Auto Bailout on The Huffington Post

GM's Saab Sale CANCELED: Swedish Buyer Steps Out

2009-11-24T12:48:09Z

DETROIT — A deal for General Motors Co. to sell Saab to a specialty carmaker has collapsed, leaving the storied Swedish brand born from jets in 1947 close to extinction.

Koenigsegg Group AB, a consortium formed by Swedish luxury sports car maker Koenigsegg Automotive AB, said Tuesday it pulled out of the deal in part because it was unable to agree with investors on how best to move the brand from mass-market to premium.

Convoys May Replace Carpools As A Greener Way To Travel

2009-11-24T11:44:23Z

The project, based on the concept of linking vehicles together using wireless sensors, is aimed at finding an inexpensive and environmentally friendly way of getting cars to travel together, convoy style.

Rob Kall: China Buys Hummer Brand -- Further Evidence of a Shock Doctrine-Assaulted America?

2009-11-23T17:31:48Z

Naomi Klein described, in her breakthrough book Shock Doctrine, how a nation is attacked, shocked and torn apart, destroying the middle class. It looks like the GM sale of Hummer to a wealthy Chinese investor, probably with the help of Morgan Stanley, is an example of how it's happening in the US.

The deal is sealed. Motortrend reports

The new owners, upon Chinese government approval, will be Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery, with 80 percent via an investment entity, and Suolang Duoji, a private entrepreneur who will hold the other 20 percent.

Don't assume that Duoji is a minority partner. The Asia Times reports

Tengzhong is "under the wing of Sichuan Huatong Investment Holding Co, Ltd, 98.5% owned by Suolang Duoji," according to a SinoCast Daily Business Beat report, carried on the Zachs Research website.

One man will basically control Hummer.

GM is selling Hummer for an estimated $150 million, far less than the $500 million it estimated it would get when it declared bankruptcy. Hard to believe that after the tens of billions the US has poured into GM, Hummer is worth so little. But apparently China thinks so.

There's some good news. The manufacturing will stay in the US. Seems the market for Hummer vehicles is primarily in the US. Also, the manufacturer of the military version of the H2 Hummer will continue to build Hummers for the military, at least until 2011.

Reports indicate that the newly owned Hummer company intends to introduce a new H4 model that gets 25 MPG. The Asia Times article compares the Hummer sale to IBM's sale of Thinkpad notebooks to Lenovo, a Chinese company that took the brand to be the number three selling notebook in the world.

We have to wonder if the US had taken Hummer, especially with its dependence on the military version, and turned it into a government-owned operation, would the US benefit? The same goes for the Saturn brand. The US could have easily loaned the money it did to GM with first option to buy those brands, or even to take them, if GM decided to end them. In the case of Saturn, how much does the US lose in terms of thousands of lost jobs? How many technological resources and even patents will the US lose when China virtually steals the Hummer brand for a tiny price?

Right wingers would raise the cry of socialism at the idea of the US salvaging brands and technology. I guess their ideology overcomes concern for American jobs and technologies. Who knows what patents Hummer holds after all? And the deal for the production of US military vehicles has an expiration date. Will China end up making military Hummers? That would surely be a sign of the USA's being in deep trouble.

Perhaps what we're seeing is just more examples of the Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein described, at work. The Hummer purchase was probably aided by Morgan Stanley, one of the last two Investment banking firms, before it and Goldman Sachs became normal banks with Federal Reserve approval. If you want to look to organizations that are profiting from the devastating effects of the Shock Doctrine on the US, look to Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. The Asia Times reports, "Morgan Stanley is financial adviser to GM during its restructuring, along with Evercare Partners and Blackstone Group, according to a June 1 Bloomberg report."

Will we see more bargain acquisitions of major US companies or brands by Chinese and other non-US firms, brokered by the companies that brought the US economic catastrophe? Considering that President Obama appointed major players from those companies to run the US economy, one would guess that the foxes are not only in, but they are running and operating the hen house. We can expect to see many more US brands acquired by the Chinese, Russians, Brazilians (who now own Budweiser) and other nations.

