News watch March 2010: today's auto industry news

Welcome to CAR's news aggregator as we round up the seismic change in the auto industry. Top tip: news summaries are added from the top hour-by-hour

Thursday 11 March 2010
• Toyota expects US sales in March to rise 30% on the back of incentives introduced to convince waivering buyers at the beginning of the month. Sales dropped 10% in February after Toyota’s recall problems (Automotive News)
• GM boss Ed Whitacre says the company is on track to repay the $8bn loans from the US and Canadian governments before the June deadline. ‘We have restructured and the progress that we've made, I believe, is sustainable’ (Reuters)
• GM is considering ditching the Daewoo name in its home market, South Korea, according to GM Daewoo president Mike Arcamone. ‘We are making some significant changes in our strategy in our home market. Our domestic sales are not acceptable,’ he told the FT (Financial Times)
• Hummer production is restarting for a month as General Motors honours a commercial fleet order of around 800 vehicles. Production originally stopped in January as no suitable buyers were found for the company. GM has said that it is still open to new offers (New York Daily News)

Wednesday 10 March 2010
• Geely has found the £1.2bn it needs to buy Volvo, according to Swedish business paper Dagens Industri. Chinese banks and regional government bodies have already given the money to the company, but the final agreement between Geely and Ford has yet to be signed (Reuters)
• Audi bosses are confident they can increase the 2009 profit of £1.2bn this year. Daimler made a £2.3bn loss during the same period, while BMW is expected to announce a small profit next week. Audi CEO Rupert Stadler said: ‘With a profit margin before tax of 6.5%, we stood out significantly in comparison with our competitors’ (Financial Times)
• Meanwhile, ahead of its financial results, BMW has announced that it is seeing a ‘definite upturn’ in almost all car markets after seeing a 14% increase in sales in February (Automotive News Europe)
• Saab is to restart delivery of cars to North America after a six-month break in supply following its sale to Spyker. The company also intends to knock 4-12% off the list price of its US cars to stimulate demand. The new 9-5 saloon launches in the summer (Automotive News)
• Mazda is considering installing a brake override system on their new cars following Toyota’s recall problems. The system will give braking priority when both the brake and accelerator pedals are depressed (Automotive News)
• Mitsubishi plans to make 100,000 EVs for Peugeot and Citroën based on the i-MiEV over the next five years. The exterior and interior styling on both models is expected to be changed from the i-MiEV, which goes on sale in the UK in 2011 (Automotive News)
• CO2 emissions of new cars sold under the UK scrappage scheme are a third lower than the cars they have replaced, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. Scrappage accounted for nearly a fifth of sales in February (SMMT)

Tuesday 9 March 2010
• Toyota has rejected claims that dodgy electronics are behind the 8m-car recall. Toyota held a press conference yesterday at which it presented Stanford University research saying there was 'no real-world' evidence of iffy electrics (BBC News)
• VW is planning to increase its share of the electric car market from 0 to 3% by 2018. Chief exec Martin Winterkorn said it planned 'an unprecedented' drive into the EV market (Financial Times)
• Mazda's new design chief Ikuo Maeda, who took over last April, has admitted to AN that he'd like to revive the RX-7. 'I do have a strong yearning to revive the RX-7 during my tenure, but in order for that to happen we need the US economy to come back' (Automotive News)
• Daimler has sold its 5.3% stake in Tata Motors (Financial Times)

