Auto Transportation Blog

According to the Detroit Bureau the 2011 Nissan Leaf will go on sale in April 2011, with Nissan already taking $100 reservation deposits on the new electric vehicle. The Leaf is Nissan’s first attempt at a full electric vehicle – it’s battery powered and the company has just finished a 24-city promotion tour. The deposit that customers put down ensure that they will be the first for formal orders when the vehicle debuts, and Nissan also received government aid to modify their Tennessee assembly plant for the company.

The company is planning on a phased rollout starting in December of 2010 for select markets, though no final price has been set for the vehicle. It will, however, be offered for sale or for lease and Nissan has considered simply selling the vehicle and leasing the battery pack, though decided against this without reason. The auto transport industry has seen full electric vehicles before, though for the most part they did not ship well and have yet to make an impact – the new Leaf is looking to change that, and let’s hope it will.

According to Bloomberg.com EIB, the European Investment Bank, has approved the $543 million loan to Saab, which thus clears the way for General Motors to sell the company to Spyker Cars. The loan also has a guarantee from the Swedish government as well as European Union state-aid clearance. Spyker is buying Saab for $74 million in cash and $326 million in preferred shares in the company.

The company will now be called Saab Spyker Automobiles and will be listed in both London and Stockholm, and the company has already raised $50 million that it owes to General Motors, with the other $24 million expected by July 15^th. Spyker makes the C8 Alleron sports car, if you were wondering, though the auto transport industry in the United States doesn’t ship many of them as they are mostly a European vehicle. Saab will still be sold in the United States, though many of them will now be sold in Europe.

Right now, the current total of recalled Toyota vehicles stands at over 8.5 million, while the company itself operates seven production plants and 1,400 dealerships in the United States alone. It employs hundreds of thousands of workers in the United States, and now they’re getting some backing from states where Toyota plants and Toyota workers reside. Many governors in states that Toyota has plants and workers in are concerned about unemployment should those plants fail in the wake of the recalls.

Other governors are suggesting that the United States government and its officials should think twice before criticizing the company, though it is obvious that jobs factor highly into the decision to back the automobile company. Toyota has yet to lay anyone off, though Congressional committees are preparing for hearings to investigate the handling of the recalls by Toyota. The auto transport industry is also behind the company, as many trucking companies handle Toyota products and many more ship Toyota cars exclusively.

According to F&I Management and Technology Zurich North America has just announced their new tools for their dealers to submit consumer contracts electronically. Through web-enabled sales and contract management the company is hoping to give consumers the tools to do all their business more effectively and efficiently. The new program is called the F&I Rate Track and was introduced to dealers and their customers in 2008 to quote Zurich F&I products.

Dealers can now create electronic contracts and print those on a regular printer and at the same time automatically send contracts to Zurich. The software will also be able to ensure that the contracts are complete before printing and submission. A lot of auto transport brokerages use a similar software – it is designed to have everything be done electronically and quickly accessible by the brokerage, who handles just about everything except the driving of the truck (and even then some brokerages have their own fleets). But no brokerage has customer-ready software – it’s all in house. This could really revolutionize the way that dealers and consumers interact, and could quite possibly be the way that things are going to go in the future.

After years of hard work and nothing to show for it, Ford is finally behind Toyota in the latest Consumer Reports in terms of quality, and General Motors has launched their “May the Best Car Win” campaign to promote their top vehicles, which is quite a gutsy move. The idea behind this new campaign is to get Americans to compare the quality of US cars to that of Japanese and other foreign vehicles, and it seems that it could be working.

But the biggest thing for American manufacturers is the fact that Toyota has stumbled into the worst crisis in the entire history of the company, with over eight million vehicles worldwide being recalled by the automotive giant. Sales of Toyota vehicles and – according to the auto transport industry – not as many Toyota vehicles being shipped has caused Toyota to lose billions of dollars in lost revenue, and to add insult to injury the company is now under investigation from both the US and Japanese governments about the recalls. Both Ford and GM have a unique opportunity to steal buyers from Toyota in the wake of the crisis, and with their vehicles charting highly in consumer reports and quality lists, it could be sooner rather than later that Ford and GM get back on top in America.

According to www.autoremarketing.com, January certified used car sales were at 109,554 units, which is actually down 22% from January 2009, a record-setting year in terms of the used car industry. However, some automakers did show gains in January, including Lexus, who raised 11%, Hyundai, who raised up 32%, and Subaru, who raised 15% in terms of market share. But other automakers have been down, including Toyota, who dropped 5.3% (despite all the bad press), Ford, who went down 28%, and GM who dropped 44%.

