As you probably know by now, General Motors has decided to discontinue producing the Saab brand after failing to make a sell to European manufacturers Spyker and Koenigsegg Group. Whether it's a lack of resources to produce the Saab brand, or just general disinterest in doing so, GM is about to swing the axe on the Saab imprint, and soon there will be no more Saab.
I have never found Saab to be anything to do cartwheels about, but there are many European car aficionados who appreciate the subtle beauty of Saab over the years, and this Web video is a slideshow tribute to the soon-to-be fallen European automobile. Though Saab has never been a sexy car, upon reflective review it does have a uniquely succinct flavor and aura. Thanks for everything, Saab. It was fun while it lasted. Cheers!
Tonight most of us will be counting down to the birth of the new year, 2010. However, it appears that General Motors will be counting down to the last Saab produced by the company, as it was announced a couple of weeks ago that the automotive manufacturer will be discontinuing the making of the Saab imprint because of its inability to sell the line to prospective European carmakers. As it appears, nothing will be changing on this front prior to the self-imposed deadline of December 31, 2009, and it seems all but certain now that the Saab car and name is to be a thing of the past in the near future.
I know this isn't exactly breaking news with the official announcement coming down the pike almost two weeks ago, but for those who've yet to get the low down on this low blow to the Saab brand, this Web video produced by the Associated Press gives viewers a quick glimpse on how and why GM has decided to shed the Saab brand from production. Though I've never been big on Saab, it has still issued many classy and reliable vehicles over the years, and my guess is GM doesn't see Saab as a marketable name to prospective American buyers to invest in. I'll pour out a little champagne for you tonight, Saab. May 2010 be much better than 2009. Happy New Year's everyone!
DETROIT--What do the modern family, young people, truck lovers, performance enthusiasts, and the "eco-culture" have in common?
They're all part of Chevrolet's target audience, says the brand's new chief, James Campbell. Launching a marketing plan that reaches each tops his to-do list. Campbell, 45, a marketer by trade, takes over as Chevrolet works on a marketing theme to replace the five-year-old "American Revolution." The new ads will launch in the first half of 2010, Campbell said last week after his appointment. He declined to give more details.
Campbell's predecessor, Brent Dewar, left to pursue personal interests and spend more time with his family, General Motors said.
Through November, Chevrolet's U.S. sales dropped 27 percent, more than the industry's 24 percent decline but less than GM's 32 percent slide. GM will lean on the brand as the market recovers and as the company makes up for departing brands Saturn, Pontiac, Hummer, and Saab.
"No question, Chevrolet has got to carry the volume, so I definitely feel the responsibility of that," Campbell said. "So goes Chevrolet, so goes General Motors." Campbell, a GM lifer, worked in field sales and customer relationship management before joining Chevrolet in 1998. There he helped launch products such as the Cobalt, HHR, Colorado, and several Corvette models. He eventually directed GM's retail planning before becoming head of GM's Fleet and Commercial Operations in February.
New GM marketing executive develops plan to sell the Volt.
(Credit: GM)Campbell said his work on the Corvette in particular taught him to understand customers and meet their needs.
In the coming year, Campbell will launch the Cruze small car, the re-engineered Silverado heavy-duty pickups, and the Volt plug-in hybrid. The Cruze is a high-volume vehicle, but because it will get up to 40 mpg on the highway, it will join the Volt in appealing to the "eco-enthusiast," he said.
Campbell is the first major appointee of Susan Docherty, GM's U.S. sales and marketing chief. She announced his new job a few hours before GM said Campbell's Buick-GMC counterpart, former Ford Motor marketer Michael Richards, had quit after eight days with the company. GM spokesman Chris Preuss said the company probably will seek an outside replacement.
(Source: Automotive News)
LOS ANGELES--General Motors Co. will roll out the Chevrolet Volt slowly, starting in California, Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said here.
GM will provide 100 Volts to California utility companies in early 2011, Lutz said last week at the Los Angeles Auto Show.
Production will reach 8,000 to 10,000 in the first full year, ultimately ramping up to 50,000 to 60,000 annually. The Volt, a plug-in hybrid, can travel 40 miles on its battery before a gasoline engine provides electricity.
Last week, Chevrolet chief Brent Dewar said GM would roll out the Volt in selected U.S. markets before launching it nationwide, choosing the markets by their infrastructure for recharging batteries and tax credit offerings.
GM designed the Volt to comply with regulations for all overseas markets, Lutz said. He expects GM ultimately to sell 100,000 to 150,000 a year.
Lutz said he drove a prototype Volt on public roads over the Thanksgiving weekend. GM, he said, is designing the battery to have a 10-year or 100,000-mile life. If the battery fails after that, the owner would need to have a dealer replace it. The cost should be no more than an engine overhaul on a traditional vehicle, Lutz said.
He said he is confident that "there will be a secondary-use market for spent battery packs" that still store energy. For instance, hospitals and homes may use the batteries for emergencies.
(Source: Automotive News)
California will be the "lead market" for the Chevy Volt when the electrically driven car is available at the end of next year, General Motors said Wednesday.
