1853 Chairman

GM vows production-ready hydrogen fuel cell by 2015

ironman — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:43:44 +0000

GM vows production-ready hydrogen fuel cell by 2015

08:42 AM

Before and after, the current GM Project Driveway Fuel Cell Powercube at left and the GM Next Generation Fuel Cell Powercube at right that could be production ready for 2015.

CAPTION

By GM

General Motors thinks it has cut so much weight and complexity out of its hydrogen fuel cell system that it says it could be production-ready by 2015.

Drive On got a look at the fuel cells yesterday at a presentation in Burbank, Calif. The new one, at right, is half the size, 220 pounds lighter and uses a third of the expensive platinum needed in the original, which is being real-world tested in a fleet of 119 Chevrolet Equinox SUVs. (It was an even 120, but one got totaled in an accident. No hydrogen escaped.)

Note that GM calls the latest powerplant a "production-intent hydrogen fuel cell system," meaning it conceivably could be mass produced at a feasible cost. But GM won’t commit to marketing a fuel-cell vehicle. No surprise there given how GM made hybrid concept cars a decade ago, then refused to market them as unprofitable until Toyota and Honda started conquering the market. So don’t count on finding a GM fuel-cell vehicle at your local showroom in five years. Progress hasn’t exactly stayed on schedule, either:

GM’s former engineering chief, Larry Burns, had predicted a few years ago that production-ready powerplant would be ready in 2010, so you can see how these promises go.

Still, Charlie Freese, executive director of GM’s global fuel-cell activities, pointed out to reporters that GM had plenty of opportunities to kill its hydrogen program during its bankruptcy — but didn’t.

The new powerplant is the size of a four-cylinder engine, far from the monster it replaces. GM has more miles on fuel cells at this point than any other automaker — three years in a Project Driveway fleet that has logged 1.2 million miles and gone through 16,000 refuelings.

"Our learning from Project Driveway has been tremendous and these vehicles have been very important to our program," Freese said.

GM Retiree: Someone Stole My Discount

ironman — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:39:26 +0000

GM Retiree: Someone Stole My Discount

Automaker: Further Legal Action May Be Taken

POSTED: Tuesday, March 16, 2010

UPDATED: 7:33 pm EDT March 16,2010

DETROIT — A General Motors Corp. retiree who still has the benefit of a GM vehicle discount said he’s being told to pick up the tab after being the victim of fraud.

Thomas Humphrey has worked for the auto maker for 30 years, flaunting his perfect attendance record. But Humphrey said he’s facing a lawsuit by GM if he doesn’t hand over $25,870.63 by the end of the month.

Humphrey said he recently got a letter from GM that listed seven names of his family members who had used his company discount to get vehicles. But Humphrey said none of the names listed were his family members and that he hasn’t given out his employee authorization number.

"I don’t know how they got out. When you sell cars, don’t you have to have some names, trail papers or some kind of way to see who sold the car?" Humphrey said.

The dealerships who sold the cars stated in a letter that they had "no knowledge" as to how Humphrey’s personal numbers were obtained and followed all of GM’s guidelines for verification.

GM has also sent a letter to Humphrey demanding that he verify the names or that his employee privileges would be suspended and further legal action would follow.

"How much do I owe? I think I owe nothing," Humphrey said. "Because I ain’t doing this mess I’m accused of .. I owe because someone I don’t know, never contacted, never talked to. Now, I can’t buy a vehicle because of that."

Humphrey said he’s only got one car through his employee vehicle discount program.

He said he’s filed a police report and is seeking advice from an attorney.

A representative for GM said the automaker could not comment on specific cases relating to its employee vehicle discount program.

NUMMI workers vote on severance package

ironman — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:35:31 +0000

NUMMI workers vote on severance package

Updated at 07:31 AM today

FREMONT, CA (KGO) — Union workers from Fremont’s NUMMI auto plant are voting on a severance package that would keep them on the job until the bitter end.

The severance package on the table is worth $281 million. A tentative agreement was reached Monday, but details have been minimal, pending the union’s vote.

NUMMI’s workers began voting at 5:00 Wednesday morning at the local United Auto Workers union office, right across the street from the NUMMI plant. Voting runs until 7 p.m. Wednesday night, and will also take place at the Fremont factory, which is still slated to close April 1st.

The tentative agreement affects about 4,700 UAW workers. Depending how long they’ve worked for NUMMI, Toyota is offering severance ranging from about $22,000 to $70,000.

Many workers don’t feel it’s a good deal. While the union believes members will ratify the agreement, many are upset that General Motors — which quit its partnership with Toyota last year as part of its bankruptcy– didn’t contribute any money towards the severance package.

Management at New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. is offering retention bonuses to workers who stay on the job making cars through the final day.

