Ari Rochmann

I am currently studying for one of my two exams which I have tomorrow morning.  While I realize that many of you have had two exams in one day, or possibly as many as 3 or 4, it seems as if this should no longer occur given the technology which is currently implemented in most modern universities.  I am speaking about the course management systems in place in schools such as Carnegie Mellon University (Pulse Scheduler) and Pennsylvania State University (ANGEL).  Through these systems students and their professors are able to post papers, take quizzes, and view lecture notes.  Additionally, these systems also have an often overlooked calendar application.

I propose that schools begin to utilize these calendars for the posting of all exams, not simply final exams as is the current practice.  By doing so, and making this calendar global to each student (displaying all exams which are applicable to them), this will allow professors to see when an exam is causing an unnecessary burden on students.  Given this information, professors will then be able to schedule exams in such a fashion as to limit a student’s exam quantity to simply one exam in a day (in most cases).

As the databases which store student course enrollment information are already integrated into these course systems I do not see any problems in the implementation of this exam scheduling solution.  Now, if only this system were already in place I wouldn’t be studying for biology at 1am after having had to study international economics for several hours prior.

I get it Windows, you’ve updated yourself and now you want to restart.  But if I am currently busy utilizing my computer is it so much to ask for you not to ask if you may restart every 5 minutes? Now I understand that there are many people from generations prior to mine who still are not fully comfortable with computers, and therefore need to have their hands held throught their daily interactions with their own computer.  However, as past generational members eventually decline in number due to natural causes it will be ever more important for manufacturers of computer software to increase a user’s control over their computer’s operational system.  My basic reasoning for this lies in the highly technologically aware status of my generation (myself being born in 1985) and those which have been birthed thereafter.  What computing knowledge and technical understanding once led to one being labeled as a “power user” in the 1990s is now equivalent to what a technologically savvy 13 year old considers “normal knowledge”.

As generations continue being more fully saturated by advanced computing and overall technologically-inclined knowledge as time passes, it is natural for what was once considered advanced knowledge to become more commonplace.  Yet it seems to me that most software manufacturers, OS manufacturers such as Microsoft in particular, do not do much to enable more advanced management of one’s own computing system.  Something as simple as allowing me to choose if I want to be reminded of my OS’s need to restart more than once, or even simply adding a dropdown box which would allow for a “sleep” period to be set for the restart reminder to remain dormant.  Another solution is to allow for the setting of “restart times”, similar to how you can already set during which times you want your virus program to scan your computer.  Overall though I think that merely being able to set a sleep timer on the notification would be more than sufficient for most users.  It’s just simply unnecessary to constantly heckle users with a restart notice every couple minutes, especially with the increasing computer savvy of modern users.  I can see the restart notification icon in the taskbar, I don’t need a prompt to pop up when I am using my computer.

Hopefully this easy to include feature will be added sometime in the near future, as since writing this my computer has asked me to restart 5 times… so I’m going to go do that now.

A week ago, my credit card was charged with over $4,000 of fraudulent activities.  This occurred due to a “merchant database leak” as I was told by my credit card company (CitiBank).  Now, the implications of something like this would be grim for most people, but as I am currently a college student attempting to build up my credit history, I’m slightly more sensitive to things like this.  I had only just acquired the card, my first, during the summer of 2007 while I was interning in Manhattan.  This being my first credit card, my credit score is extremely vulnerable due to the basic fact that with a shorter history any outliers can affect the average to a much higher degree.

So, I have been actively contacting CitiBank to make sure that my credit history is restored to its former pristine self, as well as having the $4,000+ in fraudulent charges removed from my statement.  During this process I had to recite several times to a representative over the phone which activities on my card were fraudulent.  In my eyes this was pretty obvious as there was a triplet of $800.00 charges at a Wal-Mart in Arkansas which were made on a Friday.  Unless I was intoxicated to such a degree that I unknowingly flew to Arkansas, spend $2,400 at a Wal-Mart, and then somehow awoke in my own bedroom in Erie, PA the subsequent morning then I am pretty sure that those charges were not mine.  The same can be said for the $2,000+ in charges which were made to my card in Tennessee, on a Wednesday school night.  Who in Tennessee does not question a $576 purchase at Victoria’s Secret without a valid form of identification?  I can only hope that this was all done online and that Victoria’s Secret’s central warehouse ships out of Collierville, TN.

