TOP 100 RACING SITES
| |||
|
| |||
| |||
|
| |||
| The Honda Insight, the Toyota Prius and profits Ask a Toyota or Honda executive how much their respective companies make per hybrid car and you're unlikely to get a straight answer. Indeed, it was progress of sorts a couple of years back when Toyota began saying that the Prius, which debuted in Japan over a decade ago, had begun contributing to the bottom line. Honda, meanwhile, prefers to point out that with the Insight it achieved its aim of reducing the cost of its Integrated Motor Assist hybrid system to below $2,000.All of which makes some of the claims in an article in Monday's Nihon Keizai newspaper interesting. Without citing sources, the paper reports that the gross profit on the new Honda Insight is 300,000 yen (a little over $3,000) per vehicle--or a gross profit margin of 15%. If that sounds high, in accounting terms, gross profit equals the difference between revenue and the cost of making a product and, therefore, ignores lots of other costs. Still, the 15% figure puts the Insight on a par with a Fit compact in terms of profitability per vehicle. Of course, that's much less profit per car than it gets from selling an Accord or an Acura but, with Honda aiming for 200,000 Insight sales a year, it at least helps shore up finances in these difficult times. (Honda today announced a net profit of $1.4 billion for the fiscal year just ended, but notched up a $1.9 billion loss in the January-to-March quarter).Also of note is that the new Prius may be less profitable than its smaller rival. The Nikkei adds that the gross profit margin on the latest Prius, which goes on sale in Japan in May from as little as $21,000, is likely to be in single digits this year. rss.businessweek.com |
Briscoe crashes out in Indy Australian Ryan Briscoe's remarkable run of completed laps in this year's IndyCar series has come to a shuddering halt in the Indy Challenge. foxsports.com.au |
Team notes: Labor Day getaway next up at Atlanta NASCAR team reports as the Sprint Cup Series goes under the lights for a Labor Day weekend stop at Atlanta Motor Speedway: rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Johnson's NASCAR dynasty: A case of overlooked greatness? Being overlooked isn't unfamiliar to Jimmie Johnson. The king of the Sprint Cup Series has learned a NASCAR crown carries a lot ... rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Whitacre names two new GM lobbyists, builds his team General Motors Chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre is putting his stamp all over the company. It hasn’t been a month since the board fired CEO Fritz Henderson and already Whitacre has promoted a handful of executives and brought in three new hires. Today, he named John Montford and Robert Ferguson as his two top lobbyists in Washington. They’re both former AT&T guys, which shouldn’t surprised anyone since Whitacre ran the telecom giant before retiring and later joining GM. Whitacre is building a team while searching for a new CEO. That raises a big question: How much of management will be Whitacre’s choosing when the future CEO is finally hired? It depends on how long Whitacre keeps the job for himself. But it looks like a lot of the top brass will be his selections. I talked this over with three top executive recruiters, who didn’t want to be named since they have worked for GM in the past. All of them cautioned that the longer Whitacre keeps the job and puts his people in place, the tougher it will be to attract CEO candidates. First, the new CEO will either have to keep Whitacre’s team or initiate yet another round of turnover, thus creating more instability. Second, Whitacre’s activism could lead some candidates to believe that the Chairman will be on their shoulder second guessing their moves, the three recruiters told me. Just look at Whitacre’s actions so far. Today, he hired two new lobbyists. Last week he grabbed erstwhile Microsoft CFO Christopher Liddell as GM’s Vice Chairman and CFO. A few days after the board fired Henderson on Dec. 1, Whitacre named a new president of GM-North America, a top sales and marketing executive, a boss for GM-Europe and new managers for every brand except Cadillac. This is Whitacre’s management team. That’s not to say that Whitacre is making the wrong moves. It should come as no surprised that he replaced the leadership of GM’s Washington office. GM had a tough time getting government loans out of Washington. Now-fired CEO Rick Wagoner didn’t do so well late last year when he went to Washington looking for a loan. He made a case that Detroit’s failure would be too damaging to the economy. But Congress asked him for a viability plan and repayment guarantee that he couldn’t furnish. After the initial hearings, GM twice had to submit viability plans before the Obama Administration’s Auto Task Force signed off on it and gave the company and rival Chrysler the money they needed. The government eventually fired Wagoner. So Whitacre is bringing in his own people. He is shaking things up. That is arguably needed for a company that has been set in its ways for too long. But if Whitacre is serious about hiring a new CEO, he might want to find someone soon so that the new top executive can shape his own team and put his own stamp on the company. rss.businessweek.com |