Projo Cars Blog

Soldier/scholar/online auto entrepreneur Jay Rogers was at Johnson & Wales University's Xavier Auditorium Monday to give a lecture as the school's Third Distinguished Visiting Professor.

Rogers is the founder and president of Wareham, Mass.-based Local Motors which builds niche vehicles based on designs that are solicited and developed over the Internet by an international community of designers.

I visited and wrote about Rogers and Local Motors more than a year ago. At the time, his first car, the Rally Fighter, was very much in early development, with a polystyrene skeleton sitting in the company's work shop.

Since then, Rogers and his team completed its construction and recently tested the prototype of the off-road racer on the rough roads of Mexico's Baja Peninsula. The car, designed for desert rallies, is powered by a 3 liter, inline 6, twin turbo BMW clean diesel engine and he said its performance more than met expectations. He also said it turned heads all the way back up to Los Angeles.

Rogers said Local Motors will complete a production plant in Arizona next month and expects to bring the car to market by July. So far, he said the company has orders for 65 cars at $50,000 each and he said he expects to break even with 200 sales. Overall, he sees sales of about 2,000 vehicles.

Rogers likened his company to the "American Idol" format where decisions are made by vote of the international online community rather than by Local Motors' management or a committee at the company.

Asked about future projects, he said the company would be solicited ideas from its online community and could make an announcement at the end of the summer regarding future projects.

Rogers' grandfather owned the Indian Motorcycle Co. He spent nine years serving as an officer in the Marine Corps, including a number of tours in Iraq, and graduated top of his class from the Harvard Business School. He used the prize money to help set up his company.

Peter C.T. Elsworth

The Friends of Plum Beach Lighthouse have exceeded the half-way point with their effort to sell 900 lighthouse license plates depicting the historic structure.

As of Tuesday, it said nearly 550 license plate orders have been received by the group after only four weeks of the campaign.

Gov. Carcieri signed into law the bill allowing the group to sell the license plates but the requirements also call for a minimum initial order of 900 before the Department of Motor Vehicles will commit to making the plates.

The plates are being sold to raise funds to repaint the historic lighthouse seven years after it was renovated. The lighthouse had sat abandoned and neglected for 62 years before the Friends saved the structure.

Friends president David Zapatka said the group was hoping to reach 900 orders by spring which would mean the plates could be on cars by summer.

The plate depicts the lighthouse with against a pink/purple background with a small fishing boat. The plate design still awaits final approval from the DMV, the plate manufacture 3M, and the RI State Police.

Each set of plates cost $41.50; $20 goes to the repainting, $21.50 goes toward the production of the plates. The plates are restricted to passenger vehicles and cannot exceed 5 characters.

Applications for the plates can be found at any branch of the Washington Trust Bank, the North Kingstown Chamber of Commerce and at various merchants throughout North Kingstown.

For more information, contact Friends Vice President Dee Hoebbel at 295-7665 or go to:
www.pblplate.org.

TOKYO -- Toyota said Tuesday that it would recall 437,000 of its 2010 Priuses and other hybrid models worldwide because of a glitch in the braking system, as the Japanese automaker moves to contain a crisis over problems with a range of its products, according to The New York Times.

In addition to the standard 2010 Priuses, Toyota is recalling 270 plug-in Priuses, 28,000 Lexus HS250hs, and 11,000 Sai hybrids. Older Priuses are unaffected by the problem, Toyota has said.

Separately, Toyota also recalled 7,300 of its latest-model Camrys in the United States to fix a power steering pressure hose in the engine compartment that may be the incorrect length. This could cause a hole in the brake tube and deplete the braking fluid, interfering with braking, Toyota said in a statement.

TOKYO -- Toyota said Sunday that it will soon announce plans to deal with braking problems in its prized Prius hybrid amid reports it has decided to issue a recall for the vehicle in Japan, a possible new embarrassment for the world's biggest automaker, according to The Associated Press.

Toyota Motor Corp. has already had to recall more than 7 million other cars in the United States, Europe and China over a sticky accelerator and floor mats that can get caught in the gas pedal. Those problems and criticism of Toyota's response to them have sullied the stellar reputation for quality long enjoyed by one of Japan's corporate icons.

Separately, the company has told dealers in the United States it is preparing to repair the brakes on thousands of Prius vehicles there, according to an e-mail sent by a company executive. It was unclear whether Toyota planned a formal U.S. recall.

TOKYO -- Toyota's president apologized Friday for the massive global recalls over sticking gas pedals as the automaker scrambles to repair a damaged reputation and sliding sales, according to The Associated Press.

But Akio Toyoda, appointed to the top job at Toyota Motor Corp. last June, said the company is still deciding what steps to take to fix brake problems in the popular Prius gas-electric hybrid.

Speaking at a hastily announced news conference that lasted an hour, a stern-looking Toyoda promised to beef up quality control.

"We are facing a crisis," he said, publicly confronting the automaker's safety problems for the first time since a global recall affecting 4.5 million vehicles was announced Jan. 21.

He bowed in customary Japanese-style greeting at the start of the televised news conference at Toyota's Nagoya headquarters but did not bow deeply when offering an apology as some executives, including his predecessor Katsuaki Watanabe, have done when under fire.

Toyoda, 53, said the company is setting up a special committee he would head himself.

Toyota is scrambling to fix 4.2 million vehicles recalled worldwide for unintended acceleration and potentially 5 million more for a design flaw that trapped gas pedals under the floor mat. It is also mulling the recall of its 2010 Prius for brake problems.

What lessons should Toyota have learned from the recall fiascoes of American carmakers in decades past? How damaging is this to Toyota's image -- and what will it take to recover?

Check out the observations of five auto experts that were printed in today's New York Times:

Maryann Keller, financial analyst
Jamie Kitman, Automobile Magazine
Michael Smitka, professor of economics
Peter M. De Lorenzo, publisher of AutoExtremist.com
Sean P. McAlinden, Center for Automotive Research

Safety regulators in Washington said Thursday that they would open an investigation into the brakes on the 2010 Prius, which had been spared from the recall lists, according to The New York Times.

The announcement was made hours after Toyota acknowledged that it had identified a flaw in the car's antilock braking system and corrected it for Priuses built since late January. The car was redesigned for the 2010 model year.