Car Blog

As state legislatures convene across the country for their 2010 sessions, AAA looks to build on a relatively successful campaign of traffic safety law improvements last year.

“Last year brought more than a dozen big wins for traffic safety on core needs like teen driver safety, primary seat belt laws, and child passenger safety, as well as more than a dozen states enacting text messaging bans,” said AAA Vice President of Public Affairs Kathleen Marvaso.” AAA is working with legislators and other safety advocates in statehouses across the country to draft and pass legislation in 2010 that will make roads safer.

“Traffic safety improvements should generate special interest in states facing budget challenges. These laws reduce governments’ medical and emergency response costs by preventing crashes, injuries and deaths. What’s more, some states could receive millions of dollars in financial incentives for passing some of these laws.”

AAA’s main traffic safety priorities in the states include:

Texting while driving bans: AAA last year launched a national campaign to pass laws in all 50 states to ban text messaging while driving. With a dozen states having enacted these laws in 2009, there are now 19 states with laws prohibiting drivers of all ages from texting. AAA expects nearly every remaining state will consider this legislation in 2010.

Teen driver safety: Although every state has some form of graduated driver licensing for new teen drivers, nearly every state still has opportunities to improve these lifesaving laws, according to AAA. States such as Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, New York, Oklahoma and West Virginia made significant improvements in 2009, such as increasing the age and requirements for getting a license and adding or improving limits on teen passengers and nighttime driving for newly licensed teens. Just six states (Delaware, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma and West Virginia) have graduated driver licensing systems that meet AAA’s guidelines for nighttime limits, passenger limits, and practice requirements.

Booster seat laws: Three states (Arizona, Florida and South Dakota) lack booster seat requirements, which have been shown to improve safety for young passengers. Five states (Alaska, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island and Texas) enacted laws in 2009 requiring booster seats for children under age 8. Despite this progress, booster seat laws in 24 states fall short of including all children under age 8.

Primary seat belt laws: After a record setting year in 2009 in which four states (Arkansas, Florida, Minnesota and Wisconsin) improved their seat belt laws to allow primary enforcement by police, AAA and other safety advocates will continue to work to improve laws in the remaining 20 states without a primary belt law. Primary seat belt laws have repeatedly been shown as a low cost way for states to quickly increase belt use, reduce traffic deaths, and lower the cost of crashes.

Move over laws: Nearly every state (47 states) has a law that requires drivers to slow down and, if safe, “move over” when passing an emergency vehicle that is actively working on a roadway. Six states (Alabama, Delaware, Ohio, Oregon, Nebraska and Nevada) improved their laws in 2009 to include tow trucks and other road service vehicles, increasing the number of states with these more comprehensive laws to 38. AAA will continue to promote these laws that have been shown to improve safety for police, tow truck operators, and others who work on our roadways.

Source: AAA

The intense debate underway about the future of the American auto industry has generated a lot of discussion about the public’s attitudes.

“Right now, the American people are justifiably very concerned about the state of our economy and an overriding fear for their futures,” said pollster Peter D. Hart. “Polls I conducted in mid-November showed deep concerns about the harmful impacts of the collapse of the U.S. auto industry,” said Hart.

• 90% fear the harm it would do to America’s manufacturing sector.

• 84% of Americans say it would harm the U.S. economy.

• 70% fear the harm it would do to America’s standing in the world.

• 68% worry about the lack of consumer choice for America’s car buyers.

Some pundits have been citing polls by CNN that indicate that a majority of Americans do not favor “a program that would provide them with several billion dollars in assistance.” CNN does responsible and good polling. However, the question which is being touted on the financial loan assistance for the auto industry is not a good evaluation of public opinion or public sentiments.

Their question reads as follows: “QUESTION: The major U.S. auto companies have asked the government for a program that would provide them with several billion dollars in assistance. The auto companies say they may go into bankruptcy without that assistance. Based on what you have read or heard, do you favor or oppose this program?”

The basic flaw with the question is that the respondent must know the program. They don’t, so it is difficult to assume these respondents voicing an opinion are really talking about the legislation or program the congress is voting on.

