Tata Motors Ltd. (TTM), India’s biggest automaker by sales, has agreed to acquire Ford Motor Co.’s (F) Jaguar and Land Rover luxury car brands, an executive at Tata Group said Wednesday.
Details of the deal will be announced later during the day, the executive, who asked not to be identified, told Dow Jones Newswires. He declined to elaborate.
Tata Motors, India’s second-biggest passenger vehicle maker and the biggest truck maker by sales, is a part of the Tata Group. The group includes companies such as Tata Steel Ltd., Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Tata Tea Ltd. and Tata Chemicals Ltd
Tags: Land Rover
A 13-year-old boy was riding his bike in downtown Morganton Sunday afternoon when he was hit and killed by a Dump truck.
Our newspaper partner the Morganton Herald reports that Devante O’Shea Goodman was crossing Green Street around 3:30 p.m. when a dump truck hit him.
Goodman was pronounced dead at the scene.
The driver of the dump truck, 42-year-old Joe Zimmer of Valdese, has not been charged.
Police are continuing their investigation.
Tags: Dump Truck
A senator wants Congress’ investigative arm to determine whether the Transportation Department has broken the law by spending federal money on a program allowing Mexican trucks on U.S. roads.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., called for the investigation by the Government Accountability Office a few hours after Transportation Secretary Mary Peters warned of economic losses if Mexican trucks are prohibited from driving deep into the U.S.
Peters has been fighting in court to prevent the program’s end. But Dorgan and others say Congress prohibited spending money on the program last year.
“When Congress passes a law that says no funds can be used for this program, we mean no funds can be used for this program,” Dorgan said in a news release. “The Department of Transportation cannot simply pick and choose which laws they want to follow and which laws they want to break.”
Dorgan said the agency is violating the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits spending federal money that has not been authorized or appropriated.
The North American Free Trade Agreement gave Mexican trucks greater access to U.S. roads beginning in 1995. But the U.S. only opened the roads to a few trucks when the pilot program began last September.
Long-standing opposition from labor and safety groups had kept the trucks off most U.S. roads. Without the program, Mexican trucks are confined to about 25 miles beyond the border, where goods they bring are picked up by U.S. truck drivers.
Peters said Monday the agency is not violating the law. The law prohibits using funds to establish the program, she said, but the money is being used on the existing program. The agency has made similar arguments in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is considering an appeal by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to stop the program.
The action was a prelude to a potentially bitter Senate committee hearing on the program planned for Tuesday, with Peters scheduled to testify.
Earlier Monday, Peters said U.S. business would suffer if the trucking program is stopped.
“Should Congress … end the cross-border trucking, Mexico has every right to impose fees and tariffs on the very goods we see before us this morning and many more,” Peters told a news conference. Before her were tables loaded with apples, ham, soybeans, rice, eggs, canned chili and meat, beef, milk, whiskey and other products.
Todd Spencer, vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, called Peters’ claims “economic fear-mongering.”
“The program is supposed to work both ways across the border, and yet there are very few signing up on either side,” Spencer said in a statement. “Big businesses want the cheap labor, but for a number of reasons trucking companies on both sides of the border don’t want to get involved.”
The latest numbers from the Transportation Department show 18 Mexican carriers with 62 trucks and six U.S. carriers with 46 trucks are participating in the program. Up to 500 trucks from 100 Mexican carriers can participate.
Mexican trucks have made 322 crossings into the U.S., while U.S. trucking companies have made 683 crossings into Mexico.
James Hoffa, International Brotherhood of Teamsters president, said he doesn’t buy Peters’ argument that Mexico will sanction U.S. goods with higher tariffs in retaliation. Mexico has a $70 billion trade surplus because of NAFTA and “they’d be foolish to do it,” Hoffa said.
Ricardo Alday, spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, said Mexico is keeping its options open.
Tags: Mexican Trucks
Volkswagen AG, the largest investor in German truckmaker MAN AG, is discussing whether to power its heavy trucks built in Brazil with engines made by MAN, Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper reported, citing company sources.
A spokesman for MAN declined to comment on the article, to be published in the business daily’s Friday edition, while a spokesman for Volkswagen’s commercial vehicles division rebuffed any specific plans.
“It’s generally not that uncommon in the truck industry to purchase engines from third parties, but in this particular case there is no concrete plans to use MAN engines in the heavy trucks built in Brazil,” the VW commercial vehicles spokesman said.
Currently U.S.-based Cummins Inc and Navistar International Corp’s Brazilian unit MWM International Motores supply the engines for VW’s Brazilian-built heavy trucks.
A closer cooperation between Volkswagen and MAN, which already have a distribution partnership in Germany, could put additional pressure on Swedish rival Scania to give up its resistance to a three-way truck alliance.
VW and MAN together control over one-half of the votes in Scania, but have refrained from steamrolling over the fiercely independent management at the Swedish truckmaker in the hopes of reaching a friendly deal beneficial to all sides.
