After a recent article about Tesla Motors turning a profit, I received a friendly e-mail from a regular reader that I was actually painting a false picture of the automotive landscape. This was of course the last thing I wanted to do. The reader wrote that I wasn't highlighting a couple of bright spots in the auto-field, mainly Ford and Hyundai. I knew of both of these companies' situation but was focusing on Tesla, the only all-electric car company with such profits, in the article. In the pursuit of being fair and balanced, I want to present the recent news on these two automakers, too.
First, Ford, an American automaker, posted a quarterly profit of $2.3 billion. This impressive profit was mainly due to onetime gains resulting from debt restructuring this past spring. The automaker did improve its American market share by 2 percentage point. The company only one of the big three that did not need any type of bailout fundings is banking on hybrid and improved gas efficiency to keep this streak of profit alive. Ford will improve fuel efficiency in all vehicles approximately 20 percent through the end of 2010 vs. 2005, and the company is on track to improve fuel economy by more than 35 percent by 2015.
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