Greg Schneider:

General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. said yesterday that they are rushing to adopt a new safety technology called electronic stability control, and together they will make such systems standard on most of their large and mid-size sport-utility vehicles by the end of next year.
The nation’s two biggest automakers were quick to offer the new technology on 1.8 million vehicles after preliminary testing by the government and the insurance industry showed enormous safety benefits, especially for popular SUVs that ride high and are more likely to roll over during a crash.

Robert Collier continues his three part series, Energy and America’s Future; with an article on hybrid cars. He also discusses Detroit’s lagging position in this market (with implications for its manufacturing base).

Robert McMillan:

More than one-third of the cost of GM’s automobiles now involves software and electronic components, and the amount of software loaded into a typical automobile is skyrocketing, Scott said. Cars had approximately 1 million lines of software code in 1990, but this number will jump to 100 million by 2010, he predicted.
The emergence of the automobile as a platform for software developers will mean that a much broader range of software will be used in tomorrow’s cars. Remote diagnostics software, media players, even database software all will run on automobiles at some point, he said. “I can’t think of software ? that isn’t going to run on the vehicle.”

I think we’re already north of 100 million lines of code. BMW and others have baked Windows CE into their cars. This ill advised move has introduced a legion of bugs and challenges to our once reliable cars. I believe the automakers are better off creating very simple, purpose built software, rather than extending Windows….

Autoextremist:

When is too much, just plain too much? When International, a maker of heavy-duty trucks, decides that what the world needs right now more than anything is a monster SUV that weighs 7 tons, twice as much as a Hummer H2. The new CXT (for Commercial Extreme Truck) stands 9 feet tall and is more than 21 feet long – more than 4 feet longer than the Hummer H2 pickup. The CXT is a development off of the heavy-duty platform that International uses for its rugged-use trucks designed for road work and snow plowing, etc., and gets between six and 10 miles per gallon (we’d venture closer to six) from its commercial truck diesel engine.

The popular Honda Odyssey is often seen at Madison area soccer, swimming, football, basketball and academic events, among others. Honda has introduced a new version for 2005. There’s an interesting fuel saving feature in the new Honda: cylinder “deactiviation”.

The fuel-saving feature automatically switches between 6-cylinder and 3-cylinder combustion, depending on driving conditions.

Interestingly, and typically, this is not a new idea.
General Motors actually pioneered the volume production (there were earlier concepts) of turning off cylinders to save fuel with their variable displacement V8-6-4 engine, available in 1981. Evidently, reliability problems doomed this effort.
Now comes Honda, and others with the same useful concept. They will likely make it work and make money (I imagine that today’s much more advanced computers and software play a big role in the success of these efforts).
Wilde Honda, Rock County Honda and Zimbrick Honda sell them.

Ford is running a Mustang blog (rather quietly at this point). Interesting angle on promoting their new sports coupe. I don’t think they should run this off of the mother ship’s domain (ford.com). Peter Delorenzo thinks that Ford has many, many product problems, including several new models due this fall:

But by any measure, the upcoming Ford 500, the Fusion and the Freestyle sport wagon are not only uninspiring to look at (in spite of being built on the outstanding Mazda6 platform architecture), but they’re going to be indistinguishable from their competition. These new cars may be perfectly competent, but as we all know by now, being merely good enough just isn’t good enough in this business anymore.
Ford continues to make great waves and have fun with their feel-good “heritage” cars, but their passenger cars appear to be falling behind before they even hit the starting gate.
Ford desperately needs a Grand Slam home run – a “standard” Ford that possesses all of the attitude, heritage and legacy of performance that its greatest passenger cars once had. And no, I’m not talking about some Yester-Tech Nostalgia Rod here, but a contemporary automobile that unapologetically says “Ford” in the very best possible way.
Ford executives continue to watch their car sales plummet (the July figures just in were dismal again), yet they dismiss and deflect any criticism by suggesting that when they get their new products “on-line” – everything will be all better again.
But at some point, it needs to sink in at Ford that consumers have actually gotten used to the fact that Ford has nothing to offer them – and that when Ford finally says, “Here you go, folks, check out our brand spanking new product lineup!” – a lot of people will just keep right on walking by.

Related, sort of, article by Thomas Content on Detroit’s health care cost problems.
Meanwhile, Wes Raynal reviews the new Corvette (C6).

Saw a pristine Porsche 912 today as I walked into a grocery store. I later talked with the owner who told me that it only had 65,000 miles on it! Regular maintenance is critical to a car’s longevity and reliability as Dennis Budd relates in this 6.5MB video clip (Budd’s Auto Repair on Monroe Street).

I’ve summarized my recent experience shopping and buying a new used car on the internet here. Quite a change from 10 years ago.