Free Republic

Despite the fact that Ford Motors is under fire from President-elect Donald Trump for importing cars from Mexico, the company will soon become the first US automaker to import vehicles from India. According to a report in CNN Money, the company has said that EcoSport compact crossover, introduced for the US market at the Los Angeles auto show, will be shipped to US from India starting 2018. The report says that the EcoSport, Ford’s smallest SUV, has been built at its assembly plant in Chennai for more than 100 markets around the world since 2013. About 15 per cent of...

[The] US car industry history...suddenly appears to be bombarded with a barrage of bad news: starting with Ford's disastrous August sales when the company admitted "sales have reached a plateau"...one would almost think that a respite from the bad news was in order. One would be wrong. As a result of slowing demand and declining US auto sales coupled with growing inventory, Ford Motor is halting one of two plants that builds its top-selling F-150 pickup as it idles four factories this month amid slowing U.S. auto sales. Ford is shutting its Louisville, Kentucky, factory building the Escape and Lincoln...

Is the electric car the inevitable wave of the future? Is the internal combustion engine finished, through, a relic of the 20th century—as many are now saying? I have argued before that electric cars are overhyped. I calculated that the Tesla, for example, is still a really bad deal when you compare its substantial extra costs against the cost of operating a similar gasoline-powered car over five or ten years. But what if I'm wrong? For example, how much of that calculation is due to the inflated cost of a Tesla, which uses all of the positive publicity lavished on...

Hydrogen fuel-cell cars face an uphill battle toward mass adoption. Both cars and fueling infrastructure need to be made widely available before large numbers of consumers can seriously consider switching from gasoline to hydrogen. But under certain circumstances, hydrogen could prove very attractive to consumers for one simple reason. When produced using renewable energy, hydrogen could cost nearly the equivalent of 50-cent-per-gallon gasoline, according to a study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). That will only happen if "the stars align" and several factors work in hydrogen's favor, notes industry trade journal WardsAuto noted in a June report on...

In a sign of just how much Chinese money is now shaping the electric vehicle industry, it’s been revealed that Karma Automotive and Faraday Future will both be building new manufacturing facilities in the same Chinese city, according to recent reports. Despite developing these new facilities in the same city (Hangzhou), it should be noted that the companies don’t seem to have any funding in common — Karma Automotive is backed by Wanxiang, but Faraday Future by LeEco. Karma ReveroWith regard to the Karma Automotive facility, Wanxiang recently applied for the environmental-impact review of a proposed site in Hangzhou for...

ATSUGI, JAPAN -- Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co has come up with a new type of gasoline engine it says may make some of today's advanced diesel engines obsolete. The new engine uses variable compression technology, which Nissan engineers say allows it at any given moment to choose an optimal compression ratio for combustion - a key factor in the trade-off between power and efficiency in all gasoline-fuelled engines. The technology gives the new engine the performance of turbo-charged gasoline engines while matching the power and fuel economy of today's diesel and hybrid powertrains - a level of performance and...

An analyst at Global Equities Research by the name of Trip Chowdhry has publicly commented that he considers the market value of the Tesla/Panasonic Gigafactory to be $50 billion, according to recent reports. Considering that the projected development costs of the Gigafactory total “only” $5 billion, and also that Tesla’s current market capitalization is around $32 billion, that figure is quite a notable one. Whether one agrees or not, it’s a number that gets one’s attention…. In his denouement on the subject, Chowdhry drew an analogy with Amazon — noting that the company was originally just viewed as being an...

Apple has yet to confirm whether it's investing in its own line of electric vehicles, but Reuters is out with more evidence that Project Titan is underway: The tech giant has reportedly been in talks with charging station companies and has hired at least four electric vehicle charging specialists. Apple has been asking charging station companies about their underlying technology, Reuters reports, for reasons other than providing charging stations for its own employees (which the company already does). Speculation about Apple's electric vehicle project, dubbed Titan, has gone on for months, with reports indicating the company is aiming to ship...

Back in 2011, we wrote about a fascinating new way to heat-treat regular, cheap steel to endow it with an almost miraculous blend of characteristics. Radically cheaper, quicker and less energy-intensive to produce, Flash Bainite is stronger than titanium by weight, and ductile enough to be pressed into shape while cold without thinning or cracking. It's now being tested by three of the world's five largest car manufacturers, who are finding they can produce thinner structural car components that are between 30-50 percent lighter and cheaper than the steel they've been using, while maintaining the same performance is crash tests....

Dyson is developing an electric car at its headquarters in Wiltshire with help from public money, according to government documents. The company, which makes a range of products that utilise the sort of highly efficient motors needed for an electric car such as vacuum cleaners, hand dryers and bladeless fans, last year refused to rule out rumours it was building one. But on Wednesday, the government appeared to have accidentally disclosed Dyson is working on one, along with other big companies outside of the automotive industry, such as Apple. "The government is funding Dyson to develop a new battery electric...

