Wheels: Toyota to Recall 803,000 Vehicles for Air Bag Problem

Wheels Blog: Nissan and Toyota Issue Recalls for About 1.5 Million Vehicles Worldwide

After Delays, U.S. Takes a Step Forward on Rearview Cameras in Vehicles

DETROIT — To help prevent the deaths of children hit by cars that are backing up, the Transportation Department said Tuesday that it would add rearview cameras to its list of recommended safety measures.

The recommendation, though, fell short of a law passed by Congress in 2008 requiring that the department set standards for rear visibility. And it comes as a lawsuit by a consortium of safety advocates, to be filed Wednesday, claims that the department has taken more than twice as long to issue rules than the law intended.

The department has delayed its final ruling four times since the law took effect in 2008. It was to set visibility standards that could help prevent accidents while in reverse, including the installation of devices like cameras, mirrors or sensors.

The Transportation Department, which made the announcement through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, declined Tuesday evening to comment on the lawsuit.

The department recommends that the cameras cover a 20-foot by 10-foot area directly behind the vehicle, displaying the image within two seconds after the car is put in reverse and that it be large enough to help the driver see what is behind the car.

“As we’ve seen with other features in the past, adding rearview video systems to our list of recommended safety features will encourage both automakers and consumers to consider more vehicles that offer this important technology,” Anthony R. Foxx, the Transportation secretary, said in a statement. “While adding this technology to our list of safety features is important, I remain committed to implementing the rear visibility rule as well.”

But Greg Gulbransen, who accidentally killed his 2-year-old son in 2002 when backing the family’s sport utility vehicle into their driveway, said the agency’s delay in issuing a mandate was costing more lives each year.

“Children are dying,” Mr. Gulbransen said. “Children are being seriously injured.”

Mr. Gulbranson is one of the plaintiffs in the suit, along with Susan Auriemma, who injured her 3-year-old daughter in 2005 when backing in her driveway in Manhasset, N.Y. Three consumer advocacy groups — Kids and Cars Inc., Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, and Consumers Union — are also plaintiffs. Public Citizen, which is representing the plaintiffs, declined to comment on the Transportation Department’s announcement.

The lawsuit, to be filed with the federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, asks the court to order the transportation agency to issue a final ruling within 90 days.

On average, backover accidents kill 292 people and injure 18,000 annually, according to the Transportation Department. Children under 5 years old account for 44 percent of these deaths.

In more than 70 percent of these deaths, a parent or close relative is driving when the accidentally occurs, the agency said.

The 2008 law, called the Cameron Gulbransen Kids Transportation Safety Act, stems from the death of Mr. Gulbransen’s son in Syosset, N.Y. The law required the transportation agency to revise the safety standard to expand the area that drivers must be able to see behind their vehicles and to set a three-year deadline.

But the 2011 deadline for a final ruling has been delayed four times, according to the lawsuit. A draft of the final rule sent to the White House in November 2011 was delayed and finally withdrawn from review in June, when the transportation agency said it needed more time.

The department then set a deadline for Jan. 2, 2015, which the lawsuit says would more than double the three-year timetable the law outlines. The agency said it needed more time to collect information.

“This is the fourth delay, and the longest one they’ve offered up,” Ms. Auriemma said. “It’s made me lose faith in the process of what’s supposed to happen.”

Many automakers already install rearview cameras as standard features in their vehicles. Almost 80 percent of 2013 models include a rearview camera as either an optional or standard safety feature, compared with 1 percent in 2003, according to Edmunds.com, an industry researcher.

Even more 2014 models will have the option of a rearview camera as redesigned cars come with full navigation screens.

Automakers say that it is important that rearview cameras remain optional so that consumers can choose whether to pay extra for the feature. Automakers also say they must balance safety features with competitive prices.

Other options, automakers say, include installing backup sensors that beep when a person or object is directly behind the car.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a Washington-based trade association that represents 12 automakers, said the decision to buy a rearview camera should be left to consumers.

“Consumers today are very safety savvy, and they have much information online to help them choose how best to spend their safety dollars,” said a spokesman, Wade Newton.

Automakers opposing the mandate to install rearview cameras in all new vehicles say installation could cost $2.7 billion annually and that, at $160 to $200 per vehicle, the cost will get passed on to consumers.

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Wheels: Hyundai Recalls 259,000 Vehicles for Corrosion and Axle Problems

G.M. Dismisses Executives as India Begins Investigating Recall of Vehicles

G.M. said on Friday that it had dismissed the employees for violating unspecified company policies. One of the executives was Sam Winegarden, a vice president in charge of engine programs, who retired this week after 44 years with G.M., the nation’s largest automaker.

