Tesla Fisker and the Chevy Volt Thursday 14 March 2013 / Hour 4, Block A: LouAnn Hammond, DrivingtheNation.com, in re: TESLA Lays off 100 Workers Due to New York Times Article Cancellations ... TESLA Lays off 100 Workers Due to NYT Article Cancellations? ... no idea of the scope of the cancellations, judging by the [...]
Los Angeles, CA - Mark Reuss, President, General Motors North America, talked to Lou Ann Hammond, CEO, www.drivingthenation.com, at the 2012 Los Angeles auto show. How critical is California to General Motors? I was surprised how frank Reuss was with his answer. Let's face it, when the word neglected comes out of an automotive executives [...]
John Edwards, Director of Land Rover, talked to Lou Ann Hammond, CEO, www.drivingthenation.com, about Land Rover's new Range Rover. Land Rover sold about 300,000 vehicles globally last year, but countries are putting the pressure on all manufacturers to produce vehicles in the country they are being sold. They are doing this by increasing import tariffs. [...]
Oliver Korasiak is an Engineering Manager at Robert Bosch. Korasiak talked to Lou Ann Hammond, CEO, www.drivingthenation.com, about Bosch's start-stop dc-dc converter. Autonomous engine stop-start systems have been in Europe for quite some time. With the high price of fuel in Europe, consumers can be 5-10 percent more fuel-efficient if they have start-stop on their [...]
For years I've been hearing about homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) in gasoline engines, but no action had been taken. Recently at a Bosch event, in the left bottom corner of a gasoline display was the HCCI emblem. Is HCCI still an option for the future? Hakan Yilmaz, Bosch's Global Technology Management, Gasoline Systems, explained [...]
We've got three Ford people talking about three Ford platforms, gasoline, hybrid and plug-in hybrid powertrain. John Jraiche, Chief Program Manager for the Ford Fusion, Jeff Duclos Ford Motor 2.0-liter Ecoboost engine manager, and Birgit Sorgenfrei, Ford's Auto Start-Stop program manager, talked to Lou Ann Hammond, CEO, www.drivingthenation.com about the 2013 Ford Fusion. 2.5-liter inline [...]
John Krafcik, President and CEO, Hyundai North America talked to Lou Ann Hammond, CEO, www.drivingthenation.com, about the sweet spot Hyundai is in when it comes to retail versus fleet. Where is Hyundai in the ranking of retail customers? Motortrend did a test of 5 cars that get 40 miles per gallon (mpg). The Hyundai Elantra [...]
GE watt station versus the Nissan Leaf The New York Times auto blog called General Electric about a story in the blog-o-sphere stating that a Nissan dealer in the Bay Area sent an email out to it's customer telling them not to purchase a GE WattStation. GE called Nissan Corporate to tell them to have [...]
Scott Makowski, Ford Motor Global I4 product manager, talked to Lou Ann Hammond, CEO, www.drivingthenation.com, about the engines in the 2013 Ford Escape. From Ford's press release: Spirited performance with outstanding fuel economy Escape offers Fords broadest nameplate range of EcoBoost® engine choices yet. Strong fuel economy comes from either the available 2.0-liter EcoBoost engine [...]
Derek Jenkins, Mazda's Design Director, talked to Lou Ann Hammond, CEO, Driving the Nation, about Aerodynamics and how much the designer works with the engineers on designing for more fuel economy. At what point in the design game does the designer talk to the engineers, and has that changed over the year?