A day before GM officially announced that the Astra production will be moved to Ellesmere Port, a move that is widely believed to seal the fate of Opel’s Bochum plant, we said that the decision won’t go down well in Germany, and that it will be very tough working with a doomed workforce. The workforce is already getting restive.

Opel’s works council chief Schäfer-Klug says he has evidence that the Ellesmere Port decision was bought with subsidies. According to EU law, subsidies are illegal, except under clearly defined circumstances. You may remember that it was the anti-subsidy rule that torpedoed GM’s plan back in 2009 to sell Opel jobs to the highest bidding country.

According to Automobilwoche [sub], members of the European Parliament already asked the European Commission to look into the matter, and that the Commission usually does not reject such a request.

UK business secretary Vince Cable denies that subsidies have been pledged. Opel also denies that subsidies were promised, but said that there are “a number of existing mechanisms in the UK for the support of the industry.”

One man’s subsidy is the other man’s support mechanism. We probably have not heard the last of this.

The Right to Repair law winds its way through the Massachusetts legislature. The law was approved in the Senate last week, says the AP via Businessweek The law now heads to the House of Representatives. If that sounds like deja vu to you, then your memory is excellent.

The bill previously passed the Senate in 2010, but failed to come up in the House. A nationwide bill lingers somewhere in Washington, where it has been sent back to committee.

The Massachusetts law would require auto manufacturers that sell cars in the state to provide access to their diagnostic and repair information system through a universal software system that can be accessed by dealers and independent repairs shops, starting in 2015.

Minutes after Ally Financial, the bs-artist formerly known as GMAC, took its Residential Capital bankrupt, David Shepardson tweeted to his followers that all is fine:

“GM owns 9.9% of Ally Financial Inc, while @USTreasuryDept owns 74 percent”

Isn’t that reassuring?

TTAC readers are not surprised by Ally’s ResCap going under. A bankruptcy by May 14 had been predicted. Shepardson is the Washington, DC Bureau Chief of the Detroit News.

Coda Automotive withdrew a Department of Energy loan application after two years of waiting. The $334 million loan was supposed to have gone towards establishing an assembly plant in Columbus, Ohio, but for now, production will continue in China.

The plant would have created as many as 2,000 jobs, but the DOE’s stalling means that production will continue overseas. Coda’s Forrest Beanum told Automotive News that

“It became clear to us after the Solyndra debacle that things in Washington as it pertains to this program were becoming quite politicized…Going into an election year, our objective was not to be unnecessarily scrutinized due to politics,” he said. Rather, its goal was to focus on the U.S. launch of its new EV this year, he added.”

Coda final assembly is carried out in California using “glider” chassis assembled in China. Speculating whether Coda would have really added jobs in the Midwest would just be conjecture at this point (Fisker, anyone). It’s encouraging to see Coda looking to add jobs in America, even if, as Ed points out, the car needs some work to be up to American market standards. Maybe their new tie-up with Great Wall will let them build an EV here without government help too.

Car companies severing ties with Iran are making headlines. After GM’s new partner PSA decided to stop sending parts to Iran, Hyundai “has quietly ended its business dealings with Iran, where it had extensive operations,” says the New York Times. The Times chalks this up as a win for “United Against Nuclear Iran, an American group that has advocated economic sanctions.” UANI keeps a list of companies that still do business with Iran, it also lists companies that have withdrawn from doing so. Hyundai has received a check mark in the “withdrawn” list.

Detroit is looking nervously at that list. Let’s have a look as well.

The UANI list is a veritable who’s who of the auto business. Just about anybody who is somebody is listed as having ties to the unshaven part of the axis of evil. Interestingly and coincidentally, the two American car companies that were saved by the U.S. Government are listed as still dealing with the enemy: Chrysler and General Motors. The company that was not bailed out, Ford, is not on the list of Iran-collaborateurs.

TTAC simply reprints the list as compiled by the UANI. Their list, not ours. We make no representations as to its correctness. PSA, which says it has withdrawn from doing business with Teheran, is still listed as consorting with the enemy (as “Citroen,” and again as “Peugeot”). So is Toyota, which had announced its pull-out from Iran two years ago.

It should be noted that doing business with entities in Iran is not illegal per se. There is a European embargo against Iranian oil.  The U.S.  has imposed sanctions  on Iranian imports, and on some export to Iran. Companies wanting to do business with Iran need a license from the Department of Treasury. Doing business with Iran has become increasingly complicated after Iranian banks were disconnected from international payment systems.