The management shake-up came after the Indian government began an investigation into the recall this week of 114,000 Chevrolet Tavera utility vehicles sold by G.M. in India.

Indian news reports said the government was investigating whether G.M. had improperly manipulated the weight and engine performance in the Tavera during emissions testing and certification.

A G.M. spokesman, Greg Martin, declined to say whether the employees had been forced to leave because of the government investigation.

“General Motors’ investigation into our recall of the Chevrolet Tavera, which is built and sold exclusively in India, identified violations of company policy,” G.M. said in a statement. “G.M. subsequently dismissed several employees.”

One person briefed on the dismissals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said at least 10 employees, mostly in India, were involved. The highest-ranking employee was Mr. Winegarden, who is based in the United States and is the top engineer for the company’s engine operations worldwide.

The company, which said it was voluntarily recalling the vehicles, acknowledged that the Indian government was aware of “an emissions issue” with the Tavera, one of G.M.’s mainstream models in the country.

“G.M. India informed Indian government authorities of an emissions issue involving the Tavera BS3 meeting certain specifications on July 19,” the company said.

The company stopped production of the Tavera in India this month. It said it would make changes to vehicles built as far back as 2005 and perform the required engineering validation. It gave no timetable for notifying customers and doing the work.

The recall is a setback for G.M.’s growth plans in India, particularly if it damages the reputation of the American automaker.

“Our customers are at the center of everything we do,” said Lowell Paddock, head of G.M. India, when he announced the recall.

On Thursday, G.M. reported that its net income in the second quarter dropped 19 percent, partly because of smaller-than-expected profits in Asia.

G.M.’s chief financial officer, Daniel Ammann, said on Thursday that India was among the international markets where G.M. struggled during the quarter.

The decision to oust executives is in keeping with a zero-tolerance policy about violation of corporate ethics led by G.M.’s chief executive, Daniel F. Akerson.

“We take these matters very seriously and hold our leaders and employees to high standards,” the company said. “When those standards are not met, we will take the appropriate action to hold employees accountable.”

Last year, Joel Ewanick, G.M.’s chief marketing officer, was forced to resign after questions were raised inside the company about his handling of a sponsorship deal with a British soccer team.

Wheels: CarLab Mixes Natural Gas and Gasoline for More Efficient Vehicles

CarLab The CarLab’s collection of gasoline-natural gas hybrid vehicles.

When engineers convert gasoline cars to run on natural gas as well, they typically install a large pressurized tank and figure that the driver will go 100 miles or more, use up the gas and then switch back to gasoline. But for cars in the United States, the idea hasn’t caught on.

Now Eric Noble of the CarLab, a California consulting company, is trying a different approach. At a recent meeting in Washington, the Alternative Clean Transportation Expo, he showed off several vehicles with relatively tiny natural gas tanks – not much bigger than the propane tank in a backyard gas grill – with an all-gas range of 55 miles or so. Unlike most bi-fuel vehicles, there is no switch to change back and forth between natural gas and gasoline. And at any given moment, the car could be running on a mixture of the two.

The biggest shift was rethinking the size of the natural gas tank. Natural gas has never worked out for private vehicles in the United States because there are few public refueling stations and the cost of conversion is high. But Mr. Noble said his new approach could make it practical by drastically cutting the cost. Mr. Noble’s idea was that rather than installing as big a natural gas tank as possible, hogging most of a vehicle’s cargo capacity and forcing a sizable investment in the tank itself, he installed a tank just about big enough for a day’s driving. As a result, his 2012 Hyundai Sonata Limited, which has a natural gas range of just 56 miles, was converted for $2,600, he said. A 2012 Mustang GT, in a shade of red that would make a fire engine blush, has a 55-mile natural gas range and cost $2,900 to convert.

The problem with a big tank, he said, is that “you couldn’t get the payback to work.” But a large tank, he said, is not necessary, because 95 percent of private cars are used to travel 45 to 55 miles per day.

“If you drop the size of the tank, you lower the cost,” Mr. Noble said.

His vehicles were meant to be paired with a home refilling unit, which the driver would use every night. Sixty percent of households already have natural gas connections, he said. A compressor that could take all night to fill a car’s tank could be relatively inexpensive, and deployment of his cars will rely on invention of a cheap, low-capacity compressor, he said. Eaton and other companies are working on such a device, aiming for a price of $500.

