Auto Industry Archive

Cooking a meal–or driving to work–will soon mean plugging into the smart grid. You can see what it will look like at the “kitchen of the future.” It’s a bank of homey-looking appliances off to the side in General Electric’s Global Research headquarters in Niskayuna, New York. At some point in the near future, explained Natarajan Venkatakrishnan, director of R&D at GE...

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Until now, most biofuel discussions have focused on ethanol and biodiesel. Both those technologies show promise in freeing North America from foreign oil dependence, but both have hit some heavy obstacles—mostly arising from a lack of places to fill up. But what if we could make utterly conventional motor fuels—gasoline, diesel and jet fuel—from wood chips, grass clippings or...

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It was fascinating to hear General Motors President and CEO Fritz Henderson knock GM’s corporate culture the other day. Keep in mind Henderson is a GM lifer who presumably has had more input than the average Joe on making GM’s corporate culture what it is today. “Most people would say our culture has been an impediment and I would agree with that. And that needs to...

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General Motors thinks it can sell cars online in California, through a new partnership with eBay. The plan is to offer them for both competitive bids and at set prices. Good luck with that. The record on selling cars online is not great. As reported here in January, although a J.D. Power and Associates report says 75 percent of new vehicle buyers use the Internet to shop (up from 70 percent in...

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There was a palpable sense of relief in Detroit as General Motors bid goodbye to its brief and incredibly awkward period in bankruptcy. But giants fall hard, and there’s an extremely steep road ahead. GM’s remaining desirable assets—including Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC—have been passed on to the federal entity now known by the generic name Vehicle Acquisition Company (VAC). VAC, to be...

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General Motors officially launched the “New GM” today, having secured permission in U.S. Bankruptcy Court earlier this week to drop its “bad” assets, and go forward with its “good” assets. The net effect is a much smaller company with only four brands — Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC – that theoretically can be profitable at a much lower...

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Right now, you can buy exactly one natural gas car from a mainstream automaker—the Honda Civic GX. There are only 142,000 natural gas vehicles on American roads (out of 250 million). But that could soon change if a new bill introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and enthusiastically backed by energy investor T. Boone Pickens is passed. Here’s Pickens explaining his...

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Auto dealers are finding some allies in Congress to help the dealers fight mass terminations as part of the bankruptcy reorganization of Chrysler and General Motors. For instance, U.S. Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio, on July 8 said he added an amendment to a larger spending bill that would require Chrysler and GM to reinstate agreements with dealerships. LaTourette said he doesn’t buy the...

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Some 54 ethanol producers, grouped together under Growth Energy’s banner, are carrying the torch for dramatically increasing the amount of ethanol in pump gasoline from 10 to 15 percent. Will they succeed? There are technical and political arguments to be made on both sides, but for now the momentum seems to be against fast-tracking higher ethanol blends. Growth Energy, whose producers would...

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Another major auto supplier, seat maker Lear Corp., declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week. Lear’s bankruptcy follows a bankruptcy filing by Visteon Corp., on May 28. Visteon is closely tied to Ford. General Motors is Lear’s biggest customer, accounting for 23 percent of 2008 sales, according to Lear’s annual report. Delphi Corp., a supplier formed from GM’s former...

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