Because it is not illegal to do business with Iran, the UANI pressure group wants to make companies decide between business with Iran and business with the U.S. government. United Against Nuclear Iran is proposing legislation that denies U.S. government contracts to “automotive entities” that do not sever ties with Iran.

If passed, this law could become costly for General Motors. On the UANI website, GM is listed as having nearly $2.9 billion worth of  U.S. government business.

Yesterday, the UANI started leaning on Nissan, supplier on NYC’s “Taxi of Tomorrow.” When will the true recipients of government largesse, Chrysler and GM, be in the crosshairs of the anti-Iranian nuke campaigners?

A year ago nearly to the day, I was investigating the connection between Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and Fiat. With an American-led intervention in Libya underway, Reuters had reported that a Wikileaked State Department document revealed that the Libyan Government owned a two-percent stake in the automaker Fiat as recently as 2006. When I contacted Fiat’s international media relations department for comment, I received this response:

Dear Mr Niedermeyer,

Further to your email, I would mention that the Reuters report you refer to is incorrect. As too are other similar mentions that have appeared recently in the media concerning the LIA’s holdings in Fiat.

The LIA sold all of its 14% shareholding in Fiat SpA in 1986 – ten years after its initial stake was bought.  It no longer has a stake in Fiat SpA.

I trust that this clarifies the matter.

It didn’t, actually. In fact the matter remained as clear as mud to me until just now, when I saw Reuters’ report that Italian police have seized $1.46 billion worth of Gaddafi assets, including “stakes in… carmaker Fiat,” under orders from the International Criminal Court.

So, did Fiat lie? Not exactly. The Libya Arab Foreign Bank did sell back its shares in 1986, but the Wikileaked memo claimed that a successor entity, the Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company, was the more recent Libyan investor. Not being well-versed in the structure and history of Libya’s sanction-avoiding foreign investment shell companies, and lacking the resources to effectively pursue the story (tracking Gaddafi-era investments is a chore), I left it there. And even now that Italian police confirm that a Gaddafi-controlled stake in Fiat has been seized, it’s not at all clear whether Fiat’s management was aware of this.

The AGI has the most detailed account, reporting

The Guardia di Finanza Corps of Rome has seized property worth more than 1.1 bln euro from members of the Ghaddafi family upon a warrant of the International Criminal Court of The Hague. The property seized includes real estate, company shares and bank accounts that belong to members of the Ghaddafi family or to people of Ghaddafi’s entourage with an overall value of more than 1.1 bln euro

Property investigations carried out by the GdF of Via dell’Olmata, in Rome have enabled to discover two financing companies through which leaders of the former Libyan regime had made investments in Italy. [emphasis added]

That covers Fiat management fairly well: at the very least, it appears that they didn’t know about Libyan investment until police were involved. I might suspect that this very Gaddafi stake in Fiat was frozen by Italian authorities prior to my request for comment, and Fiat’s representative misled me about it… but I have no way of proving it. Time will (hopefully) tell.

Meanwhile, on this side of the pond, it’s only a little strange that this wasn’t somehow brought to light in pre-bailout vetting of Fiat. Sure, a foreign enemy of the United States was a significant shareholder in the firm that was handed a bailed-out Chrysler for no cash down. On the other hand, Libya was not on the War On Terror radar at the time, and the auto task force had enough to worry about without investigating Fiat’s shareholders. All the same, chalk this up as yet another example of the unintended consequences of government intervention in the economy.

Finally, there’s the real question: did Gaddafi actually benefit from his Fiat investment? It all depends on when this second investment in Fiat shares took place. The Wikileaked memo says Libya owned two percent of Fiat as of 2006, which means it was enjoying the short-lived Marchionne boom (financed in part by General Motors) after years of decline and stagnation. And when things headed south in 2008, snagging Chrysler for nothing sent Fiat stock on its last real bounce… which means the Gaddafi regime did benefit to some extent from the auto bailout. Still, with Fiat’s shares pricing at all-time lows the Libyan dictator almost certainly lost money on his Fiat investment over the years. Unless the Guardia di Finanza find evidence that Fiat’s management knew about Libyan investment, this might well be a case of “no harm no foul.”

New and old media feigned outrage about the crapload of money the Chevy Volt supposedly saves its drivers if the new testimonial ads are to be believed. Honestly, we don’t give a crap. GM’s agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners probably told the client that in order to cut through the clutter, you need some shock value. When that didn’t work, the admen most likely put up a PowerPoint that showed that a YouTube video with “crapload” will receive 695.5 times the clicks of an ad that uses “a whole lot of money.” That would clinch it with Joe Ewanick, who wants to save a true crapload of money by increasing the efficiency of GM’s ad dollars.

