Industry
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The bad news for Volkswagen just keeps on coming. In the last week, the company has fired much of its upper management, eradicated all mention of its TDI diesels from its U.S. website, and admitted that 11 million diesel vehicles have software that enabled them to pass emission tests while emitting 10 to 35 times the permissible U.S. levels of nitrous oxides. Yesterday the German transport ministry announced that Volkswagen had rigged emission tests on 2.8 million diesel vehicles in Germany alone. Switzerland temporarily banned the sale of VW diesels in the country. DON'T MISS: VW Diesel...
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Overall U.S. Fuel Economy: Higher Now Than In 1923, But Only A Little
U.S. average fuel economy did not increase dramatically between 1923 and 2013.
Stephen Edelstein -
Plug-In Electric Car Sales Soar Globally Even As U.S. Is Flat This Year
Gasoline prices remain low and sales of plug-in electric cars this year are only about equal to last year's levels. That's led to a number of articles from general media outlets (some of them rather lacking in context) questioning whether electric-car sales have stalled or whether plug-in cars have...
John Voelcker -
Mazda To Lean On Toyota For Hybrid, Fuel-Cell Expertise
Mazda and Toyota will collaborate on future products.
Stephen Edelstein -
Oil Industry Will Begin To Vanish By 2030, Says New Book
A new book claims the downfall of fossil fuels is coming.
Stephen Edelstein -
How Many Tesla Model S Electric Cars Have Been Built So Far?
While Tesla likely won't reveal last year's total production of Model S electric cars until it releases year-end financial results, it has said it expected to build 33,000 during 2014. And with the Model S in production for more than two and a half years, clearly there are tens of thousands of them...
John Voelcker -
By most accounts, the world is pretty much awash in oil these days. Increases in North American shale-oil production have boosted supply to the point where there's now discussion of the U.S. becoming a net oil exporter sometime in the next decade. Meanwhile, the vehicle fleet is slowly getting more efficient--and U.S. gasoline consumption peaked in 2006 and has fallen steadily since then. DON'T MISS: Auto Industry Doing Fine In Meeting Gas-Mileage Goals, It Turns Out (Aug 2014) All of this has added up to produce remarkably low recent gasoline prices. In some parts of the U.S., drivers now...
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Mercedes CEO: No One Will Make Money On Electric Cars In 'Reasonable Time'
With the first Mercedes-Benz electric car now on sale, its parent company Daimler joins the expanding ranks of global automakers offering plug-in electric vehicles in the U.S. But CEO Dieter Zetsche doesn't seem any too happy about it. DON'T MISS: 2014 Mercedes-Benz B-Class Electric Drive: First...
John Voelcker -
Were Small Cars Exactly The Wrong Way To Launch Electric Cars?
Historically, most technology innovations in automobiles start at the high end and gradually work their way down the lineup until they've become standard features of even the humblest of cars. From automatic transmissions to disc brakes, turbochargers to fuel injection, high-end audio systems to...
John Voelcker -
Elon Musk Vs Ward's: A Sales Battle Tesla Brought On Itself
It all started when stock analysts circulating an estimate from auto-industry trade journal Ward's Auto that Tesla's U.S. sales were down 26 percent for the first nine months of 2014, compared to the same period in 2013.. It was covered in a Wall Street Journal story on the company's new lower-cost...
John Voelcker -
Should GM Buy Tesla? What Would Be The Pros And Cons?
The suggestion hit the day before Christmas: Analyst Yra Harris of Praxis Trading predicted in a CNBC interview that General Motors might buy Tesla Motors sometime in 2014. Harris called it "a perfect fit" for one of the three largest carmakers in the world to buy the closely-watched Silicon Valley...
John Voelcker -
Better Place Obit Asks: Has Tesla Done What Israel Couldn't?
Why is Tesla succeeding where Better Place failed?
Stephen Edelstein -
The Smart has lost more money than any other European car, a new report says.
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Future Of Electric Cars Depends On China, Says Nissan CEO Ghosn
Renault-Nissan is hoping increased Chinese demand will make its investment in electric cars pay off.
Stephen Edelstein -
Why The 2013 Nissan Leaf Is Really A 2001 Toyota Prius
A lot of media discussion these days seems to focus overly on the low sales of plug-in electric cars (this piece from Friday, for instance). That despite the fact that plug-ins are selling faster than hybrid vehicles did at the same phase of their launch. But automotive history may provide another...
John Voelcker -
Five Facts About Tesla & Electric Cars That May Surprise You
Tesla always tops the charts. Coverage of the feisty startup electric-car maker from Silicon Valley attracts huge attention any time it appears. Discussion boards, forums, videos, comment sections, and investment blogs overflow with opinions, analysis, and utterly confident (and wildly differing)...
John Voelcker -
Could Google Buy Tesla? Should It?
Speculating on what will happen to Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] can be endlessly entertaining, and the discussions have taken up terabytes of server space already. But last week, a Forbes contributor suggested an intriguing notion: Should search giant Google buy Tesla? The conventional wisdom has been...
John Voelcker -
Does Toyota's Hybrid Leadership Blind It To Electric Cars?
Many who follow the progress of plug-in electric cars wonder why Toyota, despite its leadership in hybrids, lags other carmakers in its electric vehicles. The business principle of The Innovator's Dilemma suggests that the company has been slow to embrace electric cars not despite its hybrid...
Matthew Klippenstein -
Electric-car maker Tesla is on a roll--its first quarter was profitable, its stock price is soaring, and Consumer Reports gave its Model S a rave review. That has led many writers to compare the company to Apple Inc. [NSDQ:AAPL]. Now one analyst has taken it further: In a Bloomberg column, Chamath Palihapitiya suggests that Apple should simply buy Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA]. And, Palihapitiya writes, if Steve Jobs were still alive, he would have done so. He argues: The right move would be for Apple to enter the car space, buy Tesla and make Elon Musk the CEO. Cook could move back to COO...
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Fisker Hires Ex-GM, Ex-Hyundai Marketing Chief Joel Ewanick
When it comes to automotive executives, perhaps none is more resilient than former General Motors marketing head Joel Ewanick. Dismissed by GM last July over an expensive sponsorship deal with English football club Manchester United, Ewanick has been named as Fisker’s interim head of global...
Kurt Ernst -
Fisker To Establish New Technology Center In Midwest U.S.
During the development phase of the Fisker Karma, the automaker established a temporary technical center in Pontiac, Michigan, in order to be closer to automotive industry suppliers and experienced engineers. In the spring of 2010, as the Karma approached finalization, Fisker shut its Pontiac tech...
Kurt Ernst -
Chinese-Japanese Group To Turn Saab Into Electric-Car Brand
Last December Saab fans all around the world received the grim news their beloved brand was filing for bankruptcy, despite the best attempts of its then-owner, Swedish Automobile, to find a buyer interested in paying off all of Saab’s outstanding debts and investing in new products. Since...
Viknesh Vijayenthiran -
2012 Tesla Model S Electric Sedan: Industry Analyst Weighs In
After a flurry of press events last October that included rides in 2012 Tesla Model S prototypes, Tesla Motors went mostly silent until it unveiled its Model X crossover last month. But the electric crossover won't generate any cash for the Silicon Valley startup carmaker over the next year or two...
John Voelcker -
Can China's Power Industry Raise Interest In Electric Cars?
China's car market is one of the fastest-growing in the world, and the implications of that are huge for the car industry. They're huge for the environment too. With the sort of air quality that Los Angeles was experiencing back in the 1970s, cities like Beijing are keen to get people into...
Antony Ingram