Category: Industry News

Japanese IHI has announced that it has developed the world’s smallest turbocharger for use in cars.

The turbocharger is about 20% smaller than existing units. Smaller turbochargers have the advantage of eliminating the famous ‘turbo lag’ which is the delay between pushing on the accelerator pedal and feeling the turbo kick-in.

The turbocharger will be featured in future Daihatsu Kei car whose engine displacement is limited by law to 660cm3.

In Europe IHI provides turbochargers to BMW and Mercedes.

As reported in a previous post, Pininfarina will unveil a concept car called Sintesi Concept at the Geneva Motor Show in March. Until now, details remained scarce but information is emerging as we’re getting closer to the show.

The Sintesi Concept will take its inspiration from the Birdcage 75th and the Nido as Pininfarina wants the concept to be a perfect combination of sportiness and functionality. The Nido was a city car while the Birdcage remains one of the greatest Pininfarina ever.

“Three years ago we unveiled Birdcage 75th, our last prototype. Together with our new concept Sintesi we would like to anticipate new car design trends” says Andrea Pininfarina, Chairman and CEO Pininfarina S.p.A.

“This concept car is the synthesis of our values, of the love for our work and our passion for innovation, of beauty driven by functionality, of sportiness and elegance. However, Sintesi isn’t only the expression of Pininfarina design; it also embraces innovative technologies that allow us to explore new typologies of mobility, active safety and packaging solutions” states Lowie Vermeersch.

The concept car will feature fuel cell and batteries which will be placed in an innovative way, around the vehicle instead of being grouped under the boot

Tesla delivered its first production car on Friday to the company’s chairman, Elon Musk.

Despite the encountered difficulties, the start up finally succeeded in reaching the production stage which remains a bit complicated. The car was flown from England where the car is built at the Lotus manufacturing plant in Hethel while the batteries were imported from Tesla’s plant located in Thailand. Both parts were assembled at the company’s headquarters before being delivered to Elon Musk.

Tesla chairman called the moment “the beginning of the beginning”. In the meantime, he confirmed the first deliveries will start in mid-March. The first cars will be delivered with a temporary transmission before getting letter the final version of the single-speed transmission.

The second car will be delivered to Martin Eberhard who left the company at the end of November.

The registration of passenger cars in January decreased by 12.7% over the same period last year, reaching a volume of 101,630 vehicles. This decrease has two basic reasons.

The first is “cyclical” generated by the advancement of operations for the purchase of vehicles from the highest segments, which occurred in December, as a result of changing tax levied from January 1 this year with a tax rate exceeding vehicles emitting more CO2.

The second cause is more “structural” and responds to a decline in private consumption and the overall performance of the economy.

The evolution of demand from individuals and companies in January showed a decrease of 16.2% while buying rental market increased by 39.6% over the same period.

Dacia deputy chairman, Constantin Stroe, is fighting the Romanian government and the EU over the method used to calculate first registration tax. As a result of the future car tax, he is expecting the growth of the Romanian market to slow in 2008 and therefore foresees personnel cuts at Dacia.

The Romanian government is currently handling talks with the European Union over the calculation method used for first registration tax. The tax was introduced as a means for the government to stop the inflow of used cars onto the Romanian market expected when the country joined the European Union last year. However, the EU pointed out that the tax is discriminatory and decided to start procedures regarding the infringement of the European Union Treaty.

The Romanian government made some modifications to the calculation method in April 2007. According to these modifications the amount of the tax will fall with the growth of the age of the car, but European Union experts still considered the tax to be discriminatory, especially in regard to the taxation of imported and domestic second-hand cars. Last November, the European Union launched the second stage of the infringement procedure and Romania now has two months to comply with EU requirements.

The current tax is applied the first time a car – either new or used – is registered in Romania. The amount levied is calculated based on the car’s age, engine capacity and emission output. Older, more polluting cars pay more. In the final variant due to be established at the end of January, the registration tax will be reduced by half for non-Euro vehicles over 20 years old, with a capacity of 1,600ccm, while for a car of 3001ccm, 15-16 years old, the tax will be reduced over three times. The tax remains unchanged for new Euro 4 compliant vehicles with a capacity of between 1,400 and 3,000ccm.

Dacia is likely to be damaged by the revamped tax as it holds a market share of around 30% on the Romanian market. According to Dacia vice president Constantin Stroe, the tripling of the tax imposed on new cars and the decrease by up to ten times on taxes on non-Euro compliant cars may leave the doors of the Romanian market wide open to all the non-functional cars in Europe. He said in an interview for BBC that the number of old cars arriving in Romania after the new tax comes into force may reach 500,000 units, compared to 125,000 in 2007.

This year, Automobile Dacia will hire 3,000 people at its assembly plant and 600 university graduates in its administrative departments in order to hit its production target of 400,000 cars in 2009. Should the tax be adopted and Dacia sales go down, the number of new employees will shrink in the following years.