Monday 8 March 2010
• Vincent Rambaud is the new CEO of Automobiles Peugeot from 2 April 2010; he will report to Jean-Marc Gales, the uber-boss at PSA Peugeot Citroën. Rambaud is 51 and was previously director of PSA's Latin American zone (PSA)
• Gales said: 'Vincent Rambaud's international experience will be a strong factor in successfully meeting the challenge of Peugeot's globalisation, at a time when the marque, on the strength of a new identity and a totally revamped, expanded range, is rediscovering a growth dynamic' (PSA)
• Ferrari of North America's new boss Marco Mattiacci is confident new models such as the 458 Italia will pep up sales in the US (Automotive News)
• Audi sales worldwide leaped 20% in February, boosting the Q1 performance. Global sales and marketing chief Peter Schwarzenbauer said China and western Europe had been the strongest performing areas (Automotive News Europe)
• The new Jaguar XJ has safeguarded around 2000 jobs in the West Midlands, says car industry body Accelerate. Around 400 Jaguar staff work on the XJ, but Accelerate says every JLR jobs supports five others locally in the supply chain (BBC News)
• New GM chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre is flying for free on AT&T corporate jets as part of his severance package with the telecoms giant. Whitacre retired in 2007 with a $158m package that lets him fly on AT&T corporate jets for up to 10 hours a month – bypassing the embarrassment of GM's private jets that were slated when the car maker begged Washington for a bail-out (Detroit News)

Friday 5 March 2010
• More than 60 complaints have been received by Toyota owners who claim their cars are still accelerating unintentionally even after repairs to their throttles (Financial Times)
• Toyota president Akio Toyoda wore a worker's uniform to address 9000 workers in Japan. He spoke of his appearance before the US Congress and his desire to move Toyota forwards again (BBC News)
• GM has dismissed some of its top managers as part of a shake-up including up to 18 senior staff (Automotive News)
• Rental car firm Europcar has placed an order for 500 zero-emissions electric Renaults (Renault)
• Ford has confirmed plans to build five full electric and hybrid cars in Europe by 2013: the Ford Transit Connect Electric arrives first in 2011, the Focus Electric in 2012, two new hybrids in 2013 and a full plug-in hybrid vehicles in 2013 (Ford)

Thursday 4 March 2010
• UK car sales are bouncing back – February registrations rose 26% with the same month last year. The SMMT trade body said 68,686 cars were sold last month and Ford's Fiesta and Focus were the best sellers (BBC News)
• GM grandee Bob Lutz will retire on 1 May. Lutz, who heads up product development globally, has already retired once and then pulled a U-turn to help pull GM out of bankruptcy. 'There is something that gets old about getting up at 4.30am in the morning,' he told AN at the Geneva show. 'At some point you have to do something new' (Automotive News)
• Mitsubishi and PSA considered a tie-up with an equity share, but in the end decided not to. Their chief executives Philippe Varin and Osamu Masuko had been deep in discussions but decided in Geneva on Tuesday to announce they were abandoning a capital alliance (Detroit News)
• The Renault Formula One team has announced a surprise tie-up with Lada (Renault)

Wednesday 3 March 2010
• Nissan is recalling nearly 540,000 pick-ups, sports utes and minivans, mostly in the US, to fix potentially faulty brake pedal pins and faulty fuel gauges (BBC News)
• Meanwhile, Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn says he is still looking for a global technology partner. He was rebuffed by GM three years ago and Chrysler last year (Automotive News)
• BMW will lease up to 700 electric 1-series to customers around the world in the second wave of its Project i electric car trials. It's already run 450 electric Minis (Automotive News)
• Renault confirms that the Dacia brand will come to the UK in 2012 (Renault)

Tuesday 2 March 2010
• GM will contribute €1.9 billion towards the restructuring of Opel and Vauxhall – more than triple its previous pledge of €600m. Opel CEO Nick Reilly said the payment would be made by equity and loans, giving Opel enough cash to operate throughout 2010 (Automotive News)
• Ford has reported a 43% jump in US sales in February, shooting it ahead of arch rival General Motors. GM itself rose 12%, analysts claiming the Toyota recall has driven its customers to Detroit giants (BBC News)
• Fiat unveils a new Twin-Air – a two-cylinder engine claimed to be the world's cleanest petrol engine. Sales start in the 500 in September and it's claimed to be 30% cleaner than existing four-cylinder engines (Automotive News)

Monday 1 March 2010
• All of team CAR are heading out to the Geneva motor show. A bit light on news gathering today!