Posted on 07/29/2009 8:46:49 AM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
TOKYO — Honda bucked expectations of losses in the first quarter, today posting a 7.5 billion yen ($79.8 million) profit and raising forecasts for the full year on optimism auto sales will improve. The results for the April-June period were better than the flood of red ink some analysts had forecast though profit was still down 96 percent, battered by slumping car sales and a strong yen, which offset cost cuts. Honda made a net profit of 173.3 billion yen in the same period of 2008.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Well, they’re profitable. Barely profitable, and probably wouldn’t have been had they not received government $$$ (billions from the Japanese government and tons of local and state tax subsidies in the US).
But that is still an improvement from last quarter for them, when they had an operating loss of $2.91 billion.
Moving the Goldwing motorcycle production line from the USA to Japan will probably kneecap them.
Bam’s new CAFE standards will create a market for lawn mowers with power steering
Ha ha ha...that’s a funny way to put it!
Not necessarily.
Keep in mind that the average mpg that they have to hit is based on original EPA estimates when CAFE was passed. They’ve dumbed down the estimates twice since then to account for people too stupid to figure out that rapid acceleration and braking will hurt your gas mileage, or those who are dumb enough to think sitting still in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-95 they should still get 34 mpg because they’re on the highway.
You can get a rough estimate of what the actual mpg is that will count towards the new CAFE standards by dividing the current number by 90% (account for 2008 changes) and then again by 85% (to account for 1985 changes).
So for example, the 2010 Ford Fusion with automatic and a 4 cylinder is rated 23/34, or about 27.4 mpg combined (estimating that since the EPA’s website is returning 2009 numbers instead of 2010).
27.4 / 0.85 = 32.24
32.24 / 0.9 = 35.8
The deadline for 2020 is 35 mpg combined.
So already, here we have a conventional mid-sized sedan beating that 2020 standard a full 11 years ahead of time.
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