Automotive Market Research Reports contain information on the latest trends in the automotive industry. It is a compilation of various reports, such as scale company profiles, demand forecast, reviews, etc. Automotive industry analysis reports are comprehensive in structure and contain every detail of the automotive sector. It is made by specialists who have experience and expertise in the field. Automotive industry research analysis reports are an updated copy of the latest happenings in the automotive market. Automotive sector is growing at a rapid pace with the advancements in technology. The Automotive market research reports help to find the leading-edge opportunities for the automobile companies. According to the latest automotive news reports, automobile industry is said to be one of the most competitive and dynamic industries around the globe. There are lots of auto giants who are launching new sedans every year to fill in the demand and supply gap. Automotive industry research analysis reports show that new innovations are being made by changing the design of the models, adding new equipments and accessories, introducing technologically advanced auto parts, etc. All this is being done to grab the market and make a foothold in this highly competitive industry. The Automotive industry research analysis reports are designed after a thorough study of the market by automotive business research companies. To assure that information is accurate, authentic, and reliable, the specialist go through thousands of books, magazines, newspapers, trade journals, white papers, industry portals that publish info on auto industry. They also take help of the government and private agencies that are monitoring industry news and developments. The automotive business research companies that make these reports maintain in-house statistical and analytical model and an industry specific database to generate authentic and updated Automotive Market Research Reports. A detailed automotive industry research analysis reports covers parameters, such as market size of the automotive industry, growth potential in the global market, factors that are influencing the scale of demand and supply, constraints faced by the automobile manufactures, etc. It gives complete information about the leading domestic and foreign players in the market. Automotive market research reports are the best source of information on the automobile industry. It gives a complete detail of the latest happenings in the market. You can find information on market trends, segmentation, opportunities, and sales and marketing strategies of the various auto companies. Automotive market research reports are a result of quantitative and qualitative analyses of the auto industry.
Automotive Market Research Reports
Top Rated 5 Automotive News Tales Of 2009
Staying abreast of the most up-to-date auto insurance coverage news is an particularly practical activity if you want to make guaranteed you have the proper stage of cover, and are not having to pay over the odds for the privilege. The laws and regulations that govern insurance policies and carriers are reviewed on an ongoing foundation by state and federal authorities agencies.
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The Audi Advantage is Ending
Audi’s free maintenance plan, the Audi Advantage, is being discontinued by the German automaker powerful with the release of 2007 model year vehicles.
I have been creating extensively about the coming invasion of Chinese constructed automobiles to the North American current market.
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5 Golf Equipment Folk Tales
When you have been involved in the golfing industry for 20 years you really do hear some interesting stories regarding golf equipment theories. Most of them are exactly that, just a theory, a wives tale or someone’s imagination producing an idea that will revolutionize their golf game to be better than Tiger Woods. Top 5 Significant Hollywood Events in 2009
We have witnessed top 5 significant Hollywood events in 2009 Tales Behind Picture Frames
In the field of arts, perhaps the most wonderful and the most celebrated is the invention of the camera Top Ten Military Movies 2000-2009
Ready for a fight? Want to watch the best war movies that debuted in the past nine years? Here are the Real Military Network’s pick for the best War films of the past decade.Two providers, Chery and Geely have been eyeing the market and programs to carry their cars and trucks more than have been underway for some time.
Not so rapidly! In accordance to an document appearing in a current edition of USAToday, that might not take place that swiftly. Apparently, there is a small bit of difficulty with emissions controls and crash safety, so much so that any vehicles that do indicate up here will likely be total redesigns.
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More affordable vehicle insurance coverage is in your fingers, drivers. To date, according to one security homework firm, there have been additional than 34 sudden acceleration fatalities in Toyotas, extra than any other auto maker.
The 2009 Tesla Roadster Hits the Market place
Tesla place out the two-seater electric powered sports car or truck this 12 months with a single velocity a transmission that can do -sixty in 3.9 seconds, seamlessly, and that has a sleek front conclude and easy, and contoured rear stop that reach as much as the rear wheel wells.
In 2009, fourteen many years forward of routine, China overtook the USA in projected auto purchases for the year, producing it the world’s most significant car or truck market.
