(Source: U.S. Global Change Research Program)

New Report Provides Authoritative Assessment of National, Regional Impacts of Global Climate Change Details Point to Potential Value of Early, Aggressive Action.

Image Courtesy: U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP)

Climate change is already having visible impacts in the United States, and the choices we make now will determine the severity of its impacts in the future, according to a new and authoritative federal study assessing the current and anticipated domestic impacts of climate change.

The report, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States,” compiles years of scientific research and takes into account new data not available during the preparation of previous large national and global assessments. It was produced by a consortium of experts from 13 U.S. government science agencies and from several major universities and research institutes. With its production and review spanning Republican and Democratic administrations, it offers a valuable, objective scientific consensus on how climate change is affecting—and may further affect—the United States.

“This new report integrates the most up-to-date scientific findings into a comprehensive picture of the ongoing as well as expected future impacts of heat-trapping pollution on the climate experienced by Americans, region by region and sector by sector,” said John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “It tells us why remedial action is needed sooner rather than later, as well as showing why that action must include both global emissions reductions to reduce the extent of climate change and local adaptation measures to reduce the damage from the changes that are no longer avoidable.”

Some key findings includes:

• Climate changes are underway in the United States and are projected to grow. Climate-related changes are already observed in the United States and its coastal waters. These include increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the ocean and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alterations in river flows. These changes are projected to grow.
• Crop and livestock production will be increasingly challenged. Agriculture is considered one of the sectors most adaptable to changes in climate. However, increased heat, pests, water stress, diseases, and weather extremes will pose adaptation challenges for crop and livestock production.
• Threats to human health will increase. Health impacts of climate change are related to heat stress, waterborne diseases, poor air quality, extreme weather events, and diseases transmitted by insects and rodents. Robust public health infrastructure can reduce the potential for negative impacts.
  

Here are the key messages of the report pertinent to Transportation:

• Sea-level rise and storm surge will increase the risk o • f major coastal impacts, including both temporary and permanent flooding of airports, roads, rail lines,and tunnels.
• Flooding from increasingly intense downpours will increase the risk of disruptions and delays in air, rail, and road transportation, and damage from mudslides in some areas.
• The increase in extreme heat will limit some transportation operations and cause pavement and track damage. Decreased extreme cold will provide some benefits such as reduced snow and ice removal costs.
• Increased intensity of strong hurricanes would lead to more evacuations, infrastructure damage and failure, and transportation interruptions.
• Arctic warming will continue to reduce sea ice, lengthening the ocean transport season, but also resulting in greater coastal erosion due to waves. Permafrost thaw in Alaska will damage infrastructure. The ice road season will become shorter.

Click here to download a copy of the full report.  Alternatively, you can specific sections of the report here.

(Source: NY Times – Green Inc.)

Having shipped hundreds of electric vehicle charging stations, and with repeat orders now coming in from Europe, Coulomb Technologies, a privately-held Silicon Valley company, expects to be profitable by the 2010 introduction of the Chevy Volt, according to its chief executive, Richard Lowenthal.

(Mr. Lowenthal appears in the video above, explaining the company’s ChargePoint Network.)

“Our plan was to sell a thousand stations, but we will probably double that,” he told NY Times’ Green Inc. last week after the company secured its third Bay Area order this year. “Our company is structured to be profitable based on early adapters.”

Image Courtesy: Coulomb technologies

Founded in 2007, Coulomb is looking to crack the chicken-and-egg riddle that bedeviled the hydrogen fuel cell industry. Without a refueling infrastructure, consumers won’t buy vehicles. But no one invested in refueling stations without potential customers on the road.

“It is a very fundamental issue for the business,” Mr. Lowenthal said. “What do you do about the road trip?”

With electric vehicles, the additional problem is that in cities like San Francisco, where almost half of all vehicles park on the city’s streets, many potential buyers couldn’t recharge their cars overnight.

Mr. Lowenthal, a Cisco veteran who served as mayor of Cupertino, said that municipalities, parking companies and condo developers represent the first tranche of customers for charge points that will be deployed on city streets and in garages. They sell for $2,500 to $4,000 and can recharge an electric vehicle battery in four to ten hours.

