Unless we want the streets of the United States to look like the streets of Michigan, we’ve got to figure out a way to pay for proper infrastructure repair and replacement.
The most logical ways to fund streets are through vehicle registration taxes and gas taxes. The problem, of course, is that both are about as high as they can politically get in most areas while streets and highways continue to crumble. As hard as it is to admit, I believe gas taxes should increase, because it’s the most fair way to evenly distribute how much tax individuals pay. Higher gas prices also will spur drivers to save more fuel and drive less.
But cities in the Bay Area have a different idea.
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Wisconsin introduced seat belt legislation in 1961. Not until 1984 did the U.S. mandate seat belt use. The same protracted battle is taking place with infotech in cars, and by most accounts, the safety guys are losing.
Audi has proudly announced it was the first luxury brand to offer Wi-Fi and Google Earth access in its cars. Nissan, GM and Ford have followed suit. Web-enabled cars are going to be a fact of life (and death), so get used to them.
The industry is loving it.
Vehicles are now viewed by automakers as entertainment and technology platforms; not transportation. The transportation part is now a given; THAT you get there is far less important than HOW you get there…
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Audi Connect, distracted driving, infotech in cars, Web-enabled cars
There’s big noise about the fact that General Motors recently pulled $10 million worth of ads off Facebook. Ford made it clear that its advertising would continue, and the two companies are squabbling.
GM says half its Facebook ads never get clicked on; Ford reached millions when it launched the new Explorer. The jury will be out a long time on this one.
While the food fight was going on, more important things were happening. Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway announced it had bought 10 million GM shares at well below the initial IPO price. That gave the stock a 2.3 percent bump.
Auto sales are on a roll, predicted to top 14 million units this year. Car sales accounted for fully half of the 2.2 percent U.S. economic growth in the first quarter. Take that, Mr. Romney.
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ad effectiveness in social media, Buffet invests in GM, Facebook IPO, GM pulls Facebook ads
1. You may already have heard that a few dealers are upcharging for the upcoming Subaru BRZ (above)—to the tune of $5,000 over MSRP. Some have called this price gouging, which, of course, it is. Anyone paying this price is a turkey.
One imbecile argues that this is owing to the immutable law of supply and demand. Since the BRZ is in high demand and deliveries are late, if you don’t like the upcharge, “go buy a Civic,” he says. He also questions why anyone would want a BRZ when you can buy a Mustang with over twice the horsepower for the price of the BRZ plus the upcharge (around $30K).
The over-list gouge is not a new thing, of course. It’s been done with the Prius and other cars. Manufacturers should absolutely forbid it and, as one commenter said, take away the dealer’s allocation. It’s a perversion of supply and demand.
2. The Responsible Young Drivers group in Belgium came up with a great idea: Make teens take a driving test in which they are forced to text and drive, with the driving instructor telling them that this is a new legal requirement.
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Gov. Brewer, red-light cameras, Subaru BRZ price gouge, texting while driving
Mitt Romney has always claimed his dog was perfectly happy on top of the car. He talks blithely about his wife’s Cadillacs, his dad’s success, his Mustang, his car elevator at the beach house, and every time he talks about cars, he says something stupid.
Last Monday in Cleveland, he went even further:
“I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy, and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet,” Romney said in an interview inside a Cleveland-area auto parts maker. “So, I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry has come back.”
Echoing another of his boss’s earlier, manic claims, senior advisor Eric Fehrnstrom said a few days later: “The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney’s advice.” One wonders how that will play in Detroit and Cleveland.
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The 2013 RAV4 EV is a pretty nice car. With Tesla-made battery and powertrain, it gives you good power, a 100-mile range, classy interior and equipment, and plenty of room. Read here a short version of its features.
However, there are a few—let us call them—restrictions. The biggest is price: a whopping $50,610, including destination charge and not including Federal and California tax rebates, which can knock off $10 grand. A very mid-level car with a luxury pricetag.