California was chosen because the state has the largest U.S. car market, and Californians are "known to be leaders in adopting groundbreaking new technologies," GM's vice president of global Chevrolet brand, Brent Deware, said in a statement pegged to this week's Los Angeles International Auto Show.
Production of the Volt is scheduled to start in late 2010. GM has not announced pricing for the 2011 model, though newly dethroned CEO Fritz Henderson acknowledged earlier this fall that the price would be about $40,000. (GM's board on Tuesday asked Henderson to resign, effective immediately.)
California, here we come.
(Credit: General Motors)As part of the California rollout, GM plans to make 100 Volts available to three utilities for testing. The cars will be used as fleet vehicles, and performance data will be collected via GM's OnStar in-car communications for a Department of Energy-run research program.
Financially strapped GM has a lot riding on the Chevy Volt. The car is designed to run for 40 miles on its lithium ion batteries and then use an engine-generator combination for longer rides. GM expects that most customers will do the majority of their driving on electric charge only, making the cost per mile cheaper than gas-only cars.
Even with the public excitement over electric cars, automakers are still not totally sure how consumers will adjust to the new technology and how electric components will operate in real-world conditions.
GM, as well as other automakers, plans to offer electric vehicles in certain regions that will invest in the infrastructure to support them. The California research program calls for the installation of 500 charging stations at people's homes, at businesses, and in public places.
It may look like yet another boring SUV, but the GMC Terrain brings the SUV, and GM itself, into this millennium. A direct injection 3-liter V-6 offers plenty of power, an option over the standard direct injection four-cylinder. The interior looks particularly nice, especially considering a base price in the mid-20s. And we were most impressed with GM's new navigation system, a hard-drive-based unit with traffic detouring. The Terrain could change your mind about GM.
Whatever happened to ethanol?
With all the buzz about hybrids, full electrics, and plug-ins, the industry doesn't seem to talk a lot about biofuels these days.
But research is continuing. So is a political debate over the amount of ethanol that should be blended with gasoline in the U.S. fuel supply.
Proving grounds tests
Vehicles at General Motors' Milford Proving Grounds in Michigan have started testing cellulosic ethanol made by GM partner Coskata at a new plant in Madison, Pa., outside Pittsburgh. Coskata dubbed its plant, which opened last month, "semicommercial." It is capable of producing 50 million to 100 million gallons of fuel a year from such feedstocks as wood biomass, agricultural, and construction waste, and crops raised specifically to be used for energy.
"The next step is to build full-scale facilities and begin licensing our technology to project developers, project financiers, and strategic partners," Coskata CEO Bill Roe said in a statement.
Among the nation's automakers, GM has been the most visible backer of ethanol. In January 2008, it launched a partnership with Coskata. A few months later, it invested in a second cellulosic-ethanol venture, Mascoma.
Companies such as Coskata and Mascoma are working to address a major criticism leveled against the use of ethanol derived from corn: that it jeopardizes the world's food supplies and raises food prices.
Cellulosic-ethanol companies are looking at ways to make fuel by breaking down cellulose, the material that gives structure to plants. The idea is to get away from relying on corn and other food crops by using waste matter, such as corn stalks.
"We invested in Coskata so that we could enable the rapid deployment of commercially viable and environmentally sustainable ethanol globally," said Bob Babik, GM's vehicle emissions director, in a statement issued at the startup of the Pennsylvania plant.
The debate over cars and ethanol long has centered on the relative scarcity of ethanol fueling stations and the low fuel economy that vehicles achieve when fueled with ethanol.
How much is too much?
Lately, that debate has shifted to how much ethanol should be blended into the nation's gasoline supply.
By law, standard gasoline in the United States can contain up to 10 percent ethanol. Recently, backers of the biofuel, led by a group of ethanol makers known as Growth Energy, have lobbied to increase that limit to 15 percent. High corn prices and a slump in demand, the result of Americans driving fewer miles in the recession, have hit makers of corn-derived ethanol hard. Many ethanol makers have gone out of business.
Flexible-fuel vehicles, which many automakers now offer, are designed to run on such a high concentration of ethanol, a blend specifically labeled E85.
Groups representing carmakers, including the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, are fighting efforts to allow 15 percent ethanol in standard gasoline. They say that engines designed to handle no more than 10 percent ethanol would suffer if the mix rose to 15 percent.
Michael Stanton, CEO of the international association, wrote this summer in a letter to the EPA that if the EPA "were to approve the sale of such fuels, we believe a range of problems would result that could jeopardize the control or reduction of automotive emissions."
| Corn-free |
|---|
| Coskata's new cellulosic-ethanol plant does not use corn as its feedstock. Here are details on the plant. |
| Input: Wood chips, agricultural, and construction waste |
| Output: Can be scaled up to 50-100 million gallons a year |
| Partners: General Motors, others |
| Location: Madison, Pa. (outside Pittsburgh) |
| Source: Coskata |
(Source: Automotive News)
One year before starting production of the Chevy Volt, General Motors engineers say they are confident in the performance and safety of the electric car's batteries.
GM executives gave an update on the car's plans on Tuesday, saying engineers are making some tweaks to the design but that they are on schedule.