In what might shape up to be the VHS/Betamax duel of the industry, a Coulomb rival, Better Place of Palo Alto, is looking to develop refueling stations where consumers on road trips can swap batteries in a matter of minutes. Still other companies are building rapid recharge points.

Mr. Lowenthal predicted the next three years would define the nascent charging station industry. By 2012, he said, the car industry will have an understanding of the early adoption rate for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: AP via Yahoo, Forbes & Autoblog)

TransportGooru was one of the earliest portals that notified about the Swedish love affair that originally reported by the Swedish National Television.  Though it was not officially confirmed by the companies involved (GM & Koenigsegg), pretty much everyone knew what is coming.  General Motors made it official this morning, Saab will soon be back in Swedish hands. In many respects, this is the most fitting result for quirky brand. Koenigsegg is an oddball itself, building insanely fast supercars in a Scandinavian country where you can’t legally drive over about 60 mph.

GM said in a memorandum of understanding that the sale would include an expected $600 million funding commitment from theEuropean Investment Bank, guaranteed by the Swedish government. Additional funding for Saab’s operations and investments would be provided by GM and Koenigsegg Group AB, it said.The sale is expected to be completed by the end of the third quarter and is subject to regulatory approvals by authorities.

Image Courtesy: Autoblog

“This is yet another significant step in the reinvention of GM and its European operations,” GM Europe President, Carl-Peter Forster, said in a statement. “Closing this deal represents the best chance for Saab to emerge a stronger company,” he said, adding “Koenigsegg Group’s unique combination of innovation, entrepreneurial spirit and financial strength, combined with Koenigsegg’s proven ability to create world-class Swedish performance cars in a highly efficient manner, made it the right choice for Saab as well as for General Motors.”

The company behind the consortium, Koenigsegg Automotive, was founded in 1994 by Christian von Koenigsegg, a Swedish sports carfanatic and entrepreneur, who remains the chief executive. It makesluxury sports cars at its headquarters, a former air force base near Angelholm, in southern Sweden.

With a full-time staff of 45, Koenigsegg makes around a dozen cars a year, customized for every buyer. The company doesn’t advertise prices for its models, but they are believed to range between 8 million and 18 million kronor ($1 million-$2.3 million) each.  Saab, on the other hand, has more than 4,000 staff worldwide, is represented in some 50 countries, and typically produces more than 100,000 cars a year.

One of the key details about the deal is the now obligatory government backing, this time in the form of a $600 million loan from the European Investment Bank, guaranteed of course by the Swedish government. That explains why minuscule Koenigsegg picked up Saab for free. It’s all about being Swedish.

“‘Saab needs to be left alone to proceed with its strategy,” says Matts Carlsson, an analyst of Goteborg Management Institute, noting that any tampering with its five-year plan to produce premium cars that are not aimed at competing with luxury brands such as BMW or Lexus ‘could destroy it.’

Crucially GM is pledging Koenigsegg its “platform and powertrain technology.” It’s very likely to include the “Epsilon 2” platform — the model (metal frame, geer box, technology) on which the latest GM European cars are based, such as the Opel and Vauxhall Insignias, says Tim Urquhart, an analyst at IHS Global Insight in London. That’s hugely significant for Koenigsegg as research and development of these platforms are a massive expenditure for automakers, he added.

Koeningsegg’s technology could prove valuable to Saab too. Koeningsegg has made a big push into green technology, making low emission, high-efficiency cars such as a flex fuel super car operating on both ethanol and petrol. It’s an area where Saab has been lagging behind its competitors, and could eventually help the company sell more cars.

It should help it increase sales volumes at Saab, which have fallen off sharply in recent years. Having access to GM’s technology will give the Swedish car maker several years to come up with a model for the future.

Koeningsegg also appears to have trumped other suitors, including Italy’s Fiat ( FIATY.PK – news – people ), which was interested in buying Saab after losing out in the race for Opel to Canada’s Magna International ( MGA – news – people ). (See “Fiat Keeps An Eye On Saab.”)

The sale of Saab to Koeningsegg marks a return to Swedish ownership after nine years in GM hands. Last year Saab posted a loss of 3 billion Swedish kronors ($384 million). It says it needs $1 billion to overhaul its business.

(Source: Eventbrite via Bernie Wagenblast)

Newcastle University and Imperial College would like to invite you to participate in a different sort of Workshop to help shape future research into sustainable intelligent transport.

