Worried about increasingly efficient cars and dwindling tax revenue at the pump, Dutch lawmakers approved the first “pay-as-you-drive” tax system in Europe. Of course, the dwindling revenue is not the official reason given. The official intent is “to protect the climate and to reduce traffic jams,” reports the Deutsche Welle. Now who can be against noble causes such as those?

Nobody even mentions gasoline taxes, the legalized form of highway robbery in Europe. The pay-as-you-drive system will replace the old system that taxes ownership. That will go. The fuel tax remains. Dutch citizens are taxed twice. At the pump and by the kilometer.

Beginning in 2012, Dutch motorists will pay approximately 3 Euro-Cent per driven kilometer, until 2018, the amount will rise to 6.7 Cent. The actual costs vary according to size and engine of the car. A Renault Twingo will cost you 1.4 Cent per km, an Audi A8 will get the Dutch government 16.6 Cent per klick.

And how will the government know?
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GM CEO Fritz Henderson’s promises of independence for Opel made the right noises, but they carefully avoided any discussion of the actual role GM envisions for its German division within its global strategy. The latest updates seem to indicate that GM will keep Opel for its engineering expertise, but that the brand will be subordinate to Chevy’s global ambitions. Henderson delivers the slapdown [via Reuters]:

Opel is a regional brand and I don’t see that changing. That doesn’t mean I’m closed to ideas about how it can be used elsewhere; but the measure of the Opel brand’s success will be Europe, because if you don’t win here all the discussion of exports will be irrelevant

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Opel’s union boss and chief thorn-in-the-side for GM’s attempt at regaining control of its European division, Klaus Franz, recently met with CEO Fritz Henderson and is telling German media that “Henderson agrees that Opel should be led back to its traditional strengths in Europe, with a high level of independence  and autonomy within the GM organization.” But Franz is looking for more than kind words from Fritz, namely a future Opel share offering. “This way, GM can prove that it’s serious about Opel’s independence,” Franz tells RTL. Franz and Opel’s employees want a complete business plan along the lines of the one they’ve been negotiating for the past year and a half. Meanwhile, GM has also said that it will pay back the remaining €600m ($900m) worth of German government’s bridge loans by the end of the month. Between the Moody’s report that GM needs $8.5b to turn Opel around and the division’s continued desire for independence, a solution to the situation won’t be easy or cheap. It may be in GM’s strategic interests to keep Opel under its wing, but to what extent and at what cost?

Wasn’t losing their precious intellectual property to the Rooskies the biggest beef GM had with the Opel-Magna-Sperbank deal? Wasn’t it clear that Sperbank wanted to sell its shares to GAZ? Wasn’t GM trying to block this deal by inserting a buyback clause? Now that GM has decided to keep Opel, those fears have evaporated. In the so far strangest twist in the Opel soap, GM is busy trying to salvage exactly the oddest part of the deal: The Opel-Magna-Sberbank-GAZ deal.

The DetN, the unofficial in-house organ of GM, reports (without flinching) that GM officials “still hope to negotiate an agreement with Magna and Russian automaker GAZ. A source familiar with the situation said GM has already contacted Sberbank.” Exactly. The same bank that is owned by oligarch Oleg Deripaska who had his US visa canceled amidst allegations of money laundering and organized crime. And who had to cut a deal with the FBI to be allowed back into the country. And who, according to the New York Times, “has repeatedly denied media reports that he had acquired a major stake in U.S. car maker GM.”
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If the managers at Opel are feeling a little queasy today, this should have them running for the Alka Seltzer (or whatever Germans use). As if to throw (more) gas on the conflagration raging at Opel, Brent Dewar, vice president of Chevrolet, announced at the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit that GM is targeting sales of 1 million Deawoo-Chevrolets in Europe, double the 500,000 vehicles sold in 2008. (Read More…)

Did we mention that China’s Brilliance hasn’t been doing so, well, brilliantly? The joint venture partner of BMW, and maker of supposedly homegrown Ersatz-BMWs (the sight of which makes any BMW engineer reach for a bottle of Jägermeister) had racked up losses to the tune of 9b Chinese Yuan ($1.3b) in the first half of the year. And now, its European importer went kaputt. HSO Imports, located in tax-friendly Luxemburg, declared insolvency. To the tune of silent, but audible “hipp-hipp, hurrah!” amongst Germany’s automakers. Break out the bubbly, another attempted Chinese invasion has been repelled.
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Frank Weber, the man in charge of GM’s electric vehicle line, will be leaving GM for a senior leadership at the soon-to-be-sold (or not?) Opel. Weber previously worked on Opel’s development of GM’s global mid-size (Epsilon II) vehicle line, before becoming the head of GM’s electric vehicle development program in March 2007. Weber is the second senior executive in GM’s global electric, hybrid and battery development organization to leave in a month, following Bob Kruse’s departure at the end of September. And as with Kruse’s exit, the sound bites coming out of GM seek to portray the loss as no big deal. “There is a huge difference in the Volt program from when I came here,” Weber tells Bloomberg. “The entire organization has inhaled what we do here.” In reality though, Weber’s defection makes the introduction of the Opel Ampera (as the Volt will be known in Europe) even more difficult than it was already shaping out to be.

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GM’s sale of Opel to Magna/Sberbank is being held up by the European Union, which is looking into whether the German government unfairly favored Magna’s bid. But while the interregnum plays out (the EU will decide by November 27th), GM has plenty of time to develop a case of seller’s remorse. After all, GM’s VP for Global Engineering Mark Reuss recently told Autoline After Hours that Opel is completely integrated into GM’s global product development, and that the relationship “won’t change.” Does that, as Business Week’s David Welch asked, mean GM will keep all of Opel’s development capacity while reducing loss exposure to 35 percent? Reuss had to change the subject, but it’s obviously not the case. With Daewoo under fire, GM would clearly prefer to keep Opel’s development capacity integrated, and keep its intellectual property out of the hands of Russian automakers. And with German newspapers reporting that GM’s board is considering a “plan B” to keep Opel within the GM fold, Opel’s workers are threatening to strike.

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Well, we’ve been here before. A while back we’d heard that an Alfa 169-branded, LX-platformed sedan would be built at Brampton for the US market, with a rumored $62k price point. That story seemed a bit iffy at the time, although it wouldn’t surprise us to hear it announced officially at Chrysler’s forthcoming five-year plan announcement. Especially now that we’re hearing more rumblings that Fiat will borrow the LX platform for European-market sedans to be built at the former Carozzeria Bertone plant in Turin. Automotive News [sub] reports a Lancia Thesis replacement and possibly even a entry-level Maserati will be built using Chrysler’s long-running RWD platform. Fiat has been looking for a RWD platform for some time, having planned on using Cadillac’s Sigma platform, and when things got nasty with GM, Fiat went sniffing around the Jag XF platform. Now Fiat has its rear-drive underpinnings, and Chrysler’s new “Pentastar” V6 to play with… but will Maserati settle for less than a V8? And will the American market actually be getting an Alfa-branded LX? TTAC will be on-hand for Chrysler’s five-year product plan announcement, and will report the definitive word on November 4th.