The French government is planning on raising taxes on diesel fuel, branding it a “health issue”, much to the chagrin of consumers and the country’s auto industry.

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Tesla announced plans to pay down their $465 million dollar Department of Energy loan in 5 years or less, as Tesla seeks to achieve profitability.

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The U.S. Treasury has begun a sale of its remaining stake in General Motors, with a goal of selling its remaining shares by March 2014. Currently, the government owns more than 300 million shares in the auto maker, equivalent to a 19 percent stake.

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They can cuff me anytime.

Hot girls in short skirts are the first things that leap into my mind whenever anyone says anything about the Japanese. The internet has not helped to change that, in fact it may have made things worse. If you add the word “Japanese” to any noun that describes a group of people and enter it into your favorite search engine, pictures of hot young girls will always appear near the top of the results. Look for Japanese tour guides, Japanese students, Japanese beach volleyball players or Japanese anything and you will see I am right. Try it, I’ll wait.

Now that you’re back, did you look for Japanese Police? I did, and despite my prior confession I was surprised at what I found. Read More >

As a worldly American and car nut, on one of your world travels, there will be a time when you fall in love with a car in a foreign land. The crush on that thing will be so big that you will want to take the irresistible beauty home with you. Just ask Sajeev or Frau Murilee.

My advice: Resist that urge at all cost. Trust me, it is easier to import a new wife from Pago-Pago to America than to bring-in a lightly used Euro-spec Porsche from Zuffenhausen. There is one man who wants to change all that: A man with the initials B.S. petitioned the White House to liberalize the immigration rules for used cars. No, it’s not THAT BS. Read More >

Those who watched the State of the Union address last night and have an interest in autos may have noticed a conspicuous absence; Barack Obama failed to mention his goal of putting 1 million EVs on the road by 2015.

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You think gas is finally getting cheaper? Cars that use less gas may be a bit more expensive, but save you money in the long run? Households in the United States spent a record amount on gasoline last year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Monday. More of your income is going out and exhaust pipe than at any time since the 1980s. Read More >

Today must be International Backpedaling Day. Volkswagen said “Never mind beat Toyota by 2018.”  Obama says: “Never mind a million EVs by 2015.” Read More >

In what Reuters calls “the latest exit from President Barack Obama’s cabinet,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced today that he would not be staying on for the second term. Read More >

Imports led the majority of the government’s green car purchases last year, with 54 percent of the nearly 1,800 green vehicles purchased by the federal government coming from Hyundai, Toyota, Mitsubishi and Honda. The federal government’s most-purchased hybrid wasn’t a Big Three product either. Instead, it was the Hyundai Sonata Hybrid.

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“Chevy Runs Deep” is being dropped as the Bow Tie Brand’s marketing slogan of choice, as the last vestige of the Joel Ewanick area has departed the RenCen.

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GM is once again the top seller with government agencies, after losing that title to Ford over the past few years. A Bloomberg report based on a Freedom of Information Act request shows that GM sold 19,404 vehicles to the federal government in the fiscal year that ended September 30th, up 3.5 percent. Sales of Fords were down by 43 percent, to 10,734 vehicles.

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NHTSA is proposing to make it mandatory that hybrid cars and EVs have the ability to emit a sound when traveling below 18 mph on electric power, as a means of warning pedestrians and cyclists. The system is said to add about $30 to the cost of each vehicle, and will no doubt tie up bureaucrats for months as they debate just what kind of tone will best protect the public from the horror of low-speed injuries. So why don’t we make life easier for them and decide ourselves?

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The Canadian government will put up $250 million as part of an “auto innovation fund”, a continuation of a 2008 program which the government claims led to over $1 billion in spending. Read More >

“Everybody uses the road and if some pay and some don’t then that’s an unfair situation that’s got to be resolved,” said Jim Whitty, manager of the Oregon Department of Transportation’s Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternative Funding.

Ah, yes. As with any number of current governmental activities, the rationale for per-mile taxation will be fairness.

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