It will be sparky; it will be challenging; it will think the unthinkable – and it will be FREE with refreshments provided.

You’ll not want to miss it, will you?

• Will the Internet and technology influence how we travel? Whether we travel at all?
• Can technology help mobility?
• How useful is “user-generated content”?
• How far can mobile Internet and Web2.0 get you? – literally
• Where is transport research going?
• Did Beethoven have a food processor?

Come and listen to new thoughts on old problems; share with us what you think matters; show us what you’re up to; join in when people ask the questions they’ve always wanted to pose on transport and the Internet; suggest the areas you think need investigation.

Proceedings will be live blogged and tweeted from the event; together with remote contributions. These will be forwarded to EPSRC as the outcome of the workshop and the SIMM final report.

If you’d like details about attending, exhibiting, making a short presentation or demonstrating a product or technology, or following the workshop online please contact Hannah Bryan:hannah.bryan@newcastle.ac.uk at Newcastle University (0191 222 6420).

This is the outline programme. It is still a work in progress, and is likely to change before the actual event, especially as we’d like your comments on it .

So, your thoughts and comments are welcome, particularly for the interactive panel sessions in the afternoon…

(Source: Autoblog & Motor Age via Search Auo Parts)

According to a recent Kelley Blue Book study, 87-percent of new-car shoppers said they thought gas prices would go much higher. Seems like the obvious choice to us, too.

Curious what those expectations for rising fuel costs are having on new-car purchasing decisions? KBB’s got a statistic on that, too. More than 60 percent of in-market new-car shoppers said that rising gas prices have either caused them to change their minds completely or at least made them think about vehicles they normally wouldn’t have considered. For instance, consumers may opt for a four-cylinder or V6 engine instead of a more powerful and furl-thirsty V8.

When asked in May 2009 what they think will happen with gas prices in the next 30 days, 87 percent of new-car shoppers said they thought gas prices would go much higher, a significant jump from the 66 percent who thought gas prices would increase just a month earlier.

In both April and May, more than 60 percent of in-market new-car shoppers said that rising gas prices have either caused them to change their minds or made them think about vehicles they normally wouldn’t have considered. When asked what they would be most likely to compromise in their next new-vehicle purchase in order to save money they might need to spend on fuel, shoppers cited engine size (for example, a four-cylinder versus a V6 or V8) as the top item likely to be sacrificed, followed closely by vehicle size (for example, a mid-size sedan versus a large sedan).

In addition, Kelley Blue Book reports that 73 percent of those who saw gas prices increasing in May said they plan to change their spending habits if gas prices were to go much higher.

KBB’s data further indicates that $3 gallons of gas may be the new tipping point that will get consumers to alter their spending habits. See more in the official press release after the break.

Click here to read the press realse from KBB.

(Source: Urban Omnibus, Wired)

Urban Omnibus and The Infrastructurist talk to the founder of Zipcar and GoLoco about everything from mesh networks to taxi stands to why “infrastructure is destiny.”  In this exhaustive interview published on the Urban Omnibus, you can get to read about Robin’s new social networking project that aims to turn your social network into a travel network. The last couple years she’s been working on GoLoco, which aims to do for ride sharing what Zipcar did for car sharing: to make it easy, efficient and commonplace to share car travel, split costs, and reduce emissions. GoLoco members receive alerts when one of their friends or interest groups is going whether they want to.  Here is an interesting excerpt from the interview, that offers a better understanding of how GoLoco works.

So, as you have moved from Zipcar to GoLoco, from car sharing to ride sharing, do you see ride sharing as more of a national set of strategies?
Yes, car sharing only works in dense metropolitan areas or in cases where people don’t need a car to get to work. If you need a car to get to work, you’re going to have to own your own car. The cost of car sharing is too high for a daily commute. But, then again, according to the National Households Consumer Survey, across the nation it costs $24 per day on average that people are spending in America on their car, day in and day out. If I were to tell you that it was going to cost $125 a week to go to work, you would say, no way, I’m not going to do it. But we are doing it – we just don’t realize we’re doing it.

That’s why I did GoLoco – I said, what about all those other people who are feeling similar transportation and mobility pains but they need a car to get to work? Ride sharing is for those people.

