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FORD: A strong finish, thanks to trucks Michael Martinez, Automotive News / January 3, 2018 Ford Motor Co.'s U.S. light-vehicle sales rose 1.3 percent in December, driven by strong light-truck sales. But those gains couldn't overcome a rough year for car sales, as Ford's full-year volume fell 0.9 percent from 2016. Still, the Ford brand retained the title of best-selling U.S. brand for the eighth year in a row, and the F series was America's best-selling truck for the 41st straight year. Brands: Ford rose 2.4% in December and declined 0.9% on the year; Lincoln declined 17% in December and 0.5% on the year Notable nameplates: F series up 2.1% in December to finish the year at 896,764; Mustang up 9.2% in the first full month for the freshened 2018 model; Fusion down 8.8%; Explorer up 31%; Edge up 7.6%; Escape up 1.8%; Focus up 9.7%; Lincoln Continental down 34%; Lincoln Navigator up 30%. Incentives: $4,662 per vehicle, up 9.9% from a year earlier, according to ALG. Average transaction price: $37,958 per vehicle, up 4.6% from a year earlier, ALG said. Fleet mix: 27.2%, 3.7 percentage points higher than a year ago. 29% year-to-date, down 0.1 percentage points. Inventory: 630,435 vehicles, representing a 68-day supply. That's down from 659,977 vehicles, a 78-day supply, a month ago. Quote: "We're really well positioned from an inventory standpoint heading into 2018,"said Mark LaNeve, Ford's head of U.S. marketing, sales and service. Did you know? Ford's fleet sales to rental-car companies ended the year at 11.1 percent of total sales, in line with Ford guidance. Daily rental sales had been at 11 percent each of the past three years, Ford said.

Ford's downshift defect recall could expand, NHTSA says Jackie Charniga, Automotive News / January 2, 2018 Federal safety regulators are investigating whether to reopen and expand a previous Ford recall by more than a million vehicles for unexpected downshifting. The initial 2016 recall affected more than 153,000 Ford F-150, Ford Expedition, Lincoln Navigator and Ford Mustang vehicles from the 2011-12 model years. A second recall would increase that number to an estimated 1,375,577 vehicles affected, and expand into the 2013 model year. Since the initial recall, NHTSA's Office of Defect Investigations received 123 complaints of select Ford vehicles with automatic transmission slipping unexpectedly into first gear, "causing the vehicle to slow down suddenly without warning," according to documents published Dec. 25. The unexpected downshift can also lock up the rear tires, or cause them to skid. The defect investigations office said it has received reports of two crashes and no injuries. Several complaints allege their vehicles were not included in the initial recall despite having the same defect. Other reports to the office say that attempts to fix the problem in recalled vehicles have been unsuccessful.

Major security flaw found in Intel processors The Guardian / January 3, 2017 A security flaw has been found in virtually all Intel processors that will require fixes within Windows, macOS and Linux. Developers are currently scrambling behind the scenes to fix the significant security hole within the Intel chips, with patches already available within some versions of Linux and some testing versions of Windows, although the fixes are expected to significantly slow down computers. The specific details of the flaw, which appears to affect virtually all Intel processors made in the last decade and therefore millions of computers running virtually any operating system, have not been made public. But details of the fixes being developed point to issues involving the accessing of secure parts of a computer’s memory by regular programs. It is feared that the security flaw within the Intel processors could be used to access passwords, login details and other protected information on the computer. “Modern operating systems rely upon Intel’s chips to provide some essential security services – but if a flaw has been found then the operating systems themselves will need to be updated to do the job that they believed Intel’s chips were doing properly,” said independent security expert Graham Cluley. The fixes involve moving the memory used by the core of the computer’s operating system, known as the kernel, away from that used by normal programs. In that way, normal programs, including anything from javascript from a website to computer games, cannot be manipulated to exploit the hole and gain access to the protected kernel memory. But implementing the fix is expected to significantly affect the performance of the computer, making some actions up to around 30% slower. While normal computer users could see performance problems, the security flaw also affects cloud servers, with Amazon, Microsoft and Google all expected to have to fix the bug with similar performance-reducing patches. The exact severity of the flaw has not yet been publicly disclosed, but the lengths being taken by the various operating system developers to fix something indicates that they view it as a serious problem that apparently cannot be patched with a small update. “The good news is that it sounds as if this flaw has been known about (but kept quiet) for a couple of months. The bad news is that users will once again have to install a security update, and businesses are likely to have to restart thousands of computers to apply the fixes,” said Cluley. More details are expected to be divulged as soon as the end of this week, along with fixes for operating systems.

