During a visit to Detroit last week, President Donald Trump all but promised the auto industry his administration will roll back the tough 54.5 mpg federal mileage standard set to go into effect in 2025.
Yet while some manufacturers, especially Detroit’s Big Three, issued a collective sigh of relief, others insisted such a move wouldn’t make much, if any, difference in their long-term plans. That includes Honda, whose CEO recently emphasized his commitment to generating two-thirds of the maker’s sales from electrified powertrains by 2030.
“Electric” doesn’t necessarily mean “battery,” however, and Honda has become one of the biggest proponents of fuel-cell technology, the Japanese maker recently becoming the third manufacturer to start marketing a hydrogen-powered car in the U.S. market.
Propane is definitely a fuel for work trucks — and 2016 was quite a good year for propane!
In a reversal of what typically occurs in February, wholesale prices of used vehicles up to eight years old fell substantially last month, dropping 1.6% compared to January.
The drop was counter to the 1% increase expected for the month and marked just the second time in the past 20 years prices fell in February (last years’ scant 0.2% being the other instance).
After weeks of intense judging by industry leaders, the finalists for NAFA’s 2017 Fleet Excellence Awards have been chosen.
The Fleet Excellence Awards (or FLEXY for short) are designed to shine a spotlight on those who have impacted fleet management in both the corporate and public fleet segments during the previous year. Three finalists were chosen for each of the seven categories.
Winners will be announced during the Fifth Annual Fleet Excellence Awards Celebration on Tuesday, April 25 at the Tampa Convention Center, Tampa, Florida during NAFA’s annual conference.
We were in Indianapolis last week for The Work Truck Show, where we saw some old friends and met some new ones - learning a lot and having fun all the while.
For us, one of the greatest benefits of attending industry events is the ability to capture a bunch of new video interview content, and this week we feature our first two interviews from Work Truck: Tiago Castro on how Nissan is making a huge push into the Commercial Vehicle space; and Tucker Perkins from PERC on how successful propane has been in the work truck space.
Look for more new video interviews in upcoming issues, and don’t forget to check in at FleetManagementWeekly.com for daily updates.
Ted Roberts
President