Screenshot of GoLoCo portal (Courtesy: Urban Omnibus)

Can you give us ride sharing 101? How can GoLoco change how we get around?

The big idea for ride sharing and for GoLoco is to think of your car, your expenses, your friends, and your trips as part of your own personal public transportation system. Your friends and their cars and their trips are ways that you can get around. It builds on the idea of long tail media and long tail economics. Ride sharing is the long tail of public transportation. There are rides that serve little niches of demand way out there, in places where you’ll never see a bus service, or a public transportation service of any kind, but you would see ride sharing, because of the individuals who do go way out there. Basically, if you look at the long tail, ride sharing can meet the needs of small groups of individuals who need to get from a specific origin to a specific destination at a particular time.

I think when we look back at ourselves sitting alone in our 120 square feet of car, driving down these highways with incredible storage costs and incredible operating costs, I think we will look back at how we travel today and be just astounded: astounded at the cost, astounded at the waste. It’s such a wacky idea that we’d want to be alone in our cars spending huge sums of money and all that parking space, when it was less fun and more expensive and kind of crazy.

This is why I did GoLoco. We know that we can’t build our way out of congestion, so if things are increasingly, year after year, getting more congested, there’s only one solution for that: addressing the cost of driving over peak periods.

At $2 per gallon, people spend 18% of their income on their car, and that’s without paying for congestion pricing or tax increases or any other changes to transportation financing coming down the road. But it’s not in the control of any government to effect what the ultimate price of gas is going to be when we have increasing demand from India and China, and arguably peak oil. We have an increasing world population that will continue to drive cars with gasoline on our roads. Ride sharing is going to be significant while we transform our infrastructure to be less car-dependent. While we have such a high cost of car travel in such a car-dependent country, I don’t see another solution. 86% of trips made are alone in a car. Think about standing in a mall, looking at a parking lot. You know that a large number of people there are going exactly where you’re going in the next five minutes.

Image Courtesy: Wired - iPhone Zipcar App

Click here to read the entire interview.

In other related ZipCar news,  there is a new iPhone App from Zipcar which makes car sharing a breeze.  The pioneering car-share company has developed an iPhone app you can use to choose, reserve and locate a car on the go – a brilliant move, considering one-quarter of the company’s subscribers have an iPhone in their pocket.

The app tells you what cars are available and uses GPS and Google Maps to direct you to it once you’ve made a reservation. Should the car you’re looking for be lost in a sea of cars in a parking lot, the app will help you find it by sounding the car’s horn. That’s also handy for finding your ride if you’ve forgotten where you’ve parked it.  Zipcar is the largest car-sharing service in the world, with locations in 49 U.S. cities in addition to Vancouver, Toronto and London. The company believes the app, which will be available later this summer, will allow it to expand its service and make car-sharing a breeze.

“There are currently 15 million people within a block of a Zipcar service station and about 47 million iPhone customers,” says Luke Schneider, Zipcar’s chief technology officer. “We therefore estimate that our car sharing network could potentially increase to 32 million customers in years to come as a result of our new partnership and expansion into new markets.”

(Source: R744.com &1234facts.com)

In the middle of this fiasco, Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel has raised his voice to warn the German automotive industry against a “highly risky economic and technical adventure” with an untested, flammable, and toxic refrigerant 1234yf. Moreover, manufacturers should not expect the EU R134a phase-out schedule to change, but rather choose CO₂ now as the most energy-efficient and safe alternative available.

In an interview with ACE, a leading automotive club representing the interests of 550.000 Germans, the Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel has taken a clear stance in favour of CO₂ in the currently hotly debated question of which refrigerant to choose for future car air conditioning systems:

“Fact is: With CO₂ there is an environmentally friendly alternative to R134a available, and it has been proven in real life,” Gabriel stated. “The VDA has to know what it does to strengthen its credibility or not,” he referred to the clear commitment to CO₂ already issued in 2007 by all carmakers united in Germany’s automotive association VDA. The Environment Ministry would continue to support CO₂ (R744) as not only the most ecological option, but also that with a significantly higher energy efficiency, as measurements by the Federal Environment Agency have proved.

Untested chemical “high adventure”
Gabriel also issued a clear warning to the automotive industry to not use untested alternative refrigerants. The currently discussed flammable and toxic chemical 1234yf would be a completely new substance not yet fully investigated by public authorities for its ecological and health risks. As a consequence, manufacturers deciding for 1234yf would embark on a “high economic and technical adventure”, Gabriel concluded.