We've come a long, long way from the Model T. And if you think about it, our cars play a huge part in the journeys of our lives. I can still remember how my grandparents' dark gray Lincoln smelled back in the '70s, and almost feel those deliciously warm seats, heated from warm Florida days with the windows rolled down (with cigarette smoke wafting out, no doubt). I loved being dropped off for a weekend at their house, with my dad flying through their neighborhood (no worries about seat belts, kids!) to deliver me in our family station wagon, seemingly...

Pedestrian deaths surged by an estimated 10 percent last year as the economy improved, the price of gas plunged and motorists put more miles behind the wheel than ever before, according to an analysis of preliminary state traffic fatality data. The growing use of cellphones distracting drivers and walkers may also be partially to blame, states a report released by the Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents governors’ highway safety offices. Warmer weather and shorter winters along with a greater awareness of health benefits may also be encouraging people to walk more. […] The data analyzed were from the first...

Toyota is committing corporate filicide. The automaker has announced that it is killing its youth-oriented Scion brand and transitioning the models currently sold by the division to Toyota in August. Scion was launched in 2002 in an effort to attract younger car buyers to the Toyota fray, and was successful at that. Its average customer age of 36 is the lowest in the automotive industry, but its overall sales peaked at 173,034 in 2006 and were just 56,167 last year.

Four years ago, a startup car company announced with great fanfare big plans for the Mississippi Delta: Using money from foreign investors and other sources, it would build a massive auto plant to churn out a new line of energy-efficient cars and bring thousands of jobs to the area. It seemed like a win for everyone involved. … Today, the place where the plant was to be remains mostly vacant except for a temporary construction trailer. The company—GreenTech Automotive Inc.—is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the probe is reverberating well beyond Mississippi’s borders, bringing scrutiny to...

**SNIP** “I deal through the Clinton Foundation. That gets me in touch with the Haitian officials,” Mr. Rodham said, according to a transcript of his testimony. “I hound my brother-in-law, because it’s his fund that we’re going to get our money from. And he can’t do it until the Haitian government does it. “And he keeps telling me, ‘Oh, it’s going to happen tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.’ Well, tomorrow hasn’t come yet.” Mr. Rodham’s Haiti project never did happen. The Clinton Foundation said in a statement that it was not aware of Mr. Rodham’s Haiti project and had no involvement...

Volvo has made a pretty bold statement this week. It says it wants to make things so that no one dies in a Volvo or because of a collision with one by the year 2020. "If you meet Swedish engineers, they're pretty genuine," said Lex Kerssemakers, CEO of Volvo Cars North America. "They don't say things when they don't believe in it." A pretty serious lot it seems. People who say what the mean and mean what they say. "With the development of full autonomy we are going to push the limits of automotive safety," says Volvo safety engineer Erik...

Fine for racing now Dh100,000 for cars, Dh50,000 for motorbikes; Also seized by Dubai Police: Porsche and Hayabusa A rare Enzo Ferrari, one of just a few hundred expensive cars made by the Italian auto giant, has been slumbering at the police impounded cars compound for nearly six years. The red luxurious vehicle, one of the most expensive cars in the world, appears to be covered with dust as it lies at the massive compound along with thousands of other cars. The Arabic language daily Emarat Al Youm said the Enzo trades at nearly $3 million (Dh3.67 million) and...

If you must drive, get on with it. Don't just sit there and let your car warm up — it is a machine that is designed to move after all — and all you're doing is adding to the state's notorious wintertime pollution problems. Results from a 14-month collaborative study show that 75 percent of a vehicle's combined emissions occur within the first three minutes after it has sat for 12 hours for more. It's called a "cold start," and if drivers want to help clean up Utah's dirty air, they should avoid it if possible. "Cold starts are a...

UCLA scientists inject silicon carbide nanoparticles into a magnesium zinc alloy. The result is a metal with 'record breaking' strength and stiffness-to-weight.Scientists at UCLA have found a new way to inject silicon carbide nanoparticles into a molten alloy of magnesium and zinc, resulting a metal nanocomposite that demonstrates "record levels" of stiffness-to-weight and specific strength, and "superior stability" at high temperatures. Magnesium is already the lightest structural metal, this lab creation maintains its light weight but makes it much stronger. The researchers said they also developed a scalable manufacturing process, opening up a door to lighter and stronger cars, planes,...

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — A Chinese-backed electric car company with visions of revolutionizing transportation — but no product to show yet — announced plans Wednesday to build a $1 billion plant near Las Vegas, marking the second time in just over a year that Nevada has landed a coveted project from the budding industry. California-based automaker Faraday Future's choice of Nevada over three other states is contingent on state lawmakers' approval of tax incentives that haven't been publicly described. The company's announcement, in a letter to Nevada legislators that was obtained by The Associated Press, also came with the...