Honda went up by 2% while Acura dropped by 19%, and brands like Kia, Mini and Mazda also went up, though numbers on them were unavailable, and brands like Jaguar and Land Rover (two major British automakers) were down. Overall this wasn’t entirely unexpected, though Toyota’s numbers are somewhat surprising given all their recalls that have plagued the company since last year, and Ford, who has been growing by leaps and bounds since all this auto industry turmoil began happening. The auto transport industry’s numbers are also in and Ford vehicles are shipping more while Toyota vehicles are shipping less, as well as Hyundai going up and Jaguar and Land Rover sitting right about the same as usual.

Computers in cars have been in vehicles since the late 1970’s and were first installed to control emissions and fuel-injection systems, though in recent years computers have revolutionized car safety, performance and efficiency, so much so that a new car is almost more computer than car. Now, new electrical and digital cars are difficult for laymen and do-it-yourself mechanics (like your dad or brother) to comprehend, let alone repair, and failures in the computers can make it impossible for even experts who know this kind of stuff to diagnose and repair. The auto transport industry hasn’t seen the most of these new computers, though they are getting more common, and as the years go on even more industries will rely on computers.

But this new vehicle software for the computers in cars can carry bugs and much more. Toyota has seen some of this in terms of their brake failures in the new Prius, which relies on electrical signals from a computer, and now Congress and the NHTSA are investigating electronics and their software systems that control the flow of gasoline and much more. Toyota and Ford are reprogramming their hybrid brake technology as we speak and until things can get fixed, it looks like computers may be taking a backseat to the old-fashioned methods, which is something that many mechanics are definitely looking forward to.

Ford is still making waves, it seems, in the wake of the huge bankruptcy problems that GM and Chrysler went through, and now that Toyota is facing a tough time Ford is rising to the occasion. Four of the top five vehicles for customer brand loyalty belong to Ford, according to Experian Automotive, who compiled an industry-wide automotive trends report for the third quarter of 2009. The auto transport industry could have said the same thing – the number of new Ford vehicles being shipped has risen dramatically. Hyundai, too, has seen good times come from Toyota, GM and Chrysler’s problems over the past few years. Hyundai has had gains in overall market share as well as new vehicle registration numbers. The Ford Fusion, Edge, Flex and Five-Hundred models were all in the Top 5, with the Ford Freestyle rounding out the top 10.

Hyundai performed quite well in the third quarter, gaining 2.2 percentage points in overall market share and experiencing a 30% increase in new vehicle registrations, while Ford also saw a 1.1 percent gain in market share and growing by 5.1% in new vehicle registrations in quarter three of 2009. Oddly enough, though, Toyota’s new Venza model was the number one contender in brand loyalty, grabbing a whopping 63.2%. This is quite odd, given Toyota’s recent troubles, but I guess it goes to show that people really love their automakers. Toyota’s Prius and Camry also made the top 10 at number seven and number nine, respectively.

In a not-so-stunning turn of events, the United States Department of Transportation is demanding all documents pursuant to Toyota’s massive recalls over the past year to see if the automaker acted quickly enough in the wake of the recalls. Toyota has already stopped work temporarily at their plants in Texas and Kentucky, and the bad news is only getting worse. Toyota is now experiencing something that they have yet to deal with – a backorder of unsold vehicles, though not as large as stockpiles could get if Toyota doesn’t get this handled.

The documents, among other things, will tell the DOT when and how the company learned of the safety defects in the vehicles and when they found out. The auto transport industry has seen a drop in Toyota vehicles and they’re now saying it’s only getting worse in the wake of this new action taken by the Department of Transportation. The documents were delivered to Toyota on Tuesday and now Toyota has 60 days to respond with their documents or face incredible fines. The Texas plant, which will be the product of a small work stoppage, builds the Toyota Tundra truck and will resume operations on April 12^th. The Kentucky plant is only taking one day off, though new vehicles may not be built on further days in March and April in addition to the day off in February.

Tesla Motors was dealt a huge blow when three of their employees died in a small private plane crash after taking off from Palo Alto, California early yesterday. The plane apparently crashed into electrical transmission wires when it flew over a heavily populated area; luckily no one in the area where the plane went down was injured. The employees’ names have yet to be released – they will be named in a press conference on the 19^th of February. The plane was owned by a senior electrical engineer at Tesla Motors, Doug Bourn, who has both a commercial pilot license and a flight instructor’s license to boot.

Tesla is stunned, for sure, and the entire company is rallying behind the three men who died tragically. The auto transport industry is also doing their part, though business continues as usual in the company despite the tragedy. Tesla has been committed to the cause of providing great electric cars for the past three years and will continue to do so. The press conference scheduled for the 19^th has yet to be set to a time. The company is still working on the Tesla Roadster and the new Tesla Electric Sedan that will be debuting in the next few years and at a lower price point than the Roadster, but they are still shocked and saddened by the loss of those three employees. As we all are.