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Modern Car Thieves Outsmart The Law By Cloning



When it comes to car theft, the good news is that law enforcement has become so good that theft rates have dropped for a decade. The bad news is that this is forcing car thieves to become far more clever and daring than they ever were in the past.

Not long ago, chop shops were the favorite fence for car thieves. They'd drop off a stolen vehicle where it would get "chopped" into its most lucrative parts and sold off for big profits. But today, chop shops are practically passé. Now car thieves find it faster, safer and more profitable to "clone" a car.

Cloning is not a new practice, but it's becoming more and more popular. It involves stealing a car, then creating a new title and VIN for it, but doing it in a way that makes it very difficult for law enforcement to track. And car thieves are adopting depressingly creative ways to clone cars.

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The Ford Motor Company is finally marshaling the resources and money to transform Lincoln into a true luxury brand again. While the company is guarded in discussing the full details of its plan, it's divulging enough for now to let the world know that this is going to be a serious effort. And the early signs are encouraging.

The linchpin to this turnaround will be daring new products and significantly upgraded dealerships. And the key to accomplishing that is a new organizational structure for Lincoln. Up through the 1950s, Lincoln was a stand-alone "house" with its own headquarters, designers, engineers and assembly. The new organization will not recreate that original "house" concept, but it's a big step in the right direction.

Lincoln says it will not abandon its traditional customers, but it must attract a new generation of buyers, people with a different psychographic mindset than those who have been buying Town Cars for the last quarter century. Yet, while it may not abandon those buyers, saying they'll suffer from benign neglect may not be too far off the mark.

Of course, other luxury brands are not sitting still, and new entrants like the Hyundai Equus are getting into the game. Everyday that goes by only makes Lincoln's comeback all the more difficult. Even so, the Ford Motor Company has formidable resources and here's how it plans to put them to work.

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All the top executives in the auto industry tell me that oil supplies will only get tighter this decade. They predict that fuel prices will do nothing but go up. And they say customers will be clamoring for small, fuel-efficient cars. Or electric ones. But what if it turns out they're wrong?

After all, over the last century the price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States, on an inflation-adjusted basis, has always come down. Always. Data from the Energy Information Administration shows that since 1919 the price of gasoline has spiked during war time or global turmoil, but it has always come down after that. This is a key reason why Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations have not worked. As the relative price of gasoline drops over time, people are not motivated to buy small, fuel efficient cars.

A decade ago, the Peak Oil theory attracted a lot of adherents. It postulated that global oil production would peak in 2006, and that the following shortage would send oil prices skyrocketing. Sure enough, in 2008 a barrel of oil shot to $150. It looked like the Peak Oil theory was coming true. But less than 12 months later it dropped to under $40 a barrel. And though the price is now closer to $100 you don't hear as much talk about Peak Oil anymore. Here's why.

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A Quick Spin In A Chinese EV Raises Eyebrows And Expectations



Whether flashing down the highway or wending my way through Taipei's notoriously chaotic rush-hour traffic, I was duly impressed by Luxgen's battery-electric MPV. Quick, luxurious, and bristling with electronic technology, I was astonished at how well this car has been developed.

Acceleration from this seven-passenger minivan can only be described as brisk. Though I wasn't able to do any kind of timed runs, my seat-of-the-pants reaction is that it sure feels faster than a Chevy Volt or Nissan Leaf. And with its aggressive re-gen, I was pretty much able to drive in stop and go traffic without using the brakes. That sure makes traffic jams a whole lot easier to take.

The only thing that detracted from my test drive was an annoying whine in the drivetrain, which my Luxgen hosts said was due to an issue that they're working on with the transmission. They assured me that noise would be gone before the vehicle goes on sale. I have no reason to doubt them.

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Ever since automobiles first appeared over 100 years ago, every automaker has tried to make them go faster. And they succeeded. Nearly every year, cars became more powerful with higher top-end speeds. But then, in the mid-1950s, we hit a plateau. The national speed limit was set at 70 miles per hour, and we've been stuck at that rate ever since. As a result, the automobile has made absolutely no progress as a transportation device in over half a century.

Actually, in 1974, it got worse. The national speed limit was lowered to 55 mph, ostensibly to save fuel and lives (it did neither). Such an agonizingly slow rate of travel proved too much to take for most Americans. We demanded that the limit be raised, and we got it back to 70 mph. Now it's time to demand another raise.

I'm not talking about some sort of modest increase to, say, 85 mph. We need to put a comprehensive plan in place to gradually move the limit up, over the next couple of decades, to 150 miles an hour. And we need to do that with no sacrifice in fuel economy or safety.

Continue reading Opinion: Time to raise the speed limit, how does 150 MPH sound?...