Now, all this leads up to my central point: Why, after giving various forms of identification over the phone to my bank, is the quickest way for me to remove the fraudulent charges from my account to be sent a paper copy of my statement in question, which I then have to circle with a pen the charges which I say are fraudulent and then sign the bottom of the form and mail it back?  After giving my address, social security number, account number, password, is it not logical that if I can tell a representative over the phone specifically which charges were not mine on my credit card they could then pass off this information to their credit fraud bureau?  Why instead make this process into a possibly 1 month long process of waiting for and returning snail mail?

It seems to me that the situation could easily be alleviated through the use of secure PDF forms.  The statement in question could be emailed to me in seconds (password locked with an encryption key which would be told to me over the phone by the representative, making it extremely secure), upon its reception I could simply circle the charges on the PDF and digitally sign at the bottom of the document and send it back to the bank.  This whole process would take 5 minutes depending on the competency of the representative on the phone and how well the customer is familiar with Adobe Acrobat and computers in general.  I guess that’s what I think would be logical in this day and age, or maybe it’s just my dream scenario (possibly the dream scenario of anyone born after 1985, especially since we know that what I have proposed is 100% possible to do).  But, in the end here I am awaiting to receive a paper copy of my statement while my credit card is maxed out with its APR climbing above 28% and it already having accrued a $39 “credit limit reached” fee.

Once all of this is resolved I will certainly be checking around to see if this is the norm for other credit card providers, most likely CitiBank will not be handling my account after that point.

Hey everyone, I just created arirochmann.com with help from my friend Mike whose blog you can check out under the links section of this page.  This site will hopefully be a good place for me to express my ideas and opinions, which I guess the heading kind of states already.  I will also be posting my résumé here in the near future.  Stay tuned for my first real blog sometime in the coming week.

In recent years voting has evolved towards an electronically-based system, as opposed to the traditional paper-based arrangement.  There are many new challenges and issues which are brought up by this change, and which make its adoption as the norm a challenging one.  In this paper I will outline the main criticisms of the new touch-screen voting technologies, as well as state my thoughts on what could be done to neutralize these problems and make for a successful implementation of what will one day soon be the future of voting as we know it.

First off, a touch-screen voting system is operated as such: “a voter receives a card and inserts it into an ATM-like machine and touches the screen to record choices.  The card is sent to the supervisor of elections, where the choices are downloaded and counted”, however, due to this system storing all of its data electronically, “no tangible record exists” (Bousquet, 2007).  This lack of a paper trail is one of the main problems with electronic voting.  Florida governor Charlie Crist proposes to solve this problem by switching from touch-screen voting technology back to paper ballots, he proposes by 2008 (Bousquet, 2007).  To do this, Crist is asking for $30 million to make the gradual switch from the touch-screens to a system based on optical scanning.  This system “allows a voter to mark an oval next to a candidate’s name before slipping a ballot into an electronic reader”; much the same way as many high school and college tests are still administrated (Bousquet, 2007).  The problem with this switch is that many counties in Florida already rely heavily on touch-screen technology to tally their elections.  According to Steve Bousquet, in Pinellas County alone there are some 3,400 touch-screen machines.  The Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Nancy Whitlock said: “if touch screens were replaced with optical scanners, vote counting would take much longer” (Bousquet, 2007).  Additionally, new regulations in place due to the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) outline that all polling places in the United States must have a touch-screen voting system in order to serve those who are in some way physically handicapped, such as the blind.  On top of these inconveniences, Pinellas County spent some $14 million just to buy their electronic voting system; if they are unable to sell them to another district they will take huge losses in their budget, especially including the $30 million stated above would need to be spent in order to make the switch in voting technology in Pinellas and surrounding counties (Bousquet, 2007).  This budget is a good chunk for Florida state’s proposed $150 million budget for new voting technology.  This sum is derived from the new HAVA statutes which give $150 million to each state in federal money, $3.9 billion overall according to John Wildermuth, for new voting technology, known as direct recording electronic machines, and for training elections officials in how to use the machines (McFeatters, 2003) (Wildermuth, 2004).