The question is, since it is so clear to so many that the US was subjected to the brutal assault of the Shock Doctrine, why aren't legislators looking into this and doing something about it? Bernie Sanders has introduced legislation to first identify and then break up companies that are too big to fail. That's a great idea, so long as the broken up companies aren't scarfed up by foreign nationals. The US economy is in shock. Congress is either in shock or in bed with the perpetrators -- same with the White House. Someone better wake up and start responding to the economic disaster and the ongoing sell-off of US assets as an economic terrorist attack. Maybe that's the language that's needed.

My guess is this will not happen from the top down. Obama's White House is inseparable, even indistinguishable from Goldman Sachs. It may happen in Congress. Sherrod Brown, Alan Grayson, Dennis Kucinich and a few others are asking questions, including getting rid of Goldman Sachs and Fed Reserve man Tim Geithner. The problem is, this is complicated stuff, just like the financial products that brought down the economy. It will take some powerful public education and media coverage to get the public aroused enough to push Congress to do something. Ironically, since Obama has bedded Goldman Sachs, it may well be Glen Beck and Fox News that gets this ball rolling. It would be ironic if Democrats like Chris Dodd, a sweetheart of the financial industry, and Barney Frank, who seems to be way too friendly to banksters, hand the right wing the issues they need to take back Congress and the White House. Stranger things have been known to happen.

Cross-posted from OpEdNews.com

Auto Industry Will Have Little Growth In 2010: Report

2009-11-23T12:32:19Z

DETROIT — The U.S. auto industry will recover only a little next year, weighed down by high unemployment and other troubles that will continue to limit economic growth, a top industry analyst said Monday.

Fitch Ratings analyst Mark Oline predicted that sales will rise to 11.1 million cars and trucks next year, a 7.8 percent increase over the 10.3 million he expects for 2009.

Electric Rolls-Royce Could Be Out By Christmas 2010, Rumors Report

2009-11-20T17:19:01Z

Rumors of an electric Rolls-Royce Phantom are back, with the word being the super-luxe automaker could have one on the road within 12 months.

Displacement Of Local Peoples As Coporations Buy Carbon Offsets

2009-11-20T08:33:58Z

THERE IS ANOTHER vexing question inherent in preserving forests: What happens to the people who use the land? Efforts to protect biodiversity in the dwindling wildlands of the world have increasingly run into a discomfiting tension between the impulse toward absolute preservation and the needs of people--many of them indigenous--who have lived sustainably in forestlands for decades or centuries. Such tensions are playing out in the new economics of carbon offsets.

Mike Signer: Drive Like a Jetson

2009-11-19T17:55:39Z

When you watch an episode of The Jetsons, what gets you isn't so much that Elroy wore an antenna on his head or that the family spent their time in cars that levitated. What still resonates about the show is the extreme ease of transportation -- they always just seem to get up and go. For many of us in the modern world, where gridlock and wincing at gas pumps are facts of life, the Jetsons seem spectacularly free of commuter woes. But it's a cartoon.

Ambitious clean technology schemes have usually been condemned as the province of dreamers. But this week, a new organization threatened to convert Jetson-esque schemes for powering electric cars from futurism into reality through a network of charging stations and new fleets of affordable electric cars. The Electrification Coalition is a group of prominent companies who have committed dollars and workforces to creating the infrastructure to make electric cars. (We previously wrote about electric cars here.)

At a lavish launch in D.C. featuring New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) were some old -- and new -- captains of industry: Carlos Ghosn, the president & CEO of Nissan Motor Company; Frederick W. Smith, chairman, president & CEO of FedEx; Peter L. Corsell, the young and dynamic CEO of GridPoint, a successful company in Arlington that builds software applications that integrate, aggregate, and manage distributed sources of load, storage, and generation to connect utility customers to the smart grid.

