Infinite Unknown

- #Radioactive Used Car: 20.38 Microsieverts/Hr Car Destined for Kenya Stopped (EX-SKF, Oct. 17, 2011):

at a car exporter in Kawasaki City, in Kanagawa Prefecture.

At least, used cars for export get tested for radiation. And those cars rejected for export for high radiation? Where will they go? (Anecdotal evidence suggests they are simply sold inside Japan.)

From Sankei Shinbun (10/17/2011):

川崎市は１７日、同市川崎区東扇島の中古車輸出会社に運び込まれた乗用車１台から毎時２０・３８マイクロシーベルトの放射線量を検出したと発表した。市は「人体に直ちに影響がある数値ではない」としている。

Kawasaki City announced on October 17 that a used car brought in to a used car exporter in Higashi Ogijima in Kawasaki-ku, Kawasaki City tested 20.38 microsieverts/hr radiation. According to the city, “That level of radiation does not have immediate effect on human body.”

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Tags: Cars, Global News, Japan, Radiation

From the article:

As the New York Times reported September 5, “For General Motors and the Obama administration, the new Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid represents the automotive future, the culmination of decades of high-tech research financed partly with federal dollars.”

Flashback (A MUST-SEE!!!):

- Who Killed The Electric Car? (Documentary)

- Man Builds Electric Car for $4750, Costs $7 For Every 300 Miles (Video)

Related info:

- Electric Vehicle Called ‘Schluckspecht’ (‘Boozer’) Sets New 1,013.8 Miles Record On Single Battery Charge

- Green Car Made From Hemp And Powered By An Electric Motor

- EU Rules: Silent Electric Cars Must Make Noise!

- New Nanoscale Material Developed For Electric Cars

- Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu Throws $1.4 Billion Loan To Nissan Leaf

- World’s first electric car built by Victorian inventor in 1884

… and General Motors CEO Dan Akerson called the Chevy Volt “not a step forward, but a leap forward” ???

Just more BS they want us to believe in!

- 115-year-old electric car gets same 40 miles to the charge as Chevy Volt (Daily Caller, Oct. 14, 2011):

Meet the Roberts electric car. Built in 1896, it gets a solid 40 miles to the charge — exactly the mileage Chevrolet advertises for the Volt, the highly touted $31,645 electric car General Motors CEO Dan Akerson called “not a step forward, but a leap forward.”

The executives at Chevrolet can rest easy for now. Since the Roberts was constructed in an age before Henry Ford’s mass production, the 115-year-old electric car is one of a kind.

But don’t let the car’s advanced age let you think it isn’t tough: Its present-day owner, who prefers not to be named, told The Daily Caller it still runs like a charm, and has even completed the roughly 60-mile London to Brighton Vintage Car Race.

If you didn’t know there are electric cars as old as the Roberts, you aren’t alone. Prior to today’s electric v. gas skirmishes, there was another battle: electric v. gas v. steam. This contest was fought in the market place, and history shows gas gave electric and steam an even more thorough whooping than Coca-Cola gave Moxie.

But while the Roberts electric car clearly lacked GPS, power steering and, yes, air bags, the distance it could achieve on a charge, when compared with its modern equivalent, provides a telling example of the slow pace of the electric car.

Driven by a tiller instead of a wheel, the Roberts car was built seven years before the Wright brothers’ first flight, 12 years before the Ford Model T, 16 years before Chevrolet was founded and 114 years before the first Chevy Volt was delivered to a customer.

As the New York Times reported September 5, “For General Motors and the Obama administration, the new Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid represents the automotive future, the culmination of decades of high-tech research financed partly with federal dollars.”

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Tags: Cars, Chevrolet, Chevrolet Volt, Economy, Electric Car, Global News, Government, Politics, Technology, U.S.

- U.S. loses $1.3 billion in exiting Chrysler (CNNMoney, July 21, 2011):

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — U.S. taxpayers likely lost $1.3 billion in the government bailout of Chrysler, the Treasury Department announced Thursday.

The government recently sold its remaining 6% stake in the company to Italian automaker Fiat. It wrapped up the 2009 bailout that was part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program six years early.

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Tags: Bailout, Cars, Chrysler, Fiat, Global News, Government, Obama administration, Politics, Taxpayers, U.S.

- India: Rajasthan in ‘cars for sterilisation’ drive (BBC NEWS, July 1, 2011):

Health officials in the Indian state of Rajasthan are launching a new campaign to try reduce the high population growth in the area.

They are encouraging men and women to volunteer for sterilisation, and in return are offering a car and other prizes for those who come forward.

