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The funny thing is that the world's two largest car companies (at the time) studied each other's practices so extensively, and yet I'm not sure that it benefited either one in the end.
Toyota's mastery of Toyota-speak ensures that we will never know what is really going on behind the scenes over there, all these new weepy, grateful TV commercials notwithstanding.
gagrice: Toyota did an exemplary job of responding to both customer feedback and feedback from Toyota dealer service departments (as to the problems they were seeing) up until about '01 or maybe '02. Then the massive expansion began. I am hoping they can eventually get back to the level of service they had prior to '02.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Does that sound unreasonable? :confuse:
New factories are moving to areas with a lower cost of living. That worked for Nissan in TN, for instance.
I think it's actually the states that regulate overtime pay rates, but here in MD it is 1.5x after 40 hours.
There may be delays while they re-emphasize quality and safety, and conclude "if overhauling safety meant slowing product, so be it". That should be no surprise at all.
their $50,000 SUV staying right side up
Remember - it DID stay right side up. There was no roll or flip, it merely drifted sideways at excessive cornering speeds.
What does that last remark mean?
It means safety will get priority over new product deadlines. They are reluctant to have these delays but they may be necessary.
I don't see any of that as surprising news.
Anything about follow-up investigations in the Sikes case - specifically the comment from NHTSA about the brake pad wear being inconsistent with full brake pedal force?
Any new interviews?
I'm just wondering if they uncovered anything new, or just re-hashed old news and summarized it.
A mural in a Nicetown park depicts a matriarch presenting a turkey dinner to smiling relatives. Its message bespeaks social order, homey virtues, and veneration of the old - precisely the notions that were shattered last Monday when a well-regarded, 68-year-old handyman was shot on Rowan Street.
The daylight killing of Lawrence Bennett, allegedly by Tyrone Roberson, 17, has riled and disconcerted Nicetown, an impoverished neighborhood f sporadic violence bifurcated by the Roosevelt Expressway and Germantown Avenue in a postindustrial sector of North Philadelphia.
"Ordinarily, the elderly in Nicetown are given respect by virtue of their age," said Police Capt. Stephen Glenn of the 39th District. "People don't think the shooting is justified in any way, shape, or form.
"So I don't quite understand this."
Others say they do.
"Yes, it's unusual a young guy kills an older one," said Mary Suttles, 66, a community liaison from City Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller's office and a longtime Nicetown resident. "But there's no respect anymore. Kids don't care any more about an old person than anyone else.
"Lack of jobs, drugs, and bad education are to blame. It's depressing."
Older residents will tell you life in the Nicetown neighborhood was comparatively grand half a century ago.
Like much of North Philadelphia, Nicetown had a heyday, a time of bustling verve that made it a great place to live in the late 1950s and '60s, people recall.
"It was close-knit with a lack of crime," said Majeedah Rashid, executive vice president of the Nicetown Community Development Corp.
"It was lovely, clean," remembered Jesse Daniels, who moved to Nicetown on Juniata Street about 40 years ago, when he was 16. "Neighbors could keep their doors open. There were no abandoned buildings. It was a decent place to raise children."
Residents saw a fitting correspondence between the name of their community and the lives they lived, even though the name is derived from John Neisse, a Frenchman and a contemporary of William Penn's.
What kept Nicetown vibrant were jobs - specifically factory and warehouse jobs that were plentiful when America was a country of manufacturers.
Residents even now can rattle off the litany of companies that offered living wages and decent lives, then moved on: Pittsburgh Plate Glass, Midvale Steel, and, most recently, Tastykake.
At one time in the 1960s, the now-shuttered Budd Co. facility sprawled over 85 acres of Nicetown and employed 6,000 in its automobile parts plant, historians said.
Now, dead factories litter the landscape like wrecked ships marooned by permanent low tide.
There is, said Suttles, a bitter, mocking quality to the omnipresence of empty buildings whose jobs went elsewhere.
"It just breaks my heart," she said.
As in many poor Philadelphia neighborhoods, white people moved out of Nicetown, African Americans moved in, jobs left, and the local economy collapsed - all between the 1960s and '80s.
Drugs and their by-product, random violence, found purchase in a place that began leaking hope.
I did a quick search for retail cashiers and found a random sample:
Sears, TN, $5.75 per hour
WalMart, Canada, $7.75 per hour
WalMart, location undisclosed, $9.40 per hour
Wal-Mart starts their employees from just a little over minimum wage to a couple of dollars over minimum
Wal-Mart is $6.55 hr
Wal-Mart $8.50 in Texas
This source says the average wage is $8:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cox04202004.html
This source says $8.23, pretty close:
http://www.ufcw.org/take_action/walmart_workers_campaign_info/facts_and_figures/- - walmartwages.cfm
If so, the $14/hour starting wage for Toyota would be a whopping 75% higher. Not even in the same ballpark.
That would need to be FULL time jobs. Toyota has lots of part time employees, at least they did before the expose came out! They probably have laid those off to collect entitlements from the local communities.and state governments.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
My best friend's wife worked at Ford, in marketing. It was a white collar job, though. Her job was outsourced.