At 267 miles, it drives a distance of fifty miles extra than any other competitor’s hybrid equivalent, creating it the perfect automobile for metropolis-to-operate driving. The Dodge Viper is Vapor
The very last 1 off the line, a 2010 Viper SRT10 Coupe, was the most striking instance.
Patent encumbrance of large automotive NiMH batteries
Background
The modern nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) electric vehicle battery was invented by Dr. Masahiko Oshitani, of the GS Yuasa Corporation, and Stanford Ovshinsky, the founder of the Ovonics Battery Company. The current trend in the industry is towards the development of lithium-ion (Li-Ion) technology to replace NiMH in electric vehicles. Some manufacturers maintain that NiMH batteries are important to the commercialization of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV)s and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) because Li-Ion technology, while functionally superior due to its higher specific energy and specific power, is prohibitively expensive and relatively untested with regards to its long-term reliability.
General Motors and the US Auto Battery Consortium
The Ovonics technology was acquired by General Motors for use in its EV1 electric car, but production was ended shortly after the NiMH batteries began to replace the lead-acid batteries of earlier models
In an interview in the 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, Ovshinsky stated that in the early 1990s, the auto industry created the US Auto Battery Consortium (USABC) to stifle the development of electric vehicle technology by preventing the dissemination of knowledge about Ovshinky’s battery-related patents to the public through the California Air Resources Board (CARB).
According to Ovshinsky, the auto industry falsely suggested that NiMH technology was not yet ready for widespread use in road cars. Members of the USABC, including General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, threatened to take legal action against Ovshinsky if he continued to promote NiMH’s potential for use in BEVs, and if he continued to lend test batteries to Solectria, a start-up electric vehicle maker that was not part of the USABC. The Big Three car companies argued that his behavior violated their exclusive rights to the battery technology, because they had matched a federal government grant given to Ovonics to develop NiMH technology. Critics argue that the Big Three were more interested in convincing CARB members that electric vehicles were not technologically and commercially viable.
In 1994, General Motors acquired a controlling interest in Ovonics’s battery development and manufacture, including patents controlling the manufacture of large NiMH batteries. The original intent of the equity alliance was to develop NiMH batteries for GM’s EV1 BEV. Sales of GM-Ovonics batteries were later taken over by GM manager and critic of CARB John Williams, leading Ovshinsky to wonder whether his decision to sell to GM had been naive. The EV1 program was shut down by GM before the new NiMH battery could be commercialized, despite field tests that indicated the Ovonics battery extended the EV1′s range to over 150 miles.
Chevron and Cobasys
By 2001, the Ovonics technology was owned by the oil company Chevron.
In 2001, oil company Texaco purchased General Motors’ share in GM Ovonics. Texaco was itself acquired by by rival Chevron several months later. The same year, Ovonics filed a patent infringement suit against Toyota’s battery supplier, Panasonic, that ultimately succeeded in restricting the use of its large format NiMH batteries to certain transportation uses. In 2003, Texaco Ovonics Battery Systems was restructured into Cobasys, a 50/50 joint venture between ChevronTexaco and Ovonics, now known as Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) Ovonics. Chevron’s influence over Cobasys extends beyond a strict 50/50 joint venture. Chevron held a 19.99% interest in ECD Ovonics as of a public filing made January 15, 2003. In a later filing on May 17, 2005, Energy Conversion Devices announced that they had exercised an option to purchase back 4,376,633 shares of stock from a Chevron subsidiary, and would cancel and return them to authorized-unissued status. This is the exact number of shares that was listed as owned by ChevronTexaco in the January 15, 2003 filing.
ChevronTexaco also maintained veto power over any sale or licensing of NiMH technology. In addition, ChevronTexaco maintained the right to seize all of Cobasys’ intellectual property rights in the event that ECD Ovonics did not fulfill its contractual obligations. On September 10, 2007, ChevronTexaco (now know as simply “Chevron”) filed a legal claim that ECD Ovonics had not fulfilled its obligations. ECD Ovonics disputed this claim. The arbitration hearing was repeatedly suspended while the parties negotiated with General Motors over the sale of Cobasys back to GM. As of March 2008, no agreement had been reached with GM.
