automobile

Saga has done some research into the age structure of the UK car travel market.  This is far more than your usual PR market research. It is very well done and mighty comprehensive.

On 12th June Tesla announced that it was making its electric vehicle patents available to open source users. This is seen by many as a bold move – Tesla has developed a different battery technology to other players in the market, using smaller cells that run more efficiently. 

“Brazen.” “Provocative.” “Exuberant.” What automotive brand comes to mind when you hear those words? BMW? Audi? Maybe even Porsche?

Forget the Volt, the Leaf, the Prius, even the Tesla. An entirely different transportation revolution is happening when it comes to big rigs.

In recent years, commercial truck fleets have begun changing course, steering toward next-gen technologies that embrace electric, hybrid-electric, and other fuels instead of petro-based diesel, and innovative drive-train technologies. It’s a development that’s born partly of concerns about carbon emissions and other pollutants, but increasingly about mitigating the risk that comes from volatile and unpredictable fuel prices.

The U.S. auto industry is heading for a banner year...so much so that there’s a question whether manufacturers will be able to keep up with demand, especially for trucks. Tens of thousands of people are being put back to work at auto plants and parts suppliers, not to mention the additional work available from everyone involved in the activities (from transportation to coffee shops along the way).

Fiat has utterly botched the intro of its quirky but very drivable 500 -- sales are under 50% of plan -- and it's about to fire people and hold a huge group-grope agency review to  come up with a new strategy. I have a simpler solution, which I hereby offer up for free: copy VW's Beetle and BMW’s Mini Cooper American launches.

As much as the car chieftains of Detroit try to fight it, America is slowly but surely turning away from the concept of car ownership. Instead, hundreds of thousands of Americans are choosing to share their cars by the hour and by the day - especially in densely-packed urban areas, where the total cost of car ownership is incredibly high.

General Motors received more clean-energy patents in the past year than any other company, according to data released a few weeks ago. The data comes from the Clean Energy Patent Growth Index, published quarterly by the law firm Heslin Rothenberg Farley & Mesiti (which also provides data for our annual State of Green Business report).

Yes,yes…a research conclusion that I totally agree with.



When you consult and write about a subject it is very tempting to extrapolate the universe of the market from your own experiences. The fact that I like something or not, or indeed the fact that the people I know have certain preferences, doesn’t mean that we are any more than a tiny niche in a large group of consumers.