02-03-2010 07:00
+++ Fiat Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne's plan to revive the ALFA ROMEO brand in the U.S. may get a boost from a new hatchback in Europe. At the Geneva auto show Alfa Romeo unveiled the Giulietta, created for Europe to replace the Alfa 147 introduced 10 years ago. With its sculpted rear, rounded triangular headlights and a selection of five turbocharged engines, the model will become the basis of a new larger sedan for the U.S., possibly in 2012. Alfa Romeo is 190,000 cars short of an annual target of 300,000 to make money and Marchionne said in January that he's reviewing the 100-year-old brand. The Giulietta may help accelerate Alfa Romeo's return to the U.S., the world's most profitable luxury-car market, as the brand examines plans to make vehicles with Fiat partner Chrysler Group LLC, said Andrew Close, a London-based analyst at IHS Global Insight. "The beauty of America is that even a niche car can still have volume", said Close, a specialist in powertrain, in a phone interview. "Alfa probably has the biggest opportunity of all the Fiat brands to assert its premium position in the U.S. market, which could help them climb out of the hole that they're in". Turin, Italy-based Fiat in January appointed Harald Wester, the automaker's technology chief and CEO of the Maserati and Abarth brands, to run Alfa Romeo. Wester may use Maserati's dealer network to bolster Alfa Romeo's premium positioning, Close said. At stake is Fiat's ability to compete with Mercedes-Benz and Audi, brands that Marchionne has said Alfa Romeo isn't keeping up with. The Giulietta will compete with cars including VW's Golf and the BMW 1-Series. +++ Late last year we first heard that Mercedes-Benz, together with its high-performance AMG division, was going to replace its entire engine lineup with a new range of more fuel efficient direct-injected and turbocharged units. Today, we have the first solid details on one of the most exciting of the newcomers, a 5.5-liter V-8 that will replace the 6.2-liter unit found in the current AMG lineup. Codenamed M157, the new 5.5-liter engine will feature direct-injection and twin-turbocharging technologies to ensure it produces more power and torque than the current 6.2-liter naturally aspirated mill. It will be rated at 537 horsepower at 5,500 and 780 Nm of torque over a wide band of revs stretching from 2,000 rpm all the way up to 4,500 rpm. This is substantially better than the 525 horsepower at 6,800 rpm and 630 Nm at 5,200 rpm in the 6.2-liter V-8. The first application of the new engine is due this summer in the 2010 Mercedes-Benz S 63 AMG, which will most likely be renamed the S 55 AMG. As for other engines in the pipeline, expect non-AMG models to get a less powerful 4.6-liter V-8 (naturally aspirated and turbocharged) as well as several V-6 units. Importantly, most will be designed to integrate with hybrid drive systems. +++ AUDI is working intensively to answer questions of future mobility. In late 2010/early 2011 the Q5 hybrid will reach the market, the first Audi with a combination of gasoline engine and electric motor. In Geneva Audi is exhibiting the A8 hybrid for the first time as a concept car: Its CO2 emissions of 144 g/km are the best figure in the full-size category. Another world premiere in Geneva is the A1 e-tron design study, which shows that Audi’s expertise in electric drive systems extends down into the compact car segment. At the end of 2012 Audi will launch the e-tron electric car that was seen last year at the Frankfurt Motor Show (IAA). A small series will be built, and will be the first electric car to reach the market. In the words of Rupert Stadler, Chairman of the Board of Management of Audi: “In future our customers will be able to choose from an increasingly broad range of driveline technologies. To accompany our high-efficiency TDI and FSI engines, we shall offer electric power in the best possible forms for a wide range of mobility needs. The hybrid driveline will be followed by all-electric vehicles.” The “e-tron” name will have an important part to play. “Just as “quattro” has become a synonym for all-wheel drive, so “e-tron” is to be the Audi brand name for electric mobility”, continues Stadler. When developing alternative drivelines, Audi is pursuing a strategy of introducing each technology where it is appropriate for specific model lines and markets, in other words where it will offer customers significant benefits. “We regard the full hybrid as we know it today primarily as a very specific technology for reducing fuel consumption. In due course plug-in hybrids will demonstrate their strong points when drivers expect to cover longer distances in the pure electric mode, in combination with a conventional engine”, says Michael Dick, Member of the Board of Management for Technical Development at Audi. According to Dick: “The strength of the electric car clearly lies in the urban mobility area, where the demand for emission-free local transportation will strongly increase”. In addition to hybrids and electric cars, Audi continues to develop its long-term competence in the development of basic propulsion concepts using fuel cells and hydrogen as an energy carrier. Every year Audi invests around two billion euros in development projects, with the focus on continued progress in internal combustion