New With Most 2014 GM Vehicles: Feds, Spies, And Criminals As Standard Equipment

Remote unlocking of your car’s doors via your smartphone , activating horn and lights and remote start, previously part of GM’s paid OnStar service, is becoming a standard feature, GM says. Buy the car, download the app, and the car can be remote-controlled via your smartphone for five years, whether you pay for OnStar, or not. “Thirty-six 2014 model year GM vehicles are compatible with the RemoteLink mobile app,” says GM in a press release, meaning that most of GM’s new cars are permanently on-line, can be reached, tracked, can reveal their locations, OnStar, or not, ignition on, or not.

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Cayenne Production Rained Out
Germany has seen heavy floods, and it is beginning to impact car production. Porsche had to stop production of the Cayenne in its Leipzig plant. Not because…
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GM Sales In China Strong, Ford Much Stronger

GM’s sales in GM’s and the world’s largest auto market China were up 9.4 percent in May, the company says. In April, sales had been up 15.3 percent.

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Treasury Unloads GM Stock

Now that the GM share finally is trading a wee bit above its IPO price, The Treasury is eager to bail from the bailout. The government’s fiance department announced “plans to sell 30 million shares of General Motors Co common stock as part of its ongoing effort to wind down the government’s stake in the bailed-out automaker,” Reuters says.

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The NHTSA And Chrysler. Or: Some Pigs Are More Equal

In a letter sent (“VIA FEDERAL EXPRESS AND ELECTRONIC MAIL”) to Chrysler on Monday, the NHTSA requests that “Chrysler initiate a safety recall on MY 1993-2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee and MY 2002-2007 Jeep Liberty vehicles and implement a remedy action that improves their performance in rear-impacts and crashes.” The NHTSA illustrated its request with pictures of burned-out Jeeps, some of which are in this article.

Yesterday, Chrysler sent out a press release, stating that it “does not agree with NHTSA’s conclusions and does not intend to recall the vehicles cited in the investigation.” It is very rare that an automaker flat out denies such a request, especially one that documents scores of deaths. This is not an article about whether Chrysler is right or wrong. This is a story about curious double standards at the NHTSA.

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Musk Blames Car Dealers For Lackluster EV Sales

Tesla’s Elon Musk found someone to blame for the lackluster sales of EVs, and the death of some EV makers: Car dealers, and their National Automobile Dealers Association NADA.

“The auto dealers association is definitely creating some problems for us, making it harder to get things done,” Musk said at Tesla’s shareholder meeting with Reuters taking notes. Tesla wants to sell its cars directly to consumers, which is against the law in most states. Attempts to have the law changed “met stiff resistance from dealer groups around the country,” Reuters says. Musk keeps trying.

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Germany In May 2013: Abwrts, Bitte

After Germany’s sudden 3.8 percent sales rise in April, this site did not buy into the sentiment that the worst is over in Europe. It’s not. After the calendar-induced April fool’s gold, the German market continued its downward run, with the rest of Europe sure to follow.

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GM Wants To Nearly Double Its Exports From China

A few weeks ago, GM’s spokesman Greg Martin said:

“There will be no exports of these cars built in China. Cars that are built in China are sold in China.”

No true, said GM China head Bob Socia to Reuters today, reiterating former statements that GM’s Chinese export machine is in full swing: “GM plans to export as many as 130,000 China-made vehicles this year, up from 77,000 vehicles in 2012, driven by demand for its Chevrolet Sail in other emerging markets,” Reuters writes.

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Volvo Bets Big On Chinese Factories

Volvo’s global sales are on a downward trajectory. The Geely-owned Swedish marker saw its 2012 global sales drop 6%. In the first four months of the year, sales were down 6.4 percent. Two new factories in China are supposed to bring the turn-around, a feature in Reuters says.

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Former Porsche CFO Fined $820,000

Haerter goes to court

Porsche’s former high-flying finance chief Holger Härter was been fined 630,000 euros ($820,000) for misleading French bank BNP Paribas in loan negotiations in early 2009. This despite testimonies by bank representatives who said BNP did not feel misled.

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Harware Meintence! Expect The Worst, Hope For The Best

Our intrepid technical team will perform hardware maintenance tomorrow, Tuesday between 8am and 11am Eastern. TTAC will move to a standby server, while they replace hardware on the main server, vacuum the dust mites, lubricate the hard-drives, and whatever scheduled maintenance a server needs.

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May Sales in Japan Weak, Imports Strong

May sales were down in Japan, and this time around, small kei cars could not bail out their bigger brethren. Imports into the allegedly closed market Japan on the other hand are zooming, despite the weaker yen that makes imports more expensive.

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May U.S. New Car Sales

Nissan, Ford and Chrysler led the way in April. GM and Toyota made smaller gains. Mitsubishi was this month’s loser, down 15 percent.

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May Sales: Chrysler Up 11 Percent

Chrysler sets the tone for a most likely very happy sales day, reporting an 11 percent increase in its May U.S. light vehicle sales to Reuters.

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Sudden Deceleration: Australian Media Blames Volkswagen Golf (Manual, Gasoline) Driver's Death On DSG, Clogged Diesel Injectors
Sorry, subtitles not available

The death of an Australian woman who was rear-ended two years ago is making new headlines. In 2011, 32-year-old Melissa Ryan was killed when a truck with two trailers hit her Volkswagen Golf from behind. A coroner is looking into the matter. The report is expected to be completed in July. In the meantime, Australian media does not let simple technical facts get in the way of a bad story.

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  • ToolGuy "Honey, someone is trying to cross the moat again"
  • Rochester "better than Vinfast" is a pretty low bar.
  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.