News watch May 2010: today's auto industry news

By Tim Pollard and Ben Pulman

Motor Industry

28 May 2009 15:00

Welcome to CAR's news aggregator as we round up the daily stories in the auto industry. Top tip: news summaries are added from the top hour-by-hour

Friday 28 May 2010
• Gordon Murray Design has announced specification and performance targets
for the electric T.27 city car. The company is working with Zytek, and the projected emissions figures are 48g/km on the combined cycle, with the full lifecycle CO2 impact of the T.27 being 42% less than the average UK car. The urban cycle CO2 emissions actually drop to 28g/km too, and the total weight of the car is 680kg (Gordon Murray Design)
• Saab CEO Victor Muller has revealed that the company’s owner, Spyker Cars NV, is in talks with automakers to share technology and a platform to develop a new small model inspired by the 1950s 92. It would be a rival for cars like the Mini, A1 and 1-series, but nothing is expected to be on sale before 2013 (Bloomberg Businessweek) 
• Nissan has revealed prices for the Juke crossover. Prices start at £12,795 for the 2WD 1.6 petrol Visia, rising to £19,995 for the top-spec Tekna model with a 187bhp turbo’d 1.6, complete with 4WD and a CVT ‘box. Sales start in September 2010 and the order books will be open from June (Nissan) 
• McLaren has chosen Carbo Tech to build the carbon monocoques for the MP4-12C supercar over the next 8 years. It’s the largest ever order for series-production carbon monocoques, and amounts to €150m. The one-piece, 80kg passenger cells will be built at Carbo Tech’s site in Salzburg, Austria (McLaren)

Thursday 27 May 2010
• The Volkswagen Group has taken a majority shareholding in Italdesign Giugiaro. The 90.1% stake includes brand name rights and patents, and the shares are being acquired by Audi's Italian subsidiary Lamborghini Holding S.p.A. The remaining shares will stay in the possession of the present owner family Giugiaro. IDG and VW are currently collaborating closely on projects such as the Volkswagen Up! (Volkswagen)
• Mercedes and Chinese car company BYD have agreed to establish ‘Shenzhen BYD Daimler New Technology Co. Ltd’, a 50:50 research and technology centre that will develop electric cars for China (Mercedes)

Wednesday 26 May 2010
• Mazda Motor Europe has appointed Martin Benders as vice president for its European sales operations. Benders was previously GM of Mazda's global marketing division (Mazda) 

Tuesday 25 May 2010
• Claims in a German newspaper that Volvo CEO Stephen Odell is to become head of Ford of Europe have been dismissed as speculation by the Blue Oval. However, Odell is widely tipped to quit Volvo before the deal to sell to China's Geely completes this autumn (Automotive News Europe)
• Volkswagen's anticipated takeover of Italdesign Giugiaro is expected to be confirmed today. VW is tipped to buy 90% of the design house (Automotive News Europe)

Monday 24 May 2010
• Opel has struck agreement with its union work councils over plans to save €1bn over the next few years in work costs; the move should help score government funding (Financial Times)
• Vauxhall workers at Ellesmere Port and Luton have agreed a two-year pay freeze as part of the negotiations (BBC News)

Friday 21 May 2010
• Toyota has bought a $50m stake in Tesla, they announced today. The two plan to build cars at the NUMMI facility in California (Automotive News)
• A young Parisian Zoe Renault is launching a lawsuit against Renault for plans to call its new electric supermini the Zoe. Renault, 23, told Le Parisen newspaper: 'I could not bear to hear: 'Zoe's broken down' or 'We need to get Zoe overhauled' (BBC News)
• President Obama is launching a campaign to have a unified US fuel economy standard by inviting law makers and auto makers to meetings at the White House. He is keen to prevent California and other states having separate standards after 2017 (Detroit News)

Thursday 20 May 2010
• UK car production rose 44% in April, up from the disastrous spring figures from last year when everyone was suspending production lines. Year-to-date, 65% more cars have been built in Britain compared with 2009 – 414,357 so far (SMMT)
• Car makers and politicians in the US have reached an agreement that silent electric and hybrid cars should broadcast some noise so that blind pedestrians, cyclists and others will know there's a car nearby (Detroit News)
• Infiniti has confirmed pricing for the new EX30d – only its second diesel ever: it'll cost £35,975 in the UK (Infiniti)