Chris Patterson, president and CEO of Freightliner LLC, told a crowd gathered for the launch of Detroit Diesel’s newest heavy-duty diesel engine that 2007 will not be a year that lives fondly in anyone’s memory.
“2007 has obviously been a very disappointing and stressful year for everyone in our business across the North American region,” he said.
Noting that the very high costs associated with the introduction of the new diesel emission standards this year prompted many large customers to purchase far more vehicles in 2006 than they would otherwise have done, Patterson said that caused many buyers to defer purchases that might have taken place this year.
Adding to the North American malaise has been a weaker U.S. economy and a surging Canadian dollar. Patterson said that too has had an adverse affect on customer enthusiasm for buying new equipment.
“As we’ve seen in recent months, the development of the general economy has been somewhat weaker than we expected, which has prolonged the drought of orders that has afflicted the industry,” he notes.
Despite the lackluster economy and the weak order board, it’s been a big year for Freightliner. The unveiling of the new DD15 14.8-litre engine marks the company’s third major product launch this year.
Freightliner rolled out the Sterling Bullet — a class 4-5 midrange conventional — in March while the Cascadia appeared in May, and now in October, we’re getting out first glimpse of the new Daimler Trucks global heavy-duty engine platform, the DD15.
Patterson says this is attributable to the overall strength of the Daimler Group worldwide. “As part of the worlds largest commercial vehicle manufacturer, which has operations in parts of the world that are not affected by this economic downturn, we have been able to continue investing in our future despite the difficult conditions we face here in the U.S. and Canada.”
With a $275 million investment in design and machinery at the Redford, Mi. DDC plant outside Detroit, and a $1.5 billion investment overall in the new heavy-duty engine, Daimler plans to integrate the new DD15 engine into Mercedes-Benz trucks in Europe and Mitsubishi-Fuso truck in Japan, as well as Freightliner, Sterling, and Western Star trucks in the NAFTA market.
Tags: Western Star trucks
City buses, refuse trucks and delivery vans are perfect candidates for hybrid powertrains, which use less energy and cause less pollution than conventional combustion engines, especially in stop-and-go traffic.
But while image-conscious drivers, especially in the United States, have embraced hybrid cars, truck operators find the new technology too expensive compared with the potential fuel savings - and hybrid diesel-electric trucks are struggling to catch on.
Hybrid trucks operate along the same principle as their smaller hybrid cousins in the car industry, reclaiming kinetic energy when the vehicle brakes, transforming it into electric energy and storing it for later use.
When driving in urban environments with stop-and-go traffic or on a construction site where there is repeated acceleration and braking, manufacturers estimate hybrid trucks can save anywhere from 20% to 35% in fuel.
While consumers may decide what car to buy based on emotions, truck fleet operators think strictly in terms of total cost of ownership. How much cargo can it haul? How often will it break down? And how much fuel will it consume?
Added weight from a second powertrain can limit a trucker’s haul - increasing per-tonne transport costs - and with most hybrid models still at the development and field-testing stage, prices are set to stay high until there’s enough of a demand to warrant industrial-scale production.
The main obstacle to growth is the truck industry’s low volume compared with cars, according to Stefano Chmielewski, president of Renault Trucks, the French unit of Volvo.
“Take Europe. About one third of the overall truck market is distribution vehicles, divided up over seven brands, so about 15,000 units each. Economies of scale begin at 150,000 for trucks,” Mr Chmielewski said.
Volvo, the world’s second-largest truck maker after Daimler, has global sales of nearly 220,000 units - a fraction of the 9 million vehicles sold last year by carmaker Toyota.
Toyota has sold over 1 million hybrid petrol-electric cars since 1997, with the Prius alone accounting for roughly three-quarters of that figure. It estimates its hybrids have led to carbon dioxide emissions dropping by about 3.5 million tonnes compared with conventional engines.
If hybrid trucks are ever going to take off, then manufacturers are going to have to find a lot more people like John Formisano, vice-president for global vehicles of package delivery company FedEx.
Mr Formisano recently bought 10 of the diesel-electric version of the Daily large delivery van from Iveco, the truck arm of Fiat.
“We have the largest fleet of hybrids in the world with 95 vehicles at present. Right now it’s a developmental technology,” Mr Formisano said, declining to reveal the actual price paid.
“If we can get hybrid trucks at the same premium that hybrid cars are at . . . the manufacturers will be able to sell as many as they can make.”
Hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius sell for about 25% more than comparable vehicles running on conventional powertrains in the US.
Iveco sales boss Stefano Sterpone said the potential of the hybrid truck market was “enormous”, after registering interest from logistics companies following recent hybrid deals with both FedEx and its competitor, Dutch mail and parcel group TNT.
“Now we have six customers with a potential of 100 each . . . but this is the beginning,” Mr Sterpone said.
Mr Chmielewski wants governments to step in and help stimulate demand through tax breaks and subsidies.
