General Motors Corp. plans to sell a version of its Volt plug-in hybrid vehicle in Europe by late 2011 and may need sales incentives because of the high cost of the new technology, the automaker’s chief for the region said.
The European version initially will be under the Opel and Vauxhall brands and then later as a Chevrolet, Carl-Peter Forster said in a posting on a GM blog. Chevrolet Volt production is to begin in late 2010 for the United States, he said.
“This assumes that we will continue to attain all of our goals and milestones for the battery and integration of the power electronics,” Forster said in the posting.
GM and Toyota Motor Corp. are competing to market plug-in hybrids, which are being designed to recharge at home electrical outlets and run mainly on electricity. Detroit-based GM intends for the Volt to travel as far as 40 miles on a charge, with a gasoline engine to recharge the batteries to help extend the range.
The automaker may need incentives on the vehicle in Europe to “offset the high costs and drive more volume,” Forster said. The lithium-ion batteries cost “several thousand more euros” than a typical engine and transmission, he said.
Ford sued over custom car
Ford Motor Co. was accused in a lawsuit of misleading buyers of the Roush Stage 3 BlackJack, a high-performance car, by claiming it would make only 100 of them.
Ford and privately held Roush Performance Products collaborated on the Stage 3 BlackJack, a modified version of the Ford Mustang. In a complaint filed Monday in federal court in Manhattan, a New York man who paid $58,000 for the car last year claims the companies defrauded buyers when they said they’d make only 100 vehicles.
“The defendants knew that they would be manufacturing more than 100,” the plaintiff, Drew Connor, said in his complaint. “The defendants produced another 100, which would then be sold in 2008.”
Connor said his car’s value fell with the production of more vehicles. His suit, which seeks class-action, or group, status, asks for damages of at least $11.8 million.
Ford spokesman Mark Truby declined to comment. A message left with Livonia-based Roush Performance Products wasn’t immediately returned.
Toyota sees lease losses
Toyota Motor Corp. said it will have to set aside large reserves for residual losses on vehicles leased in the United States, Dow Jones reported Tuesday.
A decline in demand for used cars means Toyota has to cut expectations of what leased cars will fetch when they are eventually sold, the news service reported.
Toyota declined to say how large the provisions for the first-quarter losses would be, according to the news report.
Toyota lays off 800
Japanese automaker Toyota has laid off 800 people at a plant in southwestern Japan, or about 10% of the plant’s workforce, in response to declining sales in North America, a company official said Tuesday.
All the job cuts — carried out in June and August at Toyota Motor Corp.’s wholly owned subsidiary Toyota Motor Kyushu — applied to workers sent by job-referral agencies. Japanese companies are increasingly relying on such agencies for temporary workers called haken to be flexible to market demand.
Prior to the layoffs, Toyota Motor Kyushu, which makes Lexus luxury models, had employed 8,200 workers — 1,950 of them haken — an official said on condition of anonymity, citing company policy.
The official said the job cuts were temporary and 500 haken workers will be brought back later this year.
Argentina’s production up
Argentine automakers increased production 8.4% in July from a year earlier, the country’s Automakers Association said Tuesday in an e-mailed statement.
Production last month rose to 62,179 vehicles while domestic sales climbed 5% to 54,808 units, the association said.
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