Archive for December, 2007
Friday, December 28th, 2007
At least 14.2 million motor vehicles were recalled in the United States in 2007, up more than 25 percent from 2006.
Automakers recalled 11.2 million vehicles last year, far fewer than the 30.8 million recalls in 2004, signaling newer cars and trucks are improving reliability, the Detroit News reported Thursday.
Preliminary figures from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration show Ford Motor Co. led in recalls, recalling 5.5 million vehicles this year, but about 4.8 million were 2004 and earlier model vehicles. Most of the recalls were for 1992 to 2004 models with a defective switch that deactivates the cruise control.
General Motors Corp. recalled 537,000 vehicles as of Dec. 21, a major improvement from the 1.37 million in 2006.
Honda Motor Co. recalled 547,000 vehicles, down from 1.19 million.
Volkswagen of America recalled 1.5 million vehicles, up from 950,000 in 2006.
Chrysler and Toyota had far fewer recalls in 2007 and Ford had 41 vehicle late model nameplates ranked highest for reliability by Consumer Reports magazine.
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Thursday, December 27th, 2007
Ask someone on the street what consumer item they think is recycled more than any other in the U.S. and they’re likely to guess “newspapers” or “soda bottles.” Most people probably wouldn’t say “cars” — but that is, in fact, the answer.
Roughly 85 percent of each Ford Motor Company vehicle is recyclable. What’s more, Ford is working with Chrysler and GM through the United States Council for Automotive Research (USCAR) and its Vehicle Recycling Partnership to raise that number to as close to 100 percent as possible.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more than 95 percent of all end-of-life vehicles in the U.S. are processed for recycling. That’s compared to 52 percent of all paper and 31 percent of all plastic soft drink bottles.
“The U.S. automakers have long taken a proactive stance in vehicle recycling,” says Don Walkowicz, executive director, USCAR. “They continue to work side by side with government and private industry to optimally recycle all vehicles, regardless of age, content or origin.”
The EPA calls recycling one of the best environmental success stories of the late 20th century, reporting that the practice diverted more than 72 million tons of material away from landfills and incinerators in 2003, up from 34 million tons in 1990 — doubling in just 10 years.
The agency cites several key benefits of recycling, including:
Protects and expands U.S. manufacturing jobs and increases U.S. competitiveness in the global marketplace
Reduces the need for landfilling and incineration
Saves energy and prevents pollution caused by the extraction and processing of virgin materials and the manufacture of products using virgin materials
Decreases emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change
Conserves natural resources such as timber, water and minerals
Helps sustain the environment for future generations
Re-use is a big part of the recycling story. Auto recyclers supply more than a third of all ferrous scrap to the U.S. scrap processing industry. When manufacturers use scrap iron and steel instead of virgin ore, they reduce air and water pollution by more than half during the manufacturing process.
For example, steel food cans contain up to 30 percent recycled steel, while household appliances and car bodies are made with about 25 percent recycled steel.
“Ford has been implementing recycled content on our vehicles for several years,” says Ford’s Dan Adsit, manager, Recycling Planning. “In addition to using significant amounts of recycled metals, we include nonmetallic recycled content in vehicle parts such as battery trays, splash shields, engine fan shrouds and carpet.”
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Thursday, December 27th, 2007
Ford Motor Company and U-Haul launched the industry’s first fleet of vehicles painted with Ford’s environmentally responsible new technology, which reduces greenhouse gases by 15 percent and cuts Ford’s production costs.
More than 200 Ford E-Series trucks painted with this new technology were delivered to U-Haul facilities around the country. U-Haul began renting the units, tagged with eco-friendly decals, to customers this week.
The technology combines an advanced chemical formulation of high-solids, solvent-borne paint with an innovative three-wet application process that requires a smaller, less expensive and cleaner paint shop than traditional automotive paint facilities.
In addition to reduced CO2 emissions, the new technology reduces VOC emissions (volatile organic compounds) by about 10 percent. The company estimates it can save approximately $7 per vehicle by cutting the time it takes to paint a vehicle by almost 20 percent as well as reducing the size of the traditional paint shop by nearly 15 percent.
