2010 Chrysler Town & Country Keyless Entry Sat. Radio Alloy Wheels on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Bosch fined $57.8 million by DOJ for price fixing and bid rigging

The US Department of Justice has been investigating bid rigging and price fixing among automotive parts suppliers for years, and so far the agency has leveled nearly $2.5 billion in fines against 34 companies. The latest business to be caught in this ongoing crackdown is Germany's Robert Bosch GmbH (Bosch), the world's largest independent auto component maker, and it agrees to pay a $57.8 million criminal fine to the Feds. According to the DOJ, Bosch has agreed to plead guilty to pricing fixing and bid rigging for spark plugs and oxygen sensors supplied to the former DaimlerChrysler, Ford and General Motors. The rigging is said to have occurred between January 2000 and July 2011. Bosch also allegedly played foul with starter motors sold to Volkswagen from January 2009 until at least June 2010. Bosch and other companies allegedly conspired on the pricing for bids to submit to automakers, and sold the parts at noncompetitive prices. The DOJ filed a one-count felony charge in US District Court for these actions. The company's plea is still subject to court approval, though. Bosch is only the third European company to be charged in this investigation, according to the DOJ. So far, many of the fined businesses have been from Japan, including Takata, NGK and others. Some execs have claimed price-fixing has been the standard operating procedure in the auto parts industry for a long time. Robert Bosch GmbH Agrees to Plead Guilty to Price Fixing and Bid Rigging on Automobile Parts Installed in U.S. Cars Robert Bosch GmbH, the world's largest independent parts supplier to the automotive industry, based in Gerlingen, Germany, has agreed to plead guilty and to pay a $57.8 million criminal fine for its role in a conspiracy to fix prices and rig bids for spark plugs, oxygen sensors and starter motors sold to automobile and internal combustion engine manufacturers in the United States and elsewhere, the Department of Justice announced today. According to the one-count felony charge filed today in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan, Bosch conspired to allocate the supply of, rig bids for, and to fix, stabilize and maintain the prices of, spark plugs and oxygen sensors sold to automobile and internal combustion engine manufacturers such as DaimlerChrysler AG, Ford Motor Company, General Motors Company and Andreas Stihl AG & Co., among others, in the United States and elsewhere.

What will the next Presidential limo look like?

With recent news that the Secret Service has begun soliciting proposals for a new armored limousine, we've been wondering what the next presidential limo might look like. The current machine, nicknamed "The Beast", has a design based on a car that's no longer sold: the Cadillac DTS. If General Motors gets the job again, which wouldn't be a surprise considering the government still owns a chunk of the company, the next limo's shape would likely resemble the new XTS (below, left). But Cadillac hasn't always been the go-to car company for presidential whips.
Lincoln has actually provided far more presidential limousines throughout history than Cadillac. In fact, the first car modified for Commander-in-Chief-carrying duty was a 1939 Lincoln K-Series called "Sunshine Special" used by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the last Lincoln used by a president was a 1989 Town Car ordered for George H.W. Bush. If President Obama wanted a Lincoln today, it would likely be an amalgam of the MKS sedan and MKT crossover, as illustrated above.
And what about Chrysler? The only record we could find of a President favoring the Pentastar is Nixon, who reportedly ordered two limos from the company during his administration in the '70s, and then another one, known today as the "K-Car limo," in the '80s after he left office. Obama, however, has a personal - if modest - connection to Chryslers, having owned a 300 himself before he took office. A 300-based Beast (above, right) would certainly earn the U.S. some style points.

Jeep in St. Louis hacked from Pittsburgh

One of America's most popular vehicles contains a security flaw that allows hackers to remotely commandeer it from anywhere on the planet. Cyber-security researchers Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller say they've accessed critical vehicle controls on a 2014 Jeep Cherokee that allowed them to remotely control critical vehicle functions like braking, transmission function, and steering. Automakers have downplayed the possibility a car could be remotely compromised, but the significance of the findings detailed Tuesday could cause them to reevaluate the threats posed to hundreds of thousands of vehicles already on the road. A key finding – the pair needed no physical access to the Jeep to pull off the attack. Valasek and Miller accessed the controls via a security hole in the Sprint cellular connection to Chrysler's UConnect infotainment system. In the course of their research, Valasek sat in his Pittsburgh home and remotely manipulated Miller's Jeep as he drove along a highway outside St. Louis. If you know a car's IP address, they say, a hacker could control it from anywhere. "We didn't add anything, didn't touch it," Valasek told Autoblog. "A customer could drive one of these things off a lot, and they'd have no clue it had these open attack surfaces." Remotely, he disabled brakes, turned the radio volume up, engaged windshield wipers and tampered with the transmission. Further, they could conduct surveillance on the Jeep, measuring its speed and tracking its whereabouts. They conducted the experiments over multiple breaches. They made their findings public on the same day the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal agency in charge of vehicle safety, released its latest report on the readiness of government and automakers to fend off these sorts of cyber attacks. Later today, two US Senators are expected to introduce legislation that would help consumers better understand the potential risks of car hacking. In the early stages of their research, Valasek and Miller found a security flaw in the car's wi-fi that allowed them to remotely manipulate controls from a range of about three feet. But in recent months, they found another vulnerability in the Sprint cellular connection in the UConnect system. That was a key breakthrough. "Lo and behold, we found we could communicate with this thing using cellular, and then more research, and 'Holy cow,' we're using the Sprint network to communicate with these vehicles," Valasek said.