June 2010 Archives

More damning accusations. When will this onslaught on Toyota's reputation end? Maybe when Toyota comes clean on everything involving unintended acceleration -- if it already hasn't.

Toyota accused of withholding info in acceleration probe

Toyota withheld information about safety technology on older models, and its outside research firm altered documents requested in a probe of unintended acceleration, congressional investigators charged Tuesday.

Read more on Toyota's suddent-acceleration problems.

This request is about as strange as it gets in the auto industry. But I believe seing a few tears from a powerful CEO is kind of refreshing.

Toyota CEO Urged By Investor to 'Try Not to Weep'

(Automobilemag.com) It seems showing certain emotions isn't the best thing to do, if you lead a multinational corporation. At Toyota Motor Corporation's general meeting in Toyota City, CEO Akio Toyoda was told by one investor to stop crying when addressing the public and press.

"Mr. Toyoda, you've been all over the media this year and you've gone teary-eyed on several occasions," the unidentified investor said. "For a man of your position, this is unacceptable. Please keep your chin up and try not to weep."

Read more on Toyota CEO's tears.

It's not every day that I find myself in the middle of a horror movie. But that's what happened when I visited 5D Time Machine, the Torrance 3D theater with a 360-degree screen. It was visually and emotionally intense.

Here's how I started my column:

I did not expect to have my head sliced off by a demented girl wielding shears.

Read the whole Business Casual column.

I love the way Toyota's top brass have taken responsibility for the recalls and cut their own pay. I wish American bankers would do something similar.

Toyota's Chief Apologizes to Shareholders

(NYT) TOYOTA CITY, JAPAN -- Akio Toyoda, the president of Toyota, the world's biggest automaker, and the entire board of directors made a total of $15.95 million in the year to March -- $1.5 million less than what a single top executive at Ford, Alan Mulally, made last year.

The ¥1.426 billion in paychecks -- on average $420,000 for each member of Toyota's 38-member board -- reflects the automaker's financial woes amid the global economic crisis, as well as the huge recall scandal at Toyota for which the chief executive has professed personal responsibility.

To atone for the finances and for its handling of the recalls, Mr. Toyoda and top executives have forgone bonuses for two consecutive years.

Read more on Toyota's contrition.

Here's an interesting interview with a census worker who's now out of a job. The Q&A, titled A Census Worker Unemployed Again, touches on the challenges faced by the unemployed. Julian Segura Camacho, who writes for Examiner.com, conducted the interview.

Read the Census worker Q&A.

If you've been a reader of the Daily Breeze, or any Southern California newspaper for that matter, then you may be familiar with the name Jack Kyser.
He has been quoted so many times in so many papers thathe should be named an honorary staff writer at those publications.
Well, Kyser is retiring. And it's nice to learn about the man behind all those quotes.
Here's my Business Casual column, which starts like this: "What will we do without Jack Kyser?"

SpaceX, the Hawthorne-based maker of low-cost rockets, landed a $492 million contract from Iridium Communications Inc., the largest single commercial launch deal ever signed.

The contract calls for SpaceX to use it Falcon 9 rocket to launch Iridium satellites into orbit.

There's so much hype around Tesla that I'd be surprised if the company didn't exceed its IPO goal.

Tesla, which is run by Hawthorne-based SpaceX founder Elon Musk, could change the way we drive just like SpaceX may change how we go to space.

At least that's Musk's goal and a reason Tesla is getting so much attention.

Tesla also benefits whenever SpaceX has a major breakthrough, like the recent successful launch of the Falcon 9 rocket. If Musk can get a large rocket like the Falcon 9 into orbit only eight years after founding the company, then maybe he can work the same innovative magice on all-electric cars at Tesla. At least that's how the thinking goes.

Tesla Motors to Raise $185M in IPO, Toyota Deal

(ABC News) Electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. set terms for its highly anticipated IPO Tuesday, saying it now hopes to raise about $185 million by selling shares to the public and to Toyota Motors Corp.

Read more on Tesla and Toyota.

So much incriminating evidence could come out of these lawsuits, Toyota must be shaking in its boots. Yet, despite all this, the car company keeps jugging forward on new models and hybrid vehicles.

Toyota fixed steering rods for over a decade before recall

(USA Today) Records of Toyota warranty repairs and customer complaints that are part of the lawsuit show that the car company was dealing with cracking and breaking steering relay rods in the U.S. for at least 11 years before it recalled 330,000 pickups and SUVs in Japan to replace the rods -- and 12 years before its 2005 recall of nearly a million similar trucks in the U.S. for the problem.