“Painting vehicles has traditionally been one of the auto industry’s biggest environmental challenges,” said Mary Ellen Rosenberger, paint manager of Ohio Assembly Plant where the new technology was launched. “Ford has found the solution. It’s environmentally sound. It’s cost-efficient. And it produces beautifully painted vehicles with long-term durability.”
Ford’s new high-solids, solvent-borne paint formulation produces fewer VOC and CO2 emissions than do water-borne and current solvent-borne paints. Because the new formulation contains more color pigment, it requires less paint to cover a vehicle than water-based paint. Furthermore, the new technology allows for three coats of wet paint to be applied to the vehicle one on top of the other, without drying between coats. This eliminates the prime-coat application and its related processes, which means a smaller, more efficient paint shop.
Furthermore, there’s no need for an air-conditioning process or an additional low-temperature oven, which are required in water-borne paint shops to evaporate the water from the paint.
The paint formulation contains new polymers and other additives that prevent running and sagging during the three-wet application process. And Ford’s laboratory tests show the high-solids, solvent-borne paint provides better long-term resistance to chips and scratches than does water-borne paint.
Said Dean Cerimeli, U-Haul’s director of Truck and Trailer Product: “When it comes to the environment and sustainability, we are happy to partner with Ford in this important field test. We believe this is the most environmentally responsible way to paint vehicles. And we applaud Ford for leading the industry.”
In June, Ford won the “Best Technical Prize” for its new paint technology at SURCAR: The International Conference on Automobile Body Finishing in Cannes, France.
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Wednesday, December 26th, 2007
Toyota Motor Corp will charge further into emerging car markets to achieve another year of record sales in 2008, likely cementing its title as the world’s biggest automaker ahead of General Motors Corp
Toyota, already the world’s most profitable and valuable carmaker, said on Tuesday it expects to sell 9.85 million vehicles in 2008, up from an estimated 9.36 million this year — a result that is likely to nudge it past GM’s sales forecast of 9.2 million for 2007.
With a product line-up including the Camry and Prius hybrid cars, Toyota has attracted more customers in emerging and mature markets alike, all the while increasing profits through cost cuts and economies of scale.
Stripping out GM’s minority-held Chinese joint venture, the Toyota group, which includes units Daihatsu Motor Co and Hino Motors Ltd, overtook the U.S. giant in global vehicle sales last year.
Toyota, valued at around $190 billion, is likely to widen its sales gap with GM next year as the restructuring U.S. automaker scales back production in North America and prepares to sell off its medium-duty truck business to Navistar International Corp
As with most other carmakers, Toyota’s growth has been especially brisk in the emerging car markets of China and Russia, where it expects combined sales of roughly 900,000 vehicles next year, a rise of nearly 40 percent.
“The Chinese market has undergone a significant change during the year,” President Katsuaki Watanabe told a year-end news conference.
“At the beginning of the year, we wondered if the total auto market would reach 8 million, and by mid-year we were looking at 8.5 million. Now it’s possible the market will exceed 9 million,” he said. “We need to figure out how to meet demand.”
Toyota has a target of selling 1 million cars a year in China soon after 2010, and Executive Vice President Tokuichi Uranishi said it would need several new factories to ramp up supply.
Toyota has been expanding its factories and building new ones at breakneck speed around the world, including its first plant in Russia that opened last week. Executives said Russia would drive expansion in Europe, where Toyota aims to increase sales by 2 percent to 1.27 million vehicles next year.
Toyota expects to build 9.95 million vehicles globally next year, a rise of 5 percent.
CAUTIOUS ON U.S., SLOW IN INDIA
On the most important U.S. market, Watanabe sounded a cautious tone, predicting only slight growth for Toyota in a flat overall market littered with risks.
“We expect the economy to slow down a bit, and there are risks from the subprime loan crisis and crude oil prices,” he said.
Toyota, which ranks second in the U.S. market now ahead of Ford Motor Co and Chrysler LLC, expects its U.S. sales to grow 1 percent to 2.64 million vehicles in 2008.
