31 Dec 2008;business-standard.com:New Delhi: Luxury car-maker Porsche today said it is in planning to introduce its new sports utility vehicle (SUV) Cayenne Diesel to India.
The new Porsche Cayenne Diesel will not come to the Middle East and Asia right away, but talks are underway with Germany to attempt to secure the vehicle for this market, Porsche said in a statement.
The company said its production is currently taking place at Leipzig in Germany and would be initially available in only selected European markets from February 2009.
The SUV is equipped with a three-litre V6 turbo diesel engine with 240 HP (176 kW) supplied by Audi AG. There are seven other models in the Cayenne product line.
31 Dec 2008;business-standard.com:Tokyo: Toyota Motor Corp and Honda Motor Co, Japan’s two largest carmakers, may modify their so-called ‘just-in-time’ manufacturing system to avoid possible supplier bankruptcies disrupting production.
General Motors Corp and Chrysler LLC are battling to restructure after winning $13.4 billion in emergency federal loans to keep them operating through March. Detroit’s woes could lead to a “supplier shock,” crippling US production at Japanese and other foreign carmakers, according to the Center for Automotive Research.
“We continue contingency planning” even after the bailout, Mike Goss, a spokesman for Toyota’s North American manufacturing unit in Erlanger, Kentucky, said by email. “We hope the loans provided to Detroit will also help to stabilise suppliers, but the very slow market remains a concern for all.”
The Japanese company may work with more partsmakers and increase inventories to mitigate the effects of a collapse among its US suppliers, at least half of whom also work for Detroit automakers, Goss said. US vehicle sales at a 26-year low have forced GM and Chrysler to seek government aid and left as many as a third of North American component-makers at risk of bankruptcy, according to consulting company Grant Thornton LLP.
“Partsmakers may have escaped bankruptcy filings for the next few months, but six months, a year from now, the risk is definitely still there,” said Takeshi Miyao, a Tokyo-based supply chain analyst at automotive consulting company CSM Worldwide.
1938 Adoption: Toyota fell 1 per cent to 2,905 yen at the 11 am close of Tokyo Stock Exchange trading. It has fallen 52 per cent this year.
Plunging demand in the US, the world’s biggest auto market, contributed to Toyota on December 22 forecasting its first operating loss since 1938. That was the same year the carmaker fully adopted the “just-in-time” model, according to its website. Under the system, companies avoid stocking inventories, preferring to take delivery of components as they are needed, to cut expenses.
30 Dec 2008:economictimes.indiatimes.com:Oil rose for a third day on Tuesday as traders kept scrutiny on Middle East crude supply amid the Israeli-Hamas conflict, but prices were still on
track to end the year down 60 percent, the biggest annual loss on record. Crude jumped as much as 12 percent on Monday after Israel launched its fiercest air offensive in the Hamas-ruled Gaza strip in decades and prepared for a ground assault, raising concerns that enraged Arab crude-producing neighbours would react.
By 0142 GMT, US crude was up 35 cents at $40.37 a barrel, while London Brent gained 25 cents to $40.80.
However, oil is still heading for a loss of nearly 60 percent this year, its biggest annual fall since futures began trading 25 years ago.
"Now, matters in the Middle East seem to be taking the forefront, overriding the global economic problems," said Gerard Rigby, an analyst at Fuel First Consulting in Sydney.
"I'll keep an eye on stocks and the dollar as well."
Four days of Israeli bombardment have killed more than 300 Palestinians, while at least three Israelis were killed in retaliation by Islamist militants in Gaza.
The conflict also weighed on the greenback, further boosting the investment appeal of dollar-denominated assets, including oil and other commodities.
The euro rose 0.6 percent against the dollar from late US trading on Monday to $1.4062. The dollar declined 0.4 percent against the Swiss franc to 1.0552 francs, but rose 0.2 percent against the yen to 90.71 yen.