Read more on Toyota's legal woes.

Proposition 16, which failed on Tuesday, helped expose our state's broken voter iniative system. Something needs to change.
Here's how I started my Business Casual column:

After Tuesday's primary election, it seems increasingly clear to me that Californians must either change the voter initiative process or get rid of it altogether.

The problem is Proposition 16, which was justifiably defeated. But it was too close of a call for my liking.

This arrangement could save Tesla, which is -- in terms of competition -- a very small fish in an ocean of sharks.

Tesla & Toyota (TM) To Develop EV Prototype By Year End, But Partnership Hinges On Tesla IPO

(GreenStocksCentral) Kyodo News (via Street Insider) is reporting that Toyota and Tesla will co-develop a prototype electric car by year end and this is according to Toyota sources.

It was announced on May 21st that Toyota would invest $50 million in Tesla Motors and would partner to produce the Model S electric sedan at a recently closed Toyota/GM plant in Fremont, California. It's not clear what the prototype will be, but I assume it will be a prototype of the Model S which is expected to begin selling in 2012.

Read more on Toyota's partnership with Tesla.

The big challenge for Toyota is that it must deal with this hybrid-related lawsuit at the same time it's handling the fallout from the unintended-acceleration recalls.

Toyota's Other Legal Mess

(Forbes) On a scorching summer day during the 1979 oil crisis, Alex Severinsky, a Soviet refugee, sat for 45 minutes in a sweltering Oldsmobile Cutlass, waiting for the chance to buy gasoline in Dallas. "I'm thinking to myself, in Moscow I'd wait in line in temperatures that were minus 20 to 30 degrees Centigrade for food. Here I'm doing the same thing, not for food but for gasoline!"

Read more on Toyota's hybrid legal trouble.

Tesla is in a touch spot. It's a tiny company competing against giant auto companies. Aligning with Toyota was smart, but Toyota is obviously wary about hooking up with with Tesla, which is up against giants like GM and Ford.

Tesla Reveals Loose Arrangement With Toyota for New Electric Car

(New York Times) SAN FRANCISCO -- Upstart carmaker Tesla Motors Inc. has offered a blunt, real-world assessment of a recent deal it made with Toyota Motor Corp. In a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tesla said the two companies may never get to the point where they jointly develop electric vehicles.

Read more on Tesla and Toyota.

SpaceX, the Hawthorne-based developer of low-cost rockets, is set to launch its Falcon 9 rocket.

Watch the launch live here.

The phrase "the American way" has been bandied about so much, it could mean almost anything. But maybe the only consistent definition is that the American way is the way of constant change.
America's economic and political worlds are nothing if not dynamic. That is both good, as the '90s boom times and recent recession demonstrate.
A major subplot to all this change is the tension between government regulation and economic freedom. How much of either do we want and need?
That's the subject of my Business Casual column today.

This is how I started my column:

Now the pendulum swings in the other direction.

Maybe there's some holy middle ground. A sweet spot with enough economic freedom to maintain prosperity, and adequate government regulation to avoid preventable death and destruction.

Read the rest of Muhammed El-Hasan's Business Casual.

The local foreclosure rate fell in April compared to a year earlier, CoreLogic, which tracks the housing market, reported Thursday.

In the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale area, the rate of foreclosures among outstanding mortgage loans was 3.15 percent in April. That was down from 3.19 percent in April of last year.

However, the delinquency rate for mortgage payments rose in April, with 12 percent of home loans at least 90 days overdue. That compared to 8.4 percent in April 2009.

Foreclosure activity in April for the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale was lower than the national foreclosure rate of 3.2 percent.

Toyota's gas-electric hybrid Prius is truly trailblazing, making alternative-fuel vehicles acceptable to consumers. That benefits any car company trying to sell any alternative-fuel vehicle.

Who Buys a 2011 Nissan Leaf? Toyota Prius Owners, Of Course

(GreenCarReports.com) So who are these strange people who might want something as unusual, as perplexing, as downright radical as an electric car? More specifically, an all-electric 2011 Nissan Leaf compact hatchback?

Turns out they're the same people who wanted the last most radical type of family car: a hybrid-electric vehicle.

Read more on the all-electric Nissan Leaf.