No, being Thetruthaboutcars.com, we think the ad is shit, because the statement simply is not true.

We don’t want to bore you with cost of ownership calculations. They would most likely overtax mathematically challenged GM groupies anyway. The $40,000 Volt does not save you money. Not a crapload. Not even a little bit. Thanks to a generous $7,500 tax credit and gasoline savings,  when all is said and done, the Volt will cost you as much as an average car. Says Tony Posawatz, line director for the Chevy Volt. He told Bloomberg in an interview:

“The Volt’s cost of ownership matches the average car when including the $7,500 U.S. tax incentive and gasoline fuel savings.”

Not a word about a crapload of savings. That revolutionary car ends up costing you as much as an average car.  But only because each car costs the tax payer that crapload of money.

After GM’s  IPO, stockholders looked with great anxiety at the 32 percent the U.S. government still holds in General Motors. Allegedly, the U.S. government wanted to shed that share as quickly as possible, and someone dumping the stock does not make for rising stock prices. Now, GM is sending out smoke signals that a sale is far from imminent. GM’s chief spokesman Selim Bingol wrote in a blog  that “the day will eventually come when the Treasury sells its GM stake. When is anybody’s guess (we have no say in the matter).”

In a perverse way, the GM stock had tanked before the U.S. government could dump it. The low stock price holds the government hostage. “At current stock prices,” writes the Detroit News, “the Treasury would incur a loss of nearly $16 billion on its bailout of GM.”

The stock currently is 24 percent below its $33 IPO price. Says the DetN:

“Given that a sale before the November presidential election would highlight the cost of the government’s rescue of GM, officials say it is unlikely the government will sell any shares before then.”

When solar panel maker Solyndra went bankrupt last year, which cost the taxpayer $528 million in DOE loan guarantees, the end of the DOE loan program was quickly prognosticated.  The loan program is still around, but new loans have for all intents and purposes dried up. Just a week after presumptive EV maker Bright Automotive called it quits and withdrew a DOE loan application, the program claims another victim. It is Carbon Motors, the Connersville, Ind. startup that wanted to sell fuel-efficient cop cars.

Yesterday, Carbon Motors said it was denied a $310 million DOE loan. Carbon Motors CEO William Santana Li says in a statement on the company’s website:

“We are outraged by the actions of the DOE and it is clear that this was a political decision in a highly-charged, election year environment. Since Solyndra became politicized last fall, the DOE has failed to make any other loans under the ATVM program, has pulled back one loan that it previously committed and, as of this month, the DOE has pushed aside the three remaining viable loans under active consideration.

Each of these applicants has been caught for several years in a costly and extensive DOE due diligence process. Carbon Motors simply appears to be the last victim of this political gamesmanship. In failing to deploy the tax dollars that Congress allocated for the creation of advanced technology manufacturing jobs in the U.S., the DOE ATVM program represents a glaring failure of the Obama Administration to create jobs that are clearly within its power to create.”

Bloomberg says that at least 14 members of Congress wrote to the Energy Department in support of Carbon Motors.

Asked for a comment, the DOE replied to Bloomberg:

“Over the last two and a half years, the department has worked with Carbon Motors to try to negotiate a deal that supported their business while protecting the taxpayers. While we were not able to come to an agreement on terms that would protect the taxpayers, we continue to believe that Carbon Motors is an innovative company with an interesting project and we wish them luck.”

Li thunders back:

“Although the DOE’s new found focus on protecting taxpayer interest may be a good talking point for the media, in this particular case, it fails to ring true. The highly efficient Carbon E7 vehicle would have had dramatic savings for the U.S. taxpayer and every city, county and state struggling with budget deficits. The DOE’s thoughtless decision just cost the U.S. taxpayer over $10 billion dollars of potential savings.”

It sounds like the Carbon cop car is DOA.

For quite some time, Fiat-Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne has been busy lamenting the dreadful overcapacity in the European auto industry.  He’s doing I so much that slowly, people begin thinking that Marchionne is honestly concerned. “If I would be in his shoes, I would be concerned too,” said an audibly unconcerned European auto exec, who requested anonymity. My friend thinks that when Marchionne talks about the European car industry, he is talking about Fiat.

Now, Marchionne has a plan how to fix the chronic overcapacity at Fiat in Europe.

He wants government intervention.

A week ago in London, Marchionne said this:

 “Many other industry sectors have already been through a major consolidation and rationalization, such as the steel industry in the 1990s.”