engine design and associated areas. Electric mobility is a further priority: In this area the e-tron show car seen at the IAA was a dramatic signal. At the same time, the various activities are being grouped together strategically. Audi has established the e-performance project house to deal with electric mobility topics. Since the autumn of 2009 a team has been at work on the research project of the same name, with support from the Federal German Ministry for Education and Research. Members of the team, consisting of Audi development staff and scientists from various universities, are working on the development of a new overall electric vehicle concept, including the body, battery and power electronics. Audi will be expanding its “e-tron” model family step by step: the A1 e-tron design study that the company is exhibiting at the Geneva Motor Show is an innovative Mega City Vehicle (MCV). Like the sports cars in the same family, it is electrically propelled and has a range of more than 50 kilometers in city traffic. With a peak power output of 102 hp, the A1 e-tron is also fun to drive. When the battery’s energy supply is exhausted, it is recharged by an exceptionally compact “range extender” consisting of a single-rotor Wankel engine and an electrical generator with a charge rating of up to 22 hp. This device gives the A1 e-tron an additional range of 200 kilometers. According to the draft standard for determining the fuel consumption of range-extender vehicles, the mean fuel consumption is 1.9 liters per 100 kilometers, equivalent to CO2 emissions of only 45 g/km. Audi is also displaying the A8 hybrid as an engineering study at the Geneva Motor Show. Its two power units (the 2.0 TFSI engine and the electric motor) have a combined output of 245 hp and a torque of 480 Nm. They give the car the same outstanding performance as a large-capacity conventional six-cylinder engine. This systematic downsizing demonstrates its fuel-consumption advantages in combination with the electric driveline: the average fuel consumption is only 6.2 l/100 km, equivalent to CO2 emissions of 144 g/km. The Audi A8 hybrid uses the parallel hybrid configuration; a highly efficient principle that avoids unnecessary friction and power losses. The powerful electric motor integrated between the 211 hp four-cylinder petrol engine and the eight-speed tiptronic transmission can supply a further 45 hp to the driveline, as well as a vigorous 211 Nm of torque. The A8 design study is a full hybrid, that is to say the gasoline engine or the electric motor can propel it either separately or together. In the pure electric drive mode the car can reach 65 km/h and cover a distance of more than two kilometers. +++ Growth in the North American vehicle buying population is set to drop to its slowest pace in 50 years as the BABYBOOM generation retires and cuts down on driving, according to a report by Scotia Economics. Boomers, those born between 1945 and 1963, who account for 60 percent of all drivers in the United States and Canada, are heading into their golden years. At the same time, the number of drivers in the 16 to 29 age group, is increasing at the slowest pace since the mid-1960s, the report said. The North American auto sector is in recovery mode after one of its worst ever cyclical downturns. U.S. and Canadian sales are expected to top 13 million vehicles in 2010, up from 11.9 million last year, but well below the sector's peak of 17.4 million earlier in the decade, said Carlos Gomes, an economist at Scotia Economics, and author of the report. "However, unfavorable demographics, including the retirement of the baby boom generation, will dampen vehicle demand over the coming decades, leaving the industry increasingly dependent on replacement demand", he said. Growth in the North American vehicle buying population will fall to 0.6 percent per year in Canada over the coming decade, and only marginally higher in the United States, from 1.4 percent over the past 50 years, the report said. "Growth in vehicle buying population has already been slowing since 2007, but the downturn will intensify, and remain in place through 2030", said Gomes, adding: "the sharp fall-off in driving by retirees will have an enormous negative impact to new vehicle demand". The number of North Americans 60 years or older is expected to surpass the population of young car buyers by 2013. Gomes said that vehicle replacement will become more important to the auto industry over the next few years, as nearly half of the 250 million cars and trucks on the road in North America are at least 10 years old. +++ Renault-Nissan's 'Ultra Low-Cost Car' for emerging markets will be built, despite a company spokesman admiting last week that it was struggling to engineer the car. At the Geneva motor show Nissan's executive vice-president Collin Dodge confirmed that neither it nor partner BAJAJ Auto has found engineering solutions for the proposed car. "It is over two years that Bajaj is trying to produce the car. The physics of it is very difficult. We have not yet found a solution as there are lot of engineering solutions required," Said Dodge. But a spokesman for Bajaj Auto has dismissed speculation that this may mean the Tata Nano rivalling project won't go ahead. "The partners are aligned to the project and to the agreed objectives. The project is proceeding