The United Auto Workers union also says that it got a promise that payment will be issued about a month after the plant shuts, even if NUMMI files for bankruptcy. Other details of the closure agreement, still to be confirmed include that workers will have to pay for their own healthcare and that the union promises not to picket or demonstrate against Toyota.

More will be revealed at 11 a.m. when the union makes an announcement regarding the status of its severance negotiations, if the package isn’t approved, it’s back to the negotiation table.

Honda recalls 410K vehicles over brakes

ironman — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:31:03 +0000

March 17, 2010

http://detnews.com/article/20100317/AUTO01/3170340

Honda recalls 410K vehicles over brakes

TOM KRISHER
Associated Press

Honda Motor Co. will recall more than 410,000 Odyssey minivans and Element small trucks because of braking system problems that could make it tougher to stop.

The recall includes 344,000 Odysseys and 68,000 Elements from the 2007 and 2008 models.

Honda said in a statement that over time, brake pedals can feel "soft" and must be pressed closer to the floor to stop the vehicles. Left unrepaired, the problem could cause loss of braking power and possibly a crash, Honda spokesman Chris Martin said.

"It’s definitely not operating the way it should, and it’s safety systems, so it brings it to the recall status," he said.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has reported three crashes due to the problem with minor injuries and no deaths, Martin said. Honda notified NHTSA of the recall on Monday, he said.

Honda has traced the problem to the device that powers the electronic stability control system, which selectively brakes each of the wheels to keep the vehicles upright during an emergency.

When the device, called a "vehicle stability assist modulator," tests itself when the vehicles are started, it allows a small amount of air into the hydraulic brake lines. Over time, an air bubble in the lines can cause a loss of braking power and require that the pedal be pushed farther toward the floor than normal to stop the vehicles, Martin said.

"Although not all vehicles being recalled are affected by this issue, we are recalling all possible units to assure all customers that their vehicles will perform correctly," a Honda statement said.

Dealers have temporary fix

Under the recall, which Honda said it volunteered to do, Honda said that owners should wait to get a letter from the company before scheduling a repair because the parts are not yet available. Honda said letters should go out toward the end of April.

Drivers who fear that they’ve lost braking power should have their dealer check the brakes sooner, Martin said. The dealer can "bleed" air bubbles out of the hydraulic lines, which should fix the problem until the parts arrive for the final repair, he said.

Honda technicians will put plastic caps and sealant over two small holes in the device to stop the air from getting in.

The automaker is still making a list of affected vehicles. After April 19, owners can determine if their vehicles are being recalled by going to http://www.recalls.honda.com">www.recalls.honda.com or by calling (800) 999-1009 and selecting option number four.

Honda last month recalled another 437,000 vehicles for faulty airbags in certain 2001 and 2002 models, bringing the total number of affected vehicles to nearly 1 million. The driver’s airbag inflators in these vehicles, Honda said, "may deploy with too much pressure, which can cause the inflator casing to rupture and could result in injury or fatality."

GM designs windshield to see what the eye might miss

ironman — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:25:38 +0000

GM designs windshield to see what the eye might miss

Chrissie Thompson
Automotive News | March 17, 2010 – 12:07 am EST

DETROIT — General Motors Co. is developing a windshield display system designed to outline the edges of roads in fog and highlight a deer before it crosses into traffic.

The system works by collecting information through vehicle sensors and cameras and projecting laser-generated images onto the windshield. It can also highlight road signs and tell drivers when construction is coming or when a desired exit is approaching.

GM currently has no plans to put the system in any vehicles, but some of the technologies it involves could show up in upcoming models, said Thomas Seder, group lab manager for GM R&D, in a statement.

“We have done testing on a number of drivers and their performance is better relative to head-down systems that are commonly used in vehicles today,” Seder said.

GM is working with universities including Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Southern California on the system.

GM has heads-up displays on some existing models that show vehicle speed and other information on the windshield.

GM CFO Optimistic About Automaker’s Future

ironman — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:23:14 +0000

GM CFO Optimistic About Automaker’s Future

GM, CHRIS LIDDELL, GM CFO PHIL LEBEAU, BLOG, BEHIND THE WHEEL, CNBC, CNBC.COM, AUTOS, AUTOMAKERS, OIL, GASOLINE, FUEL PRICES, OIL PRICES, ENERGY, BIG 3, BIG THREE, DETROIT, U.S. ECONOMY, GLOBAL ECONOMY, MANUFACTURING, CONSUMERS

Posted By: Phil LeBeau | CNBC Correspondent

cnbc.com

| 17 Mar 2010 | 11:42 AM ET

The challenges facing new GM CFO Chris Liddell could not be any bigger.

Two months into his job at the country’s largest auto maker he’s trying to steer a company from money-losing post bankruptcy status to profitable future as a publicly traded company.