Elsewhere, Toyota has yet to make headway in the promising markets of India and Brazil without a product in the dominant segment of cheap, no-frills cars.
Toyota has promised an ultra-low-cost family car to crack such lower-income markets, as France’s Renault SA has done with the Logan, but it has yet to give a timeline for its introduction.
“I feel that we’re coming close to making a decision on when and where to launch the vehicle, but we need a little more time to make improvements, including in the cost and design areas,” Watanabe said. The prototype that he tested a month ago, he said, was at “a pretty good level”.
At the other end of the spectrum, Toyota is aiming to spread the success of its luxury Lexus brand in North America to Europe and Japan to offset the pressure on margins from cheaper, smaller, environmentally friendly cars.
Under its “Global Vision 2020″ plan, Toyota wants to offer the fuel-saving hybrid powertrain on all of its vehicle series. To that end, it said it had started considering mass production of lithium-ion batteries with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, its partner in automobile-use batteries.
Toyota currently uses nickel hydride batteries on its Prius and other hybrid cars.
Toyota’s shares have shed 24 percent so far this year, underperforming the Tokyo market partly on worries about car demand in the United States, its biggest market.
Analysts say that Toyota’s prospects are solid in the United States, and that it is steadily reducing its dependence on North America by expanding in the Middle East and other markets.
Earlier this year, Toyota forecast group-wide sales of 10.4 million vehicles in 2009, possibly becoming the first automaker to reach the 10 million-unit annual sales milestone.
Shares in Toyota ended up 1.3 percent at 6,100 yen on Tuesday after the news, underperforming a 1.8 percent rise in the broad Tokyo market.
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Friday, December 21st, 2007
City of Toccoa commissioners figuratively kicked the tires and now are buying the truck.Or three trucks, to be precise. In a City Commission meeting on Monday, commissioners voted to approve buying three 2008 trucks from Toccoa Ford for the city water department to use.
In an earlier commission meeting, bids from all three local dealerships were opened and passed on to city staff to evaluate. City Manager Billy Morse told commissioners that he and his staff recommended buying from Ford because the vehicles were new and the price was reasonable. The decision did not come without questions from new commissioner Ron Seib.
“My understanding is we have ordered some police vehicles from Toccoa Ford. Are we still waiting for those, and are they past what we anticipated?” Mr. Seib asked Mr. Morse.
Mr. Morse told commissioners he wasn’t totally sure what the delay was, but felt it could have happened because the city decided to upgrade the police cars from 2007 models to 2008.
“We had ordered some police cars several months ago,” Mr. Morse said. “The bid was for 2007 police cars. We found out we could get 2008 models for the same price, so we opted to do that. Obviously, it wasn’t quite in, the 2008 year model, so it has taken a little bit of time to get them. We still don’t have them, but I imagine they will be in any week now.”
The total cost was $56,000 for an F-350 one ton, an F-150-half ton and a Ford Ranger. The delivery time should be eight weeks, officials said.
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Friday, December 21st, 2007
Motor Trend Magazine named the full-size Toyota Tundra its Truck of the Year for 2008 on Tuesday.
Other competitors for the award were the Chevrolet Silverado HD, the GMC Sierra HD and the Ford F-250, -350 and -450 Super Duty trucks.
Since the trucks have different capabilities, they were rated against a set of specific criteria rather than in a straight competition against one another, the magazine said.
The trucks were scored for “superiority,” a measure of general excellence in materials, engineering and workmanship, “value,” a measure of what the truck offers compared to others available for the price, and “significance,” a measure of how the vehicle changes the market in which it competes.
The magazine tested two versions of each contender, each with different engine, transmission and suspension options.
The General Motors and Ford trucks in the competition are all heavy-duty pickups designed to carry and tow large loads. The Toyota Tundra is a “half-ton” pickup of the type that is often used for personal transportation as well as for work.
The trucks were tested at a former Ford proving ground in Arizona and on area roads. Tests included trailer towing and driving performance on rough and unpaved roads.
