USING NEW STRATEGIES, the motorcars builders look for an exit to the difficult world financial situation. The vehicles consumption has suffered a clear reduction and that strikes all the companies. In case of the Asian manufacturers, Toyota trusts that it has been consolidated sufficiently well, on a global scale, to survive the financial quake. Nevertheless, already he announced reductions of his production, for the first time in a decade.“ It has been a flat year, without growth for the automotive industry and we are a country that should have more million cars circulating”, says for example Ann Maria Vallarino, director of Public relations of Toyota-México. The strategy of survival of the signature consists of creating promotions as the so called one "Handles, amuse and win", in that the consumer can obtain two tickets for the raffle of a model RAV4 in spite of only realizing a handling test, and 10 tickets for the buy of the motorcar. Campaigns like that one, added to the modus operandi of “taking care of your volume and not to encourage too much the market”, also have allowed to the self-propelled one to be supported opposite to the economic crisis in Mexico.
IN the CLOSE STATES, nevertheless, the market of the housing keeps on weighing on the sales of motorcars, and probably the industry will not return at his maximum levels up to the next decade, as admitted the president of Toyota Motor Sales USA, Jim Lentz. The above mentioned builder supported his sales prognosis in 2008 in about 14,1 million vehicles, confirmed Jim Lentz in a recent self-propelled conference in Detroit. He added that Toyota hopes that the American self-propelled sector should stay relatively stable in 2009, with the potential for an increase of about 200.000 vehicles, depending on the market of the housing, the prices of the gasoline and the stability of the credit market. Lentz supported that the consumers express “an intention as loudly as always”, of buying a vehicle next year, but a record percentage of buying potentials delay his decisions due to the unstable economy of the country. For our part we hope that these problems should be diluted and the sales bloom again, with renewed models and a better technology and, especially, that they should be more friendly than the environment.
MEANWHILE, the executive president of Ford Motor Co, Alan Mulally, discarded again the possibility of a failure and affirmed that the second manufacturer of cars of the United States is focused in his restructuring and in handling "very, very carefully" his cash flow. Mulally pointed out that Ford is evaluating his credit lines and hopes to assemble the requisites necessary for a part of the program of loans of low interest for 25.000 million dollars that was approved last month by the American Congress. "I have a lot of faith in which we will keep on doing the necessary changes for, first of all, to liberate the credit and then to assure us of turning round the casualty of the economy", it sentenced. We take the word and we will observe if his actions achieve the answer that this company and the industry need urgently.
Up to the next one,
Víctor Caycho
Publisher of Autoguide
E-mail: vcaycho@msn.com
www.hwc-md.org
| A mitigation for the drivers |
| Gasoline is cheaper than one year ago in the area |
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A notice written to hand combines two actuality phenomena, the sale of housings and the fall of the price of the gasoline.
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Autoguide
Washington Hispanic
In the middle of the worrying news on the world economic crisis, this Monday came a report that brought something from mitigation for the drivers. It is a question of the daily report of the Motorists' Association of America (AAA), according to which the price of the gasoline reached his level lowest in more than one year, at national level.
The average cost of one gallon of regular gasoline, said AAA, came from 2.72 dollars. This index is established after the prices are obtained in approximately 100.000 stations of gasoline in the whole American territory.
Nevertheless, AAA emphasized that most of the drivers of the nation buy regular gasoline below 2.50 dollars.
Washington Hispanic verified that this situation happens in several counties that surround the District of Columbia. In Manassas and Woodbridge (county of Prince William, Virginia), for example, the gallon finds regular gasoline to 2.46 dollars. Similar phenomenon can be appreciated in establishments of sale of fuel in Frederick and in Takoma Park, cities placed in Maryland.
AAA'S report indicates also that in some areas of the country the price of the regular gasoline came below two dollars on Monday, the 27th.
In last July the average price of the regular gasoline reached four dollars with 12 cents and in some cities it overcame five dollars with 50 cents.
From March, 2007 it is the first occasion that the prices of the fuels lower at these levels, the landslide of prices of the barrel of oil, which on the same Monday was quoted at 63 dollars – after bordering on 150 dollars a few months behind - and the fears about the global financial crisis.
Financial experts expressed that the reduction in the prices of the fuels saves more than 125 billion dollars to the American consumers.
Saving measurements
According to AAA, one hopes that the prices should lower up to an average of 2.25 the gallon in the country due not only to the fall of the crude oil but also to the measurements of saving of fuel that some institutions and drivers began to apply after spectacular increase of the fuels in the last six months.
For federal disposition, in the country there is expended either gasoline nor any product of massive use that contains lead, therefore the gasoline differs only for the level of his octane number and for some additives that the distributors add to his products.
| Automotive industry reinforces measurements |
| More "green" vehicles against the crisis |
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The manufacturers compete for being more ecological than his rivals, as it happened in the recent Lounge of the Motorcar of Paris.
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Paris, France
Agencies
The sector self-propelled has taken very seriously the international financial crisis and his executives are adopting emergency measurements to confront it. Nevertheless, practically none of the big manufacturers dared to do concrete predictions to himself for the next year in the recent Lounge of the Motorcar of Paris.
The last registered numbers show that in September, for example, the orders of new cars inside Germany diminished in seven per cent, while the foreigners fell down ten per cent, he informed this week the Association of the Automotive industry of Germany (VDA).
Obviously, on the American market, which keeps on being the most important of the world, the sales in September also diminished greatly.
BMW should have faced to a sales reduction of about 26 per cent. The business Daimler volume also decreased 16,4 per cent. And worse still it was the evolution that Porsche, Ford and Toyota should have suffered.
" Already some time ago that we said that 2009 would be a difficult year", pointed out in the Parisian fair the director of BMW, Norbert Reithofer. The fall of the fortitudes in the United States has spread and it came to Europe, added.
" Perhaps the people who till now was buying to herself a Porsche or a Mercedes with the annual surplus now already do not do it", mentioned with very much realism the director of Daimler, Dieter Zetsche.
Nevertheless, Reithofer thinks that the market will recover slightly from middle of 2009, opinion that he shares with the leader of market, Toyota.
Emergent markets
There will be decisive the role of the emergent states as China and India, as well as that of Russia, where it is necessary to point out that there are no levels of dioxide of carbon and prices of fuel those that are to the agenda, but rather the vehicles todoterreno and the limousines.
On the other hand, on the already existing big markets, the producers must be polished for presenting new models and of low consumption. Toyota, for example, offered the model iQ – that we show in this edition - that it expresses low levels of gases of greenhouse effect, as well as the new generation of hybrid vehicles. Volkswagen redoubled in Paris his bet with the new versions "Blue Motion" of his successes Golf and Passat.
The prognoses for the sector are unlike. Practically all the companies offered a "green" image and presented themselves as leaders on the environmental market, although it is in reference to a marginal title.
Renault, for example, developed an electronic model, while Toyota, in turn, impelled the hybrid model. And finally all the companies would affirm to the unison with the president of Volkswagen, Martin Winterkorn: "No other self-propelled company offers to his clients so many ecological products as we".