Chris Bruckner, dealer principal of Brucker Truck Sales, said allowing gliders puts his 26 Mack and Volvo dealerships at an unfair disadvantage in the marketplace. Additionally, he said that existing gliders avoiding the excise tax are skirting money that is needed for the Highway Trust Fund. “We miss out on the sales of the very vehicles that would be deployed in the construction and repair of highway infrastructure,” said Brucker, adding that “I simply want a level playing field so that we can fairly compete.” Chris, when Volvo took over Mack and discontinued the sale of glider kits, you had the freedom to dump the Mack franchise and take on another brand that still offered glider kits, if you felt that lacking glider kit product would impair your distributor's ability to compete in the market place. You made your decision to stay put.....don't complain now. Rather, you should join the Mack distributor council in demanding from Volvo the return of Mack glider kit offerings. .

Comments on glider kit proposal reflect economics of environmentalism Neil Abt, Fleet Owner / January 2, 2018 The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has received more than 24,000 comments in response to its proposal to repeal earlier efforts that would effectively phase out glider kits as part of the Phase 2 greenhouse gas regulation. Related: EPA moves to exempt gliders from GHG rule Most of comments posted online thus far are from individuals, and often focus on the economics behind the decision, rather than strictly the potential environmental impact of glider kits. Among truckers, officials with small fleets tend to favor the glider option, while dealerships have generally opposed them. The Phase 2 rule, issued in 2016 by EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, called for rebuilt engines installed in gliders to satisfy emission standards in the year they were assembled in relation to the engine. It also would have capped how many gliders manufacturers could produce in a year. EPA has estimated about 10,000 gliders are manufactured annually and make up about 5% of the entire Class 8 truck market. However, gliders could account for about one-third of all nitrogen oxides and particulate matter emissions from the sector, according to the agency. Citing “the regulatory overreach” of the Obama administration, new EPA administrator Scott Pruitt ruled gliders should not be regulated as “new motor vehicles” or “new motor vehicle engines” under the Clean Air Act, and opened a public comment period that ends Jan. 5. It is common for a rush of comments to be filed just prior to the deadline, so it is likely the final number received will rise significantly. In late December, the Owner-Operators Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) urged members to submit comments in support of the repeal. “We know [American Trucking Associations] and the corporate interests they represent will be opposing the repeal along with various environmental groups, so we will need all the positive comments we can get as the EPA reviews public input and makes their final decision,” OOIDA wrote. A number of small fleets already filed detailed comments in favor of allowing gliders. R. Kyle Fresh, president of WJW Associates in Florida, wrote that glider kits allow the fleet “to maintain our own vehicles, have much greater uptime, and attract new talent to our company.” Newer engines with emissions reduction technology “simply do not work well.” “Not only do we have too much downtime, but maintenance shops are packed with other companies' equipment having similar issues,” he said. Lane Parker, president of Trinity Transport Inc. of North Carolina, said that without gliders his small fleet would run older trucks longer because of the cost of new equipment. “Gliders are much more environmentally friendly than continuing to keep older trucks on the road indefinitely, which