Free Republic

Ford's new CEO, Jim Hackett, just announced a bold strategic move for America's most enduring automaker: abandoning the car business. Hackett completely reversed former CEO Alan Mulally's full-line strategy to focus on trucks and SUVs. A 3 percent jump in Ford's stock price validated Hackett's decision, but that adrenaline shot could be short-lived. Jettisoning automobiles may prove fatal for Ford, leaving the market to GM and foreign producers. Bowing to short-term shareholder pressures that felled predecessor Mark Fields, Hackett is undoing 115 years of Ford's automobile legacy. Unlike General Motors CEO Mary Barra, labelled a "car gal" for her 38...

Chinese President Xi Jinping promised on Tuesday to open the country’s economy further and lower import tariffs on products like cars, in a speech seen as an attempt to defuse an escalating trade dispute with the United States. While much of his pledges were reiterations of previously announced reforms that foreign businesses say are long overdue, Xi’s comments sent stock markets and the U.S. dollar higher on hopes of a compromise that could avert a trade war. Xi said China will widen market access for foreign investors, addressing a chief complaint of its trading partners and a point of contention...

There's nothing worse for a motorist than discovering their pride and joy has been broken into. And car thieves seem to always be one step ahead when it comes to overriding even the most sophisticated security devices. With a 30 per cent rise in the number of vehicles being stolen in the last three years, there has never been a better time to focus on keeping your car safe. But for these ingenious car owners, fighting back against thieves has been perfected to a fine art. These hilarious pictures show the creative and bizarre ways motorists have been locking up...

Stanford University researcher used a computer algorithm to determined whether a neighborhood leaned to the left or right by looking at vehicles in 50 millions of images from Google Street View in 200 American cities. When sedans outnumbered pickup trucks, there was an 88 percent chance the city would vote Democratic. In areas with more pickup trucks, the odds switched to 82 percent in favor of Republicans, the researchers concluded.

While the debate continues over whether stricter trade rules are needed to boost U.S. jobs, the head of the Mercedes-Benz Vans plant in North Charleston says his company is already helping to fulfill President Donald Trump's campaign promise to put more Americans to work. "I think having this facility here and the fact that we've made the decision to expand in North Charleston is something that is already very good in alignment with what your president wants — to have more things done locally and not in Mexico or some other region," said Michael Balke, president and CEO of the...

For THISISMONEY.CO.UK Weathermen and weatherladies sometimes use the Fujita scale to describe storm levels. The highest point on the Fujita scale is F5, which refers to wind speeds of between 261mph and 318mph. Why do you need to know this? Because it explains the Venom F5 name chosen by American fast car specialists Hennessey for their latest madness machine. How mad is it? Well, it has a claimed top speed of 300mph-plus. All this from a road-legal car with number plates and indicators.

Lexus is the latest automaker to leap into the fray of highly automated driving, announcing that its “Highway Teammate” advanced driver assist system (ADAS) will be available in 2020. The system, which offers “automated driving from entrance ramp to exit ramp on motor-vehicle-only roadways,” is featured as part of the sleek, glowing LS+ concept that Lexus is showing off at the Tokyo auto show this week. Highway Teammate will “enable automated merging, lane changes and diverging, as well as keep a vehicle in its lane and maintain vehicle-to-vehicle distance,” the Toyota-owned brand states. But as far as the types of...

Hyundai Dymos is currently working on an expansion that will add another 150 jobs to its West Point plant next year. The West Point City Council has discussed the expansion previously and the Troup County Board of Commissioners approved a memorandum of understanding for the expansion on Tuesday. The agreement will allow Hyunai Dymos Georgia to expand its existing facility in West Point. The expansion project will be owned by the West Point Development Authority who plans to lease the property to Hyundai under the agreement. “Hyundai Dymos has a new $9.5 million expansion planned for the West Point facility...

For a generation, the car has been reviled by city planners, greens and not too few commuters. In the past decade, some boldly predicted the onset of “peak car” and an auto-free future which would be dominated by new developments built around transit. Yet “peak car,” like the linked concept of “peak oil” has failed to materialize. Once the economy began to recover from the Great Recession, vehicle miles traveled, sales of cars, and particularly trucks, began to rise again, reaching a sales peak the last two year. Instead, it has been transit ridership that has stagnated, and even fallen...

Last week, three-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton asked people to “try to educate” themselves on why athletes are kneeling for the American national anthem in protest of police brutality and oppression of people of color. Not long after, he said he may join them at the U.S. Grand Prix this month. The act of kneeling for the anthem started with NFL player Colin Kaepernick in 2016, and has since spread. Even in sports that have yet to see kneeling in their arenas, such as NASCAR, everybody has an opinion: Team owners Richard Petty and Richard Childress said they’d fire...