But economic worries continue to cap oil gains, with Wall Street sliding on Monday after a failed $17-billion joint venture between Kuwait and Dow Chemical threatened to unravel Dow's planned takeover of Rohm & Haas, one of the year's larger merger deals.
"People are still wary of the global economic problems. There is still pessimistic news coming out of the States," Rigby said.
The economic slump has hit fuel consumption worldwide, bringing crude prices down more than $100 a barrel from a peak of more than $147 touched in July.
OPEC agreed its biggest-ever production cut of 2.2 million barrels per day in December to fight the market's slide. The cartel has cut output three times in an effort to remove about 5 percent of world supply.
Ecuador said it will monitor oil markets after OPEC makes effective its January output cuts, to decide whether to back another emergency meeting by the oil cartel.
A poll of analysts ahead of weekly US government inventory data forecast US crude stocks fell by 1.4 million barrels last week, while distillate inventories rose by 1 million barrels and gasoline stocks increased by 1.5 million barrels.
30 Dec 2008;business-standard.com:Sohini Das:Kolkata: At a time when most companies feel that exports in 2009 will decline, leading utility vehicles (UV) maker Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) is targeting 20 per cent of sales from overseas markets for its new Xylo that is slated for launch on January 12, 2009.
The company is planning three more launches during the year and has lined up the launch of an all-new sports utility vehicle (SUV) platform for mid-2010. “We will launch this yet-to-be-named SUV first in India and we plan to take it to the US market later,” informed Pawan Goenka, president, automotive sector, M&M.
As for the Xylo, M&M will start exporting it to South Africa within two to three months of its launch and, subsequently, to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. “The left-hand drive version of the Xylo would come in around a year and then we plan to take it to countries like Brazil, Chile, countries of West Asia, and some of the African countries including Egypt,” Goenka said. Exports would be an important component of Xylo sales. “The Xylo, however, has not been designed for the US at all. We are mid-way into product development for a brand new SUV platform that will be launched in India in the second half of 2010 and will be eventually exported to the US,” he added.
This, then, will be M&M’s second launch in the US market, after the Scorpio, which is scheduled to enter the US markets in end of 2009. “The downturn is perhaps one of the best times to launch new products as it creates a buzz around it. The current slowdown in the global economy will not deter our launches,” Goenka claimed.
M&M has assembly plants in Egypt and Brazil in association with local partners. M&M would send completely knocked down (CKD) units to these countries, while ready vehicles would be exported to other markets.
Extra excise on large cars may go; separate package on cards
30 Dec 2008;business-standard.com:New Delhi: The government is likely to remove an additional excise duty of Rs 10,000-20,000 on large cars and sports-utility vehicles as part of the package for the automobile industry which is facing a downturn in sales for want of cheap retail credit. The additional duty was imposed in June this year.
Heavy Industry Minister Sontosh Mohan Dev who met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said removal of additional excise duty was one of the major demands of the industry.”This will go. I am sure, PM will consider this,” Dev said here. The minister indicated that sops for the automobile industry may come separately and not as a part of the second stimulus package to be unveiled in the next few days.
The government had put extra excise duty on large cars, sports-utility and multi-utility vehicles in an effort to promote fuel-efficient small cars. The heavy industry ministry is backing the automobile manufacturers in their demand for the removal of restriction on steel and steel products import and the five per cent customs duty on non-alloy steel imposed in November. The steel industry, which is facing import surge, is seeking increase of 10 per cent in customs duty. Dev, however, opposed the demand of the steel-makers.
30 Dec 2008;dailypioneer.com:Kochi:In first clear indications of a further reduction in petrol and diesel prices, Petroleum Minister Murli Deora on Monday said the Government was considering passing on the benefit of the fall in international crude oil prices to consumers.
The Government had earlier this month reduced the price of petrol by Rs 5 a litre and diesel by Rs 2 per litre, and with crude oil sliding below $40 a barrel, there was further scope for cutting the petrol price by up to Rs 11 a litre and diesel by Rs 3 per litre.
“We are considering reducing prices of oil products,” he said.