Yesterday in Geneva, Marchionne said that the EU must forge a common solution to  fix the chronically oversupplied market:

“Europe needs to provide a unified, concerted road map to get this done. Look at what happened with the steel industries in the ‘90s, and copy that example.”

You need to be a student of recent European history to have and idea of what the oracle of Turin could be talking about. He is talking about a managed solution where everybody takes a haircut, and everybody stays alive. If he really takes steel as an example, then he is talking government aid and import restrictions.

In the beginning of the 90s, the European steel industry suffered from overcapacity. The industry was asked to shed capacity. At the same time, imports of steel were restricted. That did not work. In the second half of the 90s, a law was passed that made government aid legal as an emergency measure. Money was poured into the steel industry. At the same time, under the cover of anti-dumping measures, imports of steel to Europe was heavily restricted.

My anonymous friend opines that German automakers (except Opel, perhaps) are strictly against mandated capacity shedding. Their order books are full, and they are happy to take the market share of European makers in distress. Such as Fiat. As long as this continues, Marchionne can pound sand. As a student of recent European history, Marchionne is probably thinking of chapter two of the steel story: Government aid plus import restrictions.

Good luck with that. As long as the Germans are exporting themselves out of the crisis, Berlin won’t start a trade war, and has no reason to finance ailing carmakers. Pound sand, Sergio.

Yet another hopeful maker of electric vehicles called it quits in Indiana. Bright Automotive of Anderson, Ind., announced this week that it will wind down operations after withdrawing an application for a DOE loan. This is the latest in a series of EV companies that went belly-up in Indiana, where Gov. Mitch Daniels had vowed in January 2010 to make the state “the electric vehicle state.” The Chicago Tribune lists the failed companies:

• Last year, Think, an electric vehicle manufacturer in Elkhart propped up by government incentives, filed for bankruptcy.
• A month ago, Ener1, the battery-maker that was to supply the Think vehicle from three manufacturing facilities in Indiana, filed for bankruptcy reorganization.
• An unrelated plug-in manufacturer the state tried to nurture has yet to get off the ground.

Editor’s note: While our erstwhile Editor-in-Chief, Edward Niedermeyer, is on sabbatical, he will continue to weigh in on automotive issues in a (hopefully) weekly column entitled Blind Spot. This is the first installment.

Back in 2008, as the worlds of automobiles and politics headed towards a dramatic collision, the founder of this site and I had a series of conversations about political perspectives on automobiles. Though these conversations were wide-ranging, I kept coming back to the same conclusion: for all of the talk about guns as “tools of freedom,” it seemed to me that cars were even more worthy of the title. After all, most people use an automobile in the pursuit of freedom and mobility every day, whereas guns are (relatively) rarely used to secure individual rights.

But embracing the car’s role as a tool of freedom raises a number of troubling questions, most of them inherent to the very cause of liberty. Though cars make us more free as individuals, we must recognize that it comes at the cost of (among other things) dependence on gasoline, an “addiction” that many now seek freedom from. As new energy sources and mobility concepts become available, citizens will have to navigate a complex thicket of issues as they seek to maximize the freedom that personal mobility offers.

That private transportation fundamentally increases personal liberty is difficult to argue against. On the theoretical level, it’s not difficult to understand how private mobility frees individuals to choose where they live and work, empowering individual choice over collective planning. And for those who see humans as essentially freedom-seeking creatures, the headlong rush towards private car ownership in developing countries could be a sign of the car’s inherently liberating power.

But as is so often the case with expanding liberty, the democratization of the automobile has a flip side. Indeed, the very expansion of the global auto market puts pressure on our energy sources, creating something of a zero-sum global market for private transportation.

Even more troubling for proponents of the car as a tool of freedom, the expansion of the global car market in developing countries is being accompanied by a transition away from automobiles in developed countries. Beyond even the impact of rising gasoline prices, social, cultural and technological conditions are making automobiles less of a liberating force in developed nations. Particularly among young people, automobile ownership is increasingly seen as a burden rather than a freedom.

For some, the answer to this automotive apathy lies in new technology, most notably in electric cars (EVs, or electric vehicles). New technology, cleaner energy sources and a more high-tech image will, argue EV boosters, make cars more relevant and sustainable to new generations of developed world consumers. But can electric cars really serve as tools of personal freedom?

On the most superficial level, EVs offer considerably less immediate freedom than gas-powered cars. Once its battery is used, an EV must sit immobile for 6-12 hours before it can drive again, limiting (if nothing else) the perception that ones car could cross a major land mass efficiently should one need it to. This gut-level reaction is, among admitted fans of freedom, a major stumbling block to the acceptance of EVs.