Among the rewards on offer is the Indian-made Tata Nano – the world’s cheapest car.

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Tags: Cars, Government, India, Politics, Society, Sterilization

Published: 11 April, 2011, 19:19

Source: Russia Today

Tags: Cars, Economy, Japan, news, Radiation, Russia

The devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan last month is slowly starting to have a bigger impact on U.S. manufacturing.

Toyota announced Monday that its North American plants would likely have to close later this month due to supply disruptions in Japan. Honda, Nissan and Ford have already announced temporary plant shutdowns and Chrysler could be next in line.

But the impact of Japan’s disaster on U.S. manufacturing has been vastly underestimated and goes far beyond the auto and electronics industries, says Alan Tonelson, research fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council and author of Race to the Bottom.

A new report by the Council found that “many of the highest rates of dependence on Japan are found in non-electronics capital goods sectors — industrial machinery and components vital to high-value production throughout the domestic U.S. manufacturing base.”

The report — entitled A Supply-Chain Earthquake? American Industrial Dependence on Japanese Manufactures — cites these market-share figures for the sectors unrelated to electronics and automobiles that come from Japanese imports:

• Metal cutting machine tools = 21% of U.S. market-share comes from Japan
• Turbines for generating energy = 14.8%
• Metal-forming machine tools = 12.7%
• Plastic and rubber making machinery = 11.2%

“If you go to most small- and medium-sized factories in this country in particular, you are going to see a wealth of foreign made machine tools many of which are coming from Japan,” Tonelson tells Aaron in the accompanying interview. “[Therefore] if we have supply chain disruptions due to the Japanese earthquake … that is likely to affect much of the advanced high-value manufacturing sector because these machine tools and bearings and forgings, etc. are such an integral of advanced manufacturing today.”

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Tags: Alan Tonelson, Cars, Economy, Global News, U.S.

Toyota’s U.S. manufacturing arm is preparing for a possible shutdown because of parts shortages from Japan, a Toyota spokesman said. Word has gone out to all 13 of Toyota’s factories in the United States, Canada and Mexico. This does not mean that the plants will stop working, Toyota spokesman Mike Goss said, but that they should be ready in case the need arises.

“We expect some kind of interruptions,” he said.

While Toyota’s car factories in Japan have stopped working since the March 11 earthquake in Japan, the automaker was able to resume production of some auto parts on March 17.

Toyota employs 25,000 manufacturing and R&D workers in North America.

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Tags: Cars, Economy, George Bush, Japan, Toyota, U.S.

A 2011 Chevrolet Colorado ZQ8 Crew Cab. GM is suspending production at the Shreveport, La., plant that makes it and the sibling GMC Canyon because of a parts shortage due to the Japanese earthquake.

General Motors plans to halt production Monday of the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon compact pickups made at Shreveport, La., because some parts come from Japan and aren’t available now.

The GM move is the first production halt directly linked to the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that wiped out portions of the northeast coast of Japan.

“We have suspended production at Shreveport for next week due to parts shortages due to the crisis in Japan. We will resume operations as soon as we can,” GM manufacturing spokesman Chris Lee tells Drive On. He wouldn’t identify the parts involved. Japanese companies often are the sole suppliers of electronics part for many vehicles.

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Tags: Cars, Economy, General Motors, Global News, GM, Japan

Congratulations Centrally Planned Garbage Motors: GM slides to below its IPO price, hitting $32.75. And now we get to see if GETCO has been swimming with no bathing suit on the entire time.

(Click on iimages to enlarge.)

As a reminder, 112 hedge funds hold GM stock. Oops.

And time to remind the retarded market making robots of what we posted a week ago:

And some bad news for the world’s worst car maker (recently bankrupt), which has bet its entire “growth” platform as per the recent IPO on the one market that is so far unfamiliar with said carmaker’s “quality” reputation. In January, the Shanghai-based China Passenger Car Association reported that sales of passenger cars fell 10.3 percent in January from the month before to 965,238. Per Manufacturing.net: “Chinese bought 13.7 million passenger vehicles last year, up by a third from 2009. But that robust growth is forecast to cool this year due to the expiration of tax incentives for some vehicle purchases and a renewed effort by cities to bring traffic under control.”Is the recent collectivist action to cool off purchasing actually going to have an adverse impact not only on GM’s margins but its sales as well? Why yes. But the market will be stunned when this is publicly announced shortly.

Furthermore, the deterioration in car sales is accelerating:

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Tags: Cars, China, Economy, Ford, General Motors, Global News, GM, Government, Stock Market, Wall Street

Added: 25. Januar 2011

Tags: Cars, Global News, New York City