Ford has upgraded its Transit Connect small cargo van made in Turkey for import to the US as a 2010 model. It carries a 1,600-pound, 135 cubic foot cargo and gets 22 city, 25 highway mpg in a front-wheel drive vehicle designed for city maneuvering.
GM told Congress that its restructuring plans include closing another five US factories and cutting 49K jobs globally. Even so, it needs up to $30B more in government bailout on top of $13.4B in federal loans it already has received to avoid bankruptcy in 2009.
Wheels has integrated application codes throughout their data applications and management tool set to improve fleet customers' ability to analyze fleet use. Improved ability to slice data into use sets will permit benchmarking within the organization and across industries.
As fuel consumed decreases due to lower demand, vehicles become more fuel efficient or vehicles run on electricity, tax revenues to sustain roads now collected on fuel decline. Several states and the federal government are considering the Oregon-tested system of reading miles traveled in a given state from data collected via GPS.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes $600M for non-federal government and not-for-profits to buy alternative fuel and advanced technology, fuel-efficient vehicles or retrofit diesel emissions systems. Another $300M will be spent by federal fleets to replace vehicles with models getting at least 10% fuel economy improvement.