Automotive News - June 30, 2008 - (Page 42)

42 • JUNE 30, 2008 final assembly comment JUNE SALES >> Get live updates on June U.S. vehicle sales on Tuesday, July 1, at www.autonews.com. U.S. designers play catch-up on cool small cars W ith most product planners in Detroit scrambling to get smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles out of the studios and into their pipelines, you wonder which product development discipline can make the biggest impact with impatient consumers clamoring for immediate gratification. Materials specialists and powertrain engineers must play big roles. And it makes sense that EDWARD LAPHAM manufacturing IS EXECUTIVE types also need EDITOR OF to be involved. AUTOMOTIVE But what about NEWS. designers? As it turns out, they are a factor in a couple of important areas. Of course, they can design smaller vehicles. But General Motors global design honcho Ed Welburn told me that aerodynamics is the most important influence a designer can have on fuel economy. Aha! He’s playing the old let’slower-the-drag-coefficient game. “It’s not an accident that GM’s largest and most complete wind tunnel is attached to the Design Building,” Welburn said, looking out the window and bragging that it’s the best darned wind tunnel in the industry. As he spoke, I glanced out his office window and got a mental image of designers and sculptors scurrying around between studio, clay ovens and wind tunnel, then back again. Yes, I could see it clearly. They were searching for the perfect curve on a quarter panel the way Fabian, Barbara Eden, Shelley Fabares and Tab Hunter looked for the perfect wave at Waimea Bay in the 1964 movie Ride the Wild Surf. Welburn brought me back to the mainland by reminding me that even fuel-efficient small cars need to be aesthetically pleasing. Customers are funny that way. Designers take care of that, too. Good point. But GM North America has done few good small cars, he admitted. I felt like the seasoned design chief was setting me up, and he was. He matter-of-factly followed up: That’s why it’s great that GM has design centers in Korea and Europe that know how to design attractive small cars. OK, I get it. You don’t want North American design centers doing the new small cars for North America. Fine. How soon will they get here? Auto industry likely to play key role in Obama’s courtship dance with businesss part of the quadrennial courtship dance of an election year, presidential hopeful Barack Obama last week notched high-level face time with top business execs, including two auto CEOs. And the Illinois Democrat is likely to become a more familiar face in Autoland in coming weeks. CEO Rick Wagoner of General Motors met with Obama at an economic roundtable in Pittsburgh, and Ford CEO Alan Mulally attended a meet-and-greet session in Chicago. In Pittsburgh, where Wagoner sat next to Obama, the Illinois senator declared “surprising consensus” on what should be done to fix the General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner got prime facetime seating last week — right next to Sen. Barack Obama — at an economic roundtable in Pittsburgh. DAVID DENOMA/REUTERS nation’s economy. That includes more federal spending on research into advanced technologies, such as alternative means to power cars and trucks, Obama said. Here’s why more auto-related campaigning is likely for Obama, especially in Michigan: He has fences to mend after a 2007 Detroit speech in which he ripped automakers for fighting tougher fuel economy standards. Michigan’s Democratic pols, disregarding directives from the national party, moved up the state’s presidential primary, got spanked by losing convention votes — and, as a result, turned Michigan into a flyover for candidates during the primary season. Although the UAW announced its support for Obama in June, some meet-and-greet with the rank and file, along with some encouraging words about the auto industry, will be needed to put some passion into campaign efforts. McCain’s battery bonus? Don’t expect a ‘eureka!’ J ohn McCain’s proposed $300 million prize for a breakthrough battery for electric vehicles has generated a little bit of juice for his presidential campaign. The battery prize, one of several new and recycled energy ideas the Arizona Republican floated last week, created a spoonful of media buzz. The reality: There’s plenty of battery research going on. Progress is being made, but a single eureka moment in the field is unlikely. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the presumptive Democratic nominee, dismissed the idea as a gimmick. America has a history of contests and prizes for technological leaps forward. For example, when Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic in 1927, he was motivated in part by a $25,000 prize. But it doesn’t always work. A Purdue University research paper cites a prize offered in 1913 by the International Association of Recognized Automobile Clubs: $100,000 for an economical alternative to gasoline. It was never collected. ANWAR MIRZA/REUTERS A typical rush hour scene in Dubai: A look, perhaps, at the planet’s future? Report envisions 3 billion vehicles Chung Mong-koo gets diaper duty R S Edward Lapham writes commentaries each week for autonews.com. Read them at autonews.com/edwardlapham. trange things can result when you combine a flexible justice system, very deep pockets and a corporate publicity machine. Like a photo of Hyundai Chairman Chung Mong-koo bottle-feeding a baby. Chung’s three-year sentence for embezzling about $100 million to set up political slush funds was suspended after he promised to give about $815 million to charity and perform 300 hours of community service. His service assignment initially was to write newspaper columns and make speeches on corporate ethics. But officials, perhaps sensing the irony, scrapped that idea. Instead he’ll do the first 100 hours of his not-so-hard time feeding and cleaning babies at an orphanage near Seoul. Probation officials say other possible future duties include cleanup REUTERS work at the site of South Probationer Chung Mong-koo on duty: The Korea’s worst-ever oil job doesn’t pay, but the photo-ops are great. spill, which occurred last December off Korea’s west coast; planting trees in areas damaged by forest fires last year; and helping to repair damage from floods during the upcoming July rainy season, should any damage occur. As of last week, Chung had worked six days at the orphanage and paid $58 million into a fund meant to be used for charity. No count on the number of diapers changed. emember your worst traffic jam. Multiply it by four and think globally. That’s the future suggested in a report by consulting firm Global Insight, unless the car culture as we know it undergoes a major transformation. The report’s title — “Is Mobility As We Know It Sustainable?” — is an ominous question, and the author’s answer is simple: No. By 2035, the report says, the number of vehicles in use could quadruple, to 3 billion. Gasoline is $4 a gallon today; speculate on prices in a world with four times the demand. Ditto for steel, rubber and parking spaces. “Clearly, nonconventional solutions are needed,” says author Phil Gott. In addition to smaller and more fuelefficient vehicles, he writes, those solutions include: Hydrogen fuel cells. Performing energy conversions — fuel to electricity — on a large scale at central locations for top efficiency. (That’s more efficient than converting gasoline to kinetic energy under the hoods of 3 billion automobiles.) Cogeneration — reducing waste by using the same fuel to create both electricity and useful heat. Using the smallest possible vehicle for each trip. Another option, writes Gott: “Left unabated, the natural economic demand for mobility will overwhelm the ability to sustain it, and we will enter into an era of profoundly disruptive change: a crisis of resources, of pollution, of mobility, with all the resultant political and economic consequences.” THE FINAL SAY “ These are too dangerous to own. The balance sheets are awful, and the SUVs and trucks are just wrong for a market that is beginning to reflect $5 a gallon. — Jim Cramer, host of “Mad Money” on CNBC, quoted in the Detroit Free Press on whether investors should buy GM and Ford stock. ” http://www.autonews.com http://autonews.com http://autonews.com/edwardlapham

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