination and can provide the one that's likely to require the least amount of fuel.
EcoRoute's Less Fuel option does this by studying a variety of factors, including traffic speed and the number of stop lights along routes, and "tries to route you on roads where your speed will be constant," Garmin spokeswoman Jessica Myers said by phone.
"That doesn't necessarily mean it will always put you on the freeway," she said, "but rather it will figure out the way to route you to maximize your fuel economy."
Prior to the software update, which will be available for download in February, ecoRoute only supplied drivers with Shortest Distance -- as the crow would fly -- and Fastest Time -- think highways and freeways.
The software also now offers fuel-saving tips, which appear in text form (as opposed to verbal suggestions).
Advanced automotive battery developer A123 Systems has plunged into the government funding pool with an application for $1.84 billion in loans to help build several lithium-ion battery plants in the U.S. The 7-year-old company is seeking the loans from the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles program recently funded by Congress.
The so-called retooling loans are available to help automakers and automotive parts and components makers retool existing plants or build new ones dedicated to building more fuel-efficient vehicles.
In a statement issued Wednesday, A123 said that, if granted, the loans would help it "dramatically expand production capacity" to supply battery systems for up to 5 million conventional hybrid vehicles or 500,000 plug-in hybrids a year by 2013.
Fierce Competition
The company is one of dozens, in the U.S. and abroad, racing to develop powerful, reliable battery systems that will underpin the new generation of electric and hybrid-electric vehicles being worked on by automakers around the globe.
A123 Systems uses a proprietary nanophosphate chemistry to produce lithium-ion batteries. It's technology builds on work initially done by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where one of the company's three co-founders is a professor. Another is an MIT business school graduate.
The Massachusetts-based company was in a "quiet period" imposed by securities regulators prior to its proposed initial public offering and would not make any executives available for comment.
But in Wednesday's prepared statement, company CEO David Vieau said the auto industry is "entering a new phase...where we increase the electrification of vehicles, reducing consumption of gasoline though advanced batteries."
December's gas-electric car and SUV sales plunged almost 43 percent from the final month of 2007 as the year wound up on a discouraging note for the only alternative technology vehicles to so far make a dent in the auto market.
It was a near repeat of a stupendously disastrous November, when sales of fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles fell 50 percent from a year earlier.
For all of 2008, hybrid sales tumbled 10.3 percent with 310,724 models sold. While nothing to boast about, the hybrid segment bested the overall market's performance of an 18.2 percent drop for the year, according to Edmunds.com statistics.
The only bright spots were that hybrid sales in December actually rose a bit from November, and that 2008 hybrid sales were the second-best on record in the decade since 1999, when Honda introduced the first model, the now-discontinued two-seat Insight. The year's sales trailed only 2007, when 346,431 hybrids were sold.
Incentives Made the Difference
The 6.8 percent rise in sales volume from November to December was due to hefty incentives and discounting by most automakers and to an especially effective financing program that General Motors' financing arm provided for almost all of the company's lineup.
Industrywide, the same pricing and financing incentives led to a one-month sales gain of 20 percent.
In the hybrid segment, December's total of 17,652 sales was the second lowest of the year, trailing only November's dismal 16,536.
After that, you'd have to go back to January 2007, when only 17,591 gas-electric cars and sport-utes were sold, to find a worse month for hybrids.
Automotive News ranks the maiden journey of the Detroit Big Three CEOs to Washington to beg for bailout funds as second on its list of the 10 top automotive blunders of the year.
There are, of course, valid arguments for sending your top dogs out on private jets. They can work undisturbed while in the air, get to where they are going in the minimum amount of time, arrive fresh and clear-headed and ready to go to bat for the company, and get home and back to the grind without having to loiter at the airport for hours waiting for a scheduled commercial flight.
But if they had to fly, for Pete's sake, couldn't they at least have jet-pooled? Did no one in their PR departments warn them, or are they so full of themselves they just couldn't see how insufferably pompous they looked?
(If you are wondering, for its top automotive industry blunder, Automotive News picked the fact that GM and Chrysler waited until they were nearly out of cash before seeking federal aid. We think that was probably a wise move - it would have been difficult to persuade Congress to act while there still was money in the bank.)
Fortune wasn't satisfied with lambasting GM's Rick Wagoner, Chrysler's Bob Nardelli and Ford's Alan Mulally for flying to D.C. to seek an auto industry bailout.
For its second-dumbest business blunder of the year, it again picked on the automakers-in-chief, this time for choosing to use their companies' hybrid cars for cross-country drives to D.C. on their second, and ultimately successful, trip to implore Congress for a financial rescue.