Add to the EV’s fundamental limitations the fact that the market for them is being stimulated by government tax dollars, and i shouldn’t be surprising that EVs have become something of a punchline on the right. After all, a gut-level appreciation for continent-crossing levels of freedom and an appreciation for the free market tend to go hand-in-hand, and the EV fails on both counts.

But by making EVs out to be nothing more than a patronage plot based on Global Warming hysteria, the political right does a disservice to both the EV and itself (however true individual accusations may be). For a significant number of Americans, the EV holds the long-term promise of an almost unheard-of level of freedom from external energy sources: what could be more enticing to the lover of freedom than the idea of local private transportation powered by solar panels on your roof? And on a national level, the hidden costs to taxpayers of gasoline dependence aren’t often brought up by the deficit hawks (or hawks of any kind, for that matter), but they are very real.

In the real world, though, microgeneration and EVs themselves are too expensive to be available to all but the most wealthy freedom freaks. And frustratingly, the most convincing solution to the EV’s problems with range and cost, namely battery lease/swap infrastructure like Better Place’s, are hardly a libertarian dream come true. Only by centralizing grid management and paying for a battery swap infrastructure, a task necessitating government involvement, do EVs make sense on a large scale.

This leaves the EV in a frustrating impasse with the value of personal liberty. Though holding profound promise for self-sustainable private transport, the range-limited, heavily-subsidized reality is as bad for many lovers of liberty as its obvious cure, the “natural monopoly” of a centralized swap/lease entity.

And yet, if we look to the markets, we see it moving toward electrification. The number and variety of hybrids available today would astound American observers of the introduction of the Prius just over ten years ago. Those who believe in the market’s wisdom can not deny the steadily increasing electrification of the car market, nor ignore its implications. And as is ever the case when technology and markets shift, those seeking to maximize their personal freedoms will have to choose carefully from a new set of imperfect choices.

Last year, President Barack Obama declared that one of the “Apollo projects of our times” is the goal for the United States to be “the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.” Companies that made and people that bought those electric vehicles received generous government money. One holdout in the rush for EVs: The U.S. government. It did not do as its President said, and ended up with a drastic cut in purchases of electric and hybrid vehicles after the speech was delivered.

GSA Purchases of EVs and Hybrids

U.S. General Services Administration purchases of hybrid and electric models fell 59 percent in fiscal 2011 to about 2,645, Bloomberg reports after analyzing data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The GSA procures approximately two thirds of the government’s vehicles . The other third is bought by the U.S. Postal Service.

The GSA bought 145 Chevrolet Volts in fiscal 2011, 1,380 hybrid Fusions, 101 Honda Insight hybrids and one Toyota Prius.

At the same time, the U.S. government is more in line with another Apollo project, namely buying only alternative-fuel vehicles for the U.S. government fleet by 2015. In fiscal 2011, the federal fleet added 32,000 cars and trucks that can burn E85. That’s 58 percent of the 54,843 cars bought by the GSA in fiscal 2011.

And it is a bookkeeping trick. 88 percent of the government’s “alternative-fuel vehicles” are flex fuel cars. They can use ethanol. But they can also use regular gas. They usually do.  Out of necessity: “There are only about 2,512 ethanol fuel pumps available among the estimated 162,000 fueling stations that sell gasoline,” says Bloomberg.

For years ago, Obama promised that by 2012, “half of all cars purchased by the federal government will be plug-in hybrids or all-electric.” They better write those purchase orders fast to meet that goal.

Florida Congressman Allen West is blaming President Barack Obama for paying $70 every time he wants to fill up his Hummer H3. Not surprisingly, media outlets, as well as commenters on West’s Facebook page, are up in arms.

The Hummer name undoubtedly carries negative connotations when it comes to fuel economy, but in the grand scheme of things, the H3 is quite mild, with its roots in the fairly light-duty Chevrolet Colorado/GMC Canyon twins. The DOE’s own fuel economy site lists West’s 2008 H3 as getting between 14 and 15 mpg combined – hardly impressive for a small SUV.

Citing New York’s leadership in banning hand-held cell phone use in cars, NTSB Vice Chairman Christopher Hart urged the Empire State to become the first to ban all use of personal electronic devices while driving. Though careful to call it a state issue, Hart did hint that state compliance with forthcoming NTSB recommendations could be tied to federal highway funds (he has separately called for a national ban).