A daunting task in any company, made even tougher by the fact GM’s largest shareholder is the U.S. Government. So why is he optimistic about GM’s future?

Liddell talked with me and a handful of auto industry reporters for roughly 45 minutes this morning. During the Q and A session it was clear he’s encouraged about GM’s improving financial state. In fact, when I first met him and asked him what’s the biggest surprise he’s experienced since joining GM, he told me, "It’s coming in here and finding out the financial operation and people running it are not as bad as they were portrayed last year."

You remember how GM was described last year by the government’s auto task force. Steve Rattner described the automaker as having "perhaps the weakest finance operation any of us had ever seen in a major company."

Liddell saw the stories, but it didn’t scare him off. He loved the challenge of turning around GM.

So how is GM doing on some key metrics?

GM has a reasonable chance of being profitable this year

A GM IPO in the second half of this year is possible, but he says it’s too early to commit to a date.

GM plans to repay the government loan as soon as possible.
CEO Ed Whitacre has said GM hopes to repay those loans by June, and while Liddell wouldn’t commit to that deadline, you get the impression he plans to send Uncle Sam it’s money by then.

Will the U.S. eventually be made whole and get back the tens of billions of dollars it put into saving GM? Liddell says it’s too early to tell. Much of that depends on how GM’s stock does when the company goes public and when the government starts to unwind its 61% ownership stake.

But from where Chris Liddell is sitting, there’s some light as the end of the tunnel for GM.

GM Temporarily Restarts Saturn, Hummer Production

ironman — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:50:42 +0000

GM Temporarily Restarts Saturn, Hummer Production

Posted Today 12:00 PM by Andrew Peterson
Category: News

Although production of both Saturns and Hummers has officially ceased, General Motors is building a few extra vehicles to help liquidate its parts supply and fill outstanding orders.

Saturn production officially stopped in October 2009, after a deal to sell the brand to Penske Automotive Group fell through. Production of the Outlook crossover, however, apparently resumed last week at the automaker’s facility in Lansing, Michigan, in an attempt to use up excess parts inventory. GM built 1037 of the crossovers last month, and a spokesperson claims production will continue for a “few weeks” until Saturn-specific parts are depleted. The plant is also home to the Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia, and Chevrolet Traverse — all of which ride on the same “Lambda” platform as the Outlook.

On a different note, GM’s assembly plant is preparing to resume building the Hummer H3 after idling production of the SUV pickup. Although it was once hoped production would commence upon selling the brand to an outside party, GM says this batch of vehicles — comprised of roughly 849 H3 and H3Ts — is to fulfill a large fleet order from a commercial client.

GM says H3 production will commence on April 12, and the order should be fulfilled by May 13 at the very latest. Following that, the plant will build only the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon compact pickups.

Source: Automotive News

Workers Crushed by Toyota

ironman — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:46:13 +0000

Workers Crushed by Toyota

By BOB HERBERT

Published: March 15, 2010

California has been very, very good to Toyota. It is one of the largest markets in the world for the popular Prius hybrid. Nearly 18 percent of all Toyotas sold in the U.S. are sold in California. The state has showered the company with benefits, including large-scale infrastructure improvements for its operations and millions of dollars for worker training. California is one of the key reasons that Toyota is the wealthiest carmaker on the planet.

Toyota is paying the state back with the foulest form of ingratitude.

The company is planning to shut down the assembly plant in Fremont, Calif., that makes Corollas and the Tacoma compact pickup. The plant closure will throw 4,700 experienced, highly skilled and dedicated employees onto the street during the worst job market since the Depression, and it will jeopardize nearly 20,000 other jobs around the state.

It is a cold and irresponsible act on Toyota’s part, a decision that was not necessary from a business standpoint and that completely disregards the wave of human misery it is setting in motion.

The New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant (generally referred to as NUMMI) began as a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors in 1984. G.M. abandoned the venture when it collapsed into bankruptcy proceedings last year. Toyota declared that the plant was no longer viable because of the absence of G.M. and announced that it would close at the end of this month.

What has not been made clear to the public is that for many years the plant has been used primarily to produce vehicles for Toyota, not General Motors. A report prepared for a state commission that has been seeking to avert the plant closure noted that “G.M. accounted for only 10 percent of the plant’s production last year and an average of 15.4 percent between 2001 and 2009.”

In fact, from Jan. 1 to Feb. 27 this year, with G.M. gone, Toyota produced 61,000 sparkling new vehicles at the plant. That was more than double the 27,000 that were produced in the same period in 2009, when G.M. was part of the operation.

The report, written by Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California, Berkeley, noted that “Toyota could easily fill its production lines at NUMMI by building a higher percentage of the Corollas it sells in the U.S.,” or by adding a new model to the plant — a hybrid, for example.

