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Why should you even care about what Renault is up to? After all, the French company has not made big product waves in a long time and does not even sell cars here in the US.

The answer lies in Japan, and takes the form of Nissan. Nissan is is a big player in our market and will be selling the all-electric Leaf starting next year. As you know, Nissan and Renault form a uniquely successful alliance and share technology back and forth. Further, Renault is building the commoditized cars that Better Place will use on its grandiose mission to ...

Admittedly, I tend to get obsessive about certain things in life. It was an obsession with cars that led me to get out of pre-med studies in order to become an automotive engineer, and it was that same obsession that led me to start rightpedal.

Of late, I have had another obsession: the Nissan GT-R. Ever since seeing one at a Cars & Coffee event in Las Vegas two months ago, I have wanted one so badly it hurts. In fact, I took a picture of said GT-R on my iPhone and unbeknownst to the owner, the dude’s car now ...

In February 2003, I traveled to South Korea for a week of business development in the Korean auto industry. Appropriately, my first stop was a huge industrial complex outside Seoul, home to a certain Hyundai-Kia.

My local colleagues and I spent most of the day in meeting after meeting, where inquisitive Korean engineers were visibly interested in learning as much as they could about the engine simulation products we were selling them.

On the way to lunch, which comprised of cabbage-heavy soups and delightfully spicy kimchee (can one ever get enough cabbage? I mean COME ON, throw in another vegetable ...

As Nissan and GM have a go at each other over whose yet-to-be-sold electric vehicles will be more efficient, Honda is throwing its weight behind Hydrogen fuel cells as the alternative technology of the future.

“Fuel-cell cars will become necessary,” said Takashi Moriya, head of Honda’s group developing the technology. “We’re positioning it as the ultimate zero-emission car.”

Honda, the first company to introduce hybrids to the US market with the original Insight, is also the first company to put fuel cell cars on the market here. 200 Honda Clarity FCX, built at a dedicated plant in Tochigi ...

In what has quickly become an infamous clip among car fans, TopGear ended its 13th season on an unusual, ominous and pessimistic note. As you will see, Jeremy Clarkson mourns what he think is the end of the road for old-school performance cars.

In the strongly-worded blog post I originally wrote for the Columbia Business School website, A Requiem for the Supercar, I defended the importance of supercars and made the case that losing them would be detrimental to the auto industry. It is tough to be, as I am, a huge gear head while believing that humans are indeed ...

Try as might, I could not help but vent here today. You see, early this morning, I posted the news on BMW pulling out of Formula 1 at the end of the season, and that should have been that. However, I have long been a fan of their Formula 1 effort and I am still sitting here fuming about the decision taken by the BMW board. In fact, I will admit once again that ...

Yesterday, I was reading an article that made me think the automotive end times are here: BMW and Mercedes-Benz are working on three-cylinder cars to be released in the next five years. And no, we are not just talking cars like the above Smart.

Now, anyone who has driven a Smart surely knows how rough and harsh-sounding three-cylinder engines can be. Their only saving grace is fuel-economy, which is obvious. Mercedes-Benz does not seem to care, given that it already makes a three-cylinder junker for the Smart, and apparently thinks that a C-Class and a three-cylinder would go well together ...

You do not need me to tell you about the historic bankruptcy of GM today. Furthermore, you probably do not need yet ANOTHER opinion on what it all means. But this is rightpedal and therefore, I am bound to share my opinion with you.

Reading comments on the bankruptcy across the internet, I can best sum up the overall public sentiment as a sense of anger at the government for not having gone through these motions several months ago. Why, people are saying, did the government give GM $20B then, only to let them waste it on their way to ...

Unless you were busy under a rock yesterday, you will have heard that President Obama announced the first national fuel efficiency standard in American history. As you can hear in the video, this standard required historically-opposing parties to come together. Perhaps it is a sign of the times that even car companies are seemingly behind this plan, if the symbolic presence of officials from the ten leading car manufacturers as well as the UAW president at the announcement was anything to go by.

The new standard requires auto makers to raise the average gas mileage of their cars and trucks ...

Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, has made an investment in California-based Tesla Motors in return for a 10% stake. This is a smart move for Daimler and a strategic home-run for Tesla. The electrification of the vehicle is still in its infancy, what with range, battery life and maintenance infrastructure a long way from readiness for mass-adoption.

Through its investment, Daimler not only buys itself a stake in the immense buzz and public goodwill toward the first full-electric vehicle of the US market of recent times, but it also taps into the technology pioneered by Tesla, allowing it to ...

Yes, yes, I know you know that things have not been going, shall we say, ‘that well’ for the car industry of late. Given the downturn, it is inevitable to see major shifts in the center of power among the big corporations. But two recent pieces of news really demonstrate just how bizarre the car industry has become. Tell me I am not alone when I think that the below would make for one heck of a corporate thriller celebrity gossip rag, replete with courtships, breakups, back-stabbing and unpredictable behavior:

VW gets weak - Porsche buys VW - Porsche gets weak - VW ...

This is a republished post I recently wrote for Columbia Business School's blog, Public Offering.

Believe it or not, engineers have emotions just like everyone else. I know this because I used to be one — in the car industry, at that. Before going to Columbia Business School, I spent seven years working at Ricardo, one of the world’s leading automotive engineering and management consultancies. After graduation, I founded rightpedal, an automotive social media site for Generation Y. While it is difficult to say what makes an engineer tick, one thing is true of the people who make the ...

I came across this review by Fortune’s Alex Taylor III, who has recently driven BMW’s diesel 3-Series, and it got me thinking. In case you did not know, BMW has just started offering two diesel models in the US – the 335d Sedan and the X5 xDrive35d, both featuring the amazing 3.0L, 265hp inline 6 that return 36 mpg hwy in the former model and 26 mpg hwy in the latter.

There has always been a debate about whether diesel passenger cars are viable in a market that views them in quite a negative light. Moreover, critics are ...

On Monday, President Obama took another step toward fulfilling his campaign promises: he signed two executive orders that will affect the automotive marketplace in the United States in a big way. In one of the orders, the President has asked the Department of Transportation to issue tougher fuel economy standards in an effort to curb greenhouse gases. In the other, he has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to review the applications of California and 13 other states, in which they asked to be able to set their own statewide emissions rules. The Bush administration had previously blocked these applications.

This ...

As a former automotive engineer who spent years working in and around Detroit and a life-long car enthusiast, I take great interest in the state of the global automotive industry and the issues it is facing. As an American, I am concerned by the difficult state in which the US automotive industry finds itself. You see, I do not want to see it fall apart and care what happens to it, even if I think the manufacturers are largely to blame for their own troubles. For too long, they ignored the simple rule of good commerce: building great products. Legacy ...

I am very excited to welcome you to the rightpedal blog! Many of you reading this have been a constant source of encouragement and kind words of support, and many have demonstrated interest by signing up for our mailing list or joining our YouTube channel. A heartfelt thank you! Right at the onset, I feel it necessary to address a question that a few or many of you may have, and that is, “all this time, and all we get is a blog?!” Maybe it’s just me, but I feel that I owed you more.

The truth is, the ...