is what will ultimately happen,” he wrote. Similarly, Kyle Moye, assistant operations manager of Moving Office Equipment in Georgia, called gliders “a middle ground for small fleets between extremely expensive new trucks and old worn out used ones.” The company, which runs about 40 trucks, previously purchased older used equipment from larger carriers, “but ended up spending more in maintenance and downtime rentals that it became uneconomically sensible.” John Kennelly from Skunk River Transport said new trucks are “much more expensive but the freight rates have not increased to match the increased cost of new equipment.” He said gliders are less expensive because they do not require a diesel exhaust fluid and require less maintenance. Jerry Gray, manager of Gray Logging LLC in Florida, also defended the use of gliders, saying they cost less and “get the best fuel mileage of all the trucks in our fleet and have had the fewest breakdowns which has led to less downtime and maintenance cost.” These comments are in stark contrast to Patrick Quinn, executive director of the Heavy Duty Fuel Efficiency Leadership Group, which includes Cummins, Eaton, FedEx, PepsiCo, Wabash National, and Waste Management. Quinn said these companies value regulatory certainty, and changing the rules at this stage undermines investment decisions. “The policy was designed to allow gliders for legitimate purposes, such as salvaging a relatively new powertrain from a vehicle chassis badly damaged in a crash, while ensuring a level playing field for manufacturers of trucks and engines,” he wrote. “We are concerned that the EPA proposal to repeal the glider kit portion of the Phase 2 Rule could lead to an inconsistent patchwork of federal and state requirements, producing uncertainty for truck and engine manufacturers and fleets.” A number of truck dealers opposed the proposed change, even those selling glider kits. “While I stand as a partial owner to win financially from rolling the regulations back I find it exceptionally difficult to reconcile with it when I know clearly what the right thing to do,” wrote Justin Hopkins, part of the ownership group for Truck Centers Inc., which sells Freightliner and Western Star trucks in Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri. With new trucks now often emitting cleaner air than they are taking in, he asked, “why would we as a governing body decide to allow ourselves to create a secondary market for dirty engines on less efficient trucks after we went through everything already?” Hopkins also took issue with the suggestion that gliders are significantly cheaper, suggesting that updated IRS guidelines states new gliders are subject to the 12% federal excise tax. Chris Bruckner, dealer principal of Brucker Truck Sales, said allowing gliders puts his 26 Mack and Volvo dealerships at an unfair disadvantage in the marketplace. Additionally, he said that existing gliders avoiding the excise tax are skirting money that is needed for the Highway Trust Fund. “We miss out on the sales of the very vehicles that would be deployed in the construction and repair of highway infrastructure,” said Brucker, adding that “I simply want a level playing field so that we can fairly compete.” Truck Country of Wisconsin president Doug McCoy focused his comments on the health implications, writing that “properly regulating the glider kit issue will improve the health care of all citizens as we try to address greenhouse gas emissions for future generations.” In a recent opinion piece published in Fortune magazine, Margo Oge, director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality from 1994 to 2012, wrote the agency’s current position on gliders is “really no different from allowing manufacturers to sell cars without seatbelts.”

http://www.truckinginfo.com/news/story/2018/01/isuzu-s-ftr-a-competitive-all-arounder-in-independent-tests.aspx

