Nat­ural gas vehi­cles (NGV) like the Ford F-150 and Honda Civic Nat­ural Gas have been attrac­tive to many con­sumers and busi­nesses – it’s been much cheaper than gaso­line and diesel; and a lot of peo­ple enjoy that it’s a domes­ti­cally pro­duced fuel and not com­ing from an over­seas OPEC country.

A fed­eral tax incen­tive expired in Wash­ing­ton on Decem­ber 31 that’s increas­ing gas pump prices – up to 50 cents for each gaso­line gal­lon equiv­a­lent (GGE) of nat­ural gas sold at a lot of fuel­ing stations.

There are a few rea­sons as to why it won’t be going away:

Even if the tax credit takes its strong price sav­ings off a bit, it’s still a good deal. It might come back in Wash­ing­ton, and leg­is­la­tors are look­ing at the options.

There are a few other items to keep in mind – check out cov­er­age of the issues here……

NAFA Fleet Management’s Cer­ti­fied Auto­mo­tive Fleet Man­ager (CAFM) pro­gram is the indus­try stan­dard in terms of achiev­ing pro­fes­sional recog­ni­tion for knowl­edge and exper­tise. It is not just about cars – it cov­ers fleet and main­te­nance man­age­ment processes that apply to any­thing with an engine. For the first time, NAFA is offer­ing The Work Truck Show® atten­dees the oppor­tu­nity to test drive the CAFM cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram for free.

Appli­cants have until Feb­ru­ary 4, 2014 to sign up. Here are the details

Miche­lin has devel­oped a tire, the Pre­mier A/S, that coun­ters the effects of wear with chan­nels that grow wider, and hid­den rain grooves that emerge as the tire is used, along with a spe­cial rub­ber com­pound for wet conditions.

Tires play a cru­cial role in trans­lat­ing brak­ing force to decel­er­a­tion, par­tic­u­larly in wet con­di­tions. “Con­sumers think brakes are the moti­vat­ing force that stops your car, when in real­ity tires stop your car,” said Ron Mar­gadonna, a senior tech­ni­cal mar­ket­ing man­ager at Michelin.

Com­pared with a con­ven­tional tire, the Pre­mier A/S, reduces stop­ping dis­tances in wet con­di­tions and, when worn, bet­ter resists hydroplan­ing — skat­ing on a thin cush­ion of water.

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FedEx will deploy the Nis­san e-NV200 in the Wash­ing­ton, D.C. area, where it will undergo field tests sub­ject­ing it to the rou­tine require­ments of a deliv­ery vehi­cle. The results will be used to help deter­mine the via­bil­ity of using an elec­tric vehi­cle in this role in the U.S.

“As a global fleet oper­a­tor serv­ing 220 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries world­wide, FedEx is com­mit­ted to improv­ing the effi­ciency of its vehi­cles as part of our Earth­S­mart ini­tia­tives,” said Mitch Jack­son, vice pres­i­dent of Envi­ron­men­tal Affairs and Sus­tain­abil­ity, FedEx Cor­po­ra­tion.  “We are pleased to con­tinue our work with Nis­san and bring the e-NV200 into test in North America.”

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The future of Fisker Auto­mo­tive might be viewed as a sym­bolic tale of where eco­nomic alliances – and com­pe­ti­tion – now stand between the US and China.

Two Chi­nese investors are vying to take over the trou­bled US maker of the lux­ury, extended range Fisker Karma.

While EV sales fig­ures in either coun­try are highly unlikely to meet the mil­lion unit EV mark set by Pres­i­dent Obama within the next two years, the race is still being run.

The invest­ments have been impressive:

• An elec­tric ver­sion of the Saab 9–3 for sale in China is crit­i­cal for Saab a year out of its bank­ruptcy proceedings.
• Tesla Motors has been work­ing hard to get its web­site domain name back in China from a Chi­nese owner.
• Actor Leonardo DiCaprio announced he’s form­ing a team to par­tic­i­pate in a new EV rac­ing cir­cuit that will launch its inau­gural sea­son in Bei­jing next September.

Read all about the oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges that EVs present for the US and Chi­nese auto markets……

With labor mar­ket and credit con­di­tions con­tin­u­ing to improve and expected to main­tain an upward tra­jec­tory in the year ahead, the envi­ron­ment is ripe for sus­tained vital­ity in the new, used and whole­sale marketplaces.

These and other trends are explored in detail in Manheim’s 19th annual Used Car Mar­ket Report, unveiled by Man­heim chief econ­o­mist Tom Webb at the National Auto­mo­bile Deal­ers Asso­ci­a­tion convention.

Read more about the next evo­lu­tion in the used vehi­cle marketplace.

GPS Track­ing Reports help you hold your fleet account­able to high stan­dards. With cus­tomiz­able report time frames, you can eas­ily look up the most rel­e­vant con­tent. On top of mon­i­tor­ing infor­ma­tion in your recent his­tory, you have the abil­ity to access unlim­ited his­tor­i­cal data about your fleet which can be ben­e­fi­cial for many reasons.

Maybe you’re a fleet man­ager for an elec­tri­cal com­pany try­ing to reduce fuel costs. You want to research your fleet’s dri­ving behav­ior to pin point areas that need improve­ment. With access to unlim­ited his­tor­i­cal data, you can ana­lyze his­tor­i­cal routes, dri­ving habits and unau­tho­rized usage as far back as your fleet was equipped with GPS track­ing devices. What­ever the rea­son, may be you would need to know what hap­pened a week ago, a month ago, or a year ago, advanced fleet track­ing soft­ware will have you cov­ered. Beware, only some com­pa­nies will offer this for free, so be sure to find out first.

GPS Insight offers unlim­ited his­tor­i­cal data to cus­tomers at no charge. For more infor­ma­tion, please visit our web­site.

Ichi­nen Hold­ings Co. Ltd, one of Japan’s largest auto­mo­tive leas­ing com­pa­nies, has selected the Miles leas­ing and fleet man­age­ment solu­tion from Belgium-based soft­ware spe­cial­ist, Sofico, to man­age its fleet of more than 120,000 vehi­cles on behalf of cor­po­rate cus­tomers through­out the country.

In 2012, the com­pany insti­gated a ten­der process to find a new fleet man­age­ment soft­ware sys­tem supplier…

Pic­tured: Sofico Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, Gemar Hom­pes with Masashi Kuroda, CEO of Ichi­nen Holdings