March 15, 2012 online at www.uawlocal2250.com
From the Community Services Committee: We are extending the deadline for purchasing raffle tickets to Tuesday, March 20, with the drawing to be held at the Union meeting on March 21. Tickets are $5 apiece or 3 for $10 and the prizes are St. Louis Blues tickets (April 6), Cardinals tickets (weekend game) and a $100 Cabela’s gift card. You can buy them from any committee member. The proceeds will go to providing Easter baskets for the homeless and shelters. We will also take donations of candy (must be wrapped), toys and money to build Easter baskets. We plan to put the baskets together between shifts on Wednesday, March 28 and anyone wishing to help is welcome. Thanks for your continued support.
Reminder: Tomorrow is the last day to either enroll for life insurance or increase your existing coverage one level without proof of good health. You can either mail in the form you received in the packet or go to gmbenefits.com to accomplish this. It’s also a good time to update your beneficiary if you need to.
Ed Peper has been named general manger of GM fleet and commercial operations. During his 28 years with the company, he’s held a number of jobs, including vice president of the Chevrolet brand in the U.S., and general sales manager of Cadillac. In a recent post on the blog “Faces of GM” Peper mentioned he was captain of the basketball team at Hillsdale College. “Many of those things rub off into business, pushing yourself hard, having goals and chasing after them, working together as a team. It’s all about the team,” Peper emphasized. “That’s one of the things I’ve talked about with our fleet and commercial team. We’re going to be the No. 1 choice in the fleet and commercial market for very business-savvy fleet buyers by doing three things: providing them with great products, providing them with very innovative business solutions and providing an exceptional customer experience they can’t get anywhere else,” he continued. “Early on here in my job, I am really trying to install this vision and these three pillars and everything we do is going to be about doing these things well,” Peper went on to say. “Fuel economy is incredibly important,” he stressed. “We look at the compressed fuel pickups that we’re launching right now, with fuel prices where they are over the course of three or four years the potential savings may be anywhere from $5,000 to $7,000 on these vehicles. This is really important. ..Fleet customers desire the lowest cost of ownership so if we can give them vehicles that are great looking, get great fuel economy, have great residuals, that all contributes to that total cost of ownership for them as fleet customers. That is what’s most important,” Peper went on to say. The GM executive contends the market is ripe for GM to leverage sales in the commercial and fleet spaces. “The average age of fleet vehicles out there is almost 11 years so there are a lot of customers who want to replace their vehicles,” Peper noted. “What we’re seeing early on this year is a lot of pent-up demand and excitement around wanting to replace fleets.”
The swing toward natural gas vehicles (NGV) took on aspects of a bandwagon last week as two major automakers paraded out new natural gas-powered pickup trucks, and General Electric and Chesapeake Energy Corp. heralded a new "CNG In A Box" fueling station design, Natural Gas Intelligence reports. GE will be rolling out its proprietary "CNG In A Box" later this year with around 250 modular and standardized CNG compression stations for NGV infrastructure. Since Chesapeake has a leasehold in almost every major unconventional natural gas basin in the United States, it's a foregone conclusion that some of those CNG boxes (your choice:an 8X20 foot or 8X40 foot container) will be turning up in some of those production areas.
From the New York Times: Those Eminem and Clint Eastwood advertisements just might have worked: Americans seem to be changing their minds about the once-loathed auto bailout. Back in 2008 and 2009, the Bush and Obama administrations, fearful about losing a major industry during the worst downtown since the Great Depression, stepped in to bail out and restructure Chrysler and General Motors — an effort that ended up costing taxpayers some $80 billion. It was, to put it gently, unpopular. In polls at the time, 3 in 4 Americans said Washington should not broaden its effort to help the carmakers, as it ended up doing; nearly 6 in 10 poll respondents opposed the bailouts once they happened; and 54 percent of people said they were “mostly bad for the economy.” Largely negative polls accumulated through 2010 and 2011, too. But more recent polls seem to show a thaw in public opinion — even if the auto bailout remains relatively unpopular, as far as government initiatives go. A Gallup poll from February indicates that a majority of Americans still do not give a thumbs-up to the effort, but the approval and disapproval numbers have narrowed. And a Pew poll conducted a few weeks ago shows that an actual majority of respondents now support the bailout — a first. What might account for some Americans’ changing their minds? For one thing, the automakers that got Washington’s help have returned to the black. And the motor-vehicle manufacturing industry as a whole has added 126,500 jobs, an increase of about 20 percent, since the end of the recession. That has led to a huge surge in popularity for the auto industry. Indeed, in 2009, 59 percent of Americans had a very or somewhat negative opinion of carmakers. By last summer, 42 percent approved, with 32 percent disapproving.
From the Wall Street Journal: India is poised to overtake Japan as Asia's No. 2 vehicle market by 2016, and sales gains in China will remain strong this decade, according to new estimates. Despite recent concerns about slower economic growth, China is on track to hit sales of 30.68 million vehicles by 2020, up 74% from 17.66 million last year, according to IHS Automotive. China overtook the U.S. in 2009 to become the world's largest auto market by volume. The market-research firm's analysis of sales trends excludes buses and trucks. Sales in China are seen rising to 19.21 million vehicles this year, enough to pull past Europe's combined sales of 18.15 million, the Denver-based firm says. Sales in India are projected to rise to 4.88 million vehicles by 2016 from 2.91 million last year. Sales are forecast at 6.73 million in 2020. Japan will see demand rise to 4.51 million in 2016 from 4.13 million last year, when sales were held down by last year's earthquake. Japan had sales of 4.87 million vehicles in 2010. IHS forecasts Japan's sales will reach 4.35 million in 2020. Japanese vehicle sales, including those of minivehicles, are forecast to rise to 5.19 million this year as demand and supply rebounds from last year's earthquake. But IHS sees that as a temporary spike unlikely to reverse longer-term trends. IHS projects that Toyota Motor Corp. will remain the No. 1 auto maker in Asia, with sales of 5.4 million vehicles in 2020, up from 4.2 million last year. Those figures include sales from minivehicle subsidiary Daihatsu Motor Co. But second-ranked General Motors Co. GM could trade places with current No. 3, Volkswagen AG. GM's sales, including those of Chinese venture SAIC GM Wuling Automobile Co., are forecast rising to 4.4 million vehicles in 2020 from three million last year. VW's sales are seen accelerating to 4.5 million from 2.7 million.
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