Wednesday 19 May 2010
• GAC, the Chinese joint venture between Guangzhou Automobile, Honda and Toyota is plotting its own-brand vehicles. It will sell more than 30,000 cars wearing the Chuanqi badge in its first full year of production (Financial Times)
• Volkswagen is poised to buy a controlling stake in Italdesign Giugiaro, ANE reports. An announcement is expected next week (Automotive News Europe)
• The Italdesign purchase will help fast-expanding VW cope with its product onslaught. In 2010, the VW Group plans to add 60 new models and facelifts, as part of its drive to become the world's largest car maker by 2018 with sales of 10m vehicles a year

Tuesday 18 May 2010
• One North East, the Government agency promoting the electric car trials in the north east, says 82% of people who took part in a public trial said they would consider owning an EV in future; it's a small sample, however; only 264 people used four Smart Fortwo EVs in six months since September 2009 (One North East)
• BMW says it will launch full hybrid versions of the 3- and 5-series saloons. Chairman Norbert Reithofer told investors the Five would come in 2011, but he gave no date for the Three hybrid (Automotive News Europe)
• Ford says it cannot pay out a dividend until it lightens its $34bn gross debt. Chairman Bill Ford said: 'The most important thing we can do as a company is get the balance sheet in order' (Financial Times)

Monday 17 May 2010
• GM today reported its first quarterly profit in nearly three years. The General said it made $865m in the first three months of 2010, after a string of cost-cutting and new models (BBC News)
• The new Nissan Leaf electric car will cost £23,350 in the UK when sales kick off this summer (Nissan)
• New car sales in Europe fell for the first time in 10 months in April, as scrappage schemes dried up. ACEA reported a 7% drop to 1,171,044 vehicles registered (Automotive News Europe)

Friday 14 May 2010
• Authorities in Egypt are investigating charges made in America that Daimler used bribes to win business in Africa between 1998 and 2008 (Automotive News Europe)
• Auto industry chiefs in Europe fear they could be affected by the fall-out from the debt crisis in Greece, Spain and Portugal. The EU this week announced a €750bn bail-out for indebted nations (Automotive News Europe)
• The Wall Street Journal reports that some American car awards appear skewed by publishers' large fees charged for winners to promote their success. It found that Consumers Digest charged winners up to $35,000 for the right to mention their class win (Wall Street Journal)

Thursday 13 May 2010
• Seat's boss said VW's Spanish outpost is aiming for profitability within five years. Currently Seat uses just 60% of Martorell's factory capacity of 500,000 vehicles – but CEO James Muir says that a suite of new models will help to increase profitability. Last year Seat lost €340m and JD Power forecasters say the breakeven point of the Martorell plant is around 68% (Automotive News Europe)
• Ferrari plans to idle production and axe 9% of its workforce. The unions claim Ferrari wants to cut 120 office jobs and 150 factory workers out of around 3000 staff, as well as idling around 600 staff for a week starting on 17 May (Automotive News Europe)
• Nissan says it expects to treble net profits in 2010 – helped by the imminent launch of the Leaf electric car (Financial Times)
• Mazda's chairman, Hisakazu Imaki, has announced he will retire next month and he will be replaced by CEO and president Takashi Yamanouchi, 65. Imaki was the first Japanese CEO of Mazda after a series of Ford-appointed bosses (Automotive News)

Wednesday 12 May 2010
• Nissan today reported a return to annual profit – with a year's surplus of 42.4bn yen. But it still lost 11.6bn yen (£800,00) in the first quarter of 2010 and president Carlos Ghosn admitted the company was still 'in crisis mode' (BBC News)
• Electric car maker Think has won a $40m cash injection from investors to fund the Norwegian maker's expansion in to the US market (Automotive News Europe)

Tuesday 11 May 2010
• Toyota has returned to profit in the first quarter of 2010, it announced today. Despite the global recall, it made profits of 112bn yen (£810) – up from a 766bn yen loss for the same period in 2009 (BBC News)
• Toyota said it expects to post a net profit in 2010 – with a 48% jump to 310bn yen (Wall Street Journal)
• Chrysler  boss Sergio Marchionne says he is considering an initial public stock offering after reporting a $143m profit in the first quarter. 'There's a strengthening base for looking at an IPO in a much shorter timeframe than most people would expect,' he told reporters (Automotive News)
• Audi says it could sell every one of its 50,000 planned A1 production run in 2010. Board member for sales and marketing Peter Schwarzenbauer said demand was likely to exceed supply (Automotive News Europe)