[Image: Getty]

It took ten months. It involved the best brains in the nation. They conducted exhaustive tests. And Lord knows what it all cost. But when it was over, the results were totally predictable. The U.S. Department of Transportation could find nothing wrong with Toyota vehicles that would cause them to suddenly accelerate out of control.

The results were predictable because the country went through the same thing nearly a quarter of a century ago. Only then, it involved Audi. And in both of these cases, each car company was accused of having some sort of mysterious gremlin that would cause its cars to suddenly accelerate out of control.

But there is a significant difference between both investigations. Back then the Department of Transportation blamed it on driver error. Officially, they called it "pedal misapplication." But this time around, the Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, wouldn't do that. He said it was caused by mechanical problems, i.e., sticky pedals and piled up floormats.

Too bad the Secretary didn't have the courage to call it like it is. By failing to identify the root cause of the problem, more people are going to lose their lives.

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[Image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty]

Making Stronger Steel As Light As Aluminum




The world's largest steel maker, ArcelorMital, says it has come up with a new kind of steel that the world has never seen before. Thanks to nanotechnology, the company says automakers can now match the weight of aluminum cars, but do it in steel at far lower cost.

Specifically, ArcelorMital says it can take 188 pounds out of the body-in-white of a car. The body-in-white, or BIW, refers to the basic structure of a car, including the doors, hood and deck lid. That's a big number. By taking so much weight out of the structure, other components such as the powertrain, drivetrain, brakes, etc. can be downsized as well. In other words, the total weight savings could be even bigger.

ArcelorMital is already showing this new kind of steel to automakers. It isn't yet ready to publicly divulge any of the technical aspects of the steel or how it's using nanotechnology to make it. The company says we're still two to three years away before we get those kinds of details. And that's about the time we'll see this steel show up in production. No word yet on which car company may be the first to use it, but the rumor on the street is that Ford is all over this technology.

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Can His Arsenal Survive New Management?



When Bob Lutz ran General Motors' product development efforts, he did something that no other car company has done in the history of making cars. He hired four automotive journalists to assess all of GM's new vehicles before they were OK'd for production. And their word was law. Everything had to be developed to their satisfaction.

That didn't go down well with GM's traditional engineering staff, at least not at first. They didn't like the fact that four outsiders, four media critics with no product development experience, could force them to make changes on a new-car program. But because the journos reported to Lutz, they had all the protection they needed.

Lutz hired them as full-time employees because he wanted an independent, third party voice to evaluate GM's cars as they went through their development stages. "These are four guys who made a living out of critiquing cars," Lutz says, "and they made a pretty good living at it." Since the four didn't hold any allegiance to the design, engineering or manufacturing staffs at GM, they could feel free to critique any car just as they would when they were full-time journalists.

Lutz tells me they were his secret weapons. He credits them with the reason why GM's cars are now tuned to world-class standards. These guys didn't design, engineer or develop any vehicles. That was done by GM's long-standing employees. But the journos brought an enthusiast magazine mind-set to the evaluation process to make sure there would be very little for the press to pick apart.

I've known about Lutz's secret weapons for several years. But he personally asked me not to write anything about them. That's how much of a competitive advantage he felt they brought to GM. He didn't want to see any other car company copying this approach. Since these guys are friends and colleagues whom I've known for years, I also didn't want to jeopardize their jobs. So I didn't write about them. Until now. And now I think it's important that I do.

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Test driving an electric car at an automaker's media event is one thing. Taking one home and living with it is a completely different experience. Nissan just loaned me a Leaf for several days and I came away with a new appreciation for the potential pitfalls and rewards of owning an EV.

First off, I really liked the Leaf. It's a nice, comfortable car with more than adequate power, it's unbelievably quiet and offers a decent driving range. In fact, it's been a long time since I was this excited to bring a test car home. But it wasn't always a shiny, smiley, happy experience.

Let me state unequivocally: if you can only recharge from a 110-volt outlet, the Leaf is not for you. Not if you have a hefty commute and only own one car, that is.

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Signs To Watch For As The Cycle Repeats



Detroit's automakers are starting to beat their chests in exultation, and who can blame them? The last 16 months have been nothing short of a miracle. Who would have believed they could recover so quickly?

Dial back the clock to last summer, June of 2009. Chrysler had just clawed its way out of bankruptcy, GM was still bankrupt. And Ford just barely avoided filing, saved only by borrowing heavily before the credit market collapsed.

If someone had come up to you then and said that in less than a year Ford would be earning over $7 billion and that it would surpass Toyota and Honda in quality, you would have said it was not going to happen.

If they had told you that General Motors would be earning over $6 billion in profits, you would have called them crazy.

If they had told you Chrysler would report an operating profit and come within a whisker of catching Honda in market share, you would have said they're mad.

