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DoJ fines Japanese parts firms $740M in massive automotive price-fixing scandal

Nine Japanese suppliers have pleaded guilty in US court over charges of price fixing in the automotive parts industry, resulting in the Department of Justice doling out a total of $740 million of fines, according to a report from Bloomberg. The scandal, which has resulted in General Motors, Ford, Toyota and Chrysler spending up to $5 billion on inflated parts and driving up prices on 25 million vehicles has sent the DoJ hustling into investigations. "The conduct this investigation uncovered involved more than a dozen separate conspiracies aimed at the U.S. economy," Attorney General Eric Holder (pictured above) said during yesterday's press conference.
As the investigation stands, the DoJ has issued $1.6 billion in fines against 20 companies and 21 individual executives, with 17 of the execs headed to prison. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Scott Hammond said, "The breadth of the conspiracies brought to light today are as egregious as they are pervasive. They involve more than a dozen separate conspiracies operating independently but all sharing in common that they targeted US automotive manufacturers."
Big-name suppliers indicted in the investigation include Mitsubishi Electric, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Hitachi Automotive and Mitsuba Corporation. A list of fines and other corporations named in the investigation is available at Bloomberg.

Toyota gives dealers permission to drop Scion, shows them FR-S droptop, Juke rival first

We recently heard that Toyota could be looking to shrink its network of Scion dealerships, and now Automotive News is reporting that the automaker has officially given its dealers the green light to dump Scion without any penalties. Currently, Scion has about 1,000 dealers, yet our report from August 8 quotes an industry analyst as suggesting a healthier figure would be between 350 and 500 outlets. But before its current dealers make a decision on whether or not to get rid of the youth-oriented brand, Toyota also showed off a couple potential future products in the pipeline.
The FT-86 Open Concept shown above was revealed back in March at the Geneva Motor Show, and AN says that an FR-S convertible was driven on stage at a recent national Toyota dealer meeting in Atlanta. There has still been no definitive word one way or another as to whether the droptop model will be built, but it could be a good way to follow up to the popular FR-S coupe. Another possible future product is a subcompact crossover, which was shown in drawing form at the meeting, presumably aimed at small CUVs like the Nissan Juke and the upcoming Honda CUV based on the Fit, a model recently previewed by the automaker's Urban SUV concept.

Toyota expects hybrids will soon reach 20-percent sales volume globally

Hybrids have come quite a long way from their roots as dull, slow, boring ecomobiles. Today, Porsche sells three hybrid models, one of which is the amazing 918 Spyder. BMW will soon sell four, including a low-slung, two-seat sports car. Even Ferrari and McLaren, full-fledged hypercar manufacturers, are embracing the tech. And all of these cars are sold alongside the same sort of boring cars that popularized hybrids in the first place. According to Toyota Chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada, though, we should see an even bigger increase in the number of hybrid vehicles in the coming years.
"I foresee hybrid models pretty soon reaching 20 percent of global sales from about 13 percent to 14 percent now," Uchiyamada-san told Automotive News. Uchiyamada is the man behind the original Prius, which gives him some degree of authority on making predictions about hybrid adoption.
What's remarkable, though, is that the 20-percent figure doesn't include plug-in hybrids, just gas- and diesel-electric models. "Suppliers need higher volumes to slash costs of components specific to plug-in models, including batteries that should be bigger and more capable than the ones used in traditional hybrids," Uchiyamada told AN.