Cobasys contracts demonstrated that the company was willing to sell smaller NiMH batteries (less than 10 amp-hours) for use with hybrid electric vehicles (HEV). For instance, in March 2007, GM announced that it would use Cobasys NiMH batteries in the model year 2008 Chevrolet Malibu hybrid. Toyota uses NiMH batteries in all of its HEV models. However, Cobasys’ sales policies raised questions about its willingness to sell larger format batteries for use in EVs and PHEVs.
In her 2007 book Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that Will Recharge America, Sherry Boschert argues that large-format NiMH batteries (i.e., 25 amp-hours or more) are commercially viable but that Cobasys would only accept very large orders (more than 10,000) for these batteries. The effect is that this policy precludes small companies and individuals from buying them. It also precludes larger auto manufacturers from developing test fleets of new PHEV and EV designs. Toyota employees complained about the difficulty in getting smaller orders of large format NiMH batteries to service the existing 825 RAV4 EVs. Since no other companies were willing to make large orders, Cobasys was not manufacturing nor licensing any large format NiMH battery technology for automotive purposes. Boschert quotes Dave Goldstein, president of the Electric Vehicle Association of Washington D.C., as saying this policy is necessary because the cost of setting up a multimillion dollar battery assembly line could not be justified without guaranteed orders of 100,000 batteries (~12,000 EVs) per year for 3 years. Boschert concludes that, “it’s possible that Cobasys (Chevron) is squelching all access to large NiMH batteries through its control of patent licenses in order to remove a competitor to gasoline. Or it’s possible that Cobasys simply wants the market for itself and is waiting for a major automaker to start producing plug-in hybrids or electric vehicles.”
In an interview with The Economist, Ovshinsky subscribed to the former view. “I think we at ECD made a mistake of having a joint venture with an oil company, frankly speaking. And I think it’s not a good idea to go into business with somebody whose strategies would put you out of business, rather than building the business.” In the same interview, however, when asked, “So it your opinion that Cobasys is preventing other people from making it for that reason?”, he responded, “Cobasys is not preventing anybody. Cobasys just needs an infusion of cash.”
Critics also argue that historical evidence demonstrates the willingness of the oil industry to engage in such anti-competitive behavior. In 1949, the U.S. Supreme Court found Chevron (then known as Standard Oil of California) guilty of conspiring to buy and dismantle the Los Angeles electric street car system, in what became known as the Great American streetcar scandal. In an effort to prevent the passage of California’s zero emission mandates in late 1993 and early 1994, oil companies also funded a series of ads that questioned the viability of electric vehicles.
Cobasys’ problems with other potential customers also raised questions about the company’s sales policies. In October 2007, International Acquisitions Services, Inc. and Innovative Transportation Systems AG filed suit against Cobasys and its parents for refusing to fill a large, previously agreed-upon order for large-format NiMH batteries to be used in the Innovan electric vehicle. In August 2008, Mercedes-Benz sued Cobasys for again refusing to fill a large, previously agreed-upon order for NiMH batteries.
Current status of the Ovonics battery technology
Multiple companies have tried to develop NiMH battery technology without making use of Ovonics’ patents. Electro Energy Inc., working with CalCars, converted a Toyota Prius from a hybrid electric vehicle to a PHEV using its own bipolar NiMH batteries. Plug-In Conversions uses Nilar NiMH batteries and the EAA-PHEV open source control system in its Prius PHEV conversions. These organizations maintain that these developments are allowable because their NiMH battery technologies are not covered by Cobasys’ patents. However, these batteries did not become commercially available until late 2007. The technical capabilities of current bipolar NiMH technology are also significantly more limited than those of the ECD Ovonics technology. For example, the operating temperature range for ECD Ovonics NiMH batteries, an important consideration for their use in consumer road vehicles, is -30 to 70 degrees celsius, while the operating temperature range for Nilar’s bipolar batteries is a more limited -6 to 52 degrees celsius.
On July 28, 2009, Automotive News reported that Cobasys would be bought from Chevron and Energy Conversion Devices by battery maker SB LiMotive, a joint venture of Bosch and Samsung. At the time of the 2009 Cobasys sale, control of NiMH battery technology transferred back to ECD Ovonics. In October 2009, ECD Ovonics announced that their next-generation NiMH batteries will provide specific energy and power that are comparable to those of lithium ion batteries at a cost that is significantly lower than the cost of lithium ion batteries. It is unclear whether ECD Ovonics will continue to adhere to Cobasys’ prohibitive minimum order sales policy.[citation needed]
References
^ a b Boschert, Sherry (2007-02-01). Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that Will Recharge America. Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers. ISBN: 9780865715714. http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/3934.