She took a job with Nissan. They moved from Orlando to Franklin, TN. The cost of living is lower there, so she actually moved up to nice McMansion with twice the square footage. She went from a Mercury Mountaineer to a Nissan 350Z roadster, and just traded to a new Maxima.
I think we all have to get used to globalization. Resistance is futile.
Ford is going overseas for lower-cost labor, will continue to do so, and in fact NEED to do so to ensure their own survival.
Meanwhile, the "imports" are here to stay, the chicken tax guarantees that. They can find economies in building the cars where they sell them. They can also hedge their bets against currency volatility by building on different continents.
Anyone else find it odd that of all the car models raced in NASCAR the Camry is the only one built in the USA? :surprise:
realuncompetitive wage withrealuncompetitive benefits!It cracks me up that people think a cashier is a "career". A boxyboy, a waitress (at other than a high end restaurant), a greeter, a stocker - these are jobs for teenagers or college students! Or at best part time jobs for the second worker in the family. People who think they're going to live their lives with these jobs as a primary are not going to have a high end existence. Nor should they.
I used a turn of phrase regarding the GX460 "staying right side up", but really that vehicle was wildly out of control in the videos I saw of it being tested. it is a vehicle that is (a) high up with a high COG and (b) has no road or steering feel at all. The stability control shouldn't let it get anywhere close to where it did, and I don't think that's an isolated or extreme opinion - CR seemed to agree, as did many folks interviewed. Whether Toyota agreed in hindsight or just fixed it because of public outcry is something we will never know, now that it is back on the market.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Looks like Toyotas have improved this week, then.
Thanks for the update.
Not too long ago that sort of skid/drift was desired, because the alternative would be a rollover.
Consumer Reports actually rolled an Isuzu Trooper and a Suzuki Samurai. Car & Driver rolled a Jeep Liberty as well.
The Lexus did not roll or tip. I'd choose a little drifting over a rollover any day.
That is until you see that sidewalk quickly approaching and the vehicle still out of control.
They are also actively lowering wages and benefits in their USA plants and I'd say they will soon approach Wal-Mart wages.
There were a group of elderly Japanese who swore revenge at the end of WWII for embarrassing their emperor. Was Toyoda one of them? They supplied the government with a whole bunch of trucks and equipment during the war so I wouldn't be too surprised if he was. That would also explain why their market is closed as far as importing products made in the USA.
Most people only saw the clip where the Lexus slides. Watch the whole thing. They approach that decreasing radius curve at an abusrdly high speed.
You can't cheat the laws of physics - even with stability control it probably would not have completed that turn. It may not have skidded off course, but it still would have gone off course without skidding.
You'd still likely crash.
A big corporation like Toyota has high fixed costs, but once those have been covered, incremental sales increase profits quickly and directly.
$14/hour is a long, long way from $8/hour. Ask anyone who earns $8 if they'd be interested in a job that paid 75% more (or even 50% more). You'll have a huge line of applicants.
Oh, wait? I forgot. That's already happened in the American auto industry before, hasn't it? Thank God that Toyota sees that all you need to do is pay a fair wage and treat your people right and they will stay and do a great job for you. (Not speaking of anyones comments as to third-world slave labor...just talking the US here!)
(sorry, NOT a big fan of unions..all they've ever done is take my money for dues and give me excuses why they couldn't help me when I needed them..IMHO, they've run their course...they were valuable 100 years ago, not in todays market, with all the governmental agencies and attornies running around.)
Automotive News -- May 20, 2010 - 5:36 pm ET
UPDATED: 5/20/10 10:34 p.m. ET
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Toyota Motor Corp. and Tesla Motors Inc. will team to produce electric vehicles at New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. in Fremont, Calif., a plant that Toyota last year ruled too inefficient to keep open.
Tesla will acquire the now-closed NUMMI property and employ 1,000 people building unspecified electric vehicles in a partnership with the world's largest automaker, the companies announced Thursday.
Toyota will invest $50 million in the small California-based electric sports maker in exchange for Tesla's common stock when the EV company completes its planned initial public offering.
In addition to the NUMMI purchase, the venture will spur a product-development relationship between the automakers.
Under the partners' scenarios, Tesla will gain from Toyota's scale, engineering resources and access to its supplier base. Toyota, in turn, will have Tesla's lean and rapid product development, as well as its electric vehicle technology. Toyota is still using older-tech nickel-metal-hydride batteries in its Prius and other hybrids, while Tesla is using newer, lithium-ion batteries.
.......“NUMMI is a massive plant. We're going to be occupying a little corner,” (Tesla CEO Elon) Musk said. He added that he expects the plant to build “hundreds of thousands” of more affordable electric vehicles in the longer term.
http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100520/OEM05/100529982/1186-
I'm glad they are still going to be building cars at NUMMI, it seemed a shame to lose it totally. And its a reasonably good deal for both sides, this venture-cash-for-battery-technology swap. The amount of money is relatively little for Toyota, huge for Tesla, and if it gives Toyota a leg up in the race to introduce the next-gen electric cars, it will end up being a priceless investment.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
That cost will be covered by $465 million in Department of Energy loans that will fund the manufacturing ramp-up, as well as development of the upcoming Model S sedan.
