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Zipcar, Honda announce OneWay carsharing with 2015 Fit

Zipcar has been around for over a dozen years, and now shares more than 10,000 cars on a short-term basis with 850,000 members around the world. But there's been one thing missing from the carsharing giant's quiver of options: the one-way rental. That changes today. For a select few in Boston, anyway. OneWay's Boston launch is so soft that Zipcar says it's not even sure how much it will charge. Zipcar has announced a new one-way carsharing option called (annoyingly) ONE>WAY. This new program soft launches in Boston today, and it's so soft that Zipcar says it's not even sure how much it will charge drivers who use the new service. What we do know is that OneWay exclusively uses the 2015 Honda Fit and will allow drivers to rent by the half hour as they pick up and drop off in two different locations. The standard Zipcar model requires the cars to be brought back to the original location and has a one-hour minimum. At least one membership fee will cover both standard Zipcar and Zipcar OneWay. The introduction of shorter-term, one-way rental may sound a bit like Car2go, the successful carsharing program started by Daimler. Zipcar representatives told AutoblogGreen that it did develop OneWay in response to member demand and that there are two main differences between the two carsharing services. First, since OneWay still uses the traditional reserved-for-Zipcar parking spot method (new ones will be established for OneWay), there will always be a guaranteed space when you arrive at your destination. Second, the Fit has a lot roomier than the Smart ForTwo used by Car2go. To see this point in action, check out the four happy hipsters in Zipcar's new ad for OneWay below. There are currently other Fits in Zipcar fleets in other cities, but the specially branded vehicles in the Boston trial program will need to be used with the OneWay vehicles. That means, for now at least, that users will specify a pick-up and drop-off location before renting the vehicle, said Kaye Ceille, the president of Zipcar. The 30-minute minimum might also someday be changed, depending on user feedback. There's a lot up in the air right now, but Zipcar did say that despite the fact that OneWay is intended for short trips and has reserved parking, the Fit EV will not be involved. That car simply doesn't offer the cargo flexibility that the standard Fit does and some of the reserved parking spots will be on the street, where putting in a charging station isn't feasible.

China's largest dealer body pushes back against foreign automakers over huge inventories

Do not think for a second that automakers forcing inventory on dealers in order to pad the numbers is a ruse known only in the US. Stories of individual brands have hinted at the trouble Chinese dealerships are having trying to move units as the country's economic growth remains hot but comes off the boil, like the one revealing that 95 percent of Toyota-FAW showrooms are losing money. Yet Toyota isn't the only culprit, and the issue has become so dire that the China Automobile Dealers Association (CADA), the largest dealer body in the country, has written to the government to complain. Chinese car sales are expected to close out the year with an annualized growth of six-percent, down from last year's 14 percent when targets were set, while in the background the pace of overall economic expansion is the slowest its been since the early nineties. Automakers, shipping cars on schedule to make their earlier targets, have blown up inventories such that they are an average of 1.8 times monthly sales, when the preferred multiplier is from 0.9 to 1.2. According to the CADA, the price wars and necessary incentives mean that only 30 percent of dealers are operating in the black. That number is down a whopping forty percent since 2010. In response, Toyota has already said it will not make its 2014 target of 1.1 million cars sold. We're a long way from 2012, when Toyota planned on selling 1.8 million cars in China in 2015, a target that's now as realistic as a manticore. BMW, Honda and Nissan have erased numbers on their spreadsheets, too; BMW growth dropped from 20 percent to 8 percent midyear after it began "reducing wholesale supplies," and Honda has been reworking its plans as sales have decreased each of the past six months. It's a big deal for Chinese dealers to begin protesting publicly, the CADA saying, "In the past, dealers were angry, but dared not speak out. But now, they have to shout because the situation is getting so unbearable." With six-percent growth forecast for next year and dealers unwilling to remain underwater, The Year of the Sheep coming in 2015 could portend meaning beyond the zodiac. News Source: ReutersImage Credit: AP Photo/Andy Wong BMW Honda Nissan Toyota Car Buying Car Dealers

Former Honda CEOs chide current boss about quality

Taking charge of a major corporation will never be without its challenges, and one of those - as Honda CEO Takanobu Ito is finding out - is filling the big shoes of those that came before. Ito's predecessors are apparently not pleased with what he's doing to the company, and are wasting no time in telling him so.
According to Reuters, two former Honda chiefs have recently visited Ito (pictured above with his predecessor Takeo Fukui) to talk to him about the Japanese automaker's quality issues, which they apparently regard as eroding the company's image. Nobuhiko Kawamoto, who served as CEO from 1990-98, reportedly came to Honda headquarters in Tokyo to deliver "stern words" to Ito last month. Kawamoto's immediate successor, Hiroyuki Yoshino, reportedly met with Ito under similar circumstances earlier this year.
Kawamoto and Yoshino are part of a larger group of former Honda executives who are concerned with the declining quality of the company's products under Ito's leadership. Where Honda once focused more on quality, collaborating more closely with parts suppliers,more recently the company has, in the eyes of those former executives at least, shifted its focus to quantity and to new technologies. That's what, the report alleges, has led to Honda recalling so many of its vehicles in recent years.