^ “5 Things You Need to Know About Nickel-Metal-Hybrid Batteries”. 2008-03-07. http://www.greencar.com/articles/5-things-need-nickel-metal-hybrid-batteries.php. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
^ http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aI7Ov7Jyo2nU
^ a b c d e Shnayerson, Michael (1996-08-27). The Car That Could: The Inside Story of GM Revolutionary Electric Vehicle. Random House. pp. 194-207. ISBN: 978-0679421054.
^ Coker, M. (2003-05-15). “Dude, Wheres My Electric Car!?!”. Orange County Weekly. http://www.ocweekly.com/2003-05-15/features/dude-where-s-my-electric-car/4. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
^ “US SEC Form 8-K, Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.”. 2004-07-07. http://www.ovonic.com/PDFs/Financial_Reports/form_8k/8k_mbi_patent_infringe_settlement_7july04.pdf. Retrieved 2007-08-08.
^ Roberson, J. (2007-03-14). “Supplier Cobasys Exploring More Hybrid Batteries”. Detroit Free Press. http://www.oesa.org/publications/articledetail.php?articleId=6398. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
^ “ECD Ovonics Definitive Proxy Statement”. 2003-01-15. http://investor.shareholder.com/ovonics/secfiling.cfm?filingID=32878-03-4. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
^ “ENERGY CONVERSION DEVICES, INC. Form 8K Current Report”. 2005-05-17. http://investor.shareholder.com/ovonics/secfiling.cfm?filingID=32878-05-58. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
^ a b “ECD Ovonics Amended General Statement of Beneficial Ownership”. 2004-12-02. http://investor.shareholder.com/ovonics/secfiling.cfm?filingID=950134-04-18744. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
^ “ECD Ovonics 10-Q Quarterly Report for the period ending September 30, 2007″. 2007-09-30. http://investor.shareholder.com/ovonics/secfiling.cfm?filingID=32878-07-93. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
^ a b “ECD Ovonics 10-Q Quarterly Report for the period ending March 31, 2008″. 2008-03-31. http://investor.shareholder.com/ovonics/secfiling.cfm?filingID=32878-08-30. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
^ http://www.cobasys.com/news/20070313.shtml
^ Greenberg J. (2008-10-14). “The Edison of our Age: Stan Ovshinsky and the Future of Energy [Video Interview Part 1"]. The Energy Roadmap. http://www.theenergyroadmap.com/futureblogger/show/1030-stanford-ovshinsky-and-the-future-of-energy-interview-part-1. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
^ Hicks, Robert Eldridge (1973) Politics of land: Ralph Nader’s study group report on land use in California, pp. 410412, 488. Compiled by Robert C. Fellmeth, Center for Study of Responsive Law. Grossman Publishers.
^ http://wot.motortrend.com/6278400/auto-news/mercedes-sues-cobasys-battery-supplier-ml450-hybrid-suv-delayed/index.html
^ CalCars news “Electro Energy announces CalCars project”. 2005-10-20. http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/175.html CalCars news. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
^ Sebastian Blanco (2007-12-11). “EVS23: Kim Adelman’s Plug-in Prius with Nilar nickel-metal hydride batteries”. autobloggreen. http://green.autoblog.com/2007/12/11/evs23-ken-adelmans-plug-in-prius-with-nilar-nickel-metal-hydri/. Retrieved 2009-11-18.
^ http://www.ovonic.com/PDFs/ovonic-materials/Ovonic-Fetcenko-2008-Wolsky-Seminar.pdf
^ http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1403
^ “Battery venture buys Cobasys”. 2009-07-28. http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10296368-48.html. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
^ Michael Fetcenko (2009-10-01). “Ovonic NiMH trong Now, Room for Growth”. Ovonic. http://www.ovonics.com/PDFs/Batteries2009OctoberNiceConference.pdf. Retrieved 2009-11-18.
^ http://www.ovonics.com/PDFs/Batteries2009OctoberNiceConference.pdf
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