Dealers and automotive analysts agree that used vehicle prices are spiking across the country. A variety of factors, including the nation's weak economic recovery, high gasoline prices and the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, have converged in recent weeks to send demand for used vehicles skyrocketing and supply plummeting. NADA projects that average June trade-in values for used cars will be up by 18 percent since December and by a full 30 percent over June of last year.
There?s been much safety concern over SUV rollovers injuring passengers, but things have changed drastically since anti-rollover technology has been added. According to an IIHS study, SUVs now have half as many fatalities as comparably sized cars. Minivans are still the safest, most likely because drivers carrying young children are watchful for safety.
Ford Motor Co. plans to triple North American production of hybrid and electric vehicles to more than 100,000 units a year by 2013, says Jim Farley, global marketing chief. It?s part of the company?s strategy to make a quarter of its vehicles run at least partly on electricity. Ford is seeing a huge, growing appetite for fuel-efficient, green vehicles, Farley said.
Managers of electric utility fleets of all sizes are looking at two far-reaching issues that promise to challenge the way they will run their fleets today and tomorrow. Most immediate of those challenges is doing as much or more today as in the past with changing budgets. However, changes in the industry's technical workforce ultimately may overshadow issues of dollars and cents.
EV drivers have multiple resources to tap into to help alleviate range anxiety and find the best charging resources out on the market. Recargo, coming from Dictionary.com founder Brian Kariger, offers a searchable database of the world's charging stations with government data and user-supplied reports along with Google Street View images of more than 1,000 charging stations.