Autos
– Honda says it expects to sell fuel-cell vehicles in the general market by 2018. In September, Japan’s third-largest automaker unveiled its FCX Concept fuel-cell car, planned for limited marketing in Japan and the U.S. in 2008. Honda declined to say what the vehicle will cost, though President Takeo Fukui sees about $84,000 as the top of the market.
Recall
– Regal Lager Inc. has recalled about 14,300 Phil & Teds e3 Strollers with add-on doubles seats because children can touch the rear wheels. Internet retailers and baby furniture and baby products stores nationwide sold the product from July 2005 through November 2006. Consumers should stop placing the add-on seat in this lower position and contact Regal Lager for free wheel guards. Call the company at 800-593-5522 or visit www.regallager.com or www.cpsc.gov.
Air
– Private jets and airliners have been diverted from Gary/Chicago International Airport during bad weather because installation of a $2.5 million instrument landing system is taking longer than expected, airport officials say. The Federal Aviation Administration had planned to have the system operating by the end of October, says FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro, adding that problems calibrating the system, designed to guide planes when visibility is reduced by fog or other weather conditions, have indefinitely delayed it.
FYI
– General Motors has sold its longtime proving ground in Mesa, Ariz., netting $265 million for 3,200 desert acres once miles from nowhere but now in the heart of a burgeoning urban area. In announcing the sale in November, GM says it plans to move the testing area to a more rural area, perhaps even Mexico. It will lease the land for three years. The buyer is DMB Associates of Scottsdale, known for high-end home developments.
– Michigan’s traditional blue license plate has begun its fade into history. The plate, known as “Old Blue” and a Michigan standard since the early 1980s, will be replaced with a standard white plate that will be easier to make and to see at night.
– Local sales taxes are among the options the new Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority is discussing to help pay for a proposed commuter train line and to take public buses off the property tax in Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha Counties. A train sales tax in the three counties would raise $8 million a year, which authority spokesman H. Carl Mueller says would cover the local share of the train line’s annual operating cost and debt service on the construction bonds. The authority is funded by a rental car tax raising about $600,000 a year.
– United Auto Workers membership is expected to fall below 500,000, one-third its peak of three decades ago, after Ford completes its buyouts of 38,000 hourly workers represented by the Detroit-based union. The Ford buyouts have come months after 46,800 UAW members took early retirement or buyouts from General Motors and Delphi, GM’s parts-making spinoff, which is in bankruptcy.
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Quick Trips are compiled from the notebooks of Jim Mateja and Rick Popely, and from Tribune news services.
