euroautotraining's blog

Our intrepid traveler lands at the airport in Munich, Germany and bumps into the unexpected...

Detroit News
February 3, 2011

The Detroit News reported today that a study by Indiana University says that the US is unlikely to meet President Obama's goal of putting 1 million electric vehicles on the roads by 2015.

Here's a bit from the story:

"The production intentions of automakers are currently insufficient to meet the 2015 goal, and even the current plans for production volume may not be met," the report released Wednesday said.

Several interesting stories today, here are short bits about three of them...

Toyota recalls 1.7 million vehicles worldwide, here we go again

We're not in Munich anymore Toto. What were they thinking? This is Detroit, guys.

Apparently the BMW contingent got a taste of Detroit when they left one of thier "concierge" BMW's running unattended outside the downtown Westin. Lets let Rueters tell it...

Two thieves drove away in a brand new $94,000 BMW 750i xDrive Sedan on Wednesday night that was left idling outside the Westin Book Cadillac, one of Detroit's major hotels.

"Around the world in 125 days". At the North American Auto Show in Detroit, Mercedes announced Monday an "unparalleled long-distance journey – the F-CELL World Drive". Mercedes will drive the B-Class F-CELL over four continents in 125 days; a demonstration of the viability of fuel cell vehicles. The cars will be driven in climates and on surfaces that Mercedes claims "would not be possible, using purely battery-powered electric vehicles."

To follow up an earlier post, Audi reported this week that it did indeed break it's US sales record in 2010, selling 101,629 vehicles.

Diesels are reported to be among the biggest sellers, so if you're not up to date on diesels you'd better start learning about them!

Here's the press release from Audi:

Audi shatters all-time U.S. sales record in 2010; brand expects momentum to continue into 2011

This is a good time to thank you for your support during our first few months on line. We're really excited about the upcoming year; we've got lot's of projects are in the works with loads of great information coming your way.

Be on the lookout here for new books as well as training and reference information in new formats that'll help you tackle even the most complicated problems! And keep your eyes open for more chances to win free tools!

VW is recalling almost 380,000 cars in North America, for a potential fire hazard due to chafed fuel lines under the hood. Keep this one in the back of your mind, you might very well need to make the fix for one of these cars in the not so distant future.

Here's the text from the NHSTA document:

Vehicle Make / Model: Model Year(s):

VOLKSWAGEN / JETTA: 2006-2010 
VOLKSWAGEN / JETTA SPORTWAGEN: 2009
VOLKSWAGEN / NEW BEETLE: 2006-2010 
VOLKSWAGEN / NEW BEETLE CONVERTIBLE: 2006-2010
VOLKSWAGEN / RABBIT: 2006-2010

And I thought the auto market was still tight. Here's the press release that Audi issued yesterday:

Audi breaks U.S. sales record; on pace to exceed 100,000 vehicles sold in America for the first time
- Audi sold its 93,507th vehicle of 2010 Monday evening
- The old record of 93,506 models sold was set in 2007
- Audi sales executives confident of surpassing noteworthy 100,000 mark

Here's a car that has trouble with the windshield fogging in cold temps. When the driver gets in the car the windshield is clear, but as soon as the fan is turned on the windshield fogs badly and then takes forever to defog...even with the fan on high. Diagnosing this one means we need to think hard about just how the defroster works in this car.