Training of election officials is another hurdle which must be scaled in order to provide voters with a safe, accurate, and effective touch-screen voting system in the future.  In September of 2006, the new voting system in Cuyahoga County, Ohio was defeated by poor training of poll workers.  Due to the workers’ poor training there “were discrepancies between the new paper-ballot backups and the votes recorded by the machines” (Fessler, 2006).  This election in Ohio was one of the first studies into the possibility of electronic voting being supplemented by a paper-backed system.  This option is “often seen as an answer to concerns about touch-screen voting” (Fessler, 2006).  As Fessler states, in Ohio about 10% of the paper ballots sampled by the Election Science Institute (ESI) were uncountable, which leads to a big problem in the event that a recount be needed, as the paper ballots are the means by which the recount must occur as per Ohio state law.  California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley also has proposed that paper backups be utilized as an addition to electronic voting.  In 2003 he called for all counties in California which are using touch-screen ballots to “provide voters with paper receipts so they can confirm their choices” by 2006 (Wildermuth, 2004).  Back in Ohio, poor training also led to other mistakes in their election.  Amongst these were “thermal paper [being] fed into the [voting] machine backwards”, and “paper jam[ing], creating areas in which votes were written over one another” (Fessler, 2006).  Ohio plans on spending $700,000 on more on thorough training of future poll workers (Fessler, 2006).  Diebold Election Systems, the manufacturer of the touch-screen machines used in the Ohio elections, has dismissed the report from the ESI as ‘severely flawed’ (Fessler, 2006).

Diebold Election Systems has come under a lot of scrutiny however.  Their election machines have been proven to be inaccurate, as well as very subceptible to hacking, amongst other problems.  In an Alaskan election, “Diebold touchscreen machines in Southeast Alaska, the Interior and near Nome did not upload their votes into the Division of Elections’ central computing system” (Volz, 2006).  This problem was attributed to problems in the machines’ modems, but the result was that “election officials [had] to hand count and manually upload vote totals from several precincts across the state”, which of course greatly slowed down the election results (Volz, 2006).  This whole ordeal caused Alaskan legislature to pass a new law in 2005 requiring the mandatory hand counting of ballots in one randomly selected precinct during every election (Volz, 2006).

The inaccuracy of the Diebold machines can be seen in many places. To begin with, a January special election for a state house seat in Broward County, Florida had 134 votes taken on a touch-screen system not recorded towards the election; the election was won by 12 votes  (Wildermuth, 2004).  Another example can be seen in North Carolina where during a 2002 election some 436 votes cast on touch-screen machines were lost (Wildermuth, 2004).  Other casses of inaccuracies have surfaced in California, namely during the March, 2004 elections where “computer problems fouled up and delayed operations at hundreds of polling places in Alameda and San Diego counties.  In Orange County, thousands of voters were given wrong electronic ballots, allowing them to vote where they didn’t live” (Wildermuth, 2004).  In San Diego, a thousand votes cast towards John Kerry were ascribed as having been case to Dick Gephardt, a candidate who had already dropped out of the Democratic presidential contests (Wildermuth, 2004).  Yet another case in San Diego occurred where during an October 2004 recall election, “a software problem shifted thousands of absentee votes for Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante to a Socialist candidate from Southern California” (Wildermuth, 2004).  John Wildermuth goes on to state in his article that “the companies that sell voting systems argue that problems with the new technology are overblown and that security concerns are overstated”.  A statement by voting machine maker Diebold conforms to this account saying that their voting machines “are secure when elections officials follow proper procedures” (Volz, 2006).  However, Diebold’s machines continue to be criticized, which is in fact hurting all touch-screen machine manufacturers.  Charles from Sequoia Systems says: “voters can’t tell you the model and the company of the voting machine they use.  A problem with any machine hurts everyone’s confidence in the voting system” (Wildermuth, 2004).  This is bad news for areas such as California and Florida where hispanic voters are a major part of the election scene.  These electronic systems provide the much needed ability of an election ballot to be instantly displayed in multiple languages for non-English speakers, as well as allowing blind voters to use earpieces in order to have the ballot options read to them in a private setting for the first time (Wildermuth, 2004).  These problems of vote counting accuracy must be resolved soon if the public is expected to begin imparting their trust over to electronic means of vote counting such as touch-screen machines.