The Future: Closer Than You Think

The coalition's goals are at once ambitious but practicable. By 2013, they hope to put approximately 700,000 "grid-enabled vehicles" (GEVs) -- vehicles with lithium-ion batteries that you can plug into either a 110-volt or 220-volt outlet to recharge -- on the road. Through economies of scale and government tax credits and other incentives, the coalition thinks it can put 14 million GEVs on the road by 2020 and more than 120 million GEVs by 2030. Ultimately, they would like to have 75 percent of all vehicle miles traveled by 2040 be electric.

How to visualize this? Ghosn, Nissan's CEO, put it crisply: "How do you imagine an electric car? There is no tailpipe, no emissions." He repeated himself: "No tailpipe."

A full fleet of silent, tailpipe-less cars is ambitious and could lead even the sane to skepticism. Friedman moderated a panel with several of the coalition members and led with a question: "I want you to sell me on the efficacy and the reality of implementing this roadmap." The coalition members answered quickly and confidently, relying on actual business plans, dollars invested, consumer habits and charging infrastructure already in place, and cars already in production.

David Crane, president and CEO of NRG Energy, said, "The service station of the future is in your garage." Ghosn talked up the vastly improved efficiency of new lithium-ion batteries, saying, "We can make batteries today that were not possible 20 years ago."

Corsell of Gridpoint, the software designer for smart grids around the country, said, "We've learned that you can leverage technology ... to give consumers benefits." In response to the oft-raised concern about whether too many drivers charging their cars at once would burden the grid, Corsell said, "The power is there -- we have all the power we need. You can incentivize people to use power at the right time by building technology into the car." Other participants stressed that cars will essentially become "grid appliances" -- simple technology will allow charging mechanisms in cars to be controlled through the Internet. In Chicago, one pilot program even pays drivers per day to hook their cars up to the Internet.

The Next Step

What's needed is policy -- leadership by federal and state governments to push electrification through incentives. In the short-term, the coalition's policy goals include significantly increasing plug-in electric drive vehicle tax credits, establishing tax credits equal to 75 percent of the cost to construct public charging infrastructure, extending consumer tax credits for home charging equipment, and providing tax credits equal to 50 percent of the costs of the necessary IT upgrades for utilities or power aggregators to sell power to GEVs.

These common-sense but aggressive measures would put electrification within the free market by investing, as government can, in providing technology with the threshold it needs for manufacturers to achieve economies of scale. It's now, not the Jetsons -- and nobody will have to wear antennas on their head.

This article also appears at PPI's new website the Progressive Fix.

Thomas DeLorenzo: Who Knew a Buick Regal could be so Fabulous?

2009-11-19T15:39:01Z

Last Thursday night, I was reluctantly taken to a party. I am constantly going to parties; it's part of the price I pay for working in the Entertainment Industry. There are parties for just about any moment you can think of. Hollywood is always inventing reasons to dress up and stay out late. It's as if this entire town sleeps during the day - poolside, of course. I can assure you that is not the case with me.

This party was held at the newly remodeled Hollywood Palladium, a location I had not seen since the "facelift," so I was curious. GM was relaunching its Buick line, and the party was a preview event for the Los Angeles Auto Show. It was totally Hollywood, complete with celebs and food by Wolfgang Puck. I was secretly hoping for Adrian Brody to run up and steal a kiss from Halle Barry as I watched.

This party was one I wasn't exactly looking forward to. Cars are not my thing. I miss my subways in New York. I admit to following a trend on this matter - I drive a Prius. It's nice enough, and saves on gas. Comfortable it is not - practical it is.

The car launched was the Buick Regal. I had all sorts of preconceived notions. I believe my old Aunt drove a Buick - not sure what kind - just remember it being a metallic, shiny blue, and it seemed to be as long as the block. She was always listening to opera in that car, something that is not a favorite to a six-year-old boy.

