Also in San Francisco, Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, the parent company of Dollar Rent a Car and Thrifty Car Rental, charges roughly 20 percent more for the Prius than for other economy or compact cars. Hertz charges about $5 a day extra for its Green Collection, which includes 3,400 Priuses. The company says the fee covers the cost involved in making certain these cars can be reserved by make and model.
In an effort to re-energize confidence in the company’s future, Ford Motor Co. has been shuttling hundreds of employees and retirees to its top-secret test track in Dearborn, Mich., almost every afternoon, to drive the company’s promising vehicles of the future.
Building small cars in the U.S. has generally been a money-losing venture for General Motors Corp. (GM)
But now the auto maker believes it has found the formula to turn a profit on compact cars, even if those cars are built by union labor in a traditional Rust Belt town.
Ford Motor Co. (F) said Tuesday its vehicle sales across 19 main European markets fell in July.
In these markets, including Germany, France and Sweden, Ford sold 117,200 vehicles, down by about 6.6% compared with July 2007. In the first seven months of 2008, sales dropped 2% to 940,600 units.
If you’re in the market for a new car and safety and fuel mileage top your list of concerns, you may already be thinking Toyota. But wait! Word comes today that the Ford Escape Hybrid/Mercury Mariner Hybrid has surpassed Toyota’s Highlander Hybrid and the Toyota Prius in crash test ratings. The Escape/Mariner, in both normal and hybrid forms, have received a best-in-class five-star crash test rating from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, beating out the Highlander and Prius, which average four stars.
The Drive Clean Across Texas campaign is trying to get Texans to “drive green” and is giving residents an incentive to do so by winning a brand-new Ford Escape Hybrid SUV.
According to an e-mail sent to the Trib, you can enter the online sweepstakes at the campaign’s Web site, www.drivecleanacrosstexas.org, But the deadline to enter is Sunday.
Clean up with this hybrid contest
Volvo has been building wagons since 1953, and has made the genre a specialty. If the Swedish automaker has a small presence in the general automotive marketplace, it is a major player in the wagon class throughout the world. Wagons are a minor sideline for most manufacturers, but they make a significant contribution to Volvo’s income.
For its upcoming cycle of vehicles, Mazda wants to replace its entire powertrain lineup.
By 2015, Mazda will have given its gasoline engine lineup direct-injection spark ignition and idle-stop technology to improve fuel economy.
It shines, it glitters, it energizes and allures. In fact, the importance and psychology of color is unmistakable, even in the automotive realm. “It’s critical,” says Susan Sage, Color and Materials design manager, at Ford Motor Company. “Color creates an aesthetic emotion. If it’s a color that the customer loves, if it gives them that sense of balance and comfort, they’ll want it. It can make or break a sale.”
Ford Motor Company expects the quality, fuel efficiency, smart technologies and shared global nature of its upcoming new Focus small car in North America and other derivatives built off a new global C-car platform to deliver a double-digit percentage profit improvement compared with today’s North American Focus.
In addition, Ford is forming a new customer connectivity team to accelerate its leadership in vehicle smart technology solutions that are increasingly important to small car customers, including Ford SYNC, SIRIUS Travel Link and Ford Work Solutions and HD radio.
