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(AHN) - Sen. John McCain will be trading jokes with late night talk show host Jay Leno during the opening night of the Democratic National Convention. - Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:50:02 GMT
Published: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:57:04 GMT - Source: Allheadlinenews.Com - Read the articleNewsJay Leno's Serious Advice to the U.S. Auto Industry
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The type of vehicles America makes best are, unfortunately, not the type of vehicles that people really want anymore. Nobody builds better trucks than the Americans do. Not even the Japanese build as good a truck as the Ford F-150 or the Chevy Silverado. It's the same with performance cars. The Corvette Z06 has 505 horsepower, comes with a big warranty, and can hit 200 miles per hour. It weighs almost exactly the same as a half-million-dollar Porsche Carrera GT and gets higher mileage?26 miles per gallon.
Where we seem to lose it is in the low-bucks econocar. I used to be able to identify any American car from 25 yards. Now they all have this jellybean look. It?s a mystery to me, because the one thing we used to do better than anybody else was build cheap, extremely high-quality cars. We did it for decades, all the way back to the beginning of the industry. There was no better car for the money than the Model T. It was a basic car, but it used the finest materials available. There are still almost a million of them out there.
When you get into a high-priced, well-made American car today and the key is in the ignition, you hear a melodic bong, bong. But when you get in a cheap American car, like a rental, and the key is left in, it goes plink, plink, plink. It?s just horrible. Every time you use the turn signal, it's like breaking a chicken leg. In order to make the more expensive car more appealing, U.S. companies feel as though they have to dumb down the cheaper car.
I believe that, all things being equal, Americans will buy American. It just has to be as good as the competition; it doesn?t have to be better. The classic example is Harley-Davidson. Throughout the '70s, the motorcycle maker had huge quality-control problems. Then Harley-Davidson said, "Look, let's take our time. Let's build fewer bikes. Let?s build them properly, so they don?t leak oil and they?ll run forever." Harley-Davidson won back the market share it had lost, and it continues to dominate today. Even though the bikes might not be technically superior, they're bulletproof and they're American. People will buy American if given the chance.
The automakers are starting to think like Harley and understand that when you get into an automobile, everything should be appealing to you. If you see stitching that's out of line on the dashboard, you're going to get madder and madder every time you see it. That's one place where the American car companies dropped the ball. Thankfully, in the past couple of years, they have gotten better. If you look at the new line of G.M. cars, they are almost as good as what the Europeans are doing, especially when you compare interiors. Cadillac has a line of small four-door sedans that are, if not quite the rival of Audi or Mercedes, pretty darn close for quite a bit less money.
The problem with what's happened over the past few decades is that you have a whole generation of kids who have no brand loyalty. They've grown up on Honda, Hyundai, Kia and Toyota. To lure them to the American brand, you?ve got to give them something exciting, something bold, something different. America does technology well, and I think this is how the companies will bring those buyers back. I think cars like the Chevy Volt, which is entirely battery-powered, or hydrogen cars from Chrysler, Ford, and G.M. will take off.
Looking into my crystal ball, I predict that Toyota will probably become the dominant force, and the other companies will have to become leaner to survive. They?ll start reining in some of the more unprofitable models. The overhead at most of the U.S. firms is crazy, and they'll have to figure out a way to fix that. They'll ultimately survive, but I think that they'll need to change how they do business. And in the future, you'll see smaller companies doing more boutique manufacturing, as BMW has with the Mini.
One last thing: No matter what happens, do not expect all American cars to go Eurosize. American buttocks are not getting any smaller.
Published: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:30:00 GMT - Source: Wired.Com - Read the articleAutosHydrogen Cars Go Cross-Country With Help From Fossil Fuels
Hydrogen cars get no respect. A lot of people consider them the stuff of science fiction, a technology as vaporous as the stuff that drives them. But despite some hurdles even Liu Xiang couldn't clear -- creating a fueling infrastructure comes to mind -- Uncle Sam and the big automakers love hydrogen cars and are driving across the country in a fleet of them to prove they work.
Even if they're occasionally hauled on trucks.
Hydrogen evangelists set out from Portland, Maine, today to take the gospel to 31 cities in 18 states during the two-week "Hydrogen Road Tour." Although H2 is the most common element in the universe, it can be really tough to find when the fuel gauge is approaching "E." With only 62 hydrogen stations nationwide -- one opened in Massachusetts just this morning -- portable fueling stations will keep the cars going when they aren't being ferried on trucks.
While some may consider that cheating, road trip organizers say it's part of the point. "Part of what we're doing with the tour is raising awareness of the need for the fueling infrastructure," Patrick Serfass of the National Hydrogen Association tells us.The association joined the Department of Energy and the California Fuel Cell Partnership in organizing the tour, which hopes to convince people hydrogen is a viable fuel on the cusp of commercialization. "The technology needed to put these cars on the road, and keep them moving, exists today," says Paul Brubaker, head of the federal transportation department's Research and Innovative Technology Administration. "The question is not if hydrogen powered vehicles will be available commercially, but when."
For all its promise of emissions-free motoring, hydrogen has more than its share of naysayers, but that isn't keeping the auto industry from pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into developing cars that run on it. Honda's leasing the FCX Clarity (pictured) fuel cell vehicle and made a big deal about actress Jamie Lee Curtis picking one up last week. Other celebrities - including Jay Leno, Edward Norton and Will Ferrell - are driving the BMW Hydrogen 7, which also runs on gasoline. General Motors plans to put 100 Equinox fuel cell vehicles in driveways and Toyota's developed a fuel cell vehicle with the unprecedented range of 516 miles. Even Mazda's getting in on the act with a hydrogen-fueled RX-8 that could be in showrooms by 2012.
BMW, Daimler, Ford, GM, Honda, Hyundai-Kia, Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen have cars making the road trip, and they'll be joined along the way by fuel cell buses run by some of the nation's six transit agencies that use them. "These hydrogen vehicles are the non-polluting cars of tomorrow and they are being demonstrated today on our nation's roads," says Thomas Barrett, deputy secretary of energy.
There are many challenges to overcome before hydrogen vehicles are viable, not the least of which are making the cars affordable and producing and distributing hydrogen on a large scale. Still, the California Fuel Cell Partnership says thousands of hydrogen vehicles and hundreds of buses could be on the road by the end of 2016 and they'll fill up at hundreds of stations. In "Vision For the Rollout of Fuel Cell Vehicles and Hydrogen Fuel Stations," the partnership predicts fuel cell vehicles in California will need 5,250 kilograms of hydrogen each day by the end of 2014.
California has 26 hydrogen stations and 10 more planned. The partnership offers "a rough estimate" that capital costs for early stations will run $2 to $4 million -- excluding land and operating costs - and "the State of California should plan to spend $80-$90 million over four years (2010 through 2014) for hydrogen fuel stations to support the pre-commercial vehicle phase."
Until then, you may want to stay close to one of the nation's 62 hydrogen stations. Or have a flat-bed truck follow you.
Photo by Honda
Published: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:14:13 GMT - Source: Blog.Wired.Com - Read the articleSee Also:
