Last year, South Koreans bought 4,200 Toyota Camrys making it one of the best selling foreign cars in that country. Toyota believes that by producing the vehicles for that market in the US instead of Japan, it could lower the price, thus attracting even more buyers. Why is this so? Because by moving to American factories, the carmaker would be operating in dollars instead of yen, and taking advantage of the U.S. – South Korea free-trade agreement.

Apparently, even though actual shipping costs would be higher, the cost of production would be less overall if the cars were built in America.

Right now, Camrys destined for South Korea are constructed at the auto company’s plant in Toyota city, a Japanese city that used be known as Koromo, until strong ties with the car company precipitated a name-change.

There has been no announcement of when such a shift in production might take place.

King emphasized his organization’s desire to do so with at least one such transplant this year.

In his speech, King said, “What we’ve been saying has at least created enough comfort in them to sit down and talk with us. What we want workers at the transplants to understand is that workers in UAW-represented facilities have a much greater voice, are treated with more respect and have more protection and security.”

In a separate announcement, King said that the UAW was also seeing progress in ongoing negotiations for a new labor deal with the Detroit 3 (Chevrolet, Ford, and General Motors). These talks had their official kickoff last week, and come just in time, since the UAW’s contracts with the 3 expire in about six weeks.

According to King the challenge his union faces the the need to balance more money for its members without a negative effect on profitability for the auto companies or any slowing of job growth in U.S. factories. Right now, about 113,000 workers at the Detroit 3 are represented by the UAW.

While King believes that hourly auto workers deserve wage increases (they haven’t had one since 2003) he is aware that it may be better to increase salaries via profit sharing and alternative forms of compensation. He added that the union would like to attach hourly bonuses to the Detroit 3′s overall profitability, but also to other operating “metrics” such as increased quality, increased waste reduction, attendance, and reductions in warranty costs.

The UAW, King says, would also like to see entry-level workers – currently earning about half the rate of traditional autoworkers, or $14/hour – be increased a bit.

All totaled, Nissan Division sold 65,659 cars and trucks, an improvement over the 56,266 sold in June of last year.

Most people would consider a 17% sales uptick a good thing, but Automotive News is reporting that Nissan’s vice president for sales, Al Castignetti was disappointed by the results of his company in particular and the industry as a whole, and that he had been projecting a sales increase of 20%.

The strongest performers in Nissan’s stable were the Altima and Sentra, which saw sales increases of 23% and 31%, respectively. This is especially pleasing to Nissan since the Sentra is due for a redesign, yet managed to outsell the lower-priced Nissan Versa during the month of June. Last year, the positions were reversed, and Versa was the better selling model.

The 2011 Nissan Leaf, the carmaker’s all-electric pride and joy, was also a strong performer, with 1,708 units – 200 more than expected – delivered last month.

Other increases were seen in the Nissan Rogue (8% improvement) and the Nissan Juke, though inventory shortages hurt those cars as well.

Reports from Nissan say that Infiniti’s supply issues should end this month with the arrival of 10,000 vehicles to the United States.

I’ve often heard that rumor – that you get more gas if you fill then – but I’ve never seen any science backing it up. I wanted to know if it was true.

So I did some research, and here’s what I learned: No, it actually isn’t.

Here’s why:
Gasoline does expand and contract as the temperature varies, just as all other liquids do. For example, an increase of temperature of about fifteen degrees F generally increases its volume about 1 percent, though the energy content remains the same, but gas stations usually keep their gas in tanks under the ground, where they’re protected from the greatest temperature variations. Because of this, the temperature of gas coming from the pump doesn’t really vary that much within any 24-hour period, at any particular station.

In fact, Craig Erkes, a former chairman of the Petroleum Marketers Association of America – a trade group for gas stations – said that the contraction or expansion of gasoline due to temperature shifts during the day is “…so miniscule as to be almost nonexistent.”

So when should you fill your tank, for the best fuel economy? Day or night doesn’t matter, but you want to make sure that one or two cars fill before you, especially if the weather is hot, because while gas stays at a fairly constant temperature underground, it warms fairly quickly in the actual pump.

To that aim, the company is attempting to increase its dealership network to 650 locations from the current 450, though better integration with the Fiat supply chain is a prerequisite to that happening.

Jeep is aware that in order to improve sales in Europe it will need to adjust its product line to be more in line with consumer expectations there. The initial offering includes the Grand Cherokee and Wrangler fitted with diesel engines from VM Motori, but there are also plans for three new small-to-mid-sized SUVs in the near future.

The first such vehicle will be a new version of the Cherokee (currently sold here in the U.S. as the Jeep Liberty) that is designed less for off-road use than models Americans are familiar with. It will sport either front- or all-wheel drive, and a Fiat-created 170 HP, 2.4 liter four-cylinder engine. The plan is to have it ready for the North American market within two years, then send it to Europe a few months later.