And indeed, New York’s legislators seemed to see the issue of distraction as an issue for federal action (but then, why not make the feds pay for it?). At the same time, everyone understands that the problem is near-ubiquitous and any full ban on personal device use in cars would be near-impossible to enforce (short of Assemblyman McDonough’s suggestion that automakers equip cars with cell-phone signal blockers)… which raises huge questions about federal-level action.

Hart says enforcement will be a major topic of an NTSB forum, scheduled for March 27 (note: the forum is not yet listed on the NTSB’s events page). With the NTSB pushing hard on what was once largely a rhetorical issue, goading the notoriously-nannying New York government towards a full ban on in-car device use, this forum should be a good measure of the feds’ resolve.

After all, everyone knows that distracted driving is wrong (with the possible exception of automakers, who load ever more distractions into their cars)… it’s just a question of how much government intrusion would be necessary to stop it. If Ray LaHood’s minions go for broke and pursue an enforcement rather than an education approach at their forum (as they did with their NY pilot program), this debate could blow up into pitched political warfare overnight.

It was the early 2010, the Toyota witch hunt was in full swing. While Toyota executives were burnt at the stake grilled on the Hill, Denso’s U.S. offices were raided by the FBI. Denso is a major automotive parts supplier, and a member of the Toyota family. The raid was part of an on-going investigation into alleged anti-trust violations. Or so they said.

After the NHTSA, NASA and the National Academy of Sciences could not find a ghost in the machine, the Department of Justice also cleared out its case file. For a fee.

Denso and the DoJ cut a plea deal. Denso will pay a fine of $78 million “based on charges that it violated antitrust laws in connection with sales of certain automotive components” to one of its customers, Denso said today in a statement.

The fine will hit the books as a (hopefully) non-recurring one time charge in the third quarter of the fiscal year ending March 2012. It is said to have “no material effect on the Company’s financial forecast for the fiscal year.”

Internally, there is some finger rapping: Denso’s chairman, president and some board members and executive directors have to “voluntarily return 30 percent to 10 percent of their compensation for a three-month period starting in February 2012.”

Another supplier, Yazaki Corp., did not get off as easily. The company agreed to plead guilty to U.S. charges and pay a $470-million fine, says the LA Times. Even more painful, four of its executives are to serve prison terms of up to two years, the paper says.

Regulators are hoping to offer additional incentives and credits to spur sales of the vehicles. Hydrogen re-fueling infrastructure will also be supported, though details of how this would be approached were scant. The new rules would also favor vehicles such as the Chevrolet Volt, as CARB feels that it is closer to an electric vehicle than a conventional plug-in hybrid. The Volt has been dubbed a ”transitional zero-emission vehicle”.

Organizations such as the California New Car Dealers Association say that demand for these types of vehicles has been overestimated, but CARB chair Mary Nichols told a conference call that car manufacturers were in favor of the new rulings. “Probably the most heartening aspect of this whole rulemaking was the level of cooperation that we received from the industry. Overall, the degree of support for the package was just extraordinary.”

TrueCar says it is deeply sorry, and it will change the way it is doing business. Bowing to state regulators, TrueCar will change the way it discloses prices to car shopper. And it will change the way it charges dealers, Automotive News [sub] reports.

• Where states prohibit bird-dogging (paying a bounty for a lead that turns into a sale,) TrueCar will charge dealers a subscription fee. At the moment, TrueCar gets $299 for every lead that triggers the sale of a new vehicle, and $399 when a used car is sold. TrueCar will change its billing model in possibly 20 of the 49 states in which it does business.
• When states (like California) allow brokering, but require significant disclosures about the broker’s involvement, TrueCar will go to subscription fees.
• To customers, discounts quoted will be off MSRP, not off invoice. Several states ban the term “invoice” in ads.
• Because some manufacturers object to advertising below-invoice prices on public sites, TrueCar customers will have to create an account and log in.
  TrueCar will implement a dealer council for that represents the voice of the dealer.

This is CVN-76, a.k.a. the Ronald Reagan. It is a true multi-role ship. Today, it hauls cars, to keep them off I-5.

The ship costs new anywhere between $4.3 billion and  $6 billion (accounts differ, assume the $4.3 b are for the stripper version). Total cost of ownership is $32 billion over the carrier’s assumed service life of 50 years, or $1.75 million for the day.

The crew sets you back another $1.40 million a day, for a total daily rate of $3.15 million.

