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    Gary S. Vasilash

    Gary S. Vasilash

  • 2004: What the car world was like the year Autoblog came online

    It was the year that Janet Jackson had her wardrobe malfunction at Super Bowl XXXVIII and the Dave Matthews Band's tour bus had a fecal malfunction over the Chicago River. George W. Bush started his second term in office. The No. 1 song on Billboard's Hot 100 was "Yeah!" by Usher (featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris).

  • All the ways politics is priming the pump for higher gasoline prices

    Although you may not pay a lot of attention to geopolitical goings-on, trouble in the Middle East — especially U.S. tensions with Iran, which, incidentally, is not one of Saudi Arabia's favorite countries, either — may have a consequence on your disposable income. As tensions grow there and elsewhere, so do the odds of higher gasoline prices. Iran: According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), "the Strait of Hormuz is the world's most important oil transit chokepoint." In 2016, 18.5 million barrels of oil per day passed through the strait between Iran and Oman.

  • How creative is each car company? Here's one way to measure

    When Toyota started the original Prius program in the early 1990s, it did something that was atypical at the time: As this was an all-new approach to developing a powertrain, it decided that it would have its engineers develop as much as possible internally — down to the geometry of the wire used for motor winding. The spirit of Henry lives on, because the next OEM on the list, at No. 15 with 2,149 U.S. patents, is Ford.

  • What’s better for the environment: diesel or battery-electric?

    The result of the study, arguably, is a case for more diesel engines. The Wall Street Journal took the study and ran with it in an op-ed titled, "Germany's Dirty Green Cars." That article, and the study, have garnered controversy.

  • $12,000 per car is the cost penalty for building EVs, McKinsey study finds

    There's an old salesman's joke that says, "We lose money on every sale ... but we make it up on volume." Which seems to be the state of affairs in the electric vehicle space, although it is only the first part that's true, and so the OEMs probably don't find it to be all that funny. According to researchers at McKinsey & Company, "new EV models are launching at a rate of approximately 120 a year" on a global basis, yet, they have calculated, EVs "often cost $12,000 more to produce" than comparable small-to-midsize sedans or crossovers with internal combustion engines (ICEs). One of the recommendations that does potentially address de-contenting in a nearly transparent way is to focus on a dedicated EV platform that allows the OEM to not have to make modifications from existing architectures to accommodate the electronics, motors, batteries and the like.

  • BYD is going from buses to exotic supercars — all EVs

    It is, as most things that had their moments in the spotlight at that event, an electric vehicle. There are a couple things to know about BYD, which is based on providing "zero emissions energy solutions," some of which take the form of production vehicles like the Song Pro SUV and various electric sedans, as well as potential vehicles, like the E-SEED GT, which is said to be designed with the company's new Dragon Face design language. Egger had previously been the head of design at Audi, Lopez the head of exterior design at Ferrari, Jauch-Paganetti the design director at Mercedes-Benz Italia Advanced Design.

  • Hackers steer a Tesla with game controller, trick it with stickers

    As for the wipers, the Keen researchers took advantage of the fact that unlike other automakers, which use optical sensors to detect raindrops on a windshield, Tesla uses a 120-degree fisheye camera that feeds information to a neural network to figure out whether it is raining, and if so, to turn on the wipers. Turns out that neural networks can be tricked with some perturbations in the images being processed.

  • Slowly, steadily, gasoline prices are rising

    The concept of Chinese water torture — which is more a product of medieval Italy, and was test-rated as effective by "Mythbusters" — is that small, slow drips, which are seemingly benign, end up having a huge effect on captives.

  • AAA study shows people are scared of autonomous cars

    AAA suspects that contributing to this remarkable finding is "a number of high-profile automated vehicle incidents" that occurred in the past year. If anyone should be scared about this survey it's the companies that are investing millions of dollars in self-driving technology.

  • Elizabeth Warren says break up the tech giants: Well, they tried that with GM

    Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren's plan for breaking up tech giants including Facebook, Google and Amazon may be causing a bit of consternation among the denizens of Silicon Valley. Consider DuPont and General Motors. In 1914, Pierre S. du Pont, scion of the chemical company, bought GM stock.