Of interest is how Diebold’s machines are not the only ones which have suffered from accuracy problems.  Other electronic vote tallying machines from Sequoia Voting Systems, as well as Election Systems & Software, have been shown to be prone to inaccurate vote counting.  These inaccuracies were found during a statistical analysis conducted by University of California, Berkley graduate students and their professor (Zetter, 2004).  According to this group, voting machines in Florida may have awarded George Bush around 260,000 more votes than he was supposed to receive.  In another 15 counties using the touch-screen systems, results were found to also have been vastly exagerated.  This is in contrast to counties whose voting systems were not touch-screen based, their results lined up “perfectly with what the variables would have predicted for those counties” (Zetter, 2004).  This shows that the software being used in msot new voting computers must contain some flaw, and it is this flaw which is preventing the American people from wholeheartedly adopting this new technology.  Even more of a concern is the hacking of the touch-screen voting machines.  If these inaccuracies could throw off elections, then the deliberate damage which would be incurred by a hacker would truly be devastating.

The criticism directed towards the alarmingly intermediate amount of skill required for the hacking of electronic touch-screen voting machines has been mostly directed towards manufacturer Diebold Election Systems.  In states which are now fully dependent on electronic voting, such as Maryland, the problem of hacking is more serious than ever.  In a January, 2004 test of Maryland’s voting machines a test team showed that “it was possible for hackers to guess the password needed to access the voting machines, break into the results transmitted from the election site and even fiddle with the software so that a vote for one candidate was recorded as a vote for another” (Wildermuth, 2004).  A newer study in 2006 conducted by Princeton University professor Edward W. Felten has “confirmed the concerns often expressed by computer scientists and security experts, as well as election integrity activists, that electronic voting – and indeed our elections – may now be exceedingly vulnerable to the malicious whims of a single individual” (Friedman, 2006).  The Princeton study utilized the Diebold AccuVote DRE system, which is in use in Maryland, Florida, and Georgia, among many other states. (Friedman, 2006).

The study found that a computer virus could be implanted onto an electronic voting machine, therefore allowing the hacker to transfer votes between candidates as he wished.  This approach would be untraceable as the total tally of votes cast would still equal the expected amount, and with no paper trail of the sabotage it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to detect the tampering of the voting machine.  Friedman writes that “the virus could also be written to spread from one machnie to the next and the malfeasance would likely never be discovered”.  Of equal concern is how the virus could be written to “modify its own tracks and remain virtually undetectable by elections officials.  It wouldn’t be found in the standard tests performed either before or after an election” (Friedman, 2006).  All of this damage perpetrated during the study was able to be done “with just one or two minutes of unsupervised access to either the voting machine or [its] memory card” (Friedman, 2006).  This created an uproar in California, as during their June election in 2006 some already programmed, and election-ready, Diebold voting machines had been sent home overnight with the poll workers which were to operate them in the coming election, some days and weeks before the actual polling (Friedman, 2006).  Of note is Johns Hopkins computer scientist and elections-security expert Aviel Rubin, who was one of the first to speak out about the security threats which Diebold’s machines were subceptible to (Friedman, 2006).  Upon analysing source code from some of the voting machines, which was left by Diebold on an unsecured public internet site, he told Newsweek: ‘If Diebold had set out to build a system as insecure as they possibly could, this would be it’ (Friedman, 2006).  The Princeton study also found that voter access cards, which were used on the Diebold voting system to grant a single vote to a registered voter, could be “created inexpensively on a personal laptop computer, allowing people to vote as many times as they wish” (Friedman, 2006).