In fact, development of a cheap natural gas compressor has been identified by the federal government as a crucial ingredient of low-cost, clean, secure energy for transportation. Through the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, known as Arpa-e, the government is giving $3.4 million to Eaton to design a radically different compressor. Engineers hope the compressor will be more durable and efficient, and cheaper to produce than those now available. In fact, at $500 the price would be one-tenth the price of conventional systems.

Part of the trick is figuring out how to remove the heat created by compression. Eaton’s innovation is to use a liquid piston – that is, a slug of liquid instead of a piece of steel. The liquid forms a good seal on the cylinder wall, and it also sucks heat out of the gas being compressed, which is important when compressing a gas at a ratio of 250:1. Cooler gas is easier to compress in the cylinder.

CarLab The CarLab’s gasoline-natural gas hybrids use small natural gas tanks that fit beneath the floor of the car’s cargo area.

This is not Eaton’s first venture into a hydraulic approach. It also used a liquid piston to store energy lost in truck braking, keeping the energy as pressure and turning it back into torque when the truck accelerated. This created a hybrid that was hydraulic instead of electric. The idea caught the attention of Arpa-e.

Congress established Arpa-e as the energy version of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which gives money to high-risk, high-reward ideas that the private sector will not finance. In all, Arpa-e is sponsoring 13 natural gas storage experiments, many of which could help make natural gas vehicles more successful.

There is another twist, though. The CarLab vehicle runs on natural gas during periods when demand on the engine is low, such as during highway cruising. When the accelerator pedal is floored, the system automatically switches to gasoline, which provides more power. In intermediate conditions it burns a mixture of gasoline and natural gas. In test drives, the CarLab’s vehicles consumed 87 percent natural gas and 13 percent gasoline, and that was in very aggressive driving, Mr. Noble said.

The reason that gasoline is sometimes needed is that natural gas provides less power. That problem could be avoided by burning natural gas at a much higher compression ratio — it has an octane rating of 130 and gives more power if burned at higher pressure and temperature — but the engine remains optimized for gasoline, not natural gas.

Theoretically, the CarLab’s gas-gasoline hybrids are like the Toyota Prius or Chevrolet Volt, which use multiple energy sources to increase efficiency. But the CarLab vehicle’s small tank, which is tucked under the floor of the trunk, is a lot cheaper than the batteries the Prius and Volt carry.

News Analysis: Emissions Rules Put Alternative-Fuel Vehicles in a Bind

WASHINGTON

THE Environmental Protection Agency’s latest proposed tightening of limits on sulfur in gasoline, and its previous rules, will most likely have the perverse consequence of retarding the development of cars running on batteries, advanced biofuels or hydrogen — all promising but expensive technologies that have not become mass-market products.

At the least, domestically produced gasoline and rapid advances in technology to make the internal combustion engine more efficient are likely to help the conventional automobile survive against competition from vehicles powered by electricity, natural gas and other cleaner alternatives.

The E.P.A. last week announced its proposed new Tier 3 rules sharply reducing allowable amounts of sulfur in gasoline, which would help automobiles’ catalytic converters to capture more pollutants. Tier 1, the E.P.A.'s first set of rules, was established two decades ago, under the Clean Air Act of 1990. Tier 2 was a refinement in 2000.

The specifics of the regulatory rules are hideously complex, with restrictions phased in gradually and covering only a fraction of the new cars and trucks each model year. They are applied to several categories, including “heavy light duty truck” and “light duty truck.” But the overall picture is clear: pollutants that in the bad old days were measured in grams per mile are now measured in tenths or hundredths of a gram per mile. In Tier 3 they are measured in thousandths of a gram.

Francis X. Lyons, a former E.P.A. administrator for the Great Lakes region, said that the agency’s latest proposed limits on sulfur in gasoline “simply extends indefinitely the viability of traditional automobile engines.”

Obscured by all the numbers is that the various technologies promoted as alternatives to gasoline — batteries, fuel cells or natural gas — are now facing a refined internal combustion engine. The federal government in large part drove automakers toward engine improvements by requiring them to essentially double fuel efficiency by 2025.

At the same time, the federal government has established mandates for increasing amounts of renewable fuels in the gasoline mixture. While that mandate has not yet worked out on the schedule Congress intended, it is clear that gasoline — the product that federal and state governments have been hoping for a quarter-century to replace with a variety of alternatives — is actually a moving target.

Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade association, compared the car to the person in Zeno’s Paradox who walks half the distance to an objective, and then half of the remainder, then half again of what remains. The person gets closer and closer but does not quite reach the end point, which in this case would be a car producing zero emissions.

