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How Nissan's NYC Taxi of Tomorrow has turned into a nightmare

"Why can't we have competition? Why did the city think there had to be exclusivity?" – Taxi Association Nissan's takeover of the lucrative New York City taxi market hasn't exactly gone according to script. An agreement that should have seen the company become the exclusive supplier of taxis for the next ten years has resulted in nothing but headaches, controversy and legal challenges, despite the $1 billion deal between the Japanese marque and the Big Apple. The opposition to the Nissan deal has been fierce since day one, Automotive News reports in a sweeping writeup of the Taxi of Tomorrow saga, with the Greater New York Taxi Association – which represents nearly a third of the city's taxi owners – putting up a fight against the new van cabs. Whether it's the monopolistic nature of the Nissan deal – as we said, under the terms of the deal Nissan would become the sole distributor of taxis for New York cabbies – the NV200 taxi's limited reliability record, or concerns over the company's ability to supply the cabs, the Taxi Association has fought tooth and nail against the so-called Taxi of Tomorrow, AN reports. "Look, Nissan is a good company. And the NV200 is not a bad car. If it turns out that people like it, then great – they should be able to sell them here," Ethan Gerber, an attorney for the Taxi Association told Automotive News. "But why can't we have competition? Why did the city think there had to be exclusivity? It stifles competition and stops innovation." "Why couldn't we just have standards for the taxi, and if Toyota and Ford wanted to offer an identical vehicle that might be somehow better or more competitive, why can't they?" Gerber asked. "Obviously, there is always disappointment, but I trust that there is fairness." – Carlos Ghosn The biggest source of opposition, though, focused around how the NV200 was approved in the first place, because it doesn't subscribe to one of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's requirements for the next-generation taxi – that it would be available as a hybrid. It was that last point that initially got Nissan in trouble with the courts. In May 2013, New York County Supreme Court Justice Peter Moulton ruled the deal void, declaring that cab operators were free to shop for non-Nissan hybrids, though cab owners still had to go through Nissan if they wanted a standard, gas-powered taxi. Or, they would have.

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

Renault and Nissan are among the businesses affected by massive ransomeware attack

SINGAPORE/TORONTO, May 14 (Reuters) - Technical staff scrambled on Sunday to patch computers and restore infected ones, amid fears that the ransomware worm that stopped car factories, hospitals, shops and schools could wreak fresh havoc on Monday when employees log back on. Cybersecurity experts said the spread of the virus dubbed WannaCry - "ransomware" which locked up more than 200,000 computers - had slowed, but the respite might only be brief. New versions of the worm are expected, they said, and the extent of the damage from Friday's attack remains unclear. Infected computers appear to largely be out-of-date devices that organizations deemed not worth the price of upgrading or, in some cases, machines involved in manufacturing or hospital functions that proved too difficult to patch without possibly disrupting crucial operations, security experts said. Marin Ivezic, cybersecurity partner at PwC, said that some clients had been "working around the clock since the story broke" to restore systems and install software updates, or patches, or restore systems from backups. Microsoft released patches last month and on Friday to fix a vulnerability that allowed the worm to spread across networks, a rare and powerful feature that caused infections to surge on Friday. Code for exploiting that bug, which is known as "Eternal Blue," was released on the internet in March by a hacking group known as the Shadow Brokers. The group claimed it was stolen from a repository of National Security Agency hacking tools. The agency has not responded to requests for comment. Hong Kong-based Ivezic said that the ransomware was forcing some more "mature" clients affected by the worm to abandon their usual cautious testing of patches "to do unscheduled downtime and urgent patching, which is causing some inconvenience." He declined to identify which clients had been affected. The head of the European Union police agency said on Sunday the cyber assault hit 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries and that number will grow when people return to work on Monday. "The global reach is unprecedented ... and those victims, many of those will be businesses, including large corporations," Europol Director Rob Wainwright told Britain's ITV. "At the moment, we are in the face of an escalating threat. The numbers are going up, I am worried about how the numbers will continue to grow when people go to work and turn (on) their machines on Monday morning." MONDAY MORNING RUSH?