Other more Europe-friendly vehicles will be new models based on the soon-to-debut Alfa Romeo SUV. These will take the place of the existing Compass and Patriot, though the versions sold in Europe will be produced in Fiat’s plant in Turin. Then, in 2014 there will be a Mexican-build “baby” Wrangler, though so far, there isn’t much known about it other than that it will be small.

But that’s not all. According to Steve St. Angelo, executive vice president of manufacturing and engineering with Toyota, production will also be dropped to half capacity on the remaining three days of the week through the same date. As well, the company will continue its habit of halting production during holidays: production will stop in Canada in observance of Victoria Day during the week of May 23rd, and in the United State in observance of Memorial Day, for the week of May 30th.

In a statement to the press, St. Angelo said, “We are trying to continue production as much as possible and keep our workforce intact in order to facilitate a smooth transition back to full production when all parts are available.”

Despite the production halts, however, Toyota says there are no plays to lay off any workers, and the days when production is stopped will be used for training and plant improvement.

Right now, Texas is home to more than 520 miles of interstate highways with daytime speed limits that go up to 80 mph. This bill would require that traffic and engineering studies be completed first, but if the results are acceptable (whatever acceptable may be) 85 mph speeds would be approved, most likely on long, straight, rural roads.

Not surprisingly, there is opposition to the bill from a variety of car insurers and from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which said that high speeds were the cause of about a third of all fatal car accidents in 2009. This is because traveling at a faster speed means that you have to have more distance in which to bring your car or truck to a complete stop, and because it’s more difficult for drivers to react to emergencies. As well, the impact from high speed crashes is often much greater than the tolerances listed in the vehicle specs.

In addition to safety concerns, faster speeds consume more fuel.

Like many other states, Texas is facing severe budget issues this year. Perhaps these proposed higher speeds are a way to generate more revenue from people who don’t catch the changes to lower speeding limits at transition points?

Gas prices in the United States reached an average of $3.14/gallon this week, according to numbers from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). What that means to most of us is that the average price of gas is 53 cents higher per gallon than it was a year ago, and that prices are now the highest they’ve been since October, 2008.

Of course, there are regional variances in the prices of gas (see the map above), with some as low as Texas’s $2.99/gallon, and as high as California’s $3.45. But why is this happening? Most experts agree that it’s because the global economy is once more spinning along, but that oil production is unable to keep up with demand due to a combination of short-term logistics errors and recent turmoil in the Middle East adversely affecting the traded price of oil.

According to a story in USA TODAY, crude oil supplies have hit a bottleneck in Oklahoma, where some of the physical oil that is generally used in selling futures and options of oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange is sourced. The Mercantile Exchange is one of the key players in the futures and commodity game.

The EIA has released its own short-term energy outlook which suggests we should expect prices of around $3.15/gallon for regular-grade gasoline in the summer of 2011, $3.30/gallon next year, though, it points out, the modeling predictions are laden with “specific uncertainty.” According to the agency, there is a 35% chance that the national average gas price may exceed $3.50/gallon before the summer is over, and a 10% change that they’ll exceed $4/gallon across the country.

That’s especially bad for the West Coast, where there’s a possibility that some communities on the West Coast could be paying $4.25/gallon at the pump within the next few months.

Just this past Monday the price of oil increased by 19 cents, finishing the day the highest close for crude oil since October, 2008: $89.38 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

A cold snap in the northeastern United States has led to a higher-than-usual demand for heating oil, and investors have also been reacting to rumors that the Federal Reserve may soon go live with a new attempt at jump-starting the economy, which move would increase the upward pressure on oil.

Prices at the pump have been creeping steadily upward over the last month, as well. Even though the consumer demand for gasoline has remained consistently low prices across the country have gone up by more than 30 cents as compared to a year ago, and parts of the Northeast have seen a price increase of over 40 cents a gallon.

Analysts say that if the price of crude oil remains in the $90/barrel range, the average cost of a gallon of gas could hit $3.00 by year’s end, although some consumers have been paying that much for most of this year anyway.

The Hybrid Car blog refers us to analysts from Cameron Hanover who stated in an article distributed via the AP wire service, that for every one-cent increase in the price of gasoline, Americans spend an additional $4 million on oil.

As well, more expensive gas could strain the potential economic recovery. Witness the words of Lisa Margonelli from The Atlantic:

“This is a big hemorrhage of money that could be put to other uses that would boost our economy… A jump in the price of gas will fall disproportionately on the shoulders of the middle class. Families making $50,000 a year already spend an average of $7,900 annually on their cars, maintenance and fuel, according to the GAO. That’s more than they spend on taxes or health care—two costs the Republicans and Democrats have made their respective signature issues.”

As a result, the stake that American taxpayers have in the company will drop by over half. Launching at just over $35 share instead of in the high $20s originally anticipated, GM was able to raise a significant amount of money to repay the federal government, reducing the government’s share of the automaker’s equity from roughly 60% to closer to 26%.

Despite this very strong return to the stock market, analysts from the New York Times say that in order for the government to earn back every cent it gave to GM, stock would have to trade and more than $53/share.

We will have to watch and wait.