Thanks to the friendly people at Buick, I was introduced to the Regal and met the extended family of products. Well, let's just say the experience was above and beyond all of my expectations. Aren't Buicks supposed to be clunky? And aren't I supposed to covet something with a foreign name attached to it? The Buick Lacrosse not only grabbed my attention, they had to pry me out of the front seat. It was way beyond comfortable and stylish.

There are three things I look at when car shopping - (1) how well the AC works, (2) is the sound system amazing; and (3) is my seat comfy. The Buick Lacrosse had all of these hand-stitched details on the dashboard - it was like sitting in a very private club, complete with amazing amenities and just short of your own personal valet (which I am sure will be included in next year's edition). I learned later that it was designed by a team of engineers based China, Germany and the US. It felt so very comfortable because the car's feng shui was the major focus. They wanted to get the car's Chi just right, so the driver always felt at home. And let me tell you they succeeded.

The party, however, was not about the Buick LaCrosse. It was about the new Buick Regal. My memories of the Buick Regal take me back to summers in Wildwood, New Jersey, driving a big car to the beach. The car I saw that night was so not that same car. The Regal, based on the Opel Insignia, already achieved success in Europe - it won European Car of Year - the carmaker's equivalent of the Palme D'or. The car definitely has all the elements you need to make it in this town - styling any contestant on Project Runway would envy, and brains that would make any Studio Executive nervous. Who knows, maybe HBO already signed it up for a new series? And the opera - well GM made sure we got a completely new impression of the car with Colbie Caillet providing her pop tunes as entertainment.

The party made me think - which I assure you is something that parties don't usually do. It reminded me of how we all made it through this past year. This event was a perfect way to start ending my year. You know that saying, "As GM goes, so goes the country." It definitely fit that night. We have all gone through our own makeover, and are now on the other side of it, and are ready to relaunch our own selves. The Buick Regal has done what we have all had to do - rethink who we are and how it fits into today's paradigms, leave what works, and rethink what doesn't. We are all coming to the end of this trying time, much different than who we were in January, and frankly we are the better for it. GM is providing us hope - that we can come out of this economic crisis in a stronger position than we were before. It is just going to take effort. If GM can do the work, than so can the rest of us.

I commend GM for having the courage to realize that what they were doing was not the answer- we all know how hard it can be to admit that one - and for having the know-how to create a new, and hopefully, very successful car line.

Remember, as GM goes, so goes the country. We all have a stake in this one.

GM IPO 2010? Offering Could Come Next Year, Says Obama Administration

2009-11-18T13:31:20Z

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration wants a fast-track initial public offering of General Motors Co shares to reduce its majority stake in the automaker, a senior official said. An IPO for GM could come as soon as the fourth quarter of 2010...

Safest Cars 2010: Ford, Subaru, VW Win Insurance Industry Picks

2009-11-18T07:27:36Z

WASHINGTON -- (KEN THOMAS, AP): Ford, Subaru and Volkswagen lead the insurance industry's annual list of the safest new vehicles, according to a closely watched assessment used by car companies to lure safety-conscious consumers to showrooms.

(Scroll down for photos of the safest cars and SUVs -- and vote for your favorite.)

The Virginia-based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety awarded its "top safety pick" on Wednesday to 19 passenger cars and eight sport utility vehicles for the 2010 model year. The institute substantially reduced the number of awards compared with 2009, because of tougher requirements for roof strength.

Is That A Car Or A Millennium Falcon?

2009-11-17T15:44:07Z

I'm sitting in a Toyota Prius, testing out the new HALOsonic External Sound Synthesis technology, which could both save lives and liven up the morning commute no end.

Retail Sales Up 1.4 Percent In October On Big Boost From Auto Sales

2009-11-16T09:09:18Z

WASHINGTON — Improved retail sales gave Wall Street a boost Monday but provided little hope for a robust holiday shopping season that might invigorate the economic recovery.

