Updates from January, 2012
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Chrysler Group's Mopar division today unveiled four custom vehicles that it will display at the Chicago Auto Show next month in honor of the parts brand's 75th anniversary.11:01 am on January 31, 2012
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Light-vehicle sales in January, set for release Wednesday, may have run at a 13.4 million seasonally adjusted annual rate, the average estimate of 14 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.10:35 am on January 31, 2012
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9:00 am on January 31, 2012
A Mini John Cooper Works rally car won its first FIA international event on Sunday when Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari took victory at the Qatar International Rally, the first round of the 2012 Middle East Rally Championship (MERC).
Al Kuwari and his co-driving brother, Nasser Al-Kuwari, emerged victorious by a margin of two minutes and 24.9 seconds and confirmed their first career MERC win and a debut success for the Prodrive-built and Tok Sport-run Mini John Cooper Works Super Production Car (SPC).
“It is a fantastic feeling to win this rally,” says Al-Kuwari, who became the 32nd driver in history to win at least one round of the MERC. “I have achieved success in national rallies in Qatar, but this was the big one. This was the rally I wanted to win. The new car was fantastic. This is the biggest win of my career.”
The Mini SPC is the regional rally specification of the Mini World Rally Car. The cars are nearly identical except that the SPC runs with a smaller engine restrictor (30 millimetres versus 33 mm) and a smaller rear wing.
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Honda forecast a worse-than-expected 65 percent drop in profit for the year to March after natural disasters in Japan and Thailand hammered it harder than its rivals while the strong yen delivered an added blow.6:07 am on January 31, 2012
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Chrysler Group has elevated the art of the striptease to a new level with the release of its first official image of the next-generation SRT Viper.1:01 am on January 31, 2012
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Honda is expected to report a double-digit slide in quarterly operating profit on Tuesday and forecast a still larger drop for the full year, as natural disasters in Japan and Thailand hit it harder than rivals.6:47 pm on January 30, 2012
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Domestic automakers gained in the California new-vehicle market last year as Japanese automakers suffered disaster-related product shortages.6:38 pm on January 30, 2012
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Denso and Yazaki, two of Japan's largest auto-parts suppliers, have agreed to plead guilty in a widening multicontinent bid-rigging case, the federal Department of Justice said today.2:35 pm on January 30, 2012
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After years of enduring sexist jokes and taunts from their male counterparts, women drivers can finally take heart -- a new study suggests they’re actually better at parking than men.2:32 pm on January 30, 2012
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2:00 pm on January 30, 2012
By Nichola Groom
LOS ANGELES • California approved aggressive new rules on Friday to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by requiring automakers to put many more electric and hybrid vehicles on the Golden State’s roads by 2025.
The regulations were approved unanimously by nine members of the state’s powerful air-quality regulator, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), at a meeting in Los Angeles.
They are expected to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 34% and smog and soot pollutants by 75% by 2025, in part by putting 1.4 million electric, plug-in and hydrogen vehicles on the state’s roads.
The program would also mandate the development of an infrastructure for hydrogen fuelling stations.
“Californians have always loved their cars … Now we’re going to have cleaner and more efficient cars to love,” CARB chairman Mary Nichols says. “This really is a historic new chapter in California’s history with the automobile.”
The influential CARB voted on the rules following a two-day hearing that included testimony from automakers, environmentalists, politicians and consumer advocates. The rules will affect vehicles beginning in the 2017 model year.
The rules are part of the state’s aggressive plan to reduce climate warming emissions by 80% by 2050.
California is the biggest United States car market and has had the distinction of being able to set policy independent of U.S. federal rules, making it into a laboratory for change over the years.
About 40% of California’s greenhouse gases come from vehicles and the state’s new rules aim to stimulate production of so-called zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), which include cars that run on electric batteries and fuel cells.
The state wants ZEVs such as Nissan’s all-electric Leaf or plug-in hybrids such as General Motors’ Chevrolet Volt to make up more than 15% of new vehicle sales by 2025.
But California has said plug-in hybrids would be transitional vehicles, adding that 87% of the cars on the road will have to be pure ZEVs by 2050 for the state to achieve its goals.
The target is an aggressive one considering that such vehicles make up well below 1% of the current market and California has been forced to scale back its ZEV goals in the past because vehicle technology lagged the state’s hopes for putting clean cars on its roads and highways.
In 2008, CARB reduced the number of pure ZEVs to 7,500 for the three years from 2012 to 2014 from a previous requirement of 25,000.
Since then, however, automakers have stepped up their investment in more fuel-efficient vehicles, including battery electric cars — a development Nichols says made CARB’s decision easier.
“The level of consensus is the highest that I’ve ever seen,” Nichols said, adding she had seen “a real change in attitude on the part of auto companies, who have seen the handwriting on the wall that their future lies in these vehicles.”
An auto industry trade group, however, says automakers are opposed to a clean vehicle mandate. “Mandates create a disconnect in the marketplace. Automakers are mandated to build products that consumers are not mandated to buy,” the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers says.
Still, California’s new rules include a provision to allow automakers that over-comply with fuel efficiency requirements across their fleet to offset their ZEV requirement, an apparent acknowledgment of the slow pace of getting such vehicles into the mass market.