Monday 10 May 2010
• A prototype BMW X3 parked outside a New York museum caused a bombscare after a test driver left the engine running while he stopped for a breath of fresh air. A passer-by thought the disguised car looked suspicious and called the police (Autoblog)
• PSA Peugeot Citroën has struck a joint venture deal with China's Chang'an Automobile to make cars and LCVs. PSA said the 50:50 JV would make low CO2 models – it's the second Chinese partnership for PSA after a deal with Dongfeng Motors (Financial Times)
• But BMW won't extend its joint project with PSA beyond its current engine partnership, according to a report by German car mag Auto Motor Und Sport. Klaus Draeger, Munich's head of R&D, told AMS: 'A further cooperation in the area of other components, let alone platforms, is not planned' (Automotive News Europe)
• Aston Martin today confirmed it will sell the Vantage V12 in the US from late 2010 (Aston Martin)

Friday 7 May 2010
• GM Europe expects a final answer from the German government on its request for aid by the end of May. It's asked for €1.5bn to help it restructure (Automotive News Europe)
• Hyundai is considering launching a full-sized pick-up to target the American truck market (Autoblog)
• BMW is launching a new upmarket tour of its Spartanburg plant in the US. It's offered factory tours since the 1990s, but the new Ultimate BMW Experience will cost $99 a head (Automotive News)
• Aston Martin has delivered its first Rapide to a customer today (Aston Martin)
• UK new car registrations rose 12% in April to 148,793 – the tenth successive monthly increase. However, that's only an increase over a devastating 2009. One small nugget arose from the stats: sales of UK-built cars beat the market, rising by 26% (Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders)

Thursday 6 May 2010
• Land Rover has announced the creation of 275 new manufacturing jobs in Solihull; Phil Popham, MD, said it was caused by a jump in Land Rover sales (Land Rover)

Wednesday 5 May 2010
• The SMMT has revised its UK sales forecast upwards, to 1.9 million. That's 107,000 units higher than before, but 4% down on last year (SMMT)
• BMW has reported a return to profit with a €324m net surplus in the first quarter of 2010, compared with a loss of €152m in the same period last year. Sales were up 8% and doubled in China. Chairman Norbert Reithofer said the group aimed to sell 1.3m cars in 2010 (BBC News)
• A Renault advert for the Fluence EV has been banned in the UK for using French electricity figures in its claim it cut emissions by 90% compared with a diesel (BBC News)
• New car sales have fallen in Germany for the fifth month in a row, with a 32% decline in April. Meanwhile the end of scrappage schemes in Italy crashed to a 14-year low – with a 16% slump to 159,971 vehicles registered in April (Automotive News)
• Vans and light trucks should have mandatory speed limiters in Europe, a new report claims. The Big Brother gadget would stop them exceeding 120kph (75mph)

Tuesday 4 May 2010
• Volkswagen has unveiled a plug-in electric Golf in the US. The Golf Blue-E-motion will be sold in Europe and America from 2013 – in Golf Mk7 guise, not today's Mk6 spec (Automotive News)
• Car makers have posted higher sales in the US in April, bolstered by the economic recovery and a discounting war led by Toyota as it sought to recover from the recall stutter (Financial Times)
• Chrysler, Ford and Toyota each reported a jump in sales of around 25% in the US, but GM rose by just 7% as it phased out four of its brands in its restructuring (Wall Street Journal)
• Skoda has started building the Fabia in its Kaluga factory in Russia alongside the Octavia. Russians buy more Fabias than any other model and last year Skoda sold 264,173 globally, a rise of 7.1% (Skoda)
• Famed UK hauiler Eddie Stobart is celebrating 40 years in business. Overseas readers note: Stobart lorries form a key part of many British kids' upbringing, with long car journeys eased by spotting them and their lady names (Eddie Stobart)
• In other anniversary news, Ford is celebrating 45 years of the Transit. It's built 6 million globally, with more than 2.1m of those sold in the UK (Ford)

Monday 3 May 2010
• A bank holiday in the UK, CAR HQ is closed...
• Renault Nissan chief exec Carlos Ghosn tells the annual shareholders meeting that the French division will return to net profit by 2011. By this year, the target is to achieve positive free cash flow and a new medium term plan will be announced by the end of the year (Automotive News Europe)

By Tim Pollard and Ben Pulman