as planned," Bajaj Auto vice-president of business development S Ravikumar said. Nissan, Renault and Bajaj Auto agreed in 2008 to manufacture the car, which should cost from around 2.500 euro excluding taxes. +++ Gherardo Corsini, director of ELECTRIC vehicle implementation at General Motors’ Opel/Vauxhall unit, made his way Sunday to Geneva from Germany more quietly than most. He was at the wheel of a prototype of the Opel Ampera. “Getting lots of curious looks at the rest area,” one of Mr. Corsini’s passengers, Dietmar Thate, manager of social media for Opel, tweeted after the car made a short stop Sunday. Opel has displayed the Ampera at previous auto shows. But this time, the message (underscored by Mr. Corsini’s 560-kilometer road trip) is that the darn thing actually works. One of the big themes of the Geneva show, which opens to the media Tuesday and to the public Thursday and runs through March 14, is that electric-powered vehicles are moving inexorably from prototypes to actual production, whether the auto-buying public is ready or not. “The time is past when companies only displayed studies,” said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, director of the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Duisburg, Germany. “Now the industry is moving toward hard facts.” But the shift toward electric vehicles also represents a huge leap of faith for the automakers, especially as they emerge from a devastating industry downturn. To be able to produce electric cars in a few years, they must invest billions now without knowing how large the market will be. In addition, there is no consensus on what kind of technology will prevail. The possibilities include pure battery power, some combination of batteries and internal combustion engines and more exotic solutions like hydrogen fuel cells. “Right now, car companies don’t quite know what technology to bet on,” said Peter Wells, co-director of the Center for Automotive Industry Research at Cardiff University in Wales. “It’s probably not safe to bet on just one.” Pushed by governments eager to do something about global warming and fearful of missing a technology shift, companies are moving ahead anyway. Opel, which already has its hands full trying to regain market share in Europe from Volkswagen and Ford, is scheduled to start commercial production of the Ampera (a cousin of the Chevrolet Volt) near the end of next year in Rüsselsheim, Germany. BMW said last week that it would produce an electric vehicle made partly with lightweight carbon fiber at its existing plant in Leipzig, with market introduction no later than 2015. Toyota, even as it struggles to repair a reputation battered by unintended acceleration in some models, is scheduled to show the latest prototype of its plug-in Prius hybrid in Geneva. The car will be able to travel 25 kilometers solely on battery power and is expected to hit the market in 2011. A few all-electric cars are already on the market or nearly so in limited numbers. And some industry experts believe that such vehicles present an opportunity for carmakers to create a new market among well-heeled, environmentally conscious buyers. “Interesting customer segments are waiting desperately in some cases for these products,” said Gregor Matthies, a partner at the consultant Bain & Co. in Munich. In November, Daimler began producing small numbers of battery-powered versions of its two-seat Smart car in Hambach, France. The company has said it plans to produce 20,000 a year, beginning in 2012. Mitsubishi’s i-MiEV, already in Japanese showrooms, is scheduled to be available in Europe later this year. Nissan plans to introduce its Leaf in the United States, Europe and Japan in December. Even sports car makers, bastions of internal combustion, are moving tentatively toward electric power. Porsche shows a hybrid version of its Cayenne, developed with Volkswagen, in Geneva. The car, to go on sale in the autumn, is capable of running solely on battery power for short periods. And Ferrari shows a prototype hybrid Italian stallion. The carmakers can take some reassurance from the strong demand for hybrids, which many analysts see as a way station on the road to all-electric vehicles. Sales of hybrids rose 33 percent last year to 700,000 worldwide, even as the overall market dived, according to SBI Energy, a market research firm in Rockville, Maryland. Japan accounted for half the hybrid sales and the United States for most of the rest. Impetus for electrification is also coming from governments. The British government said Thursday it would offer motorists as much as £5,000 (or 5,500 euro), to buy “ultralow carbon” vehicles. The U.S. Department of Energy is loaning Nissan $1.4 billion to modify its plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, to produce the Leaf. But Mr. Wells of Cardiff University said he was worried that politicians could lose interest in electric vehicles because fuel prices have come off their peaks and because there has been little success reaching international accords to limit carbon dioxide emissions. “Governments have short memories on these things, as does the public,” Mr. Wells said. The best thing that could happen to electric-car development might be a recovery in the market for conventional gasoline and diesel autos. That would give the big carmakers more money