john mcelroy autoblog

How GM Can Repay All the Taxpayer Money General Motors can be pretty ham-handed when it tries to manipulate public opinion. The latest gaffe involves the company's newest advertising campaign, bragging to the public that it paid off its $8 billion in government loans. Listening to those ads you ...

DON'T BE DUPED BY THE EV HYPE With all the attention being lavished on electric cars, you'd think the salvation of the planet is nigh at hand. But don't be duped by all the EV hype. It's going to take decades before they catch on – if ever. I'm not anti-EV. Just the opposite. I am ...

TOYOTA'S HYBRIDS COULD BE BANNED FROM THE AMERICAN MARKET In a shocking development Toyota faces a lawsuit filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission that seeks to ban the import of all hybrids to the American market. Toyota is being sued by Paice LLC for patent infringement on its hybrid ...

2010 CHEVY CAMARO: DRIVING IMPRESSIONS I'm sure there are a lot of Autobloggers out there who know the specifications of the new Camaro far better than I do. But numbers on paper don't mean much until you experience them through the seat of your pants. So here are my driving impressions of the new ...

Why I Still Support Those Boneheads at the Big ThreeWhat a week it was. Or maybe I should say, I can't believe how weak it was.The CEOs of the Big Three and the president of the UAW showed up in Washington last Tuesday to plead their case for a bailout. But by Thursday they had managed to turn most ...

GM IS ON ITS LAST LEGS There is only one number that really matters in today's financial report from General Motors: how much cash it has in the kitty. And the answer is, not enough. GM is now burning through its cash reserves at a rate that will run short before Christmas. Every month GM spends ...

WHAT IF GM COLLAPSES? Anyone watching the auto industry these days is acutely aware that General Motors is hurtling towards disaster. It's burning through cash reserves at a rate that will put it in Chapter 11 sometime next year, no matter how much management says "that's not an option." It's ...

THE DOWN SIDE TO LITHIUM BATTERIESUh-oh. In the pell-mell race to develop lithium-ion batteries for plug-ins, EV's and hybrids, has any automaker taken a hard look at where all that lithium is going to come from? Guess what? Not only are global lithium supplies pretty tight, prices are about to ...

HOW MANY BRANDS ARE TOO MANY?With gas prices soaring and SUV sales sinking, General Motors just put its HUMMER brand under "strategic review." That's generally the term used when a company is getting ready to dump a brand. And that begs the question, how many brands does a car company really ...

THE BIG THREE COLLAPSEOoof! May sales were like a punch in the stomach, especially to the Detroit Three. It's been nearly three decades since we've seen their sales collapse so dramatically.Last month the annualized sales rate of the American market, including all automakers, fell to only 14.2 ...