The ship traveled from its home port in San Diego up the West Coast, to 120 Dewey Street, Bremerton, WA 98314-6012, better known as the Kitsap-Bremerton Naval Base. The Ronnie will stay there for a one year maintenance and upgrade (or make that “scheduled dock-planned incremental availability maintenance”) at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility. The crew is coming along.

To spare the Gipper-skippers the 1,264 mile drive from San Diego to Seattle, along with the associated wear & tear, greenhouse gases etc., their cars were loaded on the flight deck.  The fighter jets took the air route to an undisclosed location.

As announced last December, Fiat made good on its promise to build its Alfa-based Dodge Dart in the U.S. According to Reuters,

“Chrysler and Fiat formally committed on Wednesday to the U.S. Treasury Department to produce the 2013 Dodge Dart sedan at a U.S. Chrysler plant.”

With that simple commitment, Fiat has increased its stake in Chrysler to 58.5 percent. By announcing its intentions to build “a highly fuel-efficient car” at a U.S. plant, Fiat reached the final milestone with the Treasury. The government is out of the automaking business, at least as far as Chrysler is concerned. Fiat shares ownership of Chrysler with the UAW. The UAW’s retiree health care trust holds the 41.5 percent. left over after Fiat’s 58.5 percent.

Actually, it is not the new Dodge Dart that got Fiat the last chunk of Chrysler, it is a special anemic edition of said Dart. Equipped with a 1.4-liter turbocharged FIRE engine that also powers versions of the subcompact Fiat 500, THAT Dart is expected to get the required unadjusted combined fuel economy rating of at least 40 mpg. Never mind that the EPA-issued windows sticker probably will say something like 30 mpg. Who are you going to sue, the government?

The 2013 Dart will be built at Chrysler’s plant in Belvidere, Ill.

A few days ago, the Washington  Post demanded the execution of the $7,500 tax credit for EVs. Republican Congressman Mike Kelly is ready to comply. He introduced H.R. 3768, legislation that would repeal the $7,500 tax credit for plug-in electric drive vehicles. The odd thing is: Kelly is owner of Kelly Chevrolet-Cadillac in Butler, PA. The not so odd thing is: He knows firsthand whether the car is worth tax payer money or not. Kelly does not think so:

“While our nation borrows 42 cents on every dollar, taxpayers are paying for an electric vehicle tax credit that has cost tens of millions of dollars, and that largely benefits upper-income Americans. According to General Motors Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson, the average income of a Volt owner is $170,000 a year.”

“I introduced legislation to repeal the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit because, quite simply, our nation can no longer afford to subsidize vehicles that not only lack market demand, but whose safety has been called into question. In addition to the Chevy Volt, which is currently under federal investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after the batteries of three crash-tested Volts caught on fire, the safety of Fisker’s electric vehicle has been recently scrutinized as well.”

How would you vote?

Ethanol trade groups have said that the industry would survive the loss of the subsidy, now that the US ethanol production industry has become established. The industry is still protected by congressional mandates that call for 15 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2015 and 36 billion gallons by 2022.

The ethanol issue involves a number of powerful players, corn growers and affiliated industries on one side and food interests, automakers and engine builders on the other. Then there’s the EPA to consider. The EPA has approved the use of E15, an 85/15 gasoline/ethanol blend, for use in post 2001 cars. Manufacturers say that without modifications, E15 will damage engines. In February, in a bipartisan move the House voted 285-136 to block the EPA from moving ahead with E15 regulations.

While ending the subsidy would seemingly discourage ethanol’s use, the end of the 54 cents per gallon tariff on imported Brazilian ethanol might do more to encourage that use than the subsidies did. Brazil is one place where it makes sense to use ethanol as a fuel because of Brazil’s huge sugar industry. The ratio of energy needed to produce it vs the energy obtained in the fuel for ethanol made from corn is barely greater than one, 1.3:1, compared to 2:1 for using sugar beets and 8:1 for sugar cane, the feedstock for Brazil’s ethanol. It costs half as much to make Brazilian cane ethanol as it does to make American corn ethanol. According to one academic study transportation costs to US ports eliminate that competitive advantage, but if that was a certainty, Brazilian sugar cane producers wouldn’t have threatened to start a trade war if the tariff wasn’t ended.

Al E. Forrest sat in the driver’s seat of a 2003 Ford Explorer with another man in the passenger seat as two police officers came up on either side of the vehicle. According to Officer Kevin George’s testimony, he just wanted to see if the Explorer driver was okay. The officers had no suspicion of any criminal activity prior to approaching the Explorer. When George poked his head into the driver’s window, Forrest looked surprised to see a cop staring at him through the window. George said this was a sign of “nervousness.” When George saw money in Forrest’s left hand, he ordered the man out of the SUV. This was the beginning of the legal problem for the Columbus officer.