to invest in research. Mr. Dudenhöffer of the University of Duisburg-Essen is optimistic, predicting a 5.7 percent increase in sales this year to 56 million vehicles worldwide. That is still well below sales in 2007 of 58.8 million. Most of the growth will come from Asia and the United States. Western Europe, where most factories are running at well below capacity, will remain flat, Mr. Dudenhöffer predicts. Recent statements by carmakers have been less than euphoric. Although there are some signs of global economic recovery, there is no reason to assume that the crisis is over,” Daimler said last month as it announced a loss of €352 million, in the fourth quarter of 2009. Opel/Vauxhall said in a statement Feb. 9 that it “does not believe the market will come back to the levels seen earlier in this century for quite some time.” The firm plans to close a plant in Antwerp, Belgium, and cut 8,300 jobs in Europe. As a result, said Mr. Matthies of Bain, automakers will band together to share the cost of developing electric vehicles. “It is a real stretch for the manufacturers, which is why we will see more and more cooperation,” he said. +++ A decision by HYUNDAI to recall over 40,000 cars, many sold in the United States, has sparked doubts about whether the carmaker, like its Japanese rival Toyota, saw quality suffer due to its quick expansion in the world’s largest market. The Hyundai recall comes at a time when the Korean company had been trying to take advantage of the Toyota fiasco to bolster its sales further. Yet it seems unlikely Hyundai will suffer from similar blowback, at least for now. “Compared with Toyota’s recall, ours are not something to talk about,” Lawrence Pardy, a sales associate at a Hyundai dealership. “Toyota’s recall has become so massive because they waited so many years before taking care of it. So many cars are out on the road,” he said. “We are doing the recall now before consumers get it, since the new Sonata models are being taken care of before they are sold.” Hyundai decided to recall around 47,300 new Sonata sedans (around 46,000 in Korea and 1,300 in the U.S.) due to a problem with the front door locks. The Korean Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs yesterday confirmed the decision. U.S. authorities have yet to comment on the Hyundai recall. The largest Korean carmaker tried to downplay the process, saying that the Sonata had no serious safety problems and that the size of the recall was tiny. Toyota is estimated to have recalled more than 8 million cars in recent weeks over issues including sudden acceleration. Pardy said almost every car manufacturer in the United States experiences recalls of at least 50,000 cars per year for minor technical problems, going so far as to say that the Hyundai recall deserves positive attention as it is a pre-emptive measure. “If we quickly take care of it, we can quickly move forward with the new model,” he said. Hans Jung, another sales manager for Hyundai in Atlanta, said he has seen no change in the number of pre-orders received for the 2011 Sonata since the recall decision. “I explain to customers that this car is subject to a recall over this problem, and they just don’t show serious concern,” said Jung. That lack of concern may actually be a problem for Hyundai, though - evidence of the chronic low regard many still have for Hyundai cars there, consumers said. Earl Turner, a 68-year-old retired engineer visiting a Toyota dealership in Duluth, Georgia, said Hyundai still has to work on building public trust. “I would still look at a Toyota or Honda,” he said. “Hyundai’s perceived reliability is still not as good as Toyota’s”. +++ Toyota and Honda, JAPAN's two biggest automakers, led the seventh straight increase in the nation's monthly auto sales as government incentives boosted demand. Sales of cars, trucks and buses, excluding minicars, rose 35 percent to 294,887 vehicles in February from a year earlier, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said in a statement today. Toyota sold 146,145 units, excluding Lexus-brand cars, up 48 percent. Japan's auto sales began recovering from a yearlong slide in August as government rebates and tax cuts for fuel-efficient vehicles helped rekindle demand. The incentives helped raise sales by about 600,000 vehicles last year and may increase them by about 900,000 this year, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association said. "A year ago, auto sales were in very bad shape because of the recession", said Yoshiaki Kawano, an auto analyst at CSM Worldwide in Tokyo. "The incentive programs hadn't been implemented, either". Under a government program started in June, consumers in Japan can apply for a 250,000 yen (2.200 euro) subsidy if they scrap a car more than 13 years old to buy a new one, and 100,000 yen for a new car purchased without scrapping an old one. The subsidies are available retroactively for purchases from April 10, 2009. Toyota said Feb. 10 it will recall 223,068 hybrid cars in Japan to repair computers in anti-lock brake systems. As delivery and registration of new cars takes a few months after customer orders are placed, any effect from the recall won't be reflected immediately in sales figures, Kawano said. February sales jumped 36 percent at Honda, while Nissan, the nation's third-largest automaker, sold 18 percent