The Senate has agreed to pass legislation lifting regulations on manufacturers of self-driving cars. Full details will be announced the first week of October, but it's expected the bill will cover safety and manufacturing regulations as well as driver protection. Paving the Way United States roadways are one step closer to being traversed by driverless cars: on September 30, the Senate announced that it had reached an agreement to lift some of the regulations on manufacturers that made it harder to get self-driving cars on the road. “While this Senate self-driving vehicle legislation still has room for further changes,...

INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Wednesday an unnamed foreign leader told him at the United Nations last week that the country would soon announce plans to build or expand five automobile industry factories in the United States. "I just left the United Nations last week and I was told by one of the most powerful leaders of the world that they are going to be announcing in the not too distant future five major factories in the United States, between increasing and new, five," Trump said in a speech on tax reform in Indianapolis. He added the...

Every new car is infested with Little Brothers – in the form of code and programming that “corrects” outright or thwarts whatever it is you wanted to do. It goes way beyond the Seat Belt Nanny. Have you tried backing up a new car with the driver’s door cracked open? Several won’t allow it – refusing to engage Reverse until you close the door. You can try all day to move the shifter into Reverse – but programming controls whether the transmission will comply. It’s all drive-by-wire now, you see. So no direct, mechanical connection between the gear selector and...

The once-secret project the Jefferson County Commission in June identified only as "Project Sunrise," was revealed today to a planned $120 million facility being built by Autocar, LLC. The project will reuse old buildings on more than 1 million square feet on property in both Birmingham and Center Point in the currently vacant Meadowcraft Complex at the intersection of Carson Road and Highway 79. "This project represents a significant expansion of Autocar's existing operations, which we were able to accelerate to meet our rapid growth," Autocar Chairman Andrew Taitz said. "I can tell you we conducted an extensive review of...

Hurricane Harvey's massive flooding has displaced tens of thousands of people and destroyed tens of thousands of homes across southeast Texas and Louisiana. Now, Wired reports Harvey's devastating path has also left as many people without cars. Insurance companies have received at least 100,000 claims for cars impacted by Harvey, according to Wired. Seventy-five percent of those claims have been for totaled cars, with the number of claims expected to rise. Others estimate Harvey has destroyed up to five times more: Cox Automotive chief economist Jonathan Smoke told USA Today he believes 300,000 to 500,000 vehicles were destroyed by Harvey's...

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote Wednesday on a sweeping proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars without human controls and bar states from blocking autonomous vehicles, congressional aides said. The bill, which was passed unanimously by a House panel in July, would allow automakers to obtain exemptions to deploy up to 25,000 vehicles without meeting existing auto safety standards in the first year, a cap that would rise to 100,000 vehicles annually over three years. Automakers and technology companies including General Motors Co and Alphabet Inc’s’ self-driving unit Waymo have been pushing for new federal rules making...

California is a global environmental leader, but it’s falling behind in one key respect: phasing out gasoline cars. Germany, India, Norway and the Netherlands are moving to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by or before 2030, and France and the United Kingdom by 2040. Here’s why California should join that list. It would: Fight climate change: Every gallon of gas burned emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change. Transportation is our biggest source of carbon emissions. Shifting to electric vehicles today would cut tailpipe carbon emissions to zero, and total carbon emissions by 75...

Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of consumer electronics, said it’s planning a multibillion dollar investment in the US state of Michigan, a week after announcing a US$10 billion plant in Wisconsin, giving a shot in the arm to Donald Trump’s election pledge to lure investments and create jobs for Americans. The new plant will be engaged in the research, development and production of components and vehicles that can drive autonomously, said Terry Gou, founder of the Taiwanese company, on Saturday in Shenzhen. “Automotive development in the US is still more advanced than China,” said Gou, declining to...

Lyft is betting the future of the road centers on sharing autonomous vehicles. It aims to be at the forefront of that technology with a new self-driving division and a self-driving system car manufacturers could plug into their self-driving cars. The company expects to hire “hundreds” of people for the new division by the end of next year and has just signed a lease for 50,000-square-feet on the first floor of a Palo Alto facility where it plans to build out several labs and open testing spaces. The building Lyft refers to as “Level 5” will be developing its new...

Mercedes-Benz has chosen July 18 to unveil its production X-Class pickup truck, which the company is billing as the world's first premium mid-size pickup. But don't look for it on our shores any time soon. This week saw the premiere of a slick teaser commercial, posted above, and the X-Class website. The model features a GLS-style grille with prominent horizontal bars, a tall hood and a front bumper with a skid plate, according to Autoweek. It has a live rear axle and a transfer case with reduction gears, and is powered by V6 engines. Production is set to begin next...