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Child cobalt miners: Automakers pledge ethical minerals sourcing for EVs

BERLIN - Leading carmakers including Volkswagen and Toyota pledged on Wednesday to uphold ethical and socially responsible standards in their purchases of minerals for an expected boom in electric vehicle production. Demand for minerals such as cobalt, graphite and lithium is forecast to soar in the coming years as governments crack down on vehicle pollution and carmakers step up their investments in electric models. To cover its plans for more than 80 new models by 2025, Volkswagen alone is looking for partners in China, Europe and North America to provide battery cells and related technology worth more than 50 billion euros ($59 billion). Talks with major cobalt producers, including Glencore, at VW's Wolfsburg headquarters last week ended without a deal. More than half of the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country racked by political instability and legal opacity, and where child labor is used in mines. On Wednesday, a group of 10 leading passenger-car and truck manufacturers announced an initiative to jointly identify and address ethical, environmental, human and labor rights issues in raw materials sourcing. The partnership dubbed "Drive Sustainability" consists of VW, Toyota Motor Europe, Ford, Daimler, BMW, Honda, Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo Cars and truckmakers Scania and Volvo. The alliance "will assess the risks posed by the top raw materials (such as mica, cobalt, rubber and leather) in the automotive sector," said Stefan Crets of the CSR Europe business network. "This will allow Drive Sustainability to identify the most impactful activities to pursue" to address issues within the supply chain.Reporting by Andreas Cremer.Related Video: Image Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images Green BMW Ford Honda Jaguar Land Rover Mercedes-Benz Automakers Toyota Volkswagen Volvo Green Automakers Green Culture Electric Scania ethics mining

It turns out Takata isn't willing to expand airbag recall nationally after all

There have been "approximately 0.000006 failures per air bag deployment, which is far below the failure rate" of most recalls, Takata claims. Takata has seemingly made an about face following reports that it would expand its regional airbag recall into a nationwide repair effort, issuing a scathing, four-page letter rebutting allegations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and its Office of Defects while simultaneously attacking the government's handling of the situation. The Japanese supplier claims in its letter that the "currently available, reliable information does not support a nationwide determination of a safety defect," arguing that there were "approximately 0.000006 failures per air bag deployment, which is far below the failure rate in the vast majority of the thousands of recalls," The Detroit News reports. Takata then breaks down the two specific incidents mentioned in NHTSA's original recall request letter, a 2005 Honda Accord and 2007 Ford Mustang. Referencing the two crashes, NHTSA Administrator David Friedman said last month "one incident is an anomaly, but two are a trend." The supplier, though, argues the Honda issue is already being covered by that company's soon-to-be-national recall (more on that in a moment). The company then goes on to point out that neither Takata nor NHTSA has been able to analyze the Mustang's airbag inflator, saying that such a lack of examination meant there was "no way to ascertain what actually occurred during the incident, whether any inflator ruptured, and whether any inflator rupture that may have occurred was related to the incidents that led to the current regional campaigns." Takata alleges that NHTSA has disobeyed its own statutes. Takata also took the opportunity to take a few swipes at NHTSA's behavior during the airbag scandal, saying it was "very surprised to receive" a recall request letter because the ODI had yet to even receive the company's responses to a pair of special orders. It also alleged that NHTSA was disobeying its own statute, which says only manufacturers of vehicles and replacement equipment can "decide in good faith whether their products contain a safety related defect," and that the government can only "issue an initial decision that a safety-related defect exists" to those same entities.

Honda Civic Tourer images arrive early on web

Honda provided a teaser sketch of its Civic Tourer concept wagon about a month ago (right), but today, just a couple days before its official debut at the Geneva Motor Show, we've found these official pics of the car in question from WhatCar?
The Civic Tourer concept adds a little length and height to the current Civic hatchback sold in Europe, stretching the shape every which way to make a new wagon model that will compete with cars like the new Volkswagen Golf Variant, which is also making its debut in Geneva this week.
As we mentioned when Honda released the teaser sketch last month, the European Civic is different from the Civic sold here in the US, so the production version of this concept, which should debut in the fall, will never see the inside of a dealership in the States. Do you care, or does the smaller Fit fill that role well enough for Americans?