“The alternatives are having a harder time keeping pace,” Ms. Bergquist said. “Once they were further ahead. Now it really is a horse race.”

The race is reflected in the E.P.A.'s mind-boggling terminology for clean cars. First there were Low Emission Vehicles, then Ultra Low Emission Vehicles. As the standards got even tighter, “ultra” was not enough, and there were Super Ultra Low Emission Vehicles. Then there were Zero Emission Vehicles, or ZEV, meant to be electrics, and then internal-combustion cars named, with no apparent sense of irony, Partial Zero Emission Vehicles.

The pursuit of an all-of-the-above strategy (a phrase popularized by President Obama but in practical use in the field of transportation energy and pollution since the early 1990s) assures that options will compete with each other, and not all will cross the finish line.

In the view of Mr. Lyons, the former E.P.A. official, the government can promote fledgling alternatives but not make them popular if the underlying technology is too expensive or inadequate to consumers’ needs. And among the technologies making strides are gasoline engines that are getting smaller, lighter and much more fuel efficient, he said.

Many environmental advocates, however, reject the idea that gasoline has an edge in a long-term competition with nonfossil fuels. Although environmentalists embrace the improvements in gasoline and the internal combustion engine, they say they are not meant to meet international goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

“We still need to get to an electric-drive fleet to meet our long-term carbon goals,” said Luke Tonachel, the director of clean vehicles at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

He and other experts are still counting on a much greater penetration of electric vehicles, even if the vehicles have so far failed to become a mass-market product.

At the Union of Concerned Scientists, David Friedman, deputy director of the clean vehicles program, said that the Tier 3 proposal was a sign of success driven by the alternatives. “There is a long history of exactly this happening,” he said, recalling that when methanol was being promoted as a cleaner fuel the oil companies said, “'Hey, we can clean up our fuel, too.''’

Something cleaner will have to be developed, he said, because one-third of Americans live in places that are out of compliance with federal air quality rules at least part of the time, partly because of tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks.

In the meantime, he said, the competition was driving some air improvements. “You can connect the zero-emission vehicle mandate to the Tier 3 standards we see today,” he said. “ZEV set the long-term bar, and the auto industry innovated until they could meet some of those standards, and that’s where we got Tier 3.”

Wheels Blog: Kia and Hyundai Are Recalling 1.9 Million Vehicles in Three Actions

Hyundai Motor America 2010 Hyundai Elantra.

Kia and its parent company Hyundai are recalling almost 1.9 million vehicles in three actions, according to reports posted on Wednesday on the Web site of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

About 1.7 million of those vehicles – Hyundais and Kias – are involved in separate recalls for the same problem: a malfunctioning stop lamp switch.

The automaker said the malfunction could set off a variety of faults, including the failure of the cruise control to disengage, failure of the brake light to illuminate, the ability to move the gear-shift lever out of Park without applying the brake and “the intermittent operation of the push-button start feature.”

The third recall covers about 186,000 2011-13 Hyundai Elantras because an air curtain air bag, if deployed in a crash, could propel a support bracket from the headliner into an occupant.

The largest stop-lamp recall covers just over one million Hyundai models, according to a report the automaker provided to the safety agency. They are the 2007-9 Accent and Tucson; 2007-10 Elantra; 2010-11 Genesis Coupe; 2007-11 Santa Fe; 2011 Sonata and the 2008-9 Veracruz.

The Kia recall covers almost 624,000 vehicles, according to the report filed with N.H.T.S.A. They are the 2011 Optima; 2007-10 Rondo; 2007 Sedona; 2007-11 Sorento; 2010-11 Soul and 2007-10 Sportage.

Some other Hyundai models had already been recalled once for a similar problem.

Hyundai in 2009  recalled almost 532,000 2005-8 models after the agency began investigating consumer complaints.

Hyundai decided the new recall was needed after Transport Canada, a counterpart to N.H.T.S.A., began investigating customer complaints of stop-lamp problems on models built after the 2009 recall. That prompted N.H.T.S.A. to get involved.

The Elantra air-bag recall was prompted by an investigation the agency began last year following the complaint from an owner who said his ear was cut when the air bag deployed.

In Hyundai’s report to the safety agency, the automaker said it had discovered the supporting bracket on some vehicles was apparently dislodged when optional auto-dimming rearview mirrors were installed after the vehicles left the assembly plant.

Hyundai described the recalls as voluntary, but once a manufacturer is aware of a safety problem the law requires it to inform the agency within five business days of plans for a recall or face a civil penalty.