These security threats, inaccuracies and hacking, are of great importance to all voters, including Pennsylvanians.  According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “A newer version of the Diebold machine is being used by 16 Pennsylvania counties, including Armstrong, Clarion, Somerset, Warren and Washington” (Sherman, 2006).  This is of course due to the Help America Vote Act mentioned earlier, which states that all counties must have at least one touch-screen voting machine in order to allow disabled and non-English speakers to be able to vote (Bousquet, 2007).  To help in the fight against electronic voting machine inaccuracies and hacking Representative Rush Hold, a Democrat from New Jersey, proposed an extension of the HAVA (Sherman, 2006).  This extension would “require the use of machines with paper trails and a routine audit of those trails” (Sherman, 2006).  This would of course make most of the newly purchased machines in many counties across the country obsolete, thereby squandering billions of dollars in federal aid that the counties have already spent for the upgrade to touch-screen voting machines (Sherman, 2006).

Overall, the current future for electronic voting looks bleak, this is not to say however that a solution to the above problems cannot, or will not, be found.  I myself believe that once solid software is written for the voting machines, possibly even a standardized operating system, that electronic voting will be more viable to full acceptance by the U.S. population.  The biggest concern is of course the possible hacking of these systems.  This can be prevented by keeping the machines under lockdown at all times, and having especially tight security measures weeks prior to an election.  Such is the case in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania where its 4,600 iVotronic voting machines are stored in a secure warehouse in the North Side of Pittsburgh (Sherman, 2006).  In my research I also found minor mentions of the generally unfriendly and sometimes confusing menus found while navigating the voting machines.  This is a simple problem, and quite frankly, a ridiculous one to have.  It is very simple to make an easily legible and understandable menu system for the voting machines; manufacturers simply need to get the message that their current efforts are not sufficient.  I believe that after these issues are resolved there will be widespread, and trusted, use of electronic touch-screen voting machines.

Works Cited

Bousquet, S. (2007, January 31). Crist wants touch-screen voting machines gone. Retrieved April 19, 2007, from St. Petersburg Times: http://www.sptimes.com/2007/01/31/State/Crist_wants_touch_scr.shtml

Fessler, P. (2006, September 13). Election 2006- Problems Found in Ohio Computer Voting. Retrieved April 19, 2007, from National Public Radio: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6069712

Friedman, B. (2006, September 14). Hack the vote? No problem. Retrieved April 19, 2007, from Salon.com: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/09/13/diebold

McFeatters, A. (2003, August 7). U.S. News- Computer voting viewed skeptically. Retrieved April 19, 2007, from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03219/209386.stm

Sherman, J. L. (2006, September 26). Professor shows flaws in touch-screen voting. Retrieved April 19, 2007, from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06272/726096-84.stm

Volz, M. (2006, August 23). Problems with touchscreen machines slow vote count. Retrieved April 19, 2007, from Anchorage Daily News: http://www.adn.com/news/politics/elections/story/8113627p-8006175c.html

Wildermuth, J. (2004, April 26). ‘Touch’ voting a worry/Hazards haunt new high-tech machines. Retrieved April 19, 2007, from San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/04/26/MNGQS6B1K81.DTL

Zetter, K. (2004, November 18). Researchers: Florida Vote Fishy. Retrieved April 19, 2007, from Wired Magazine: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2004/11/65757

Over the last several years there has been a major shift in the world automotive market.  This shift is the addition of some major countries into the market; these countries are Thailand, China, and India.  Making up a massive majority of the world population, these three countries bring a staggering amount of new buyers, as well as more than their share of manufacturers, to the global table.  In the essay to follow we will take a closer look at these three emerging markets and then discuss some of the positive and negative repercussions of their addition to the global economy.

