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Shawn Chittle
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G.M. Trails Toyota as U.S. Sales Slow
By NICK BUNKLEY
New York Times
Published: April 23, 2008
DETROIT — The General Motors Corporation said on Wednesday that the slowdown in the United States market had led to a decline in sales in the first quarter and had allowed Toyota to take the lead in this year’s global sales race.
G.M. said its first-quarter sales had fallen less than 1 percent, but it was enough to slip behind its Japanese rival by about 160,000 vehicles.
Toyota sold 2.41 million vehicles, a 2.7 percent increase, to G.M.’s 2.25 million. Toyota outsold G.M. in the same period a year ago but ultimately fell short of G.M. for all of 2007 by about 3,100 vehicles.
But G.M. could have more difficulty keeping pace this year as record crude oil prices and gas prices near $4 a gallon dampen demand for vehicles in the United States, where G.M.’s market share is still a considerably larger than Toyota’s.
G.M. joined several other automakers Wednesday in predicting that the auto industry’s worst months were still ahead. It said overall sales in the second quarter were shaping up to be lower than expected.
“The big caveat is gas prices,” G.M.’s chief sales analyst, Michael C. DiGiovanni, said. “This is clearly a headwind we didn’t anticipate would be to this level.”
Mr. DiGiovanni said G.M. had raised its forecast for oil prices twice, though he did not reveal what range the company now anticipates. Crude oil for June delivery was trading at more than $117 a barrel Wednesday morning in New York, and the average price of regular gas has reached a record high of $3.533 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club.
Still, he said that G.M. remained upbeat about the latter part of the year, when it and other automakers believe a recovery could begin. Chrysler is among those that have since backed away from that prediction.
“The fundamentals are in place for a second-half recovery,” Mr. DiGiovanni said. “We’re starting to see the positive signs that we thought we would see.”
G.M. hopes sales growth in other countries will allow it to retain its 76-year-old title as the world’s largest automaker. In the first quarter, 64 percent of G.M.’s total sales occurred outside the United States, the most ever. Sales grew 78 percent in Russia and 58 percent in India. North America was the only region in which G.M. did not set a sales record.
Company executives have said they are more concerned with returning G.M. to profitability than staying ahead of Toyota. G.M. lost more than $50 billion from 2005 to 2007, though nearly $39 billion was an accounting charge in 2007.
Still, G.M. does not plan to cede any ground without a fight.
“We obviously want to win,” Mr. DiGiovanni said. “We want to be No. 1 in sales at the end of the year, and we’re going to compete very hard to do that. But our goal is profitable sustainable growth around the world.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/business/worldbusiness/23auto-web.html |
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Wed Apr 23, 2008 1:24 pm |
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http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN2237297620080222?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&rpc=22&sp=true
GM exec stands by calling global warming a "crock"
Fri Feb 22, 2008 3:08pm EST
DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Corp Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has defended remarks he made dismissing global warming as a "total crock of s---," saying his views had no bearing on GM's commitment to build environmentally friendly vehicles.
Lutz, GM's outspoken product development chief, has been under fire from Internet bloggers since last month when he was quoted as making the remark to reporters in Texas.
In a posting on his GM blog on Thursday, Lutz said those "spewing virtual vitriol" at him for minimizing the threat of climate change were "missing the big picture."
"What they should be doing in earnest is forming opinions, not about me but about GM and what this company is doing that is ... hugely beneficial to the causes they so enthusiastically claim to support," he said in a posting titled, "Talk About a Crock."
GM, the largest U.S. automaker by sales and market share, has been trying to change its image after taking years of heat for relying too much on sales of large sport-utility vehicles like the Hummer and not moving faster on fuel-saving hybrid technology.
"My thoughts on what has or hasn't been the cause of climate change have nothing to do with the decisions I make to advance the cause of General Motors," he wrote.
Lutz said GM was continuing development of the battery-powered, plug-in Chevy Volt and other alternatives to traditional internal combustion engines.
GM is racing against Toyota Motor Corp to be first to market a plug-in hybrid car that can be recharged at a standard electric outlet.
Lutz has previously said GM made a mistake by allowing Toyota to seize "the mantle of green respectability and technology leadership" with its market-leading Prius hybrid.
A 40-year auto industry veteran who joined GM earlier in the decade with a mandate to shake up its vehicle line-up, Lutz is no stranger to controversy.
As part of a campaign against higher fuel economy standards, Lutz wrote in a 2006 blog posting that forcing automakers to sell smaller cars would be "like trying to address the obesity problem in this country by forcing clothing manufacturers to sell smaller, tighter sizes."
Automakers ended their opposition to higher fuel standards in 2007 when it became clear that proposed changes would become law with or without their support.
In December, President George W. Bush signed a law mandating a 40 percent increase in fleetwide fuel economy by 2020, the first substantial change in three decades.
