Recent Comments:
Artega GT priced at €75k {Autoblog}
Jul 1st 2008 1:10PM No, the Artega is built by Paragon a company, that makes interior interior elements, sensors and even complete cockpits for nearly all European luxury car producers. The buttons for the power windows are a little gimmick, because it look like there would be hand-crank windows. Another gimmick is the unique rotation display and the g-force sensors.
A-Class Mercedes: Goodbye fuel cell, hello Tesla battery? {Autoblog Green}
Jun 30th 2008 3:06PM There are rumors of three cooperations for electric cars at Mercedes:
1.One is Magna-Steyer, because they designed a modular construction kit for electric cars.
2.The other one is BMW, because both companies plan to build small electric cars.
3.The third one is a cooperation whit Tesla.
P.S.:
A cool solution would be a redesigned Whitestar with a 3-cylinder-diesel-range-extender from SMART and a small Mercedes-star on the hood.
Flintstones arrested at EU protest over CO2 regulations {Autoblog Green}
May 28th 2008 7:37AM @Karl-Uwe
Again your point is typical for the German greens. Nazi Germany is a thing of the past and so is Nazi mentality. And not everything about Germany is bad. We were technology leaders in Europe for several years. Everybody remembers names like von Braun, von Ardenne, Heisenberg, Planck, Gauß, Liebig, Bosch, Porsche, Benz, Daimler,Junkers, Focke, Karmann, Otto, Diesel, Roentgen, Zuse, and Einstein for the great innovations they made. We had some golden age of technology, but our bad education system brought this to an end. Many things about the "superior German technology" statement are based on a great past without an equivalent in our modern time. That are things that do not need to be drummed in children's minds. Reading the names of physical units or terms for special technological solutions gives you a hint that there was a golden age of technology in Germany. Another reason why Germans are proud of their technology is that they can't be proud of their history for obvious reasons and because they did not have great philosophers or great cultural works like most other European countries. Nowadays our biggest problem is that we live massively better than we should in our situation: We would need to drastically lower the expensive social standards to stay competitive and to invest in modern technology and education of engineers. At the moment lobbyism and corruption are necessary evils to hold our social state.
"Why stop at one's Nazi history, when there's plenty of Nazism today?"
The German nationalist parties are a small minority. No real danger for democracy and they are just some east German unemployed lower-class idiots. 10% of the French can vote for Front-National in the presidential election and no one would brag about the nationalist idiots in France, but if there are some parliamentarians of a nationalist party without political power in an east German state parliament, everybody states that"Germany has still a lot of Nazism". Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlaams_Belang
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_National_(France)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Alternative
There are enough idiots in every European country.
Flintstones arrested at EU protest over CO2 regulations {Autoblog Green}
May 27th 2008 5:17PM Germany's automotive industry is still the biggest employer in Germany, and they have a lot of problems. With the high prices you could think the margins are very good, but they had big loses with dangerous expansions in the 90s. BMW and Mercedes still have massive debt from their takeovers of Rover and Chrysler. Volkswagen had very big reliability problems with the Mark IV Golf and all models deduced from it. They destroyed their good reputation with that cars and lost a lot of money, which they needed for projects like the Audi Duo or the 3l-car and the 1L-car. Basically cars sold with a VW badge don't make big profits in Europe. VWs biggest markets are China and Brasil. Audi and Skoda are the only cash cows in the European market. Another big problem is a massive lack of good young engineers: Germany's bad education system just doesn't produce enough good engineers nowadays.
P.S.: CO2 based taxation will be introduced in Germany in 2009. The other big point is the German petrol taxes, which are extremely high. The average price for one liter of gasoline is 1,50€/liter (8,96 $ (US) per gallon (US)). That is a very big incentive. Smaller more efficient cars sell very well at the moment.
P.P.S.:
Basically negative publicity for Germany doesn't change anything. We are always the "bad guys". I think our "Nazi -history" has made our bad reputation and we just can't change it.
The government wants to know: Why Are You or Aren't You Biking to Work? {Autoblog Green}
May 14th 2008 2:50PM I live in Herzogenrath near Aachen (Germany). That little city was awarded as Germany's most bike-friendly city. We have bike lanes on nearly every major street and a special biking road system. On the 100 days with good weather (the rest is cold and rainy) I bike to work (15 km = ca. 10 miles) and I love it. Now the only thing we would need would be weather like in Northern Italy so that I can use my bike every day. I guess global warming will have at least one positive effect :-)
Fiat considering plant in Mexico {Autoblog}
May 13th 2008 5:44PM Na. the time when FIAT built unreliable low quality cars is a little bit longer. They had the lowest reliability ratings in the 70s, the 80s and the 90s. The first really reliable new Fiats are the new Punto, Grande Punto and the Panda. That cars were very good at hard reliability tests (from various european car magazines). The 500 will have similar test values, because it is based upon the Panda.
Audi chief: Electric car in 5 - 10 years {Autoblog Green}
May 5th 2008 4:00PM Volkswagen wants to offer their first electric car in 2010 (with cheap Skoda and Seat versions of the same drivetrain). That car will be the electric Lupo (Volkswagen up concept). The only problem for Audi is that their electric car must be something alike the tesla roadster to fit to the Audi brand.
So 5 to 10 years seems very realistic.
@armmat
2.0 TDI is still more efficient than anything America has to offer.
Swedish plug-in hybrid vehicle update coming in May {Autoblog Green}
Apr 30th 2008 2:44PM The Volvo C30 Recharge Concept is very similar to the Chevy Volt. The only big difference is that the C30 uses wheel-motors for propulsion and that the range-extender is a diesel-.generator.
The launch date I heard last time was 2011.
BMW to introduce 3-series that gets under 120g/km of CO2 {Autoblog Green}
Apr 29th 2008 5:00PM Ahh, this is based on the "Autobild test".
First:
Autobild is part of the Axel-Springer-group: They produce the worst tabloid in Germany and are openly making propaganda for the German conservative party. Normally anything German with "Bild" in its name is full of lies or misinformation.
In this case the tests were heavily biased, by high-performance driving and top-speed intervals.:
For short Bild people were looking for a big headline.
http://www.repubblica.it/motori/euro/consumi2_auto_index.html
In this table which is basing on the same tests, even cars which are known for optimized fuel efficiency like the Fiat Panda or the Toyota Prius have 40% more emissions. Of course it is absolutely normal that personal driving styles can result in higher emission values than the ones measured in the EU test cycle. In this case there were some dirty tricks by BILD to get sensational numbers (top speed on the Autobahn, city driving with the Diesels, long distance with the hybrids, irregular shifting, congested cities, deactivated eco-features). Normally this numbers don't differ so extremely.
F.E. with my A6 2.0 TDI I have an average consumption which is just 5% to 10% higher than what the EU test cycle says.
Magna International reportedly developing hybrid car {Autoblog Green}
Apr 29th 2008 1:21PM Err, I mean the Magna Steyr MILA Alpin concept.
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/02/28/geneva-08-preview-magna-steyr-mila-alpin-concept/