Anyone want to guess if the UAW is included in the plan? My guess is the company will recruit NON Union people for their 1000 eventual employees. When Toyota shut down the plant because it was inefficient, the UAW was the biggest factor. Now that WE are footing the bills it is a great place to do business.
There are still many obstacles to selling a $40k+ car with very limited range. Even with the $7000 tax rebate. That limits the buyers to people that pay that much in taxes to start with. The current Tesla is a joke IMO. You may want a car with 6000+ AA sized batteries in your garage charging. I DON'T. This does not make Toyota look good except in the eyes of the blind.
Well, this $40K sedan is supposed to be the equal of the BMW 3-series in terms of speed and handling, and will only be $32,5 after the rebates. Not to mention it will create no tailpipe smog-forming emissions. And the range is expected to exceed that of the Leaf, which people are calling a pretty good deal at $23K after the federal rebate.
I think this thing has potential, but will reserve judgment until they actually have it fully designed and ready to show. Seems like a good idea, no?
Mainly I think it's good that this company's manufacturing unit will remain in California (there was talk of Texas and other places even further away), given that it is a Silicon Valley company. And I do think the relationship will prove beneficial for Toyota in the long run.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Seems like a good idea, Yes!
I have always been an EV supporter. Just not liking the direction it is headed. A simple in town solution as a second car or commuter vehicle would be my choice. Everyone is looking for the miracle battery. Until that is invented we will be in this same 100+ year old holding pattern.
Toyota has wisely stayed with the NiMH until a better battery comes along. They have enough problems without having Li-ion batteries burning homes down.
I've long had doubts about Tesla's viability but this looks like a good deal all the way around to me too. Some jobs are created, a plant remains on the tax rolls, and Toyota needs all the good PR they can get right now (as does Governor Schwarzenegger).
The way Subaru sales are going, maybe Toyota can set up a line for them there sometime.
Just in: will the UAW kill the project before they even get started?
DETROIT, May 21 (Reuters) - The United Auto Workers union urged Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) and electric car start-up Tesla Motors to hire union workers when they reopen a recently closed plant near San Francisco.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2113644620100521
No way Tesla can compete paying line workers $30 per hour. If I am doing the hiring I would not talk to anyone that was even related to a UAW worker. The fact that it is OUR tax dollars opening the plant TesYota may be screwed from the get go.
Lexus LS recall
Retail sales for Toyota in early May are down 12 percent, Edmunds said.
"We're noticing that Toyota's incentive program is starting to fall on deaf ears since most of the people who were open to getting deals from the automaker already made their purchases," said Edmunds analyst Jessica Caldwell.
"Our Toyota cross-shopping data indicates that the brand has not yet recovered from recent image problems."
Read more: http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100521/RETAIL01/305219950/1- 448#ixzz0odVS9A2T
I believe the Tesla 'S' will be a whole size class larger. And with the moves of a BMW for the same price (after federal rebate) as a BMW, I think it has a shot.
That is the design spec, now let's see if they can do it. This car is still two years away.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
My guess that would defy the laws of physics. Though there are people in our government that say they can do that. It will be interesting to see how involved Toyota gets in the project. I think it is strictly a PR move for them.
The Tesla sedan with a base price of $49,900 will not be for everyone. Nice commuter for an LA Yuppie. Or movie mogul with more money than brains. I don't see you or myself popping for one.
http://www.teslamotors.com/models/
PS
A Prius may be the perfect Island rig..
Hydrogen cars
Biodiesel is a green fuel available on some of the islands. VW TDI is a great alternative to cars like the Prius. Rest is still Pie in the Sky..
Toyota no good.
Why would anyone buy one?
Unintended take off eeeeeww!!!
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
Time to catch with Toyota`s sudden unintended acceleration in hydrogen/fuel cell development, I guess!!
Here`s the link:
link title
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-05-11/classified/chi-toyota-hydrogen-fue- l-cell-sedan051110_1_hydrogen-fuel-cell-toyota-gas-powered-vehicle
Of course, customers have to buy that vehicle as well. The prospects of a $50,000 car with limited options for refueling seem suspect right now. It's possible that by 2015 some kind of bare-bones hydrogen infrastructure could develop in some regions of the country, but even if Toyota gets the cost of a vehicle down to $50,000, many hurdles remain before hydrogen adoption begins on any significant scale.
Even Masuda admitted that the market for the fuel-cell sedan would at first be "small, but with some support." GM, Mazda and Honda have been on the hydrogen path for some time, but the nearly non-existent infrastructure in the U.S. has prevented retail thoughts ... along with the nearly $1 million cost for their vehicles as well.
My response was to your statement that fuel cell cars costs 100k and above.
I don't see Toyota selling Fuel Cell vehicles at a loss like they did with the Prius.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Noone does hyperbole like Gary. Noone.
Keep it up, it's funny and harmless as long as people realize you're joking half the time.
I'm surprised Telsa didn't partner with Nissan, but I guess Nissan bailed out of Cali and went to TN already. Hope they save a few jobs - CA needs them!
Sienna is governor-limited to 110mph. :P