Trucks.com / January 2, 2018 Navistar International Corp. Chief Executive Troy Clarke has a message for tech entrepreneur Elon Musk: There will be more electric trucks on the road by 2025 from Navistar than semi-tractors from Musk’s Tesla Inc. It’s all about familiarity, comfort and established customer base. Navistar’s International brand already holds 11 percent of the market for trucks in the heaviest Class 8 weight segment, according to research firm Statista. Tesla, which introduced its semi in November, has collected hundreds of reservations. But it has yet to build a truck for a customer. It plans to launch production in 2019. “Customers know us, and they know that when we give them a truck it gives them a guarantee that this truck is going to serve their needs, because we understand how our customers make money,” Clarke said in an interview with Trucks.com. Navistar is developing an electric truck with help from its much larger partner, Volkswagen Truck & Bus. The German automaker owns 17 percent of the Lisle, Ill., maker of International trucks, IC buses, defense vehicles and engines. The two companies have a broad agreement to work together on vehicle development, new engines and purchasing to take advantage of volume discounts They expect to have electric-powered medium-duty trucks and buses ready to launch in late 2019 or early 2020. Clarke's comment “is not that outlandish of a claim,” said Brad Delco, transport analyst at Stephens Inc. Navistar, like all major truck manufacturers, has an established network of dealers nationwide “to service the product and, more importantly, the customer who is using that product to earn a wage or put food on the table.” For these customers, Delco said, “time is money.” Tesla sells its passenger cars direct to consumers via its own stores. It will have to build service centers for its truck or contract with a third party to provide maintenance services. There are 110 Tesla stores in the U.S. Freightliner, by comparison, has over 100 dealerships just in the Southeast. With established brands such as International, Peterbilt, Kenworth and Freightliner, Delco said, “if something goes astray, those trucks get pulled into their dealerships to get fixed immediately, particularly when under warranty.” Proximity to a dealership can make a big difference in how much income gets lost during a breakdown. Although it is new technology, there looks to be a crowded market for trucks with electric powertrains. Legacy manufacturers, including Freightliner, Western Star, Kenworth, Toyota and diesel engine manufacturer Cummins Inc., are all also working on the zero-emission commercial vehicle technology. There’s also a question of where the Tesla electric truck and similar vehicles from competitors fit into the trucking industry. Tesla models will come with two ranges, 300 miles and 500 miles, depending on the size of the battery. Rival trucks are expected to have ranges of as little as 100 miles, depending on the vehicle. The absence of a sleeper berth rules out irregular over-the-road routes, Delco said. In the less-than-truckload sector, he said, line haul routes between hubs run on average just over 500 miles per day. Since drivers are not going to push to the edge of their vehicle’s capacity, any electric vehicle would need to last more than 500 miles to make it a viable option, he said. The other typical less-than-truckload route is local pickup and delivery. However, carriers generally use their older trucks for these routes, Delco said. After new vehicles on longer routes run out of warranty, they rotate to local routes to be closer to terminals in case they break down. So, he argued, the economics of buying new electric vehicles for those routes do not make sense for the industry as it works today. Still, many in the industry are taking Tesla’s truck seriously. The Palo Alto, Calif., electric vehicle builder has trial orders from companies like J.B. Hunt, Sysco, PepsiCo, Anheuser-Busch, Walmart and UPS. Antti Lindstrom, the trucking industry analyst at IHS Markit, said he is waiting to see if Tesla trucks can deliver on their promised range. “While we’re waiting for that to happen, the most realistic application are those local runs, like from the ports in California to an inland distribution point,” Lindstrom said. More achievable in a shorter timeline, he said, would be a combination of battery electric with hydrogen fuel cell technology. Toyota, for example, is testing a Class 8 fuel cell drayage truck in Southern California. Kenworth is also working on a Class 8 fuel cell drayage truck. Nikola Motor Co. has received over 8,000 reservations for its hydrogen fuel cell Class 8 sleeper and day cab models to be built by 2021, and Wabco Holdings invested $10 million in the Salt Lake City company last month. Lindstrom said that carriers are placing orders with multiple manufacturers for alternative fuel vehicles, like Nikola. “Some of the other players might not make as much noise, but everybody is in the same boat,” he said. “Tesla is basically securing financing right now.” Given the early stage of the technology, he said, “at this point it’s anybody’s guess who will survive or who will be dominant in the future. Companies are hedging their bets, and they want to do their internal comparisons.” Delco also said that UPS has made the largest Tesla order to date with 125 trucks. That’s still just a tiny percentage of the 200,000 new trucks purchased every year industry-wide. Companies such as Navistar regularly sell 1,000 trucks per order. .

The number one selling heavy truck in Brazil is the Volkswagen Constellation, and it's not a European truck. .

