1959 Chevrolet Apache Fleetside Pickup Truck on 2040-cars

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800k car names trademarked globally, suddenly alphanumerics seem reasonable

What's in a name? This cliched phrase probably gets tossed out at every marketing meeting that happens when a new car gets its nomenclature. We know the answer, though: everything. The name of a car has all the potential to make or break it with fickle customers that are more conscious than ever about what their purchases say about them.
That's giving headaches to marketing folks across the automotive industry. "It's tough. In 1985 there were about 75,000 names trademarked in the automotive space. Today there are 800,000," Chevrolet's head of marketing, Russ Clark, told Automotive News. Infiniti's president, Johan de Nysschen, echoed Clark's sentiment, saying, "The truth of the matter is, across the world, there is hardly a name or a letter that hasn't already been claimed by one car manufacturer or another. You can go through the alphabet - A, B, C and so forth - and you will quickly see that almost all available letters are taken."
What has that left automakers to do? Get creative. In the case of Infiniti, it made the controversial move to bring all of its cars' names into a new scheme, classifying them as Q#0 for cars and QX#0 for SUVs and crossovers. So the Infiniti G, which was available as the G25 and G37, is now the Q50. The FX37 and FX50 are now the QX70.

Two More Recalls Push GM Total To 4.8 Million In A Month

General Motors announced two more recalls late Friday, bringing to 4.8 million the number of cars, trucks and SUVs the automaker has called back for repairs in the past month. The string of recalls, topped by an ignition switch problem in compact cars now linked to 13 crash deaths, has embarrassed the company and sidetracked its new CEO, who started work just over two months ago. GM has admitted knowing about the switch problem a decade ago, yet it didn't recall any cars until February. The recall delay has brought two congressional investigations and probes by the Justice Department and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Late Friday night, GM announced it would recall 490,000 late-model pickup trucks and SUVs because transmission oil cooling lines weren't secured properly in their fittings. Transmission oil can leak from a fitting and hit hot surfaces, causing fires, the company said in a statement. GM said it knows of three fires and no injuries. The recall affects Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra 1500 pickup trucks from the 2014 model year, as well as 2015 Chevrolet Suburban and Tahoe SUVs and the GMC Yukon and Yukon XL SUVs. All have six-speed automatic transmissions. The Silverado is GM's top-selling vehicle and an important profit center for the company. The GMC Sierra also is among GM's top sellers. Dealers will inspect the transmission oil cooling line fittings and make sure they're securely seated, at no cost to owners. Also Friday night, GM announced the recall of 172,000 Chevrolet Cruze compact cars because the right front axle shaft can fracture and separate while being driven. The recall affects cars from the 2013 and 2014 model years equipped with 1.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder gasoline engines. If a shaft fractures, the wheels would lose power without warning and the cars would coast to a stop. GM says it has warranty reports of several dozen shaft fractures. It is not aware of any crashes or injuries. Dealers will replace the shafts free of charge. The recall allows dealers to resume selling affected Cruzes. GM issued a stop sale order on the cars Thursday night. The recall also covers about 2,500 replacement shafts used to fix manual transmission Cruzes that were recalled last September. In all, GM has recalled 4.8 million vehicles since last month, two million more than the company sold last year in the U.S.

GM executive chief EV engineer says reducing cost of plug-in vehicles is 'huge priority'

As we know, another major automaker investing heavily in electrified vehicles is General Motors, and it's doing things much differently than rivals BMW, Ford or Nissan. The Chevrolet Volt extended-range EV is a modest seller at its $35,000 sticker price but a huge hit with owners. The Chevy Spark BEV, still in limited availability, puts smiley faces on its owners and drivers. The just-introduced Cadillac ELR, a sharp-looking, fun-driving $76,000 luxocoupe take on the Volt's EREV mechanicals, has admittedly low sales expectations. With this interesting trio in showrooms and much more in the works, the third vehicle electrification leader I collared for an interview at Detroit's North American International Auto Show (see #1 and #2) was Pam Fletcher, GM's executive chief engineer, Electrified Vehicles. ABG: Why do your EREVs need four-cylinder power to extend their range when BMW's i3 makes do with an optional 650 cc two-banger? "We designed [the Volt and the ELR] to go anywhere, any time" - Pam Fletcher PF: I get that question all the time: why not something smaller? You don't really need that much. You use the electric to its ability, then you just need to limp. But we designed those cars to go anywhere, any time, and we don't want their performance to be compromised. If you're driving through the mountains, we don't want you to be crawling up grades, or to be limited on any terrain. So it's optimized to be able to travel literally the biggest grades and mountain roads around the globe at posted speeds. Because what if you can't? Another good reason: when the engine is on, you have to run it wide open throttle, max speed, most of the time. And while we can do a lot with acoustics, and the ELR has active noise cancelation, a small-displacement, low cylinder-count engine at high speed, high load all the time isn't something you want to live with. That's how we came up with the balance we did among the key factors of performance, NVH [noise, vibration and harshness] and range. ABG: Where you go from here? Is the range-extender engine due for an update? PF: We know and love the current Volt, and there is still a lot of acclaim about it, so we think it's a good recipe. But we are heavily in the midst of engineering the next-generation car, which I think everyone will love and be excited about.