The second restriction is that it’s available in only four California regions: Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles/Orange County and San Diego. The company expects to sell a mere 2,600 over three years.
The third restriction is that this is clearly a so-called “compliance car,” built to sell only in small numbers to satisfy California’s zero-emissions requirements. The law essentially requires that in order to sell cars in the state, a carmaker has to build at least some few ZEVs.
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CNG-powered Ram pickup
We’ve heard a lot about the natural gas revolution lately—you know, the immense resources of gas just waiting to be fracked out of places like Pennsylvania and Western Canada, not to mention parts of China, Europe and Central Asia.
There are literally trillions of cubic feet of the stuff locked away in rocks under the surface in the U.S. alone. However, the extraction and environmental costs will be huge. It’s the same deal with shale oil, which requires much refining.
With gasoline prices heading north of $5 a gallon, Americans (at least some) will continue to trade in their SUV swizzlers and vans for smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. And they will be driving less. So oil imports will be reduced—a trend already happening—and so will greenhouse gas emissions, slightly.
But gasoline prices are determined on the world oil market, and they will continue to rise as functions of supply, demand, geopolitics and speculation. The biggest factor will surely be rising demand from China, India and other developing countries. One blog claims we presently use three billion gallons of gasoline a day on this earth.
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People need to give Fisker a break. We told you last December about the financing debacle, and now, with a new car being announced, most auto writers are bringing it up again, along with the battery problems the Karma has faced.
The Fisker Atlantic (formerly the Nina) will be finally revealed (so far, it’s been mostly photos) in a press conference tonight and then at the New York Auto Show, opening Wednesday. This is to be Fisker’s smaller, half-price Karma (around $50K, we hear, before tax breaks), and will likely be made at the company’s Delaware plant.
The car is slated to use a BMW 2-liter turbo four rather than the GM turbo that the Karma uses for charging. A crossover and a coupe may come later. Look for the car to appear in late 2013. It looks beautiful.
Slamming Fisker is easy; producing an entirely new plug-in hybrid from scratch is not. The company has never failed to come clean about its problems, and while there are no shortage of critics laughing at Fisker’s Green Luxury concept, if it gets the Atlantic right, there will be buyers.
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About a year ago, New York selected its next taxi design from among some pretty good competition. Nissan won with an adaptation of its NV van, and now the details of its design are being worked out.
With streets that have been compared to those of a third-world nation, New York places the toughest demands on a car’s underbodies and suspension. For solutions, Nissan apparently dismantled retired cabs and looked at a bunch still running.
Besides broken and rusted suspensions, their team found really stinky cabs with scratched and broken partitions, torn vinyl, plus all the other kinds of wear and tear you’d expect. Manhattan streets don’t have deeper potholes than other places; it’s just that the cabs drive over them much more frequently.
Two weeks ago, I rode in some pretty decent New York cabs, including the Ford Escape Hybrid and the Fusion Hybrid (which is still kind of cramped). But the new NV200 will be the first cab since the old Checker to be designed specifically for the job.
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The NHTSA is currently trying to figure out how or whether to ban handheld devices like smartphones from use in cars. And the automakers are supporting such a ban or at least some restrictions.
But they are also very concerned that such a ban might force them to redesign their built-in systems. What a shame that would be.
No one should be surprised that a recent British study confirms that smartphone use while driving is much more dangerous than driving drunk. With a test group of 17-24-year-old drivers fooling around on Facebook, their reaction time slowed by about 38 percent. (Blood alcohol at the legal limit slowed reaction time by 12.5 percent.)
They missed “key events,” wandered out of lane, and failed to respond to speed changes by a car in front. About 25 percent of drivers admitted to texting or social networking while driving. I’ll bet it’s more in the U.S.
None of this, in fact, is very surprising. Nor is it surprising that mobile multitasking, as much as some people love it, is clearly addictive and distracting. If you’ve observed how young people operate with these devices, you get the picture.
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