The Minister warned the German automotive industry against a further use of R134a in cars after 2011. According to Gabriel, the EU MAC Directive, prescribing the use of refrigerants with a Global Warming Potential of below 150 in future passenger cars, will not be changed. Carmakers should acknowledge that he would hold on to the agreed phase-out schedule starting in 2011, with a gradual ban of R134a until 2017. As a result, from 2011, the deprivation of type approval for cars using the climate-damaging refrigerant would be enforced as originally scheduled.

(Source: Autoblog, Bloomberg & ThisDay)

America might get most of its oil from Canada, but the moves that Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) makes still reverberate here. Thus, a statement by the Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmed al-Abdullah al-Sabah to reporters yesterday probably won’t help decrease domestic gasoline prices any time soon. OPEC’s al-Sabah said that the organization will not consider increasing production until the price of a barrel of oil reaches $100.

Crude oil traded in New York has climbed almost 60 percent this year, after plunging more than $100 in five months at the end of 2008 as the global recession curbed demand for fuel.

(Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office)

The U.S. transportation sector relies almost exclusively on oil; as a result, it causes about a third of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. Advanced technology vehicles powered by alternative fuels, such as electricity and ethanol, are one way to reduce oil consumption. The federal government set a goal for federal agencies to use plug-in hybrid electric vehicles–vehicles that run on both gasoline and batteries charged by connecting a plug into an electric power source–as they become available at a reasonable cost. This goal is on top of other requirements agencies must meet for conserving energy.

In response to a request, GAO examined the:

(1) potential benefits of plug-ins,

(2) factors affecting the availability of plug-ins, and

(3) challenges to incorporating plug-ins into the federal fleet. GAO reviewed literature on plug-ins, federal legislation, and agency policies and interviewed federal officials, experts, and industry stakeholders, including auto and battery manufacturers.

Increasing the use of plug-ins could result in environmental and other benefits, but realizing these benefits depends on several factors. Because plug-ins are powered at least in part by electricity, they could significantly reduce oil consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions. For plug-ins to realize their full potential, electricity would need to be generated from lower-emission fuels such as nuclear and renewable energy rather than the fossil fuels–coal and natural gas–used most often to generate electricity today. However, new nuclear plants and renewable energy sources can be controversial and expensive. In addition, research suggests that for plug-ins to be cost-effective relative to gasoline vehicles the price of batteries must come down significantly and gasoline prices must be high relative to electricity.

Auto manufacturers plan to introduce a range of plug-in models over the next 6 years, but several factors could delay widespread availability and affect the extent to which consumers are willing to purchase plug-ins. For example, limited battery manufacturing, relatively low gasoline prices, and declining vehicle sales could delay availability and discourage consumers. Other factors may emerge over the longer term if the use of plug-ins increases, including managing the impact on the electrical grid (the network linking the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity) and increasing consumer access to public charging infrastructure needed to charge the vehicles.

The federal government has supported plug-in-related research and initiated new programs to encourage manufacturing. Experts also identified options for providing additional federal support. To incorporate plug-ins into the federal fleet, agencies will face challenges related to cost, availability, planning, and federal requirements. Plug-ins are expected to have high upfront costs when they are first introduced. However, they could become comparable to gasoline vehicles over the life of ownership if certain factors change, such as a decrease in the cost of batteries and an increase in gasoline prices.

Agencies vary in the extent to which they use life-cycle costing when evaluating which vehicle to purchase. Agencies also may find that plug-ins are not available to them, especially when the vehicles are initially introduced because the number available to the government may be limited. In addition, agencies have not made plans to incorporate plug-ins due to uncertainties about vehicle cost, performance, and infrastructure needs.

Finally, agencies must meet a number of requirements covering energy use and vehicle acquisition–such as acquiring alternative fuel vehicles and reducing facility energy and petroleum consumption–but these sometimes conflict with one another. For example, plugging vehicles into federal facilities could reduce petroleum consumption but increase facility energy use. The federal government has not yet provided information to agencies on how to set priorities for these requirements or leverage different types of vehicles to do so. Without such information, agencies face challenges in making decisions about acquiring plug-ins that will meet the requirements, as well as maximize plug-ins’ potential benefits and minimize costs.

