Daniel AkersonGeneral Motors announced Aug. 12 that Ed Whitacre Jr. will step down as chief executive officer on Sept. 1, and as chairman of the board by the end of the year. He’ll be replaced by Dan Akerson, 61, who has served on the GM board of directors since July 2009. Akerson will become CEO on Sept. 1 and chairman by the end of the year.   -Read more-

Consumers soon will be able to control vehicle functions from their smartphones, thanks to an expansion of OnStar's mobile app technology.
In addition to unlocking the doors and sounding a vehicle's horn and lights, OnStar subscribers will be able to see their current fuel tank level and range, remaining oil life, current and recommended tire pressure and lifetime average mpg.  -Read more-

General Motors entered into a definitive agreement on July 22 to acquire AmeriCredit, an independent auto finance company, in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $3.5 billion. GM said it acquired the firm to meet customer demand for leasing and non-prime financing for GM vehicles.
This acquisition puts GM back in the financing business and allows those borrowers with poor or faulty credit ratings to seek out loans. Some analysts say this will help GM compete better with Ford and Toyota.  -Read more-

Fisker Automotive, Irvine, Calif., finalized on July 19 its purchase of a onetime GM factory in Delaware where it will build plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
The Southern California-based environmentally driven automotive company took full possession of the 3.2 million-sq.-ft. Wilmington Assembly plant in Wilmington, Del., for which it paid Motors Liquidation Co. $20 million. Motors Liquidation is the holding company formed by General Motors Corp.’s bankruptcy.  -Read more-

Six months after emerging from bankruptcy, GM announced a loss of $4.3 billion for that time period. The automaker said it earned $57.5 billion in revenue during that time.
“As the results for 2009 show, there is still significant work to be done,” said GM’s chief financial officer, Chris Liddell. “However, I continue to believe we have a chance of achieving profitability in 2010.”
GM reported a near-17% uptick in sales for the first quarter on 2010, ended March 31.

 

Are pickup sales picking up?

After fuel prices dramatically rose during the summer of 2008, followed by the dramatic fall of the economy in 2009, pickups and big SUVS fell out of favor with American consumers. Some traded them in for fuel-friendly cars during 2009’s “cash for clunkers” program.

Some put for-sale signs on them just hoping someone else would come along and take their box-on-body fuel eater off their hands. Others figured they’d already paid for the vehicle, so they’d just keep it. The reasons are as varied as there are individuals. In any case truck sales in 2008 and 2009 plummeted even more than those of automobiles.

But is that trend doing a one-eighty?

Hummer With Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery unable to get approval from the Chinese government to purchase GM’s Hummer brand after agreement with the U.S. automaker in October, a pair of new bidders have made overtures to pick up where Tengzhong leaves off. The latest bidders weren’t revealed as of the morning of March 1.  -Read more-

For a decade or more, fuel cell vehicles have been touted as the “next big thing” in automobiles, featuring the promise of zero emissions, other than water and heat.
Today fleets of FCVs measure in the hundreds with the increasing utilization of fuel cells in commercial vehicles. Light-duty FCVs might be commercialized by mid-decade. According to a new report from Pike Research, Boulder, Colo., fuel cell vehicles will be commercially launched in most regions of the world by 2014, and cumulative sales of fuel cell cars and trucks will surpass 2.8 million vehicles globally by 2020.