What we’re dealing with here is the kind of corporate treachery toward workers and their local communities that has ruined countless lives over the past several decades and completely undermined the long-term prospects of the economy.

The NUMMI plant is a heck of a lot more viable than the nonstop dissembling of top Toyota executives. The company could keep the plant open and profitable if it wanted to. But, instead, it has decided to shift the production of these vehicles to Japan, Canada, Mexico and Texas.

The scale of the ingratitude is breathtaking. The U.S. is the largest market for Toyota vehicles in the world, larger even than Japan. The Corolla, one of the vehicles produced at NUMMI, is the best-selling car of all time.

Beyond sales, Toyota has reaped endless benefits not just from California, but from the U.S. government and other states as well.

The federal cash-for-clunkers program, for example, was a bonanza for Toyota. As Professor Shaiken’s report put it: “The automaker ranked first in ‘Cash for Clunkers’ sales in summer 2009, a stimulus effort that allocated $3 billion in incentives to trade in older models for newer, more fuel-efficient ones. The Corolla proved the most popular model.”

Among the infrastructure investments made by California on behalf of the NUMMI plant was the dredging of the Port of Oakland 12 years ago at a cost of $410 million. That was done to accommodate the types of cargo ships required by the plant.

It will be a crushing economic blow if Toyota, as planned, high-tails it out of Fremont. Like the rest of the nation, California is struggling with the worst employment crisis since the 1930s. The NUMMI plant closure would be the single biggest layoff in the state since the start of the Great Recession in December 2007.

Those who are trumpeting the alleged fact that the recession is over should consider that the unemployment rate in California in January (the last month for which complete statistics are available) was a mind-numbing 12.5 percent. That was the fifth worst in the nation. In eight California counties, the jobless rate — not the underemployment rate, mind you, but the official jobless rate — was higher than 20 percent. Those counties are suffering through a depression.

The human toll behind such data is of no apparent interest to the fabulously wealthy Toyota operation.

UAW, NUMMI reach deal on plant closing

ironman — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:35:01 +0000

Posted: 5:28 p.m. March 15, 2010

UAW, NUMMI reach deal
on plant closing

By BRENT SNAVELY
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

The UAW and NUMMI have reached a tentative
agreement on the closing of Toyota’s and
General Motors’ former joint venture in Fremont, C
alif.

The agreement covers approximately 4,500 UAW
members represented by UAW Local 2244 at New
United Motor Manufacturing Inc., or NUMMI.

Toyota said earlier this month it would offer
$250 million to pay bonuses to hourly and
salaried workers at the plant, which makes the
Toyota Corolla sedan and Toyota Tacoma
pickup.

However, the company and union need to resolve
a $131 million shortfall in the company’s hourly
pension.

The UAW said it won’t discuss details about the
agreement until members at UAW Local 2244
have an opportunity to vote.

Toyota and GM formed NUMMI in 1983 at an
existing GM assembly plant.

GM withdrew from the joint venture last summer

after emerging from its taxpayer-financed
bankruptcy. Without producing the Pontiac
Vibes NUMMI sold to GM, Toyota decided to
close the plant.

Toyota plans to close NUMMI on April 1.

Southfield firm hires former GM chief

ironman — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:18:09 +0000

March 16, 2010

http://detnews.com/article/20100316/AUTO01/3160337

Southfield firm hires former GM chief

ROBERT SNELL
The Detroit News

Former General Motors Co. Chief Executive Fritz Henderson will work as a consultant for the company hired to dispose of the unwanted assets the automaker left in bankruptcy. It is Henderson’s second notable consulting job since he was ousted by Chairman and now-CEO Edward Whitacre Jr. on Dec. 1. The hire, disclosed in legal filing Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, comes one month after GM hired Henderson as a $60,000-a-month consultant, specializing in international operations.

The legal papers did not indicate how long Henderson will work as a consultant to Southfield-based restructuring firm AlixPartners LLP, or his compensation. But he will not consult on any matters involving the old GM, known as Motors Liquidation Co.

"From time to time, AlixPartners contracts with experienced specialists to complement our existing team and to help us grow, and that’s our purpose in signing on Fritz Henderson as an independent contractor working on a part-time basis," AlixPartners said in a statement.

"Mr. Henderson is a broad-based strategic thinker with contacts all around the world, including in parts of the world where we hope to grow even faster."

Henderson, whose consultant contract started March 1, will work as an independent contractor, according to the legal filing.

AlixPartners Vice Chairman Al Koch, is chief executive and president of Motors Liquidation. He disclosed Henderson’s hiring in a document filed in the bankruptcy estate case.

Subsidiary firm AP Services LLC has reaped millions handling GM’s bankruptcy estate. The firm billed GM and its bankruptcy estate more than $23 million in the 90 days leading up to and following the June 1 bankruptcy filing. Since then, AP Services has billed an additional $12.7 million.