Search results for Toyota
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Posted
Oct 07 2009, 10:19 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 Could the Prius and other Toyota hybrids be banned from the U.S.? It seems unthinkable, but that's one possible ending to a patent investigation launched this week.
This case centers around Paice, a tiny Florida company that has patented a way to apply force to a car's wheels from the electric motor or the internal combustion engine. Paice thinks that Toyota (TM) is infringing on its technology, and is going after the automaker in court. The legal spat became much more serious for Toyota this week, when the U.S. International Trade Commission decided to investigate the matter. Bing: How do hybrid cars work?
The problem is that the ITC can stop any imports that infringe on U.S. patents.
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Posted
Oct 02 2009, 07:31 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Rumors, credible rumors, are beginning to circulate in the car industry and the automotive press, that Chrysler may not make it another year primarily due to its falling sales and growing financial losses at partner Fiat.
Chrysler sold a 62,197 cars in September, down 42% from the same month last year. The figure was down from 93,222 in August when traffic to dealers was pushed up by the ”cash for clunkers” program.
Chrysler’s problems may only be beginning and, if so, Fiat, the ”managing partner” among Chrysler’s owners may not be able to keep the American company intact.
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Posted
Sep 04 2009, 09:49 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 Volkswagen (VLKAF) wants more sales in the U.S., and will start building cars with more "American flavor," MSNBC.com reports.
That means bigger. And cheaper. VW is considering expanding into seven-passenger crossover SUVs in hopes of boosting its U.S. sales to 800,000 cars a year. Worldwide, Volkswagen wants to get to 10 million cars sold by 2018 (it sold 6.2 million last year). Volkswagen is hoping that it will appeal more to people who buy Toyota Camrys and Honda Accords, reports Dan Carney. Bing: Volkswagen fan clubs
It's also moving more car production to the U.S.
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Posted
Aug 17 2009, 12:15 PM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This article was written by Minyanville's Josh Lipton This morning, longtime market pro Dennis Gartman weighed in with his views on the current Whole Foods boycott and controversy: “People who will go to a store wearing Birkenstocks and socks will take almost any outlandish position, and they’ve taken a position opposed to [CEO John Mackey’s] editorial in The Wall Street Journal last week that took Obamacare to task,” Gartman wrote. “When your own supporters are willing to abandon you, who will support you? It seems like a good question.” In his outrage-provoking WSJ piece, Mackey called for a move toward “less government control and more individual empowerment” rather than “a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system.” Bing: Whole Foods
Unsurprisingly, not all of Mackey’s Prius (TM)-driving customers agree with his views -- and some of those once-loyal, left-leaning patrons are now reportedly calling for a Whole Foods boycott on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Of course, Mackey's certainly managed to alienate them before: see CEOs Gone Wild: John Mackey for more. Investors should boycott Whole Foods shares, but not because of its stance on health care reform.
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Posted
Aug 05 2009, 04:01 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
General Motors' new chairman, Edward E. Whitacre Jr., says one of his major goals is to make certain that the No. 1 U.S. car company stays No.1. GM will find it very hard to measure up.
In an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal, Whitacre said being No. 1 is “the position we should strive for… (as) an American company that employs hundreds of thousands of people…We just want to be No. 1.”
If wishes were horses, all the beggars would ride. GM is losing ground to the competition at an alarming rate. In July it sold 187,582 vehicles, down 20% from the same period a year ago. Toyota (TM) sold 174,872, down 11% and Ford (F) sold 158,354, up 2%. The spread between the top three manufacturers has become remarkably small.
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Posted
Jul 17 2009, 11:13 AM
by
Minyanville
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
I can recite the 15 or so stops on New Jersey Transit’s North Jersey Coast Line in my sleep. I’ve made the trip from New York to Long Branch more often than I’d like to consider. My friends and I exchange NJT horror stories like trading cards -- though some are too depraved to divulge here.