more vehicles. Mazda sold 16,252 cars, up 43.7% and the fifth consecutive month of increase. Mitsubishi sold 6,000 vehicles, up 54.6% and marking the seventh straight month of rise. New imported vehicle sales in Japan, including cars made abroad and imported by Japanese automakers, jumped 16.9% in February from a year earlier to 14,433 units, posting a year-on-year increase for the fourth month in a row, an industry body said. The total excluding Japanese brands surged 20.4% to 13,041 vehicles, also rising for the fourth consecutive month, while Japanese-brand vehicles came to 1,392 units, down 8.2%, according to the Japan Automobile Importers Association. By brand, Volkswagen was the top seller with sales of 3,882 units, for an increase of 35.1% from the previous year. Mercedes-Benz ranked second with sales of 2,208 units, up 4.9%, followed by BMW at 1,910 units, rising 26.9%. Toyota’s Prius remains the top-selling car in Japan despite the automaker’s global recall woes that included braking problems with the hit hybrid. More than 27,000 of the gas-electric hybrids were sold in February, making the Prius the best selling model for the 10th straight month, according to Japan Automobile Dealers Association figures. The continued popularity of the Prius comes despite Toyota’s recall debacle affecting 8.5 million vehicles around the world, including the third-generation Prius in Japan, recalled for a glitch in antilock braking. Sales of the Prius have been boosted by its reputation for delivering superb mileage by switching between a gasoline engine and electric motor as well as tax breaks and other government incentives. The Prius, also the world’s top-selling hybrid, has been so popular in Japan that it has a big backlog of orders, with a waiting list lasting about six months. But Toyota officials have acknowledged some people canceled their orders since the recall. Toyota began offering new software to fix the braking problem since last month. Toyota’s handling of the quality lapses, which emerged in the U.S. last year, has received widespread media attention in its home market but loyalty to Toyota remains relatively strong because the other defects behind the recalls (sticky gas pedals and faulty floor mats) have not affected any models sold in Japan. In Japan, Honda’s Jazz/Fit was second in sales in February at nearly 14,000, followed by three of Toyota’s smaller models, the Yaris/Vitz, Passo and Corolla. There have been no high-profile accidents or drivers complaining publicly of unintended acceleration in Japan, as there have been in the U.S., where Toyota’s once stellar reputation for quality is getting hammered. Toyota U.S. sales for February dropped a smaller-than-expected 9% year-on-year, according to data released Tuesday. Toyota is offering zero-percent financing on most models this month plus two years of free maintenance to returning customers in the U.S. Other automakers, including U.S. automaker Ford and Hyundai of South Korea, saw U.S. sales recover from February 2009, when demand was hurt by the recession. +++ TOYOTA president Akio Toyoda urged thousands of his employees to work toward a new start and win back customer trust following safety lapses that have battered the world’s biggest carmaker. “Let’s go with high spirits, have fun and be confident while staying humble,” Toyoda, choking up and wearing a gray workman’s jacket, told 2,000 workers packed into the company’s headquarters. “We are making a start today.” His address, billed as “An Urgent Meeting for All Toyota - Toward a New Beginning for Toyota,” was also watched via live video by 7,000 workers at company plants. Representatives of suppliers and dealers also attended the event in the Japanese city named after the automaker. Toyoda returned to Japan earlier this week after being grilled by U.S. lawmakers in a congressional hearing on the spate of quality lapses that include braking problems and sticking gas pedals. The problems have resulted in global recalls of 8.5 million vehicles, 6 million of them in the U.S. Other executives who appeared before congressional hearings on Toyota’s recalls also attended Friday’s event. The head of Toyota’s North American sales unit, Jim Lentz, assured the crowd the company was working hard to restore customer trust. He urged all to be prepared for “a long road ahead” of harsh criticism. Workers, who applauded executive speeches, said they were moved. “I could feel the president’s anguish, and I felt we all must work harder,” Hideki Watanabe, 51, a Lexus engineer, said after the 45-minute meeting. “It breaks my heart to think that the cars we are making to bring joy to people might cause sorrow and accidents.” U.S. transport regulators have linked 52 deaths to crashes allegedly caused by sudden, unintended acceleration in Toyota cars. An executive vice president, Takeshi Uchiyamada, said the Toyota brand was in “a serious crisis,” acknowledging the company must improve monitoring of consumer complaints and respond more quickly during crises. Toyota has been widely criticized, especially in the U.S., where most of the recalls have happened, as slow and unresponsive, and doubts are growing it may not be transparent or forthright about defects. “The path to regaining trust remains tremendously difficult,” Uchiyamada said. “But I would like to work with all of you.” +++