(Reporting by Kevin Krolicki, editing by Toni Reinhold) |
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Wed Apr 23, 2008 2:20 pm |
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twotap
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Posted 17 April 2008 04:48 PM
Lorne Gunter, National Post Published: Monday, March 24, 2008
Bob Strong, Reuters
They drift along in the worlds' oceans at a depth of 2,000 meters -- more than a mile deep -- constantly monitoring the temperature, salinity, pressure and velocity of the upper oceans. Sea Surface Temperatures (SST) are a critical component in world temperature data.
Then, about once every 10 days, a bladder on the outside of these buoys inflates and raises them slowly to the surface gathering data about each strata of seawater they pass through. After an upward journey of nearly six hours, the Argo monitors bob on the waves while an onboard transmitter sends their information to a satellite that in turn retransmits it to several land-based research computers where it may be accessed by anyone who wishes to see it.
These 3,000 yellow sentinels --about the size and shape of a large fence post -- free-float the world's oceans, season in and season out, surfacing between 30 and 40 times a year, disgorging their findings, then submerging again for another fact-finding voyage providing over 100,000 readings a year.
It's fascinating to watch their progress online. (The URLs are too complex to reproduce here, but Google 'Argo Buoy Movement' or 'Argo Float Animation,' and you will be directed to the links.)
When they were first deployed in 2003, the Argos were hailed for their ability to collect information on ocean conditions more precisely, at more places and greater depths and in more conditions than ever before. No longer would scientists have to rely on measurements mostly at the surface from older fixed scientific buoys or inconsistent shipboard monitors. It was to be a quantum leap ahead in data accuracy from the Ocean sources.
So why are some scientists now beginning to question the buoys' findings? Because in five years, the little blighters have failed to detect any global warming. They are not reinforcing the scientific orthodoxy of the day, namely that man is causing the planet to warm dangerously. They are not proving the predetermined conclusions of their human masters. Therefore they, and not their masters' hypotheses, must be wrong say the climate warming advocates. The millions spent on this system have been wasted as the system does not fulfill its purpose of proving global warming. In fact it has created a panic. Interested parties are frantically attempting to disprove the data set that they said would prove warming.
In fact, 'there has been a very slight cooling, in SSTs' according to a U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) interview with Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a scientist who keeps close watch on the Argo findings.
Dr. Willis insisted the temperature drop was 'not anything really significant.' And I trust he's right. But can anyone imagine NASA or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)-- the UN's climate experts -- shrugging off even a 'very slight' warming.
A slight drop in the oceans' temperature over a period of five or six years probably is insignificant, just as a warming over such a short period would be. Yet if there had been a rise of any kind, even of the same slightness, rest assured this would be broadcast far and wide as yet another log on the global warming fire. You are hard pressed to find coverage of SSTs any more, just two years ago, relying on shipboard measurements, reports were published claiming the 'highest sea surface temperatures ever recorded', those figures are in conflict with the Argo monitors.
Just look how tenaciously some scientists are prepared to cling to the climate change dogma. 'It may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming,' Dr. Willis told NPR.
Yeah, you know, like when you put your car into reverse you are causing it to enter a period of less rapid forward motion. Or when I gain a few pounds I am in a period of less rapid weight loss.
The big problem with the Argo findings is that all the major climate computer models postulate that as much as 80-90% of global warming will result from the surface of oceans warming rapidly then releasing their heat into the atmosphere. Oceans represent over 70% of the planet's surface and the presumption of most models is that heat will stay at the surface.
But if the oceans aren't warming, then (please whisper this) perhaps the models are wrong.
The supercomputer models also can't explain the interaction of clouds and climate. They have no idea whether clouds warm the world more by trapping heat in during the night or cool it by reflecting heat back into space during the day. The models actually depend on increased water vapor induced heat effects to account for most of the warming, and no data confirms this concept.
Modelers are also perplexed by the findings of NASA's eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily over the entire surface of the Earth, versus the approximately 7,000 random and periodic readings from Earth stations that forms the basis for climate models (known as General Circulation Models.)
In nearly 30 years of operation, the satellites have discovered a warming trend of just 0.14 C per decade, far less than the models predict and well within the natural range of temperature variation. The satellites don't agree with ground based measurements.
I'm not saying for sure the models are wrong and the Argos and satellites are right, only that in a debate as critical as the one on climate, it would be nice to hear some alternatives to the alarmist theory. Any news from NASA or NOAA in conflict with the theory of man-made global warming is ignored or buried in a small notation in the back pages. A Robin shows up two days earlier than average and it is held out as proof of global warming in headlines. Proof of cooling will not get to print. I for one believe that 'the truth will out' and that the fortunes recently spent to study climate have discovered the truth which will be an inconvenient truth, it is now cooling. Many will try to deny facts that dispute a position of man-made and continuing warming. But as these studies were at the onset heralded as going to be able to provide the indisputable truth, now it is difficult to disagree with their findings.
Günter@shaw.ca |
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Wed Apr 23, 2008 3:10 pm |
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Wed Apr 23, 2008 3:56 pm |
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