That ranking we don't agree with.
It seems that Fortune's gripe is that Chrysler's Nardelli made the drive in one of the company's Dodge Aspen two-mode hybrids, a car that had just been ordered dropped from the company's 2009 lineup.
We think the three should have drawn straws and carpooled in the hybrid from the company run by the guy with the short straw, but we don't think that the trip rates as the second-dumbest move made in the business world last year.
The all-new 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid will carry an EPA fuel economy label of 41 miles per gallon in the city and 36 mpg on the highway when it goes on sale this spring.
With those numbers, the Fusion Hybrid will be America's most fuel efficient mid-size car, topping its chief competitor -- the Toyota Camry Hybrid -- by 8 mpg in the city and 2 mpg on the highway.
But the Fusion Hybrid might be even more fuel efficient than the Environmental Protection Agency numbers indicate. In an article in last Friday's Los Angeles Times, Pulitzer Prize-winning auto writer Dan Neil wrote that on a test drive of a Fusion Hybrid in West L.A. traffic, he managed, "without much trouble, to get 52 mpg in mixed city-highway driving."
The Fusion Hybrid's final fuel-economy certification was completed this week at Ford's testing laboratories in Allen Park, Michigan. The low-emissions car, which beats even the much smaller Honda Civic hybrid by 1 MPG in city driving, can travel more than 700 miles on a single tank of gas, Ford says.
To deliver the class-leading fuel economy, Ford's engineers spent the past three years developing the vehicle's next-generation hybrid propulsion system. It allows the Fusion and Mercury Milan Hybrid to travel up to 47 miles per hour in pure electric mode -- faster than the Toyota Camry and all other hybrids currently on the road.
President-elect Barack Obama leveled a stern warning at General Motors and Chrysler last week after the federal government promised them billions to help them survive: "The auto companies must not squander this chance to reform bad management practices."
---------- President-elect Obama on next week's cover of Time. ----------
Once he takes office, the bailout will give him a tool to prod the industry to change, but it will also test his resolve as he pushes it in new directions.
Obama, after all, has been thinking out loud about the future of the American automobile industry for years, well before his presidential campaign began. He co-sponsored two bills in 2006, during his second year as a U.S. senator -- one to raise fuel economy standards, and the other to encourage the use of alternative fuels.
His writings and speeches on the auto industry suggest a keen interest in finding ways, including new technology, to improve the fuel efficiency of the cars and trucks that Americans drive.
But with Detroit in a fragile financial state, it is unclear how many compromises he will have to make in pursuing his agenda for the auto industry, as he juggles other priorities such as providing a stimulus program for the broader economy, The New York Times reported Sunday. The United Automobile Workers union, which backed Obama, will want a say in the changes he envisions for the automakers.
Fourteen U.S. technology companies are joining forces and seeking $1 billion in federal aid to build a plant to make advanced batteries for electric cars, in a bid to catch up to Asian rivals that are far ahead of the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reported today (subscription required).
---------- GM engineers work on the lithium-ion battery pack for the Chevrolet Volt. ----------
The effort, the latest pitch from corporate America to inject federal dollars into a project, is similar to an alliance that two decades ago helped the U.S. computer-chip industry restore its competitiveness. Participants include 3M Corp. and Johnson Controls Inc.
Many experts believe battery technology and manufacturing capacity could become as strategically important as oil is today. Automakers, including General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., say they plan to roll out plug-in electric cars by 2010.
But the United States has limited capacity to make the lithium-ion batteries those cars will need. Asian producers such as Panasonic Corp. dominate the car-battery field.
Ford Motor Co., the domestic carmaker that's not facing imminent bankruptcy, plans to bring a small electric van to market in the U.S. and the blogosphere is abuzz with speculation, revved up by an article in the trade journal Automotive News, that it will be based on the compact Ford Transit Connect cargo van built in Turkey and sold in Europe.
----------
Could Smith Ampere (foreground) be Ford's new electric cargo van?
----------
The buzz is probably correct. After all, Ford of Europe already has teamed up with Britain's Smith Electric Vehicles to bring a Transit Connect EV to market -- it was previewed by Green Car Advisor way back in April, when it was formally announced in the U.K. at a commercial truck show.
The van is co-branded as the Ford-Smith Ampere and was jointly developed by Ford and Smith's parent, Tanfield Group.
The European van has a payload capacity of almost 1,800 pounds (800 kilograms), a top speed of 70 miles an hour and a range of 100 miles on a single charge of its lithium-ion battery pack (which, for the battery wonks in the crowd, uses iron phosphate chemistry). We imagine a Ford electric cargo van for the U.S. would pencil out about the same.