The October figures, driven by a surge in auto sales, exceeded economists' expectations. Yet consumers are so squeezed by tight credit and rising unemployment that economists don't expect to see significant spending until well after year's end. Even optimists predict scant improvement over last year's holiday season.

GM To Begin Repaying Aid By Year-End

2009-11-15T23:34:28Z

WASHINGTON — General Motors Co. will begin paying back $6.7 billion in U.S. government loans by the end of 2009 and could pay off that full amount as early as 2010, five years ahead of schedule, CEO Fritz Henderson said Monday.

The government debt represents about 13 percent of the $52 billion that U.S. taxpayers have invested in General Motors, the majority of which was exchanged for a 61 percent ownership stake in the company.

John Wagner Givens: Ford, GM, IBM and China: A Match Made in the Han Dynasty

2009-11-15T02:49:00Z

On October 28, Ford announced that it had picked China's biggest carmaker, Geely, as the preferred bidder for its Volvo brand. In June, General Motors, the former car giant and current burden to the American taxpayer, announced that it would sell its Hummer brand to China's Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company Ltd. These recent deals lend credence to the idea that the purchase of IBM's PC hardware division in 2004 by Chinese computer giant Lenovo was the beginning of a trend. In all these cases the brand itself seems to be the most valuable asset of the purchased companies. But why are Chinese firms so keen on buying brands rather than building their own? Japanese and Korean firms did not feel the need to buy well-known US brands during their ascent in western electronic and car markets. For example, Toyota never bought ailing Studebaker for its brand. The answer may, surprisingly, be more cultural and historical than economic.

After repressing a revolt led by powerful noblemen in 154 B.C.E., the second emperor of the Han dynasty mandated that Chinese nobles divide their lands equally between sons. By forcing division he hoped to fragment the power base of the hereditary nobility and disrupt the continuity of succession. This effort seems to have been remarkably successful not only in terms of disrupting the nobility, but over two millennia later Chinese communities still practice a system of coparcenary inheritance in which a family's assets are divided more or less equally between heirs who then can take their inheritance and steer their own course. This means that Chinese businesses tend to neglect building brands in favor of diversifying into assets that are easier to split between heirs who many not want to be forced to cooperate under the umbrella of a valuable brand name. Additionally, a century of instability and uncertainty discouraged long-term investment in building a brand. This results in Chinese firms that have little experience building brands and hence a dearth of well-known Chinese brands.

As opposed to the three richest Americans whose names are synonymous with, if not overshadowed by, the brands that made their fortunes (Bill Gates - Microsoft, Larry Ellison - Oracle, Warren Buffet - Berkshire Hathaway), of the world's three richest Chinese (Li Ka-shing, Raymond, Thomas and Walter Kwok, and Lee Shau Kee) none is associated with any internationally known brand. While names like PetroChina, Bank of China and China Telecom are becoming more familiar, these brands generally owe their renown and tremendous size to ownership by and special relationships with the Chinese government. Tiger Balm and Alibaba, private internationally recognized brands built by ethnic Chinese, may be the exceptions that prove the rule.

None of this is to say that it is impossible for a Chinese firm to build a valuable international brand. Rather, a combination of culture and history means that they have not developed experience in brand building and, currently, the US seems to have a comparative advantage in internationally known brands. Someday brands established by China's entrepreneurs will probably be as familiar as Sony, Toyota and Samsung, but for now, cash-flush Chinese firms seem content to snap up American companies for their names, especially while economic troubles mean that they can be acquired at bargain basement prices. In other words, do not be surprised if other brands owned by near-fatalities of the financial crises end up in the hands of Chinese companies with names as familiar as Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company Ltd.

