Category: Industry News

Tesla chairman Elon Musk, who has just been delivered the first car, said in an interview with the Financial Times that the start up plans to raise £125 million to build the upcoming WhiteStar electric saloon model.

With the Whitestar, Tesla wants to go maintsream and is the company’s serious attempt to take on established rivals such as BMW 3-Series or Mercedes C-Class models. The saloon is expected to be sold at a price tag of £25,000, about half the price of the roadster.

With such an attractive price, the company expects to sell 20,000 unites per year. wants to build a factory in the US to produce the saloon and is applying for a loan guarantee from the US Department of Energy for debt finance. The roadster is currently being built by Lotus in the UK. The most likely location for the future facility would be either New Mexico or California.

Tesla Motors was launched in 2003 and has raised £72 million in venture capital financing, including a £20 million round completed last week. It has taken deposits from more than 900 customers for its roadster and plans to sell 1,000 to 2,000 next year.

The German parts supplier will unveil a concept car at the Geneva Motor Show called Light Concept.

Like Faurecia and its concept car, the Light Concept will aim at showcasing the expertise of the company’s technologies. The concept car will show the new “Webasto LigHT Concept”, a roof concept featuring a hybrid top with a new material mix and he Liquid Heat Generator (LHG), a newly developed auxiliary heating system which generates heat, which occurs through turbulence in the engine coolant, and is regulated by an intelligent hydraulic performance control.

Webasto has previously displayed concept cars such as the Welcome2 Concept unveiled in 2003. It was based on the Mercedes CL500.

Pagani has announced it won’t launch the Zonda R at Geneva as it’s still waiting to sell the 10 planned cars.

Only 10 of these supercars will be made but still the Italian carmaker encounters difficulties to get people to sign the check. Pagani needs to sell all the cars to cover the cost of the project. When done, it will be able to officially launch the Zonda R.

The Zonda R is a sportier version of the normal Zonda whose power has been boosted to 750bhp. If you want one, it will cost you £890,000.

The troubled Italian coachbuilder hasn’t confirmed wether he would attend the Geneva Motor Show or not. However if it does come, it will bring a concept car rumoured to be called BAT 11.

This concept car would be the fourth BAT concept car after the company unveiled the BAT 5 in 1953, the BAT 7 in 1954 and the BAT 9 in 1955. Initially, Bertone’s intention was to design a car with the lowest Cx possible. Indeed, BAT means Berlinetta Aerodinamica Tecnica. The BAT 7 had an astonishing 0.19 figure.

The first sketch of the concept car shows a car with flat curves close the BAT 5’s. One crosses ones fingers.

A study conducted by Edmunds shows that demand for V8 engines has fallen in almost every segment. Only the pickup segment escaped the trend.

Overall demand for V8s has dropped from 19 percent in 2006 to just 15 percent this year. SUVs recorded, of course, the biggest decline. Two years ago, 24% of buyers opted for a V8, but at the end of 2007, that number fell to just 18%. In the meantime, the V8 saloon market has also seen a shift in demand, with V8 take rates dropping from 36% to 29%.

Even iconic engines are not immune. The Chrysler’s Hemi V8 was chosen by 60 percent of Charger’s buyers two years ago while only 38 percent of them chose the V8 option today.

On the other hand, V8 demand grew in the pickup segment. Indeed, high gas prices have discouraged casual owners but not the core users who still need a powerful pickup for work.

Morgan will unveil the LifeCar at the Geneva Motor Show. The prototype is a fuel cell hybrid sports car based on the company’s Aero 8 roadster.

The LifeCar’s purpose is to demonstrate that a zero emission vehicle can also be fun to drive and to lower the entry barriers for a vehicle powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.

The LifeCar project costed £1.5 million and Morgan collaborated with Oxford University and Cranfield University.

Canadian Auto Workers president Buzz Hargrove is the kind of guy you’re not sure you want to to have as a friend as you get the feeling he would blame you for all the problems occurring in his life.. Indeed He wants the Canadian prime minister to make a public statement saying Canada will no longer allow car imports from Japan and South Korea unless they open their markets to North American vehicles. Why don’t American car maker make proper car for a try that people want to buy for once?

“I’m very fearful. Every month when I look at the numbers, the market share losses just keep growing. [For] Ford and GM I think there’s only one scenario if you don’t stem the market share losses,” he said, following a meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa. He blamed the number of imports from Asia and Europe that far exceed the number of vehicles shipped there from Canada.

The reality is that the cars the Canadian factories build are not designed for European and Asian roads. Too large and too thirsty, the American cars also suffer from a poor build quality, a poor reliability and a poor ride, except for a few models which meet a certain success on our shores.

The Canadian Auto Workers also wants the Prime Minister to help persuade the United States to take the same action in a new North American auto pact. Sometimes, utopia is a nice refuge.

George Magliano, Insight’s North American automotive research director, said at the NADA that emerging markets such as India and China will count for half of all car sales by 2012.

At this moment, Western Europe and the US account for 75 per cent of all global car sales but with the recession in the US and slowly growing market in Western Europe, the fast growth recorded by emerging markets will change how the pie of car sales is shared in the world.

China, India, but also Brazil, Russia and Eastern Europe will be the winner. According to Insight’s forcasting, car makers will build 82 million vehicles in 2012.

Source: Just Auto (registration required)