MOTOR

British car sales up

New car sales in Britain rose 1.8 percent last year, despite a sharp drop in December, as the motor industry staged a modest recovery, trade data showed on Friday.

The total number of new car registrations climbed to 2,030,846 vehicles in 2010, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said in a statement.

“Last year was a year of recovery for the motor industry with new car registrations up 1.8 percent on 2009,” said Chief Executive SMMT Paul Everitt.

“Economic conditions remain extremely challenging, but industry expects demand to strengthen in the second half of the year. “Competition in the retail sector will intensify as the industry seeks to re-balance demand across its new and used car and service and repair business,” he said.

However, the industry experienced mixed fortunes last year after the end of the government’s new-for-old car scrappage scheme in March.

Sales soared by nearly 20 percent in the first half of 2010, but tumbled 13.8 percent in the second half.

In a further blow, the SMMT also revealed that 123,817 new cars were registered last month.

That marked an 18-percent slump from December 2009 and was the sixth successive monthly drop despite the looming VAT sales tax hike which kicked in recently.

The SMMT industry body also predicted that sales would drop by 5.0 percent this year to 1.93 million vehicles, citing difficult trading conditions.

“The car sector faces a difficult looking 2011,” said IHS Global Insight economist Howard Archer.

“Not only will car sales be pressurized by the VAT increase from 17.5 percent to 20.0 percent, and current record high petrol prices, but private sales are likely to be dampened appreciably by the serious headwinds facing consumers,” he said.

The most popular car model in December was the Vauxhall Astra, but the Ford Fiesta retained the top spot for the whole of 2010.

AFP

Car tech dazzles at Consumer Electronics Show

Automakers are taking a drive into the future at the Consumer Electronics Show.

The annual event is traditionally a showplace for mobile phones, computers and television sets but car makers are grabbing a lot of attention this year with the latest in automotive technology and a glimpse at what’s to come.

US automaker Ford even chose Las Vegas over next week’s Detroit Auto Show to reveal its first all-electric car, the Focus Electric, which can get up to 100 miles (160 kilometers) on a single battery charge and goes on sale this year.

Audi attracted crowds to its CES stand with a demonstration of a “head-up display” that resembles a videogame, projecting important information like a car’s speed or directions in hologram fashion on the windshield directly in front of the driver. “It shows you where to turn, the speed limit and your speed so you don’t have to look down at the dashboard,” said Jessica Silvia, a spokeswoman for the German automaker, which has also been experimenting with self-driving cars.

Audi’s self-driving cars were not seen zipping around CES but a concept car developed by General Motors was — the two-wheel EN-V, or Electric Networked Vehicle, which can park itself or be summoned using a smartphone. Test rides in the two-seater bubble-like EN-V, which was making its debut in the United States after first being shown at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, were a popular diversion among CES attendees.

Ford showed off the 2012 Ford Focus version of MyFord Touch, a touchscreen navigational and entertainment display mounted on the dashboard that besides being touch-responsive can also understand 10,000 voice commands. “I can get destinations, I can get songs. I just have to tell it what I want,” said Paul Aldighieri, a Ford spokesman. “We don’t want you to control the content with your hands we want you to tell the car what you want.”

The information on the screen is color-coded — blue for climate, red for entertainment, green for navigation and yellow for phone — to minimize the amount of time a driver takes their eyes off the road.

Ford also introduced a new software program called Sync Applink which can access mobile applications like Pandora Internet radio after being connected to an Apple iPhone, a Blackberry or an Android-powered smartphone.

AFP

China sales hit record in 2010 - Ford

The brand new all-electric Ford Focus is displayed as President and CEO Ford Company Alan Mulally delivers a keynote address at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show at the Las Vegas Hilton last Friday. CES, the world’s largest annual consumer technology tradeshow, concluded yesterday.

US automaker Ford said Friday that its sales in China, the world’s biggest vehicle market, soared 40 percent year-on-year in 2010 to an annual record of 582,467 units. The strong growth was driven by sales of the Focus and Fiesta brands, Ford said. These models benefited from the government’s incentive policies aimed at boosting sales of small cars during the global financial crisis.

Sales in December rose 52 percent year on year to 56,880 units, Ford said.

“We are grateful to our partners and Chinese consumers for yet another year of record growth in one of the world’s most dynamic markets,” chief executive Ford Motor China Joe Hinrichs said in a statement. Ford said its passenger car joint venture Changan Ford Mazda Automobile saw sales rise 34 percent year on year in 2010 to 403,283. However, Ford still trails US rival General Motors, which set an annual record of 2.35 million vehicle sales in China last year, a 28.8 percent year-on-year jump.

Ford did not provide a forecast for 2011. Sales however could be affected as China withdraws stimulus measures introduced to cushion the impact of the global economic downturn. The government raised the purchase tax for small passenger cars to 10 percent starting this year, ending an incentive policy that helped the nation overtake the United States as the world’s top auto market in 2009.

The country’s auto sales totalled 16.4 million units for the first 11 months of 2010, up 34.1 percent from a year earlier, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

AFP

Vehicle sales hit high

Sales of motor vehicles in the Philippines hit a historic high in 2010, beating a record set in 1996, the industry’s leading trade association said on Saturday.

Sales in 2010 stood at 168,490 units up 27.2 percent year on year, the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines Inc. said.

The growth was due to heavy spending for national elections in May and the need to replace vehicles damaged by floods and typhoons in 2009, it said.

Sales growth was forecast to taper off to four to five percent this year but the association also expected more investment in the sector due to renewed business confidence.

Sales of passenger cars, trucks and vans all grew by double-digits last year, the association said, without giving exact figures.

AFP