The proposed $14 Billion Auto Bailout package from the Federal government has collapsed in the Senate. Senate Republicans doomed the bill, which had won support of both the White House and Congressional Democrats, after pressing for steep cuts in both the wages and benefits guaranteed to auto workers by the UAW union contract. The UAW had already made steep concessions in an effort to move the much needed loans from the Federal government swiftly through Congress. However the GOP Senators, many of whom represent
southern states home to foreign owned auto factories who are not obliged to offer UAW contracts to their labor force due to state anti-union laws, would not accept any compromise that did not fall in line with the wages and benefits offered with Toyota, Honda and Nissan in their southern factories.

The Senate was able to muster a majority in favor of consideration of the bill with 52 voting for and 35 against. However due to the arcane rules of the legislative body, 60 votes are needed in order for a bill to be considered by the full Senate - at which time it could then be filibustered which would require 60 votes to break. Such ridiculous rules, not even found in the Constitution of the United States, but rather by Senate specific rules that nobody other than Senators ever agreed upon, are why the US Senate has long been known as the place where good legislation goes to die at the hand of one aggrieved minority interest or other. Getting 51% of the vote is hard enough in a democracy. Getting 60% is simply unattainable for most measures that even involve the semblance of opposition.

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Diesel fuel, long regarded as the dirtier, noisier, lamer gasoline, has been reborn as a more environmentally friendly energy source, and is poised to be unleashed on the US car market.   The International Herald Tribune (the New York Times in disguise for non-Americans (don’t tell France)) reports that the new diesel emits 97 percent less sulfur than those old models, and can pass emission tests in all fifty states, even the really really hippie ones California and New York.

In the next couple years, automakers will once again attempt to turn Americans on to the diesel market.   Mercedes, Audi, VW, Nissan, Ford, GM, Jeep, and so forth and so on will be introducing new diesel vehicles to the market by 2010.

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The Israeli government has joined forces with French carmaker Renault and its Japanese partner Nissan to launch Project Better Place, an ambitious plan to provide Israel with 500,000 charging stations that will recharge an electric car that Renault/Nissan intends to begin selling in 2011.

Project Better Place, a Silicon Valley based start-up, will “mark the largest nationwide roll-out of electric vehicles yet,”  according to the Financial Times, which adds that ”Project Better Place will invest about $1bn in Israel and plans similar projects in other densely populated small countries and municipalities.”

The potential market for electric cars has long been hampered by the lack of an infrastructure to support a battery-powered car.  Renault/Nissan is committed to changing all that. Project Better Place marks “the first illustration of the alliance’s commitment to mass-market zero-emission vehicles all over the world.”