The Tundra stood out, the magazine said, for its ride and handling, excellent interior quality and quietness combined with impressive truck capability.
“This new Toyota Tundra is big, it’s tough, it delivers class-leading performance, it has excellent towing capability,” said Angus MacKenzie, editor in chief of Motor Trend, in a video posted at MotorTrend.com. “It’s smooth and refined inside and out and it’s priced to take on its Detroit rivals.”
Toyota (TM) introduced the new, larger Tundra this year as a direct competitor to market-leading trucks from GM (GM, Fortune 500) and Ford (F, Fortune 500).
The GM trucks were close contenders, the magazine said, but they couldn’t mass the Tundra in the area of “significance.” The Fords were strong performers but were more ungainly to drive than their GM competitors, according to Motor Trend.
“The recent launch of the new Tundra has not been without a few hiccups,” the magazine noted. The truck has faced several recalls.
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Friday, December 21st, 2007
Ford Motor Co. has temporarily shut down at least two factories that build large pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles amid tepid demand, a spokeswoman said.
A Dearborn, Mich., plant that builds F-150 pickups and a Louisville, Ky., plant that builds Explorer SUVs went dark starting Monday – two weeks ahead of their normally scheduled holiday shutdowns, said the spokeswoman, Anne Marie Gattari.
Both plants will remain closed the rest of the year, people familiar with the matter said. The moves are part of Ford’s efforts to “align capacity with demand,” Ms. Gattari said.
The Dearborn plant will resume production at the start of the New Year, Ms. Gattari said. Workers are also scheduled to return to the Louisville factory just after New Year’s, a person familiar with the matter said.
Ford, along with Detroit competitors General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, has suffered sharp sales declines among its pickups and SUVs. F-Series pickups are off 12.4% through November, while Explorer sales have plunged 23.5%, according to Autodata Corp. Overall, Ford-brand light-duty truck sales, which include pickups and SUVs, have dropped 6.1%.
Detroit’s Big Three auto makers are feeling the pain of plummeting real-estate values and surging fuel prices, both of which have sapped consumer spending. In addition, a marked decline in residential construction has damped sales of Detroit’s profitable pickups. Ford has tended to suffer the most from that trend, as its F-Series trucks are used a disproportionate amount in the home-construction business.
In addition to December shutdowns, Ford will likely temporarily idle some factories in January as part of a 7% first-quarter production cut.
Ford has generally declined to discuss specific factory plans for January but George Pipas, the auto maker’s top sales analyst, said the company would likely target plants building pickups and SUVs for shutdowns or scaled-back overtime as part of the first-quarter production pullback.
Chrysler plans to halt production at truck plants in Warren, Mich., and Fenton, Mo., right before Christmas and extend the shutdown through all of January, according to people familiar with the auto maker’s plans. A third truck plant in Mexico will shut down for the first two weeks of January.
General Motors has said it will temporarily idle three pickup-truck plants for two weeks in January, in addition to the traditional holiday shutdown.
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Wednesday, December 19th, 2007
An international jury comprising as many as 58 specialist journalists from 22 European countries has picked the Fiat 500 for the Car of the Year 2008 award.
Fiat’s compact car bagged the award raking in as many as 385 votes, more than Mazda 2’s 325 votes and the Ford Mondeo’s 202 votes. An auto industry report said that this was the second time that an A-segment model has won the most prestigious award in the world car industry.
Pointing out that the first such laurel went to the Fiat Pandain in 2004, it added that the record has pushed up the total Fiat Group wins to 12. While the Fiat 124 won in 1967, Fiat 128 won in 1970, Fiat 127 in 1972, Lancia Delta in 1980, Fiat Uno in 1984, Fiat Tipo in 1989, Fiat Punto in 1995, Fiat Bravo/Brava in 1996, Alfa 156 in 1998, Alfa 147 in 2001, Fiat Panda in 2004 and now the Fiat 500 for 2008. The award ceremony for Car of the Year 2008, organised by the German magazine Stern, will take place in Berlin on 28 January 2008.