There is a much more significant finding in this same CNN survey which has not been highly noted nor much discussed. Fully, 15% of the American public — or roughly 18 million households — tell the CNN pollsters that the auto industry going out of business “would immediately affect their families. Additionally, 77% of Americans say that auto bankruptcy would affect them and their families, if not now, sometime in the future it would affect them immediately.”

“This means that one out of six households would have a ‘goodbye and good luck’ sign put on their house. That is 18 million households directly affected. This would be the same as having a dozen Katrinas hit from coast to coast,” said Hart.

Peter Hart stated: “The bottom line is pretty simple — the American public does not want the housing industry to fail, the banks to fail, and they certainly do not want the auto industry to fail. This survey has merit, but the figure that counts most is the one that tells us that 3 in 4 Americans say they will be affected and 18 million American households will be affected immediately.”

Peter D. Hart is the founder of Peter D. Hart Research. He has co-directed the NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll for the last 20 years. His firm has conducted research for hundreds of corporations, government agencies, non-profits, including the automotive industry.

Source: Peter D. Hart Research

CEO of Lithium-Ion Automotive Battery Maker Ener1 Says Aggressive Investment in Advanced Energy Storage Systems Is Key to Industry Survival, U.S. Competitiveness

As Congress and the new administration weigh sweeping measures to rescue the U.S. auto industry, advanced lithium-ion battery maker Ener1, Inc. is joining dozens of companies that develop and build technology for hybrid and electric vehicles this week to show their latest innovations and discuss how they fit into this changing landscape. Ener1 CEO Charles Gassenheimer says companies like Ener1 have a crucial role to play in the federal retooling effort.

“The technology is here,” says Gassenheimer. “The question is who is going to win the race to get it to market. Decisions we make as a nation today will determine whether or not our country remains competitive in the global automotive industry.”

By coincidence, the conference and technological showcase put on by the Electric Drive Transportation Association (EDTA) at the Washington, D.C. Convention Center from December 2-5 corresponds with this week’s deadline for the Detroit Big Three automakers to present their individual recovery plans to Congress in hope of receiving a $25 billion rescue package.

“Whether it is a plug-in hybrid like the Chevy Volt or a fully electric car like the Th!nk City, the future depends on better batteries,” Gassenheimer says. “We need dedicated federal support to ramp up production and drive down costs. That’s already happening in China, Korea, and Japan, as well as in Europe. It needs to happen here, and it needs to happen quickly or we will miss the boat.”

Ener1 is the first company to commit to producing advanced lithium-ion batteries in the U.S. on a commercial scale for the automotive market. In addition to its plant in Indianapolis, Ener1 recently gained an Asia foothold by acquiring South Korea’s third largest lithium-ion battery producer.

More than 75 hybrid models will hit the market by 2011. President-elect Barack Obama has promised to put one million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015, and he has made clear that Detroit will not get the federal help it wants without clear commitments to change the way they do business. That means swift transition to next-generation technology and a concrete commitment to better fuel economy.

“Advanced batteries are as important to this new market as the microprocessor was to the emergence of the personal computer revolution,” Gassenheimer says. “You can’t have one without the other. Unfortunately, the U.S. manufacturing capacity is just not there today to produce them in anything approaching the numbers we need over the next few years at costs the market demands.”

Automakers are already putting lithium-ion batteries on the road in small numbers today, and growth is expected to be rapid. While it may be a few years before truly mass-market scale is achieved, Gassenheimer says the competitive foundations for the entire sector are being built today.

Auto industry leaders have publicly echoed the call for more aggressive battery development:

“One of the things we need to sort out as a country is batteries,” Ford Motor Company executive chairman William Clay Ford, Jr. was quoted as saying in the New York Times last week. “We really don’t want to trade one foreign dependency, oil, for another foreign dependency, batteries.”

“It’s a game that we are behind in,” GM CEO Rick Wagoner said when the Washington Post recently asked him about the need for advanced batteries. “It doesn’t mean it’s a game that we lost. If we choose to go at it as a country we are really going to have to pick up the pace.”

“From a technological standpoint, the future is now,” Gassenheimer explains. “We know this is going to be a multibillion-dollar market; the question is who will control it. High oil prices will be back the minute the economy begins to recover. This is not a change we can afford to put off.”

For more information, visit www.electricdrive.org.