Sixty To Zero - An Inside Look at the Collapse of General Motors...

I just finished reading "Sixty to Zero", an engaging and insightful read by Alex Taylor III on the collapse of General Motors.

He succinctly articulates what I've always thought. The reasons why Detroit has produced so many duds is because the companies have mistakenly tried to satisfy right brain desires of the market using left brain answers, filtered through a host of other management issues on top of that.

...Band-Aid solutions like needs segmentation provided only mechanistic solutions to emotional problems: creating cars that people wanted to buy.

They had not figured out how to offer usable fantasy as well as their competition.

Think for a moment about the world of fashion. Imagine a company that makes pants, and they make them from burlap sacks and use rope for a belt. They do this because it's cheap and the pants work. But would you ever buy them?

Pretty much the same thing happened with cars in Detroit. The people who ran things didn't "get it". These days they're turning out better cars than ever but it remains to be seen if the Detroit 3 can really turn things around.

F1 Budget Cap: Impossible to Enforce

This exactly why I've always thought that the budget cap was flawed and unenforceable. Capping budgets is a good intent but there is no way to go about it convincingly with the way F1 is currently structured. The teams that have the money to spend will spend it, and there will never be a realistic and reasonable way of policing that. It's going to take a lot more than a gentleman's agreement and some accountants to ensure that a cap is adhered to.

And even if (IF) this system worked how can this be explained to the fans succinctly, and why should they care? It has little to do with racing other than holding out the potential to mar the credibility of a championship as we're seeing with the rumors that are going around about the Red Bull team's spending in 2010.

Furthermore, suppose the team was found to have exceeded the cap. Then what? Strip them and their driver of the titles? That would be a PR disaster. The problem with racing rulemakers is too often they come up with rules that are not practical to enforce. Sure, it would be great if no team spent more than the cap. But proving or disproving that is so far removed from the realm of what the fans care about that it's academic.

I've said it time and again: Racing results should be decided definitively at the moment the checkered flag is waved. There should never be any doubt of the race result right then. And should there be an exception (scrutineering, driver penalties, etc) it should be decided quickly after the event. It should never drag on into another day.

Saab Turnaround

Following its acquisition from General Motors by Spyker, Saab has been on the move with a number of notable projects:

• Introduction of the new 9-5 for 2011.  Much of the development was done by GM prior to the transition.  The results look promising.
• Saab recently signed Jason Castriota, formerly of Bertone and Pininfarina, as design director.  Some of his works include the Ferrari 4/5 one-off and the Maserati GranTurismo.
• Beginning in 2012 BMW will be supplying turbocharged 1.6 liter 4 cylinder engines.
• The 9-3 will be updated for 2012, presumably with the BMW engine as one of the engine choices.
• There is a smaller 9-2 model now under development. 
• And Saab also began researching a fully electric 9-3 project with a Swedish coalition, with batteries coming from Boston-Power.  The EV is expected to reach the market mid-decade (2016).

With all of these changes, it looks like the venerable brand may have a future yet.

Unintended Acceleration, Unintended Consequences

Automotive News reports that in response to the recent issues surrounding unintended acceleration, Federal Regulators are expected to undertake a rulemaking to require brake override and event data recorders (EDR) on passenger vehicles.

The changes for brake override, where engine power is reduced when the brakes and throttle are pressed simultaneously, have mostly to do with software and should be fairly straightforward to implement.

However, one unintended consequence could be that it will no longer be possible to heel-and-toe a car equipped with a manual transmission.  That's a technique used during performance driving, where the driver "blips" the throttle while shifting and braking to keep the engine at a higher RPM for more and faster power delivery once the next gear is selected.

Event Data Recorders (EDR), also known as "black boxes" will be a bit more involving.  The costs will vary greatly with the rule's requirements.  I worked on this issue for 6 years for heavy trucks and there are a lot of things to consider.  They've also been required to record data a certain way on passenger cars IF those cars were equipped with such a device.  Typically, manufacturers install them to trigger and record data to protect themselves from liability.

NHTSA's cost estimate for these devices in the 2004 rulemaking was laughable, the low end starting about $0.50 to install them on each new car.  Let's hope whatever comes out is reasonable and effective.

A Few Fuel Economy Details

Picked up some interesting tidbits in an SAE article on fuel economy. Fuel consumption, measured in grams per second, is about 0.2 for your typical idling car. That can jump to 2 or 3 g/s under light acceleration, a factor of 10 to 15 times as much. And the average driver launches at about 0.2 g.
Further, the engineers interviewed said that lowest speed in the tallest gear is the most efficient point for each vehicle's fuel consumption.

Cold weather also increases engine friction with the article estimating it is twice as much at 0 degrees C than it is in warm conditions.

Hybrid vehicle fuel economy is more sensitive to driver aggressiveness. For example, during hard braking energy that could be recaptured is wasted if the vehicle's regular friction brakes have to supplement the regenerative brakes.

A few more pieces of info: The average car loses about 4% fuel economy for basic electronics (engine control, brake lights, etc), while it can lose up to 15% when including the use of heated seats, audio, defrost and so on.  Neat stuff.

DOE Calls BS On V-Vehicles?

The V-Vehicle Company won't be getting government guarantees for low-interest loans to build cars in Louisiana after all.