The recommendations are listed below:

• To enable agencies to more effectively meet congressional requirements, the Secretary of Energy should, in consultation with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), General Services Administration (GSA), Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and organizations representing federal fleet customers such as Interagency Committee for Alternative Fuels and Low-Emission Vehicles (INTERFUEL), Federal Fleet Policy Council (FEDFLEET), and the Motor Vehicle Executive Council, propose legislative changes that would resolve the conflicts and set priorities for the multiple requirements and goals with respect to reducing petroleum consumption, reducing emissions, managing costs, and acquiring advanced technology vehicles.
• The Secretary of Energy should begin to develop guidance for when agencies consider acquiring plug-in vehicles, as well as guidance specifying the elements that agencies should include in their plans for acquiring the mix of vehicles that will best enable them to meet their requirements and goals. Such guidance might include assessing the need for installing charging infrastructure and identifying areas where improvements may be necessary, mapping current driving patterns, and determining the energy sources used to generate electricity in an area.
• The Secretary of Energy should continue ongoing efforts to develop guidance for agencies on how electricity used to charge plug-ins should be measured and accounted for in meeting energy-reduction goals related to federal facilities and alternative fuel consumption. In doing so, the Secretary should determine whether changes to existing legislation will be needed to ensure there is no conflict between using electricity to charge vehicles and requirements to reduce the energy intensity of federal facilities, and advise Congress accordingly.
• The Administrator of GSA should consider providing information to agencies regarding total cost of ownership or life-cycle cost for vehicles in the same class. For plug-in vehicles that are newly offered, the Administrator should provide guidance for how agencies should address uncertainties about the vehicles’ future performance in estimating the life-cycle costs of plug-ins, so agencies can make better-informed, consistent, and cost-effective decisions in acquiring vehicles.
• Once plug-in hybrids and all-electrics become available to the federal government but are still in the early phases of commercialization, the Administrator of GSA should explore the possibility of arranging pass-through leases of plug-in vehicles directly from vehicle manufacturers or dealers–as is being done with DOD’s acquisition of neighborhood electric vehicles–if doing so proves to be a cost-effective means of reducing some of the risk agencies face associated with acquiring new technology.

Click here to read or download the entire report.

(Source: The Jakarta Globe)

Swedish luxury sports car maker Koenigsegg will buy Saab Automobile from US giant General Motors with the backing of Norwegian investors, Swedish television reported on Thursday.

The buyers have signed a letter of intention to buy Saab, SVT said on its website, citing anonymous sources and naming Koenigsegg and added that the negotiations could last for months.

“We are getting close to a deal done, but there are some final steps to be taken,” a source close to the matter told AFP, but would not confirm the identity of the leading bidder.

Both Saab and its parent company GM declined comment. Saab was put up for sale by General Motors, which filed for bankruptcy after being brought to its knees by falling demand amid the world economic downturn.  Saab’s reorganisation process began separately in Swedish courts in February.

Koenigsegg, set up in 1994, produces just 20 of its deluxe sports cars a year and sells each one for more than a million euros (1.4 million dollars).

Saab’s sell-off drew a little closer on Thursday after Stockholm announced it had authorised the Swedish Debt Office, which acts as a public bank to the state, to discuss guaranteeing a 500-million-euro loan made to Saab by the European Investment Bank (EIB).

“We have always said that the debt office could start negotiations on guaranteeing the loan when Saab has a new owner,” state secretary for business Joran Hagglund said in a statement.

Media reports had also said Italy’s Fiat was keen on buying Saab, but observers say such a move is now unlikely because of Fiat’s failure to acquire GM’s other European brand Opel.

Opel and its sister marque, Vauxhall, share a lot of technology with Saab.  The Saab automaker — not to be confused with a Swedish defence company also called Saab — sold 93,000 cars worldwide in 2008, according to its website.

It owes 9.7 billion kronor (1.3 billion dollars, 924 million euros) to GM — its largest individual creditor — as well as 347 million kronor to the Swedish government. Other creditors are owed 647 million kronor.

Saab, the automaker, employs about 3,400 people in Sweden. Including suppliers, some 15,000 jobs in the country are believed to be at risk if the company were to disappear.

Click here to read the entire article.