China is the largest of the three emerging automotive market countries in both size and population.  Their automotive sector alone saw a profit rise from $1.29bn in 1999 to $2.14bn in 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s U.S Commercial Service (BuyUSA.gov 1).  And these numbers will only continue to grow as China is quickly adding to its highway and roads system, with a target of 4,600km to be built by 2020 (BuyUSA.gov 2).  Large automotive manufacturers in China include: China First Automotive Group Corp., Dongfeng Motor Corp., and Shangai Automotive Industry Corp.  These corporations make up the vast majority of China’s estimated 2.3 million vehicles a year production capacities (BuyUSA.gov 1).  These figures are solely for new vehicles, as the Chinese consumer is different from the average global consumer in many ways.  According to a study by consulting firm Capgemini the vast majority of Chinese consumers will buy a new car and not a used one (Business Wire 1).  This ideal is boosted by the fact that China does not allow used motor vehicles to be imported from other countries, save for those with diplomatic status or for antique vehicles (BuyUSA.gov 1).  A very important, and personally interesting, trend in automotive purchasing in China is loyalty.  In China both brand and dealer loyalty are lower that in the U.S and European countries.  This is vastly due to the status of the market, since most consumers are purchasing a vehicle for the first time in their lives, they do not care what brand or dealership sells them their vehicle.  Instead, the prime focus for Chinese auto shoppers is price.  The statistics supporting this show that price is listed as the number one priority while shopping for a new vehicle in China by 98% of those surveyed.  Compare this to 82% and 83% in the U.K and U.S respectively (Business Wire 1).  Another culture specific buying trait in China is how a potential vehicle purchase is researched and validated.  First off, the Chinese buyer places more value on the opinions of friends and family when seeking to purchase a car.  More importantly, and especially to manufacturers, is the focus on internet based research that takes place.  79% of Chinese buyers were polled as saying they were more likely to purchase a vehicle based on the manufacturer’s website and how it was put together, compare this to a U.S. and U.K average of only 69% (Business Wire 1).  Another figure from the Capgemini study reveals that a significant 78% of consumers in China shop using the internet; this is some 11% higher than the average consumer.  Of these internet research savvy users, 90% compare vehicle information from both the manufacturer’s, as well as third-party commercial web pages (Business Wire 1).  This data clearly shows that car manufacturers would be wise to invest more capital into creating feature rich, information packed websites for the Chinese market, a lot more so than to the English speaking countries.

While China is the largest population force in this new automotive world, it is not the only quickly growing market out of the three emerging automotive countries.  In fact, the country with the second fastest growing automotive market is India.  China’s top automotive corporations are getting ready to establish plants in this emerging automotive giant.  The base for these operations will most likely be the technological behemoth which is New Delhi.  Chinese firm Chery will be attempting to take away some sales in the passenger car market, focusing on small and mid-size sedans.  On the other end of the spectrum is the firm Foton, which will primarily focus on building larger vehicles such as SUVs and commercial trucks (Anand 1).  According to the same article, these large Chinese firms are becoming a major threat to the already established Japanese car manufacturers.  These new Chinese manufacturers have also caught the eye of U.S. automotive companies, much as their Japanese counterparts did in the early 70’s, but more predominantly so in the early 90’s.  One such company is DaimlerChrysler which is currently in the middle of securing an agreement with Chery to import its sub-compact vehicles into the United States.  This sourcing of Chinese vehicles is driven by their general fuel efficiency, as well as significantly reduced pricing when compared to American, and even Japanese automobiles (Business Wire 1).