Why is this company so secretive? My guess it's because there is little substance behind the smoke and mirrors. We've all seen this movie over and over (and over) again with all the hype over so-called green cars.

The idea of building cars that have less of an environmental impact is sound and SHOULD be something the industry focuses on. The problem is that any time you have a paradigm shift that involves large sums of money you get a lot of charlatans, prima donnas and the like.

They promise the moon and the stars and deliver nothing of the sort. In fact, they generally poison the well which has a tendency to ruin it for everyone else.

Anyway, I think the Department of Energy made a good call on this one, cutting losses at $6m rather than potentially blowing $320m+.

The classic list of lines include:

1. The check is in the mail.

2. I'll still respect you in the morning.

3. [Too crude for this blog]

To which we can add:

4. I'll build "x" cars per year which get "y" mpg and will create "z" jobs.

With x, y and z being grossly inflated (and conveniently round) figures of questionable basis.

The Next Big Thing Is About 1.4 Liters

Future engines are getting downsized for cost and environmental reasons. But due to increasing efficiency, there shouldn’t be much if any reduction in performance. Why do with 5 what you can do with 3? Classic engineering progress.

According to this month’s AEI (Automotive Engineering International), Nissan, Chrysler, VW, GM and a number of other automakers will be releasing engines in the 1.4 liter range. These will supplant current engines in the 2.4 liter range, and will feature a variety of efficiency enhancing features such as Direct Injection and turbocharging.

Coupled with more efficient CVT or dual clutch transmissions, or with just more speeds these powertrains will find their way into vehicles expected to return over 40 mpg, in an effort to raise each manufacturer’s fleet average fuel economy above the nominal 2016 CAFE target of 35.5 mpg.

Toyota Problems Compounded By Politics

Let me be perfectly clear. Toyota’s product issues with unintended acceleration are serious safety issues and I’m not downplaying their significance.

However, it is obvious that there is a political undercurrent to the whole debacle that is being amplified by the media that is clouding the true extent of the problems and resulting in even more irrational behavior than normal (panic).

People are losing thousands of dollars trading in their Toyotas. It reminds me of the results of the spike in fuels in 2008, which drove prices of fuel efficient small cars up (e.g. $8k for a mid-90’s Geo Metro).

Here are a few key points to think about.

• Toyota overtook GM in 2008 to become the sales leader in the US market.
• Toyota does not have a union workforce in its North American plants.
• GM is mostly unionized.
• The Democratic party has the support of the UAW (United Auto Workers).
• The US Federal government is now the largest shareholder of General Motors (the UAW also holds a significant stake).
• The US government is controlled by a Democratic administration.

I’m not going to mince words. Every major automaker has recalls, some more serious than others. But the propaganda machine has blown Toyota’s issues all out of proportion.

A Pedestrian Is Struck - How Did this Happen?

Yesterday morning I had tea with a lady whom I had stopped to help about 6 weeks ago after she was struck by a car while walking across a busy highway. It was remarkable in that she was not seriously injured.

I had been riding my bike to work one drizzly morning when out of the corner of my eye I saw an umbrella on the ground and heard crying. There was a commotion. I stopped. put my bike down and ran over to the scene. People were standing about, a few on the phone to 9-1-1.

A lady was laying on her stomach in the crosswalk in the middle of 3 lanes of traffic, sobbing. I did hear her telling someone her neighbor's address, presumably an emergency contact. Others were tending to her so I helped direct traffic before the police arrived. Route 50 is a major artery in Northern Virginia, and traffic backed up instantly. I could see it was easily half a mile.

Police were very quick, arriving in a matter of about 2-3 minutes after the phone call. Fire and rescue were just another minute or two. Since I did not witness the actual incident, I did not need to stay and give a report.

About a week later I stopped by the lady's neighbor's house to inquire about her condition. I found she had, almost miraculously, been discharged from the hospital the day of the accident, and did not have any broken bones.

Thinking back about the incident, what happened was that she was struck by a left-turning car while crossing the street (see diagram). Since the car had been stopped, it was a low speed incident.

I started wondering about pedestrian airbags. Will they work? I don't know. Perhaps not in this instance, where the pedestrian ends up on the ground in front of the vehicle and not on the hood.

But the actual cause of the accident itself, I think, is because of a number of factors. First, the intersection is a bit tricky. It's a four way with access roads that run parallel to Route 50. On top of that, there are no turn arrows on the cross street, and it's questionable if the "walk" sign was working correctly.

Lastly, I have a theory that newer vehicles have poorer turning visibility due to much thicker A-pillars - a necessity for passing today's roof-crush standards, and to store airbags on some vehicles (the one that struck her was a new crossover SUV). Combine that with the possibility of distracted driving and you have all the ingredients for an accident.

Is it any wonder that we have about 40,000 fatalities and millions of highway injuries each year?

How Dangerous Is Texting While Driving?

Back in October the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) released a study in which 200 commercial motor vehicle (CMV) drivers, aka truck drivers, covered 3 million miles, and found that drivers are 23.2 times as likely to be involved in a "safety critical" event while texting than if not.

The report found that texting drivers took their eyes off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds before such an event took place, and thus traveled the length of a football field, including the endzones, without looking at the road (at 55 mph that's 371 feet).

While we all know texting while driving is obviously a hazard, this puts some concrete numbers to just exactly how bad it is.

Here's the link from FMCSA (PDF).