A few of the milder occurrences: There’s the person who slides his smelly, shoeless feet directly through the seat cushion on which you’re sitting. There are the times you’ve fallen asleep and ended up utterly lost at the end of an unfamiliar line. The lone bottle that noisily rolls up and down the car with nobody bothering to stop it, the loud cell-phone talkers, the constant delays. And of course the merciless sonic blast of a conductor announcing stops at which nobody will exit on an early-morning train.
Worst of all, the train travels at a speed that’s the opposite of Mach 1. A century ago, the trip from New York to the Jersey Shore lasted about 2 hours. Now it’s only about 30 minutes faster, in spite of the benefits of modern technology.
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Posted
Jul 10 2009, 07:35 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Updated at 5:09 p.m. ET
The “best” parts of General Motors were transferred Friday morning to a newly created company owned almost two-thirds by taxpayers. The federal government will end up stuffing $50 million into the new entity in the hope that a smaller and less debt-heavy GM can make money in the ravaged domestic car market.
Investors seemed to think so, and the announcement set up a bizarre day of trading in the stock that now represents GM, GMGMQ. It rose 37% during the day. Yet in the new world of GM, these shares are worthless, as Barron's explained in this report.They don't represent the new entity.
That new entity faces a difficult future
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Posted
Jun 24 2009, 10:58 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
One of the few commendable trends to emerge in the last few years has been the push to "go green." Tal Pinchevsky elaborates on this notion in a featured slideshow on Minyanville.com.
Between canvas bags and hybrid cars, consumers have made an effort to reduce, reuse and recycle -- even going so far as to equate "environmental" with "hip." While the movement could always use a little more steam, some self-professed "green" businesses have been polluting it with smog.
Companies synonymous with chemicals, crude oil and toxic waste are confronted with an unfavorable public image and diminishing returns. Since the change to cleaner technology and waste reduction can be a costly -- possibly unaffordable -- endeavor, PR reps have to concoct creative interpretations of their companies' production. Sometimes it's as small as adding a leaf to the logo or topping a bottle with a green cap. Other times, it's as egregious as fudging carbon dioxide emissions standards or referring to landfill clogs as "biodegradable."
The process is known as "Greenwashing."
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Posted
Jun 19 2009, 04:01 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Toyota (TM) has booked 180,000 domestic orders for its latest Prius hybrid in the first month it has been on the market. There is no reason to think the car will not do extremely well in America. It is considered to be the best hybrid made by any car company and has sold well in the U.S. since it was first introduced.
With the third-generation Prius on its way to America, many of the auto plants of The Big Three are idle and the domestic manufacturers are hardly in a position to produce tens of thousand of hybrids during the rest of 2009. Even if they could, their products don’t have the reputation of the Prius.
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Posted
Jun 08 2009, 07:29 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
In a perfect world, all energy would come from electricity and hydrogen. Wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, and other renewable energy sources would provide enough electricity to power everything except air transportation. The “conventional” answer to transportation in the future was the hydrogen fuel cell. It doesn’t get any better than that. The fuel cell burns hydrogen and powers cars, trucks, and any other transportation vehicle. The hydrogen combines with oxygen to form water vapor. No other gases or pollutants are released.
The hydrogen fuel cell is an efficient generator of electricity, but it has one major problem: It needs hydrogen. So where does it get it? Therein lies the hydrogen myth. On Earth, there's no hydrogen to mine. You have to make it, and that requires wasting energy. You could conceivably mine hydrogen from the sun or Jupiter, but even Al Gore would probably agree that that would be tough to accomplish.
Last month, the Department of Energy (DOE) finally conceded that hydrogen won't be a part of the near-term solution to global warming, the peak oil crisis, or anything else you can think of. They're cutting back funding dramatically on hydrogen research. This is a triumph of physics over policy. In the long run, physics will always win, but we have way too many policy wonks in Washington without a clue about how the physical world works.
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