There are, however, challenges which face the Chinese firms when expanding into India.  A major hurdle in this process is the lacking infrastructure of the country.  Basic things such as roads and power are lacking in a lot of areas.  India’s highway system specifically is greatly malnourished, with only 2% of India’s road network being national highways, yet these highways carry almost 40% of the total traffic in India.  Additionally, Indian roads are responsible for transporting almost 70% of the country’s cargo traffic and about 85% of it’s’ passenger traffic (Rathore 2).  Similarly, the country’s power grid is also plagued by poor infrastructure.  This is leading to such things problems as poor energy distribution, and insufficient energy being derived from power plants.  This is very much a major problem as India’s power needs will only continue to grow greatly as its population and wealth grows ever exponentially (Rathore 2).

India also possesses its own means of manufacturing; although they are hindered with a smaller working force than China they still have sufficient means for production.  The automotive industry in India produces about 10 million vehicles a year, but where India’s main advantage comes in is its education.  The Indian workforce is one of the best educated in the world, which is why the U.S. and European countries often partake in brain draining from India.  The workforce is primarily young professionals which have a thirst for economic and social advancement, and are always on the lookout for the best new business opportunities which may come their way.  This gives India the advantage over China in the Research and Development sub-field in automotive manufacturing (Miller 1).  India’s automotive industry has increased by 17% according to the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association.  Subsequently, automotive parts and components have risen 30%, with total automotive exports from India totaling some 40% higher than previously.  This figure of a 40% increase is also the same which shows the increase of imports the U.S. receives from India (Miller 2).  According to Businessline, Forbes Magazine recently listed the city of Pune as one of the “Emerging Global Cities for 2006” (Businessline 1).  India’s largest auto company, Tata Motors, is increasing production in the city of Pune, as is their partner Fiat SpA of Italy.  They are joined in their increased production from this Indian city by Bajaj Auto, maker of two-wheeled vehicles, and Force Motors (Businessline 1).  Little known to most, the American company DaimlerChrysler has an Indian branch which has been operating out of Pune for over 10 years.  They recently added assembling of their Mercedes-Benz brand’s S-Class flagship sedan in Pune.  The region also provides automotive components to such brands as BMW and General Motors.  India’s automotive market is exceedingly ripe for expansion.  This is made especially valid by the fact that for every 10,000 Indian citizens of driving age, only 10 own a car (Businessline 2).  With this much room to grow we will surely see the Indian automotive market increasing exponentially in size in the years to come.

Third on our list of emerging automotive markets is Thailand, located just east of India.  The Houston Chronicle heralds Thailand as the “pickup truck capital” of the Asian continent.  Their auto production has surpassed 1.1 million vehicles a year, with an impressive 75% of those being smaller pickups (Foster 1).  These pickups may indeed soon be on U.S. shores in the near future.  They will be attractive due to low manufacturing costs, mostly derived from government tax breaks for manufacturers and the flood of suppliers in the region.  Even Japanese manufacturers have moved their pickup productions into Thailand.  Such manufacturers include Toyota, Mitsubishi, and Isuzu (Foster 2).  This has gone to the extent that Thailand is currently Toyota’s second largest exported of vehicles, Japan being the largest.  Ironically, Thailand possesses none of their own domestic brands, and most of their vehicles are manufactured by either Chinese or Japanese firms.  As mentioned above, these firms are drawn to Thailand due to low costs, and many, such as Toyota, get about 90% of their parts and materials locally (Foster 2).  Once again as in the case of India, American automotive corporations have plants in Thailand.  Some of these manufacturers include Ford Motor Company, and the largest auto producer in the world, General Motors Corp.  These companies are also drawn to Thailand for its cheap, ready labor force, and easy access to raw materials and parts.

We have looked at three increasingly pertinent countries and their strides forward in automotive manufacturing.  But how does this affect us in the United States?