The Fiat 500 model was unveiled at the start of July 2007. Customers poured into the showrooms and more than 105,000 orders were taken in just four months in Italy and France. The report added that the rest of Europe is also all for it with a total of 6,300 orders already placed in Germany after the car went on sale just a few weeks ago.
Auto analysts certify that this is the first time that a car barely 3.55 metres long has been awarded a 5-star crash safety rating by Euro NCAP and also the first time a car in this segment has seven airbags fitted as standard, with the advanced ESP available on all models. Another first is the fact that a model has been launched with the entire range of power units, i.e., 1.2 69 bhp, 1.3 MultiJet 75 bhp with DPF and 1.4 16v 100 bhp, Euro 5 emission standards.
A broad range has also brought to Fiat 500 brownie points. Customers can also choose from 15 interiors including the prestigious Cordura and Frau Leather, nine types of road wheel, and 19 sticker treatments, for a total of more than 500,000 variations.
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Tuesday, December 18th, 2007
The need for cleaner vehicles, mixed with the urge drivers have to get out and explore the world, has sent the auto industry spinning. And Toyota, always the hybrid instigator, has answered this call. With its new Highlander Hybrid, you can now have your SUV and reduce your fuel usage at the same time. The hybrid version of the Highlander uses 8.1 L/100 km, shaving 4.1 L/100 km off of the original’s record. A push on the throttle and you can hit 100 km/hr in 7.6 seconds. With a four-wheel-drive system, you are covered in any weather situations. So, lock your skis or kayak on the roof and set off for an action-packed road trip!
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Tuesday, December 18th, 2007
Honda and Toyota offered U.S. consumers the highest average fuel efficiency of 2007 model year vehicles, the government reported Wednesday.
The average fuel economy for 2007 vehicles was 20.2 miles per gallon, the same as 2006 vehicles, the Environmental Protection Agency said in an annual report that used new testing procedures.
For individual vehicles, the test results are included on window stickers in dealer lots. The agency said the overall results marked an increase compared with 2004 vehicles, which averaged 19.3 mpg.
Honda Motor Co. had the highest fuel economy of any manufacturer with 22.9 mpg, a slight decrease compared with its 2006 lineup.
Toyota Motor Corp. posted a 22.8 mpg average for its 2007 vehicles compared with 22.4 mpg the previous year. Toyota’s average was helped by the gas-electric Prius hybrid, which had the highest combined fuel economy of any passenger car with 46.2 mpg.
South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co., which includes Kia vehicles, improved to 22.7 mpg for 2007 vehicles, followed by Volkswagen AG with 21.4 mpg. Nissan Motor Co. showed the largest gain of any automaker during the past year, improving 0.6 mpg to 20.6 mpg.
General Motors Corp. led domestic automakers with 19.4 mpg, followed by Ford Motor Co. with 18.7 mpg. For the third straight year, Ford’s Escape hybrid had the highest fuel efficiency of any light truck with 29.7 mpg.
DaimlerChrysler AG, which recently completed the sale of a controlling stake in Chrysler to private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, was the lowest rated with 18.3 mpg, a mark that has been unchanged the past three years.
The figures were calculated for the first time based on test methods devised to better reflect driving habits and provide a more realistic estimate. The new tests led to a 6 percent decrease in fuel economy averages compared to past estimates using old testing criteria, EPA said.
Among vehicle type, passenger cars averaged 23.4 mpg in 2007 - unchanged from 2006. SUVs averaged 18.1 mpg, an increase of 0.3 mpg, and pickups were unchanged at 16.2 mpg.
EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said the findings were evidence that “automakers are answering President Bush’s call to improve fuel economy and decrease our nation’s dependency on foreign oil.”
But the figures underscored complaints in Congress that the auto industry has failed to rapidly ramp up production of vehicles that can get more miles on a gallon of gas. The Senate approved legislation in June that would require automakers to build more efficient vehicles; the measure is pending in Congress.
With more consumers driving larger vehicles than a generation ago, overall fuel efficiency has made little progress. The current fleet is less efficient than the new vehicles produced in 1981, for example, and well below the peak of 22 mpg in 1987.
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