Ford previously had announced that it was bringing a conventional version of the Transit Connect to the U.S. next year, so it's no big stretch to figure that an electric version would follow.
The interesting wrinkle here is that Smith Electric Vehicles has said it will sell the Amphere EV cargo van -- its electric version of the Transit Connnect -- in the U.S.
No word yet on whether Ford is planning to simply buy its Transit EVs from Smith or plans to compete directly with the British firm's co-developed version of the truck.
Ford is expected to reveal more of its EV plans during the upcoming Detroit auto show (press preview days are January 11-13), so stay tuned.
Ford must be delighted with this news: Sales of its 2009 Fiesta -- the first of a generation of new global fuel-efficient cars from the American automaker -- are off to a strong start and gaining market share in Europe.
Those sales made the new Fiesta the second-most popular vehicle in the Ford of Europe lineup behind the Focus compact. The new and outgoing Fiesta models were the best-selling car in the United Kingdom in November among all models from all automakers.
The strong early sales of the low-emissions Fiesta helped Ford's European operations increase market share in November. It bodes well for the troubled automaker as it prepares to launch the global small car in China in the first quarter of next year and in other key Asian markets and the United States in early 2010.
Overall, Ford sold 95,700 vehicles across its 19 European markets. This was down 21.4 percent versus November 2007, but the company outperformed the industry by increasing its market share to 8.8 percent, up 0.5 percentage points.
Small cars fare better in crashes than they used to, but they still lag behind larger vehicles in protecting passengers. Their disadvantages are especially clear in side-impact crashes.
---------- Chrysler's PT Cruiser did poorly in the side-impact test. ----------
Of the nine small cars recently tested by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, all received the group's top rating of "good" in frontal crashes, but only two got good ratings when broadsided.
The Insurance Institute tested nine small cars for the 2009 model year in front, side and rear collisions. The group included the BMW Mini Cooper, Chevrolet HHR, Chrysler PT Cruiser, Ford Focus, Hyundai Elantra, Saturn Astra, Suzuki SX4, as well as the Toyota Matrix and Pontiac Vibe, which are essentially the same vehicle sold under two brand names.
Only the SX4 and Matrix, and its twin the Vibe, received good ratings for protection in side crashes. The Ford and Chevrolet were judged acceptable in side-impact protection, while the Hyundai and Saturn were marginal and the Chrysler was poor.
Only the Ford Focus was top-rated in rear-impact crashes that test how well the vehicles' seats and head restraints protect passengers. The Chrysler PT Cruiser was the worst performer, with poor ratings for side and rear protection.
Already talking big about the fuel-efficiency gains projected from its new downsized engines and six-speed automatic transmissions, Ford Motor Co. will engage a full-scale war against weight in its next product-development-led gambit to become the green-focused car company executives believe Ford must become to reemerge as a success in the U.S. and global auto markets.
The big cut in ever-bloating vehicle weight will come as Ford phases in the next-generation platforms for its product range, says Derrick Kuzak, group vice president of global product development.
"In our next-generation vehicles, we're going to go after weight in a big way," Kuzak told Edmunds.com's AutoObserver at a media event in Dearborn, Michigan.
In late 2007, Ford pledged with its "Blueprint For Sustainability" to cut vehicle weight by 250-750 pounds from 2012 to 2020. That kind of lightening-up is a heavy burden when about the best that can be claimed today is that a redesigned or heavily revised model at least hasn't added any weight.
Kuzak says that's because Ford currently is working its way through a "top-hat strategy" that has sees most of the company's new or coming vehicles based on an existing architecture that has not been weight-optimized. But when those existing vehicle platforms are replaced, Kuzak is promising serious weight reductions.
"You really go after weight when you start replacing platforms," Kuzak said. Many of those platforms will be smaller and originate in Europe, where fuel prices are typically two to three times what they are in America, making attention to weight an omnipresent design factor.
Ford Motor Co. is putting the "finishing touches" on a 2.0-liter four-cylinder EcoBoost engine and it will likely debut in the Ford Fusion, The Detroit News reported Monday, citing unnamed sources.
EcoBoost is the name Ford has given to a series of low-emissions, fuel-efficient engines that combine two technologies -- turbo-charging and direct fuel injection -- to produce more horsepower from a smaller engine.
As we've previously reported, the Dearborn, Michigan, automaker intends to launch production of the first EcoBoost engine -- a 3.5-liter V-6 that delivers the power of a V-8 -- early next spring for installation into the Lincoln MKS sedan and the Ford Flex crossover SUV.
But all Ford has said to date about a four-cylinder EcoBoost engine is that the company expects to introduce one within the next couple of years.
