The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers launched an initiative called "EcoDriving” yesterday, to educate Americans about how to reduce fuel consumption and cut carbon dioxide emissions by changing driving habits. But the initiative was met with skepticism by environmentalists, who assert that the campaign throws a smoke screen over the industry’s slow move toward fuel-saving vehicles.
Now that more than one million hybrids have been sold, one might think that automakers have figured out how to sell environmentally friendly vehicles. Think again. Based on current marketing moves and machinations, no single technique has emerged as the winning tactic. Case in point: Eco sub-brands being trotted out by Renault and Peugeot.
Cutting vehicle weight saves gas. And despite idealistic notions of an entire nation driving Honda Fits, it won’t happen—too many people really do need midsize, full-size, or truck-based vehicles. So what’s the actual impact of cutting weight? On Tuesday, Michael Bull, director of technology at Novelis Corporation, presented data from two studies that quantified the fuel savings from a given weight reduction.
Now that gas prices are sliding back down, one national survey found that car buyers already are rethinking their new obsession with high-mileage little cars. Edmunds.com research found that in July truck owners dramatically reduced the extent to which they cross-shopped in the other major vehicle segments—cars, crossovers and hybrids—compared with June. SUV owners were also fickle, but to a lesser extent.
The new Honda hybrid will hit dealer showrooms in April 2009. That’s the official word from Honda about the hybrid-specific yet-to-be named hybrid—designed to take the Prius head-on in the battle for the hybrid market.
Continuing to tease the public and the media with details on the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the car’s designer today showed a handful of slides that revealed further details of the car’s design. The entire car won’t be revealed until the Los Angeles Auto Show in November.
The Management Briefing Seminars, held every August in a resort community five hours northwest of Detroit, got their start as a way for auto industry executives to get in a few rounds of golf on the company dime. Forty-three years later, it’s a mix of “Davos for auto execs” and the ultimate networking forum for the beleaguered leaders of America’s largest industry.
If you were to visualize the most enthusiastic supporter of the much-touted Chevrolet Volt—someone who rallies thousands on its behalf, who blogs daily, whose influence and prestige garners invites to speak with top GM brass—what would that person look like? Probably not Lyle Dennis, a mild-mannered suburban neurologist from New Jersey.
A cleaner Bluetec system is now 50-state legal and will be featured this fall in a trio of high-end Mercedes SUVs: the R, ML, and GL. We had an opportunity to drive one of the new Mercedes clean diesel SUVs, the R320 Bluetec, to determine its real-world gas mileage. The results were disappointing.
In recent years, the State of California has become the unofficial capital of plug-in hybrid technology. But proposed certification standards from the California Air Resource Board (CARB) could create an obstacle for small companies selling plug-in hybrid conversion kits.