1968 International Atkinson 4870 https://www.bigrigs.com.au/news/transformed-into-a-tsunami/3300641/

It's amazing how Australian Western Stars can look so good, but in North America..........

https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-koch-25907a97

Frank Warner, The Morning Call (local Allentown, PA newspaper) / December 28, 2017 A Mack Trucks production supervisor was awarded $675,000 in damages after a jury found she was denied promotions as a result of discrimination based on her sex and disability, her lawyers said Thursday. Melissa Koch, 50, a Mack employee since 1997, won her case Dec. 19 after a seven-day trial in federal court in Easton. Lawyers Patrick Reilly and Samuel Cohen, representing Koch, argued that while her supervisor rated her “promotable,” she was passed over for more than 60 promotions that she applied for. Koch worked at several Mack plants, starting in Winnsboro, South Carolina, moving to New River Valley, Virginia, and, in 2010, moving to the Lower Macungie Township facility. She lives in Allentown. Koch’s lawyers made the case that she was treated differently from the men in Mack’s “male-dominated workplace,” and received less assistance than men in completing various tasks. Mack Trucks’ initial in-house investigation of her complaints found she suffered no intentional discrimination and that, when she was treated differently, there was good reason to treat her differently. That finding led to her lawsuit. Her complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission went to Judge Edward G. Smith’s court and the jury that found in her favor.

Heavy Duty Trucking (HDT) / December 27, 2017 Daimler Trucks North America is recalling certain 2018 Freightliner, Western Star and Freightliner Custom Chassis vehicles for an issue with improperly torqued brake caliper mounting bolts. The recall affects 3,007 vehicles, including certain 2018 Freightliner 108SD, 114SD, Cascadia, M2 Business Class vehicles, 2018 Western Star 4700, 4900 and 5700 vehicles, and 2018 Freightliner Custom Chassis S2C 106 chassis and S2G Cab/Chassis vehicles. The brake caliper mounting bolts on these vehicles may not have been properly tightened, potentially resulting in the caliper detaching. DTNA was made aware of reports for loose caliper mounting bolts in October and decided to initiate a voluntary safety campaign to recall affected vehicles. DTNA will notify owners, and dealers will inspect the bolts, replacing them as needed, free of charge, according to the recall notice posted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Owners may also contact the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236 (TTY 1-800-424-9153), or go to www.safercar.gov.

But remember, we're actually speaking of the Rheinmetall-MAN joint venture, and Rheinmetall owns 51 percent of the JV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinmetall_MAN_Military_Vehicles https://www.bigmacktrucks.com/topic/32063-rheinmetall-man-military-vehicles-and-haulmark-trailers-win-158-billion-adf-contract/?tab=comments#comment-195967

Bob, our government and media continually "drill it in" that China is the key to dealing with the DPRK. But in fact, that's not the true situation. As for trust, it seems that nobody can trust anyone. We now know that our intelligence community was spying on most of the western European leaders (our so-called allies) including French Presidents Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. So I can't see the "we can't trust China" argument, when we ourselves don't practice what we preach. http://www.bbc.com/news/33248484 Everyone looks out for their own. The global political arena is alike football, some plays are good......some bad, some good plays are executed well.....and some badly. You need to have sound plans, clear goals that justify sticking your neck out, the ability to quickly alter the plan due to evolving situations, and darn good judgement.

Foreign companies can indeed own up to 50 percent in joint ventures. The limit allows the country to share in the profit, rather than just the foreign aggressor taking 100% of the proceeds.

At least 50 percent government owned. (The foreign company can own up to 50%)

Foreign companies can not hold more than a 50% stake (not 51%) in a joint venture (in most industries), unless they are producing solely for export (which fewer and fewer do because of the high labor costs there today).

Yes, that's what you'll indeed read in the western media. But it's not true.

Billy, believe it or not, we believe it has more to do with concern for the country's well-being (including its citizens), than it does global image (though being able to project a positive global image is always good for any country).

Geely is not privately owned.