ON THE TABLE
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 03:00PM May 4, 2011
The Electric Vehicle Deployment Act. Editor-in-Chief's Note: Reps. Judy Biggert, R-Ill.; Ed Markey, D-Mass.; Jerry McNerney, D-Calif.; and Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., introduced the Electric Drive Vehicle Deployment Act on Tuesday in the U.S. House to provide grants of up to $300 million to help regional communities establish themselves as models for the successful development, installation, and deployment of advanced electric vehicle infrastructure, including public charging stations. As first reported by David Shepardson in the Detroit News, the measure also would provide up to 500,000 people with additional $2,000 tax credits to buy EVs - on top of the existing $7,500 federal tax credit. The bill is nothing new, as it's similar to legislation in 2010 and mimics most of what President Barack Obama proposed earlier this year. "If we're ever to break our addiction to expensive foreign oil, we're going to have to give a jump-start to sound alternatives. Consumers want to enjoy a cheaper, gas-free commute, but they need to have confidence in their access to things like charging stations," Biggert said. Really? All consumers want a gas free commute? Where? In the handful of cities across America where that's even possible? No, Biggert, if we're ever going to reduce our dependence on foreign oil consumers will have to make more informed choices while shopping the high-mileage gasoline powered cars available in the market right now, because there are plenty of them. Throwing our tax money at people so that they'll adhere to some warped vision of a Shiny Happy transportation nirvana of the future as envisioned by politicians in Washington and California is a non-starter and a waste of our time and money. Oh, wait a minute, I forgot. Irrational thinking and plausible deniability is your raison d'etre isn't it? When you look at it that way this boneheaded "Act" is a thing of beauty.
Saab. From the "Prolonging The Agony" File comes word that China's Hawtai Motor Group has signed an agreement with Saab's owner Spyker Cars to form joint ventures on manufacturing, technology, and distribution. The Chinese company will provide $222 million in funding for Saab, which has halted production because it can't pay its suppliers. We still don't think Saab will survive.
Nissan. The Japanese car company wins the run-off to be the supplier of the nation's largest taxi cab fleet as conducted by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission starting in late 2013, in a ten-year deal. The Nissan taxi is a highly-modified version of the company's NV200 compact commercial minivan that's already in-market in China, Europe, and Japan. The new New York City taxi cabs will be built at Nissan's plant in Cuernavaca, Mexico. New York's taxi cab fleet is made up of 13,000 vehicles. All good news for Nissan we suppose, but then again if anything goes wrong with this program or consumers don't like the vehicles, Nissan will never hear the end of it.
AE "Duh" of the Week. Headline in this week's Automotive News - "Facebook: Fun - but sells few cars." The dealers are just figuring this out? Yikes.
GM, Corvette. The Good News? GM announced today that it will sink $131 million into its Bowling Green (Kentucky) Assembly facility (adding 250 jobs), which means that the Corvette will have a long life to come. “This is a significant day for anyone who believes that America should build world-class, high-performance products,” said Mark Reuss, GM North America president. "Corvette has no domestic peer for performance and pedigree and stands alongside the world's best supercars with almost 60 years of continuous heritage." The Bad News? The plant in Bowling Green is scheduled to continue building the current generation Corvette for at least the next two model years. That means the seventh-generation Corvette will be a 2014 model, coming out in the summer of 2013 at the earliest. Not Good.
(Audi)
How might Manhattan appear in the year 2030? The Audi Urban Future Initiative was established to look into the future of megacities and individual mobility. At the Festival of Ideas for the New City, held by the New Museum in New York from 4 to 8 May, Audi is bringing together architects, designers, artists and researchers to visualize ideas about the future of New York. Following the Audi Urban Future Award 2010 in Venice, this is the second venue of the Initiative. A model of Manhattan in 2030 on a scale of 1:1200 will be created through the collaboration of the Audi Urban Future Initiative and the architecture community Architizer. The so-called Audi Urban Future: Project New York will be presented by the Audi Initiative in the Openhouse Gallery in New York from May 7-9. Based on the visions of the architects involved in the Audi Urban Future Award 2010, five up-and-coming New York architecture practices, LEONG LEONG, Matter Practice, Abruzzo Bodziak Architects, Peter Macapia/labDORA and Marc Fornes & THEVERYMANY, LLC, will design a future Manhattan. Each team will devote its attention to one district of the city, for example Lower Manhattan, Central Park West or Midtown East.
(Images courtesy of Mercedes-Benz)
The new convertible 2012 SLS AMG Roadster is the second car to be developed independently by AMG. The Coupe and Roadster concepts were created in parallel during a 3-year development period. With the new SLS AMG Roadster engineers devoted particular attention to body shell rigidity, driving dynamics, the performance of the soft top and NVH. Currently undergoing testing in Stuttgart, the 2012 SLS AMG Roadsters are minimally disguised as they negotiate their test routes. The two-seaters - with fabric soft top in full view - have no Mercedes identification or model designations, just black adhesive foil at the front, rear and along the sides. The world premiere of the new SLS AMG Roadster will be at the International Automobile Show in Frankfurt in September 2011.