Aside from the common outcry about loss of American jobs due to outsourcing to these
countries, there are also other ways that these new vehicles and manufacturers will affect
American people.  First we must remember that these new countries represent the newly growing car markets, as the U.S. and Europe once were.  Now it is their turn to grow in this industrial area.  Soon Chinese brands such as Geely and Chery will be imported onto U.S. soil and also European countries (Griffiths 2).  There will surely be outcry from these added companies “funneling” away profits from American and Japanese automobile companies.  But due to their low cost, and increasingly improving manufacturing quality, they will surely be here to stay.  The upside to Asia’s emerging automotive market is that it creates the chance for American car companies to export some of their products and technology to the Asian manufacturers which are still in their infancy.  This is beneficial to both parties as the U.S. firms get a new sales market and increasing profits, while the Asian firms can evolve more rapidly without needing to create their own technologies or parts in a lot of cases.  This can go a long way towards helping to outweigh the revenue lost due to outsourcing in the United States.  In an article on Emerging Markets Economy, sales for General Motors were announced to hit a record high in 2004, up by almost 58% from the same half the previous year (Emerging Markets Economy 1).  Other manufacturers, such as Ford, are following suit and releasing modified versions of their U.S. market cars in China and India.

While these new Asian markets have a long way yet until they reach the manufacturing numbers of the top two worldwide companies such as Toyota and General Motors, they are quickly becoming a driving force in the automotive market.  The day quickly approaches when Asian automobiles will be just as common on U.S. and European streets as cars of those respective countries currently are.  When that day arrives we will be able to truly see how their individual economies, as well as the world economy, will benefit or loose from the changing times.

Works Cited

“Us Commercial Service: China”.  BuyUSA.gov. 22 Oct. 2006.
<http://www.buyusa.gov/china/en/automotive.html>

“China’s Emerging Automotive Market is Vastly Different from More Developed Regions; Brand and Dealer Loyalty Remain Low Among Chinese Consumers, According to New Global Survey From Capgemini”. Business Wire. Nov 17, 2005. FindArticles.com. 22 Oct. 2006.
<http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2005_Nov_17/ai_n15858533>

“GM’s Car Sales Hit Record High In China”. Emerging Markets Economy. Jul 15, 2004. FindArticles.com. 22 Oct. 2006. <http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4174/is_20040715/ai_n12932673>

Anand, Byas.  “Chinese cars eye India”.  Knight Ridder Tribune Business News. Washington: 2 Oct 2006: Page 1.  All Collections.  ProQuest.  22 Oct. 2006.
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Rathore, Deepesh.  Swarup, Tilak.  “A review of India’s automotive industry: Management briefing: Political and economic overview”.  Just – Auto. Bromsgrove: June 2006: Pages 1-3.  All Collections.  ProQuest.  22 Oct. 2006. <http://proquest.umi.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/pqdweb?did=1064943051&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=9874&RQT=309&VName=PQD>

“Full speed ahead”.  Businessline.  Chennai: 31 Aug. 2006: Pages 1-2.  All Collections.  ProQuest.  22 Oct. 2006.
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Miller, Chris.  “Competition from the East?”.  Aftermarket Business.  Cleveland: Aug. 2006.  Vol. 116, Iss. 8; Pages 1-2.  All Collections.  ProQuest.  22 Oct. 2006.
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Foster, Malcolm.  “Thailand has become the No. 2 pickup producer and is making an effort to grow even more / Trucks take front seat”.  Houston Chronicle.  Houston, Tex.: 23 Jun. 2006: Pages 1-3.  All Collections.  ProQuest.  22 Oct. 2006.
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Griffiths, John.  “The world automotive industry is in a rare state of turmoil as the Paris Motor Show prepares to open its doors”.  Financial Times.  London (UK): 28 Sept. 2006: Page 2.  All Collections.  ProQuest.  22 Oct. 2006.
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