“If there are no incentives from the Government, a transport company will not [buy hybrids] unless they do it for marketing,” he said.
Lars Stenqvist, head of vehicle definition and quality at Sweden’s Scania, expects hybrids will be regular business in a couple of years if the industry can demonstrate that the technology is a sensible buy.
“For a commercial vehicle operator it will come back to the profit potential - cost versus savings. The payback time will decide the success of hybrids,” he said.
Mr Stenqvist went so far as to recommend incorporating the technology into trucks built by Scania, which generates the bulk of its business with very heavy vehicles for long haulage.
“If we want a global CO2 reduction with hybrids, it must be in haulage,” he said, defying a general belief in the industry that fuel savings in long-distance transport would be minimal.
Meanwhile, FedEx’s Mr Formisano said he is willing to expand his hybrid fleet, which consists mainly of custom-assembled Freightliners using an Eaton electric drivetrain.
“We’re depending upon the producers to develop the technology, bring the cost
down and find new customers,” he said.
Tags: Hybrid trucks
The slow-moving flatbed truck hauling 18-wheeler parts caught the eye of Keller patrol officer Mike Norris.
The truck was traveling only 30 mph Thursday afternoon on Texas 114, so Norris pulled it over. The stop led detectives to a tractor trailer chop shop and as many as four thieves who dismantled up to $800,000 worth of parts from five stolen trucks.
“It just looks like an 18-wheeler graveyard,” Detective Jesse Minton said Friday morning of the fenced lot in the 4800 block of Keller-Haslet Road. As officers talked to truck driver Rodrigo Garcia on Thursday afternoon, Norris saw the front end of a Freightliner truck on the flatbed trailer, Keller police Lt. Brenda Slovak said.
“The officers ran a number that was on it and it turned out to be stolen,” Slovak said.
Garcia then told police he had obtained the parts from a 2-acre lot on Keller-Haslet Road. He was released after police confiscated the truck parts he was hauling.
Members of the multiagency Tarrant County Auto Theft Task Force obtained a search warrant and combed the fenced lot starting about midnight, Minton said.
They found five stripped trucks, only one of which had a trailer attached, Minton said. Investigators also found large plastic drums labeled “Hawaiian Punch” full of diesel fuel.
“This is the first time I have ever seen an 18-wheeler chop shop,” Minton said. “To get five in a row doesn’t usually happen, and 18-wheeler parts are expensive.” The discovery prompted detectives to obtain a search warrant for Garcia’s home in Kaufman County, where they found a stolen Dodge pickup that had been dismantled, police said. Garcia was arrested on suspicion of auto theft and taken to a jail in Kaufman County, Minton said.
Garcia has not been charged with crimes relating to the chop shop, but he led detectives to a truck parts wholesaler in Ferris, about 20 miles south of Dallas in Ellis County, who police believe unknowingly bought stolen parts.
The chop shop lot was reportedly rented in January, and all the trucks discovered there have been reported stolen since Jan. 16 in Dallas, Balch Springs and Mesquite, Minton said. The lessee, whom police are calling a “person of interest,” is scheduled to meet with police in coming days.
After the three-county overnight investigation, detectives headed home to get some sleep
“It has been a pretty incredible day,” said Minton, who was rushing home Friday night to attend his father-daughter school dance. “We contacted all the victims so they could come and claim their trucks, but unfortunately the damage to all the vehicles is so great that they probably won’t be on the road ever again.”
The Ford Work Solutions computer in the dashboard of the 2009 F-150.
When Ford asked owners of its trucks and utility vans which work-related problems drove them nuts, forgetting to bring crucial tools to a job was high on the list. On Wednesday at the Chicago Auto Show, Ford demonstrated radio frequency identification technology that should allow its 2009 F-150 trucks and E Series vans to instantly advise owners if they have every tool on their checklist with them when they set out or, for that matter, before heading home.
A Ford promotional image.Ford won’t say how much it plans to charge for the RFID package, which includes 50 radio tags truck owners can glue or tie onto their tools, as well as the embedded antennae and cabin-mounted reader necessary to monitor what’s been packed in the truck. As a prerequisite, the truck owner also has to purchase a newly designed dashboard computer screen and printer system that can connect wirelessly to the Internet, which stores the tool checklist and displays the RFID data.
The package represents a new twist on RFID, which has been used among other things for identifying and tracking livestock, Viagra on its way from Pfizer to drug stores, and a growing range of products meandering through the warehouses and back rooms of major retailers like WalMart. For the most part, though, manufacturers have avoided permanently affixing radio tags to consumer goods. Their goal has been to avoid clashes with privacy advocates who claim the tags might make consumers vulnerable to clandestine spying on their buying habits and behavior.
Ford, though, is betting consumers will not only accept this RFID application but pay for it. The data on the tags cannot be read more than a foot or two outside the truck bed and would be meaningless to anyone without access to files in the on-board computer