  • Why Ford CEO Jim Hackett may be the smartest person in the car business

    Jim Hackett succeeded Mark Fields as president and CEO of the Ford Motor Co. Although there was some initial upward movement under the Hackett regime, with the stock hitting $13.20 on Jan. 5, 2018, a high it hadn't seen since 2016, now it is bumping along below $9 per share. Which brings us back to (1), the Hackett vision for Ford.

  • What's an ultracapacitor? Tesla's clever acquisition explained

    Perhaps it got stepped on by the seemingly unusual news that Volkswagen's Electrify America will be installing Tesla Powerpack battery systems at its charging stations, but the announcement that Tesla is acquiring Maxwell Technologies, a developer and producer of ultracapacitors, is far more significant. It not only will put Tesla products into a number of other automakers' vehicles, but it further extends the company's capabilities and capacities in electrification, both mobile and static. Another benefit of storing the charge in a field is that the ultracapacitor can be recharged many more times than a battery.

  • Trucks and tidbits from GM's earnings report

    GM reported full-year income of $8.1 billion and EBIT-adjusted income of $11.8 billion. Altogether, GM sold 973,463 pickups in the U.S. in 2018. Although Ford gets bragging rights for F-Series sales, GM gets to point out that it has a greater aggregate number.

  • Who knew that service parts belong in service centers?

    Which he himself admitted, "But even with tough economic times, to see 50% growth is pretty nutty."An interesting definition"A large complex manufactured object." That's how Musk described what they're making.Perhaps a Coke machine in the lobby, too"I think we made a strategic error in the past about not having service parts located at our service centers.

  • Why it's so hard to give up gasoline

    According to the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS), which is all about "advancing convenience and fuel retailing," of the 154,958 convenience stores in the U.S., 122,552 sell gasoline. What this means is that should you be in need of a gallon of milk you can also readily get a gallon of gas, which is arguably the definition of convenience for many people, who also are interested in everything from lottery tickets to vaping supplies, as well as topping of their tanks. According to the Alternative Fuels Data Center, part of the U.S. Department of Energy, there are 21,009 chargers in the U.S. Admittedly, the data tracks all types of installations, whether it is a DC fast-charging setup at a Dunkin' Donuts or a Level 2 charger on a corporate campus.

  • Will attaching the electrodes re-animate Cadillac?

    This announcement last week from General Motors —"Cadillac will be GM's lead electric vehicle brand"— followed quickly by the surprise reveal Sunday night of a Cadillac EV crossover, leads one to wonder whether this is a case of GM pulling out the defibrillator and hoping a full-on jolt of electricity will revive Cadillac from its ongoing diminution in the market. In 2018, Cadillac U.S. sales were 154,702 vehicles, which was down from the 156,440 it had sold in 2017. Sure, part of Cadillac's problem — one shared by some other OEMs — is that its sedans aren't selling.

  • Elektroauto: German EVs are coming — and Germans are interested

    It is rather amusing to know that this is considered to be something of a "Tesla killer" given that the Tesla Model S, the car that the Taycan is presumably going to take out, was launched in 2012, so arguably it could die of old age first. According to Peter Wawer, Division President Industrial Power Control at Infineon, "The biggest challenge in switching from combustion engines to electric motors is to set up a charging infrastructure, and to upgrade existing power grids.

  • How VW will pay for its $12.5 billion transformation

    General Motors has initiated its transformative belt tightening through the "unallocation" of five factories in the U.S. and the closing of two plants outside of North America by the end of 2019. Meanwhile Ford has yet to announce the details of its $11 billion restricting plan (while denying the Morgan Stanley report that it would be eliminating 25,000 jobs). As Ralf Brandstätter, the brand's Chief Operating Officer, said when announcing the plan, "We must force the pace of our transformation and become more efficient and agile.

  • General Motors: Smacked by scale

    For beer aficionados, there is a big difference between a few barrels and an ocean of Bud. Instead, the auto industry is all about scale. By and large, automakers have too much capacity for vehicles that people are losing interest in.

  • Ghosn's legacy: one of the auto industry's most effective execs

    It shows that Ghosn is a remarkable executive, given that he was able to take Nissan from the edge of financial oblivion to one of the foremost automotive companies (although with alliance partners Renault and, more recently, Mitsubishi). In 1999, Ghosn created what was named the "Nissan Revival Plan." It could have just as well been called the "Nissan Resuscitation Plan." Things were that bad.