Ford spokesman Said Deep confirmed that Ford is developing a four-cylinder version, but he said it was "too early to discuss displacements" or what vehicles might get the new engine. Other Ford spokesmen we spoke with were unwilling or unable to elaborate.
In all their talk of Detroit's need to make fuel-efficient vehicles, members of Congress managed to overlook a simple fact: General Motors and Ford already make popular, high-quality, high-mileage automobiles.
---------- The 2009 diesel-powered Ford Ka, available in Europe but not the U.S., gets 60 miles per gallon. ----------
The trouble is, those very desirable vehicles are sold only in Europe because of regulatory differences between the U.S. and the European Union. So says an article published in The New York Times.
The automakers' reluctance to sell those cars domestically is not as simple as the vehicles' inability to meet U.S. standards for equipment, safety and exhaust emissions; there's also the cost involved in the certification process. Changing the law to allow the U.S. sale of cars compliant with European emissions and crash standards, even for just a few years, would allow GM and Ford to quickly add some of their popular, high-mileage European models to their lineups in America.
It's reasonable to think that within a year, the Times reported, GM could import the tiny Opel Agila, the sporty Chevy Spark, and the midsize Opel Insignia, which won the 2009 European Car of the Year award. Ford's improved lineup could include the Ka subcompact, the universally praised Fiesta and the S-Max minivan, which blows the sliding doors off any current domestic competition.
Crash testing for new cars, often referred to as New Car Assessment Programs, varies by geographic region, though a 10-year plan is in place to define a global standard. The NCAP test results, summarized in the United States in easy-to-grasp star ratings (five is best, one is worst), provides useful information for consumers, though it is not the same as the federal tests conducted by automakers to certify new models before they can go on sale.
Congressional Democrats crafting an auto industry bailout are pushing to include language requiring carmakers to drop their legal challenge to an attempt by more than a dozen states to regulate climate-changing emissions from motor vehicles.
A Democratic draft bill would require that Detroit carmakers who receive a portion of the bailout to drop their lawsuit against state efforts to enforce greenhouse-gas tailpipe restrictions on cars and trucks. The bill would prevent the carmakers from participating in "any legal challenge (existing or contemplated) to state laws concerning greenhouse-gas emission standards."
Longtime supporters of California's request for a waiver from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to enforce such restrictions, which when granted would permit other state's to adopt California's car-emissions rules, are promoting the provision. Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer of California, who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is among them.
One of the reasons the auto industry is in trouble is their fight against the waiver, Boxer told reporters Monday. Meeting California's tougher-than-federal emissions standards is in the automakers' best interests, she said.
But Republicans and auto industry supporters say the provision is unnecessary and counterproductive.
Ward's Automotive Group has announced its 15th annual 10 Best Engines list, which "reflects the diversity of 2009 powertrains that will play a role in reshaping America's automotive landscape."
The winning engines were selected by editors for Ward's, publisher of automotive trade magazines since 1924.
Thirty-two engines were considered this year. Eligibility requirements included: Availability in a regular-production U.S.-specification model on sale no later than first-quarter 2009. And, the engine must be in a vehicle priced no more than $54,000 (a price cap indexed to the average cost of a new vehicle).
The winners by manufacturer, engine and vehicle tested:
Audi; 2.0-liter TFSI (Turbocharged Fuel Stratified Injection) DOHC (double overhead camshaft) I-4 (inline 4-cylinder); A4 Avant BMW; 3.0-liter turbocharged DOHC I-6; 135i coupe BMW; 3.0-liter DOHC I-6 Turbodiesel; 335d sedan Chrysler; 5.7-liter Hemi OHV (overhead valves) V-8 (a V-shaped engine with eight cylinders); Dodge Ram truck/Challenger R/T large car Ford; 2.5-liter DOHC I-4 HEV (hybrid electric vehicle); Escape Hybrid SUV General Motors; 3.6-liter DOHC V-6; Cadillac CTS sedan Honda; 3.5-liter SOHC (single overhead camshaft) V-6; Accord coupe Hyundai; 4.6-liter DOHC V-8; Genesis sedan Toyota; 3.5-liter DOHC V-6; Lexus IS 350 sedan Volkswagen; 2.0-liter SOHC I-4 Turbodiesel; Jetta TDI sedan
The diesel engines from VW and BMW and the engine from the Ford Escape Hybrid all got better than 30 miles per gallon during Ward's testing and often topped 40 mpg, said Tom Murphy, executive editor of Ward's AutoWorld magazine.
The Ford Fusion (above) and Toyota Prius help propel hybrid sales gains despite weak economy and credit woes. 
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