Whale-Penis Leather SUV Seats: Pamela Anderson Protests Dartz Pombron Monaco Red Diamond Edition SUV

2009-11-13T08:25:59Z

What's the world coming to when you can get your $1.45 million bulletproof SUV with gold trim, a ridiculously expensive Vertu cellphone and three bottles of premium vodka, but you can't get the whale-penis-skin interior?

We have environmentalists and Pamela Anderson to thank for this.

Neil Barofsky, TARP Watchdog: Bailout Will 'Almost Certainly' Result In Loss For Taxpayers

2009-11-12T17:48:26Z

Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Neil Barofsky, the federal watchdog for the $700 billion financial industry bailout, said the program will "almost certainly" result in a loss to U.S. taxpayers.

Simon Sinek: The Best Thing You Can Have Is Bad Intelligence

2009-11-12T09:12:17Z

During the Cold War, America would fly spy planes over the Soviet
Union to count how many bombers they had. Knowing exactly what the
Americans were doing, the Soviets laid out hundreds of fake, wooden
bombers to trick the Americans into thinking that they had a much
bigger capability than they actually did. The problem was, America
believed its own intelligence and built real bombers to counter the perceived Soviet threat.

It
wasn't until after the fall of the Berlin Wall did we learn that, if we
ever had gone to war with the Soviet Union, we would have annihilated
them because our resources vastly outnumbered theirs. This massive
unfair advantage would not have happened if it weren't for the good
fortune of some bad intelligence.

Believing that your
competition is stronger and better than you pushes you to better
yourselves. Whether real or perceived, believing you have a
disadvantage forces you to find new and clever ways to compete. It's
always the organizations that are resource constrained that come up
with the good ideas to win.

You can save money on competitive
analyses by simply pretending that whatever your competition is doing,
they are doing it better than you. This works whether you're the
leader or the challenger. Instead of constantly trying to compare what
you're doing to others, focus instead on constantly trying to improve
yourself and the way you do things. You should believe, true or not,
that there is always someone lurking on the horizon waiting to take
advantage of you.

The greatest threat any organization can face
is not its competition but its own success. With great success comes
complacency - the false belief that you are the best and that you don't
have to worry. The problem is, you'll only realize it's a false belief
when someone else catches you by surprise. This pattern is repeated
over and over and over. Wal-Mart, Microsoft and General Motors all
believed that they were unbeatable -- until a company who believed they
were not as strong found a better way to compete with the 800lb gorilla.

Are you a leader who wants to know more about how to inspire people?

Click to read a chapter of Simon Sinek's new book: Start With Why

Simon Sinek

Author

Start With Why

Read Now - http://bit.ly/L26zk

Twitter - @simonsinek

Steve Parker: Friday is LA's EV day -- Nissan's Leaf Hits Dodger Stadium, Santa Monica

2009-11-11T15:22:11Z

For its first public showings outside Japan, Nissan's all-new Leaf "pure EV" plug-in electric sedan, due on-sale worldwide as a 2012 model, will see the first light of an American day at a press-only event this Friday morning at Dodger Stadium featuring Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn, and later that day, in front of the public, at Pier 59 Studios, 2415 Michigan Avenue in Santa Monica.

Nissan Leaf at its first public display at last molnth's Tokyo Motor Show; Los Angeles gets it next!

"Get an up-close look at the 100 percent electric Nissan LEAF", say Nissan's marketers, "and the opportunity to learn more about its industry-leading technology. Top Nissan people will be on-hand to answer questions and share Nissan's vision for Zero Emissions."

Nissan estimates the four-door EV will cost around $27,000 and achieve about 100 miles per charge. It can be charged overnight on a standard 110-volt household plug or much faster using an optional 'quickcharge' service.

The Leaf stop in LA kicks-off a nationwide tour of the car which will hit all major American cities between now and February. Production of the cars will be in Japan, the UK and in Tennessee, where Nissan's manufacturing facilities for the US are located. Those factories are already been prepared for Leaf manufacture.