The Volt's chief engineer, Andrew Farah, also implied that GM is close to moving ahead with a project to make a Cadillac that uses the same gas-electric power train that the Volt uses. Last week, there were reports that the Converj concept had been given the green light internally, with expected car delivery in 2013.
For the Volt, GM is preparing the battery and auto manufacturing, which will happen in its home state of Michigan, with the process and product validation scheduled to begin early next year, executives said.
In the meantime, GM engineers are testing the Volt's battery pack, called the Voltec, and putting 80 prototype vehicles through the paces. In addition to crash tests for safety, they are testing the car's performance on a range of conditions, including very hot and cold temperatures, and steep hills.
This crash test shows that the orange T-shape battery pack of the Volt is not impacted during frontal collision, says GM.
(Credit: General Motors)The Volt is a gas-electric hybrid, but unlike the Toyota Prius and other hybrids on the road now, the Volt moves only from electric motors. The gasoline engine is used to supply energy to the batteries through a generator.
Because it's a new car, GM still is trying to project what sort of performance to expect. Overall, engineers are happy, but they also know that climate conditions and driving style will affect the battery's performance, they said.
"Ten years is the target life (for the battery). Depending on how you use it and where you live, you could see significantly longer time," said David Wallace, engineering group manager for Voltec Battery Systems.
The biggest challenge is battery durability in very hot weather, he said. People who live in more temperate areas and do a lot of city driving will have more forgiving conditions, Wallace added.
"But even if you live in Phoenix, as long as you charge at night, and you run during the day, your battery will remain happy," he said.
During its testing, GM has to tune the chemistry of individual batteries, which will be supplied by LG Chem. Various tests, including crash tests, have indicated that battery safety is good, executives said.
For the car itself, auto engineers are now making adjustments to reduce the overall noise during times when the gas engine kicks on for longer rides.
Farah declined to say how big the gas tank will be, which will indicate what the overall driving range is, saying that decision will be made as late as possible.
Separately, Farah said GM's plan to produce an Opel in Europe that uses the Voltec powertrain is still on target, with a schedule roughly one year behind the Volt.
DETROIT--As General Motors Co. expands its lineup of rechargeable vehicles beyond the Volt, it will not brand them to be identified with the plug-in Chevrolet launching next year, a senior GM executive says.
That approach sets GM apart from Toyota Motor Corp., which is considering a range of hybrids identified with the Prius.
"Our thought is to take the Volt technology to other products," Brent Dewar, chief of global operations for Chevrolet, told the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit this month. "The Volt was the original vehicle that we started, but I wouldn't see that as a brand marketing direction for us."
The Prius, introduced in the late 1990s, commands about three-fourths of the hybrid market.
Dewar said the Volt would pave the way for more vehicles based on the same technology--combining a rechargeable battery pack for all-electric driving with a gasoline-powered generator for longer trips.
But Dewar said the Volt name would not be identified with GM's future electric vehicles.
By contrast, Toyota's brand chief has said the automaker was considering a plan to put the Prius name behind a broad family of high-mileage hybrids.
Bob Carter, group vice president of Toyota's U.S. sales arm, told the Reuters Autos Summit that he thought the Prius had become synonymous with hybrid cars.
The Volt is on track to become the first mass-market plug-in hybrid in the United States. It is designed to run for 40 miles on a battery charge and can be recharged at a standard electric outlet.
When the battery is partly depleted, a small gasoline engine kicks in to recharge it and power the vehicle. That will allow the Volt to make longer trips without what Dewar called "range anxiety."
Separately, the Detroit News reported last week that GM will produce the Cadillac Converj plug-in concept car it introduced last January at the Detroit auto show. The vehicle uses the same technology as the Volt.
A Cadillac spokeswoman declined comment.
The Volt will be sold in North America and Europe before it goes on sale in Asia, Dewar said. The introduction in Europe is to be in 2011.
Dewar said Opel will sell its extended-range Ampera, derived from the Volt, in Europe alongside the Volt.
(Source: Automotive News)
Earlier this week, I posted a video featuring an SUV, the T-98 Kombat, as made by Russian manufacturer Dartz (whose $1.5M Dartz Prombron Monaco Red Diamond Edition extravagantly decked out in whale penis leather--how high-brow is that--even got lip service recently on "The Colbert Report"). Anyhoo, this particular blog (located here for your convenience) garnered the snide comment of "It looks like a Hummer...big deal." Well, funny that you should say that, sir, as today's video features the Dartz Kombat one-on-one against the Hummer H1. Let's get ready to rumble!
The Dartz T-98 has been noted as one of the fastest multiterrain armored vehicles in the world, boasting an 8.1-liter engine and made with parts courtesy of General Motors. The Hummer H1 is often considered to be the most desirable of the Humvee makes, being the first of the now famous line introduced by AM General and also valued for its (relatively) efficient gas mileage. Coincidentally, the Hummer brand is also associated with GM, which had to part with the line as part of its bankruptcy settlement. So how much do they have in common versus how much they don't have in common? Well, I'll let you be the judge, as this video puts both vehicle types to the test in various environments including highways, sand dunes, forests, and snow. Enjoy. Or not. It's no big deal, right?
