Ford Comes in Second Last in Consumer Reports’ 2012 Auto Reliability Survey [w/Video]

Two years ago, Ford was included in the Top 10 of Consumer Reports’ (CR) annual reliability survey, with more than 90 percent of its range rated average or better.

In the 2012 survey, however, you’ll have to look a long way down to find the Blue Oval: it occupies the next-to-last place as it finished 27th out of 28 brands rated, and its Lincoln luxury division is just one place ahead.

"Ford's bumpy road can be seen in the numbers. Sixty percent of Ford-branded models and half of Lincolns were below average in predicted reliability and none placed above average," said Jake Fisher, director of automotive testing for Consumer Reports.

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The Sales Network: Facebook’s New Features Help Carmakers Shift More Cars

Initially, Facebook was available only to Harvard students, then to other Ivy League institutions, companies like Apple and Microsoft and as of September 26, 2006, everyone in the world who has a valid email address and is at least 13 years old.

As of last month, the social network has over one billion active users worldwide. California-based web analytics company Quantcast reports that in May 2011, it had 138.9 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S.; that’s close to 45 percent of the country’s population.

A billion users, half of them accessing the social media through their mobile devices, which means that they can be reached at all times: it’s a marketing team's wettest dream.

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British Study Reveals Alarmingly High Levels of Interior Pollution in Smokers’ Cars

Nobody needs to tell us that smoking is a nasty habit that threatens not only your own health but others’, too: the Surgeon General and thousands of advertising campaigns have ensured that you get the message. Whether you choose to adhere to or ignore it is your own choice.

Smokers may have an increasingly hard time finding a place where they can indulge in their vice but their own vehicle is their private space and, for the most part, they can do what they want in it.

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TomTom Publishes List of Most Congested Cities in North America and Europe

It’s happened to most drivers: congestion, that is, that plague of modern cities that increases traveling times and, of course, pollution.

Since 2007, Dutch manufacturer of automotive navigation systems TomTom has initiated a program to better understand the traffic flow of more than 80 major cities in all continents to improve its guidance systems.

Instead of relying purely on mathematical models, the company is collecting real-life GPS data from millions of TomTom customers and has created an accurate database of their driving patterns.

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NHTSA Reports Increase in Traffic Deaths For the First Time in 5 Years, Baffles Experts

U.S. traffic deaths increased by nine percent in the first six months of the year, to 16,290 people, the most since 2009, according to a preliminary report by the National Highway Safety Administration.

The latest findings interrupt a 5-year continuous downward trend, which resulted in what the administration called a “historic” 60-year low in 2011. The NHTSA report does not examine causes, and a full report of analyzed data could take more than a year.

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German Gov. Mulling Subsidizing EVs, Which So Far, Haven’t Made a Blip on the Sales Radar

In the first eight months of the year, new passenger car registrations in Germany were more than 2.108 million units. According to a study from the Center of Automotive Research (CAR) at the University of Duisburg-Essen, electric cars registrations in the country, were just 2.272, which accounts for a negligible 0.1 percent market share.

The thing is that Chancellor Angela Merkel has set a target of having one million fossil-free, i.e. electric- and fuel-cell powered vehicles, on German roads by 2020 – a goal which Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, head of CAR, finds “unworldly and naive” to continue pursuing.

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