And if they had told you that Toyota would be battered by criticism for all its defects and quality problems, you would have said that's impossible.

But here we are a year and a half later and the American auto industry has been completely transformed. The Big Three are more competitive than they've been in nearly four decades. Even more amazing, the good times are just getting going. The next five years could be phenomenal.

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Autoline on Autoblog with John McElroy

Nestled on the fringe of Stanford University's campus in Palo Alto, California is one of the coolest toy stores in the automotive industry. Officially it's called Volkswagen's Electronics Research Lab, and inside they're working on some of the most innovative technology that we'll soon see in cars.

Volkswagen is using the ERL to develop electric cars, autonomous cars, online navigation, new human-machine interfaces and other electronics related technology. The reason the lab is in Silicon Valley is that VW wanted to tap into the "let's-just-get-it-done" entrepreneurial spirit for which the region is famous. And it's attracted some pretty interesting talent to work there.

For example, Martin Eberhard, the guy who created Tesla and who later had a major fallout with Elon Musk (who now owns Tesla), is now working on electric cars for VW. And yes, he's still working with laptop-type batteries, which are officially known as the 18650. Eberhard claims he's going to be able to come out with an electric version of the Golf with a 200-mile driving range, and an Audi e-tron with a 300-mile range.

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John McElroy is host of the TV program "Autoline Detroit" and daily web video "Autoline Daily". Every week he brings his unique insights as a Detroit insider to Autoblog readers.

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Fiat Eschews EV's, Chooses CNG

While every other major automaker in the world is pouring billions of dollars into research for electric vehicles, Fiat doesn't seem to be all that interested in electric cars. Instead, it's putting its efforts into producing cars that can run on compressed natural gas. Even more importantly, it's offering what it calls bi-fuel cars, which can run on both gasoline and CNG.

In fact, the Italian automaker is more bullish on bi-fuel cars than it is on diesels. It prides itself on having the lowest average CO2 emissions of any major automaker in Europe. Low emission ratings are a big deal to European car buyers. And Fiat believes it can continue to maintain its lead with engines that can run on both gasoline and CNG.

Most of Fiat's sales come from the low-end of the market, tiny A- and B-class cars that don't cost a lot of money. The people who buy these cars typically can't even afford to pay the premium to get a diesel engine. And forget about hybrids or electric cars, they're simply further out of their price range.

Now Fiat thinks it has another idea that could push it far ahead of everyone else when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions. It wants to combine hydrogen gas with compressed natural gas and offer the cleanest burning engines in the industry.

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John McElroy is host of the TV program "Autoline Detroit" and daily web video "Autoline Daily". Every week he brings his unique insights as a Detroit insider to Autoblog readers.

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GOVERNMENT WANTS 60-MPG CAFE

Last year, when the federal government set Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards at roughly 35 miles per gallon by 2015, automakers squirmed uncomfortably. Though that should be an achievable target, it won't be easy. It means Americans will have to buy several million more small cars a year, they'll have to buy fewer trucks and SUVs, and they'll have to pay thousands of dollars more for the technology needed to meet those standards.

But now it sure looks like the government is getting ready to set a new fuel economy standard of 60 mpg by 2025. According to Ward's, both the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will release the new standard next month. Is it at all realistic to think that we can double the fuel economy standard in a decade?

Remember, that 60 mpg target is a fleet average. That means all of the cars and trucks and SUVs and crossovers and vans that an automaker sells will need their fuel economy to average out at 60 mpg. That's not going to be easy. It's not just a matter of building the right kinds of cars, it's about getting people to buy them.

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John McElroy is host of the TV program "Autoline Detroit" and daily web video "Autoline Daily". Every week he brings his unique insights as a Detroit insider to Autoblog readers.

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Car Prices Will Climb For Years

Have you've been watching car prices lately? They seem to go up every month. Forget everything you've been reading about sales incentives, bargain leases or low-cost financing. They just mask the fact that automakers are quietly bumping up MSRP's every chance they get.

In other words, they quietly raise the price of a car and then loudly announce the deals they're offering. Sure, you get a discount. But that discount comes off an ever-higher price.

I've said it before and I'll say again. By 2015, the average new car in the American market is going to cost about $35,000. I'm not talking about the MSRP, which is already at an average of $33,000. I'm talking about the transaction price, what people actually pay for a car.

There are a variety of reasons why this is happening. But it basically comes down to this: even though car sales are very weak, we're actually in a seller's market. The planets are in alignment for automakers to raise their prices, especially for General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. And it's only going to get worse.

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John McElroy is host of the TV program "Autoline Detroit" and daily web video "Autoline Daily". Every week he brings his unique insights as a Detroit insider to Autoblog readers.

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