General Motors just issued a release saying global sales fell 0.6% in the first quarter. The news isn’t all bleak — sales in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East rose 19.6%, sales in the Asia-Pacific region grew 5.8%. Heck, they even posted a 3.3% sales increase in Europe. Apparently the increased sales everywhere in the world were offset a bit by that 10% decline in North American automotive

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BMW is full of gas – literally. It has unveiled a new concept vehicle that can run solely on lightweight hydrogen. A previous version of its Hydrogen 7 concept car was a bi-fuel design, taking both gasoline and what many experts believe is the fuel of the future.

“The mono-fuel Hydrogen 7 is the (result) of more than 25 years of hydrogen development by BMW,” noted Tom Baloga, Vice-president of Engineering for BMW in the US. “It demonstrates BMW’s support for a hydrogen infrastructure by producing an internal combustion engine that produces truly near-zero emissions and simultaneously cleans the air of certain pollutants.”

The previous version of the BMW Hydrogen 7 did have one key advantage: if the lightweight gas wasn’t available, a motorist could switch to gasoline and keep running. But the downside is that the car’s big V12 powertrain had to be compromised to handle both fuels. And that impacted performance, mileage and emissions, according to BMW officials.

The tiniest amount of NOx does come out of the tailpipe, the natural result of the compression-ignition cycle in an internal combustion engine. But, “The BMW Hydrogen 7’s emissions were only a fraction of SULEV level, making it one of the lowest emitting combustion engine vehicles that have been manufactured,” contended Thomas Wallner, a mechanical engineer who leads Argonne’s hydrogen vehicle testing activities. “Moreover, the car’s engine actively cleans the air. Argonne’s testing shows that the Hydrogen 7’s 12-cylinder engine actually shows emissions levels that, for certain components, such as Non Methane Organic Gases (NMOG’s) and Carbon Monoxides (CO’s), are cleaner than the ambient air that comes into the car’s engine.”

BMW’s approach to hydrogen is unusual, though not entirely unique. Most manufacturers working with this “green” fuel are using it to run fuel cell stacks. At their most basic, fuel cells combine hydrogen with oxygen from the atmosphere, producing water vapor and electricity. That current can be used to run a vehicle’s electric motors.

Burning hydrogen in an IC engine is generally considered less efficient, but it also makes it easier to switch to the fuel without completely rebuilding the automotive infrastructure. Other makers, including Ford and Mazda, have also been experimenting with this approach, the Japanese maker, for example, field-testing hydrogen-powered versions of the rotary-powered RX-8 sports cars.

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 Carroll Shelby: racer, car builder, automotive legend, pilot, transplant recipient, entrepreneur, perhaps even rascal.

One thing is probably true, the plain-speaking Texan is a bit of all of these – and more. And despite a life-long series of illnesses, anyone of which would have crippled a weaker man, Carroll Hall Shelby, at 85, is still going strong. So it’s probably no surprise he’ll be receiving the latest in a long line of honors, today, as Automotive Executive of the Year.

The path from Leesburg, Texas hasn’t always been a straight line. Indeed, Shelby was born dirt poor, on January 11, 1923, with seemingly few opportunities. So it was probably no surprise to family and friends when he signed up for the then Army-Air Corps, during World War II, serving as flight instructor and test pilot. (Which kindled a lifelong love of flying, that continues today.)

Returning from the War, Shelby planned to settle down and do something that fit in, back in Leesburg. “I opened a chicken farm,” he recalls, with the Texas twang that’s never left him, “but my chickens all died.” Farming clearly wasn’t in his genes. But somehow, fast cars had gotten into his blood. And by the early 1950s, he was proving his mettle as a talented amateur. Turning pro, he landed “rides” with then-strong teams from Aston Martin, Maserati and Cad-Allard, unquestionably proving his skills with a 1959 win at Le Mans.

Continued

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Forget the doom-and-gloom. If a new report is right, job prospects could be looking good at the Big Three, with a hiring binge set to begin by Fall of this year and running through to the middle of the next decade.

The report, prepared by the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Center for Automotive Research, projects that 46,000 new auto workers will be hired in Michigan alone by 2016.”The bleeding will stop, proclaimed Kristin Dziczek, a CAR project manager.

Well, the hemorrhaging will, but there’s a down side to the new study. Overall employment will continue to decline, with more workers leaving the industry, through buy-outs and attrition, than will be joining on. The Car report said in Michigan alone, the number of autoworkers will drop from 129,00 today, to just 108,430 by 2016.

On top of that, many of the new hires will be coming in at much lower wages and with smaller benefit packages than the employees they replace. The United Autoworkers Union approved a two-tier package, last year, and those in the lower echelon will make $14 an hour compared to top-tier wages of $26 an hour.

(source: thecarconnection)

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