“We note initially that the police needed no suspicion of activity, legal or illegal, in order to walk up to or approach the Ford Explorer,” Judge G. Gary Tyack wrote for the appeals court. “What a person willingly displays in public is not subject to Fourth Amendment protection. However, Officer George went far beyond approaching the vehicle.”
Forrest did not immediately get out of the Explorer. Instead, he rolled up the window and removed the keys from the ignition. Unsatisfied with this response, George pulled open the car door and yanked Forrest out. George had no warrant and had still not observed any illegal activity. Because of this, a Franklin County Court of Common Pleas judge suppressed evidence obtained from arresting Forrest. The state appealed. The three-judge appellate panel found the prosecution’s claim that exceptions to the Fourth Amendment applied to be entirely unpersuasive.

“The state argues probable cause to arrest and then search incident to arrest are present, but both fail because they are premised on Forrest’s wrongfully refusing to obey the order to step out of the vehicle,” Judge Tyack wrote. “The officer, however, had no basis to order Forrest out of the vehicle because he lacked reasonable articulable suspicion of criminal activity when Officer George reached across Forrest’s body to grab his hand and pull him out of the vehicle. Since there was no lawful arrest, the search and seizure cannot be justified as a search incident to a lawful arrest.”

With the suppression motion upheld, the state has no case against Forrest. A copy of the decision is available in a 30k PDF file at the source link below.

Source:  Ohio v. Forrest (Court of Appeals, State of Ohio, 12/6/2011)

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

A pair of senior police officers in Brindisi, Italy were arrested Tuesday in a speed camera bribery scheme. The owner of a BMW X6 blew the whistle on officers Giuseppe Manca and Antonio Briganti after a speed camera accused him of driving 160km/h (99 MPH) on state route 16, where the limit is 110km/h (68 MPH).

The driver faced a fine of between 500 to 2000 euros (US $650 to $2615) plus license points. The officers offered to make the conviction disappear for payment of 250 euros (US $327) in cash. The officers were able to erase the conviction from the speed camera logs to prevent detection of their tactics.

The attempt at secrecy failed when the BMW found he was out of cash. The driver’s account of what transpired is supported by surveillance video showing one of the policemen escorting him to a bank in the village of Pezze di Greco to withdraw money. Judge Paula Liaci ordered Briganti and Manca to be placed in preventative detention.

Meanwhile, the public prosecutor in Grosseto conducted four raids on the offices of speed camera companies in Capagnativo and Scarlino. Investigators uncovered irregularities in the way speed camera contracts were handed out in those jurisdictions between 2005 and 2007. Previously, local police handled speed camera operations, but prosecutors insist forgery, corruption and bid rigging led to the decision to contract out the photo ticketing services.

Investigations into Italian speed camera fraud have been in the works for years. Earlier this month, seven were arrested in Frosinone for rigging speed camera contracts. In March, the Guardia di Finanza announced five indictments in Brescia. In August 2009, speed cameras were shrouded in black plastic as up to 200 officials faced charges in Caserta. In September, a judge ruled that a group of 15 mayors, cops, speed camera company employees should stand trial on fraud charges.

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

Reasonable minds can disagree about the wisdom of the auto bailout, but according to analysis by the EPA and Department of Transportation (based on data from the Department of Energy and auto forecasters CSM), the Government’s rescue of GM and Chrysler may not have been the best idea (at least from a market perspective). According to data buried in the EPA/DOT proposed rule for 2017-2025 fuel economy standards [PDF here], Fiat-Chrysler is predicted to be the sick man of the auto industry by 2025, losing over half of its 2008 sales volume, while GM is expected to improve by only 3%, the second-worst projected performance (after Aston-Martin). In terms of percentages, even lowly Suzuki and Mitsubishi are projected to grow faster than The Mighty General. Ouch.

On the other hand, the proposed rule notes that data will be finalized before the final rule comes out. Besides, the agencies appropriately admit (in as many words) that projecting auto sales so far into the future is one hell of a crapshoot. Still, with the obvious exception of “Saab-Spyker” and with some skepticism about the projection’s optimism about overall market growth aside, these are not the craziest guesses I could imagine. Who knows what the future holds, but it certainly is a bit troubling that the government’s own data suggests the two automakers it bailed out may well have some of the weaker performances of the next 14 years. At least the Treasury could have sold off their remaining GM stock before this report was released…