Word: fording
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...automotive industry, hoping for the kind of lifestyle change that can bring car sales back from the dead. All three major U.S. auto companies have been working on plans for electric cars, and debuted some prototypes at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this week. Ford announced that it hopes to have an all-electric vehicle, which would be able run for 100 miles on a single charge, on sale by 2011. Chastened by their collapsing sales and sustained by infusions of bailout cash, GM, Chrysler and Ford need to come up with ways to revolutionize car design...
Which is terrific, because, well, who can replace this guy? You've got to wonder whether Jobs is a creature loftier, more meaningful than just another corporate big cheese. CEOs come and go, after all, and some of them are every bit as megalomaniacally brilliant--think of Henry Ford, Thomas Watson, Sam Walton, even Bill Gates. Each of them set up a business that, massive and complex as it was, could be replicated and run by others...
...overall, passenger cars outsold trucks, sport-utility vehicles and minivans for the first time since 2000, according to George Pipas, sales analyst for Ford Motor Co., as consumers reacted to last year's spike in gasoline prices. Truck sales made a modest comeback during the fourth quarter, in part because fuel prices had dropped and truck buyers (a group that includes many small-business owners) had better access to credit than buyers of more fuel-efficient passenger vehicles, automakers...
...biggest losers in 2008 were GM and Chrysler, which were recently bailed out by the White House with $17.4 billion in loans. GM reported a 35% sales drop in December and a 27.5% decline for the year. Chrysler's annual number was slightly worse than GM's, down 30%. Ford escaped 2008 with less damage: its sales declined 32% in December and 20% for the year...
...Every recession sows the seeds for its own recovery," says Ford economist Emily Kulinski-Morris. "Sales are actually below the natural replacement [rate], so there is pent up demand for new vehicles," she notes. That, of course, assumes American drivers don't grow complacent with their clunkers...