Business News short takes
Posted on Thursday, October 19, 2006
Ethanol price said to curb auto buyers
Ford Motor Co., the second-largest U. S. automaker, said higher bio-ethanol prices are deterring consumers from buying vehicles that use the alternative fuel made from sugar cane.
“Technology and vehicle cost is not the constraint,” Andy Taylor, director of sustainability and corporate citizenship at Ford’s European unit, said at the Sugaronline World Sugar & Ethanol Conference in Geneva on Wednesday. “The real constraint is the price of bio-ethanol.”
Ethanol prices are putting off buyers from buying “flex-fuel” cars, he said. Flex-fuel vehicles can run on gasoline, ethanol or a blend of the two. E 85, a fuel that is 85 percent ethanol, needs to be 30 percent cheaper than gasoline to compete, Taylor said.
“Flex-fuel cars will remain a niche market unless that is tackled,” he said. “We know that only 5 percent of our customers will pay a premium for environmentally friendly cars.”
Twelve percent of all new cars sold in Sweden are flex-fuel vehicles, Taylor said. That may rise to a quarter by 2009, he said. The Scandinavian country is Europe’s biggest buyer of flex-fuel cars, Taylor said. Some video iPods carry Windows virus
SAN JOSE, Calif. — In another example of how mobile gadgets can carry malicious programs, Apple Computer Inc. said a fraction of its iPod players sold in the past month contained a virus that affects rival Windows systems.
The problem affected fewer than 1 percent of the video iPods available for purchase after Sept. 12, according to a posting on Apple’s technical support Web site. The company has received less than 25 reports about the problem, Apple said.
The iPods got the virus from a Windows computer at one of its manufacturing plants, Apple said. The virus, RavMonE. exe, is known to spread through external data storage devices when connected to computers and affects only machines running Microsoft Corp. ’s Windows operating system. Security experts say the virus opens up more security holes for hackers.
Up-to-date anti-virus software included with most Windows computers should detect and remove it, Apple said.
Though the iPods themselves are not affected, nor are Apple’s Mac OS computers, Apple recommended that iPod owners use its latest iTunes program to remove the virus from their new devices.
Other iPod models were not affected, and all video iPods now shipping are virus-free, the company said.
“As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it,” the company said. Airbus boss reportedly pledges changes
PARIS — Airbus is considering plant sales and outsourcing as it prepares to overhaul production but will also take into account jobs and other political factors, the European jet maker’s new boss said in an interview published Wednesday.
“A fairly deep reorganization of the chain of production is needed, but we will have to take into account the problems that poses in terms of local employment and economic fabric,” Airbus Chief Executive Louis Gallois was quoted as saying by Toulouse, Francebased newspaper La Depeche du Midi.
Airbus has been hit by a costly two-year delay to its A 380 superjumbo, sagging sales of its midsize jets and a weaker U. S. dollar, which hurts its revenue in euros because planes are sold in dollars.
The European aircraft maker promised bold restructuring moves in July, a month after revelations about the extent of the A 380 ’s problems wiped away more than a quarter of Airbus parent EADS’ market value. The cuts will generate annual savings of $ 2. 5 billion by 2010, the defense group said earlier this month without giving details.
EADS is under growing pressure from the Paris and Berlin governments to keep job cuts to a minimum and maintain the traditional distribution of work between the two countries that was blamed for many of the inefficiencies and communication failures at Airbus.
Airbus is still “at the preliminary study stage” as it weighs possible changes to production, Gallois said, “including the solutions used by Boeing, which sold some of its sites.” GE Consumer Finance being probed
TOKYO — Japan’s financial watchdog is investigating a customer complaint over allegedly illegal debt-collection tactics by GE Consumer Finance, the lender said Wednesday.
GE Consumer Finance, a unit of General Electric Co., said in a written statement that it called a customer at work twice in April even though the customer asked not to receive such contact after the first call.
Calling a borrower at his workplace after a request not to do so violates Japan’s money lending laws.
GE Consumer Finance, which operates a personal-loan business in Japan known as Lake, said the second telephone call resulted from internal miscommunication and that it hasn’t received notice of a formal punishment from Japan’s Financial Services Agency.
But GE Consumer Finance apologized for its actions and pledged to take steps to prevent such human errors.
The Kanto Finance Bureau, which is investigating the complaint on behalf of the FSA, said that in a similar case two years ago regulators ordered a lender to close its operations for 15 days after making one illegal telephone call to a borrower’s place of work.
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