teamcar headline
Puzzling local interest in Proton
teamcar - ASK any research analyst in town about Proton Holdings Bhd and everyone is likely to agree that the national carmaker needs a foreign partner to help it ride out the current slump.
But in recent months, several local automotive companies have made public their interest to take over Proton. DRB-HICOM Bhd, which is run by Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary, Naza Group, owned by Tan Sri SM Nasimuddin SM Amin and the Mofaz Group, a car distributor.
Initially, some were confused. Could Proton be rescued by a Malaysian company?
Analysts had scenarios to take into account both a local and a foreign partner, allowing them to co-exist at different levels of the group.
To follow the often cited Perodua model, a local partner could be at the holding level while a technical partner could control the manufacturing arm.
Last week, speculation reached fever pitch when DRB-HICOM held a Press conference. Group executive adviser for automotive operations, Tan Sri Abdul Rahman Omar, said he was called to the Cabinet committee on the automotive industry, to talk about the firm's bid.
DRB-HICOM has made a bid for a third of Proton and it is 100 per cent sure of its chances.
Naza wants to buy all of Khazanah Nasional Bhd's shares in Proton. At Friday's closing price, that 43 per cent block is worth some RM1.4 billion.
Should the Government sell its shares in Proton to local firms? A more pressing question is that can they turn around Proton?
"Proton needs good exports and it has to be fast in rolling out new models. Can DRB-HICOM help do that?" asks Rosnani Rasul from TA Securities.
Conversion of Carbohydrate And Sugar Into Petroleum
teamcar - Following independent paths of investigation, two research teams are announcing this month that they have successfully converted sugar-potentially derived from agricultural waste and non-food plants-into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and a range of other valuable chemicals.
Chemical engineer Randy Cortright and his colleagues at Virent Energy Systems of Madison, Wisc., a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research awardee, and researchers led by NSF-supported chemical engineer James Dumesic of the University of Wisconsin at Madison are now announcing that sugars and carbohydrates can be processed like petroleum into the full suite of products that drive the fuel, pharmaceutical and chemical industries.
The process Virent discovered in early 2006, and announced at the Growing the Bioeconomy conference sponsored by Iowa State University on Sept. 9, 2008, is the subject of patent applications published last week.
That announcement was followed this month by the publication of a separate discovery of the same process in the Dumesic laboratory. Dumesic and his colleagues announce their findings in the Sept. 18, 2008 online ScienceExpress, to be followed in print in the Oct. 18, 2008, issue of Science.
The key to the breakthrough is a process developed by both Dumesic and Cortright called aqueous phase reforming. In passing a watery slurry of plant-derived sugar and carbohydrates over a series of catalysts-materials that speed up reactions without sacrificing themselves in the process-carbon-rich organic molecules split apart into component elements that recombine to form many of the chemicals that are extracted from non-renewable petroleum.
According to Dumesic, a key feature of the approach is that between the sugar or starch starter materials and the hydrocarbon end products, the chemicals go through an intermediate stage as an organic liquid composed of functional compounds.
"The intermediate compounds retain 95 percent of the energy of the biomass but only about 40 percent of the mass, and can be upgraded into different types of transportation fuels, such as gasoline, jet and diesel fuels," said Dumesic. "Importantly, the formation of this functional intermediate oil does not require the need for an external source of hydrogen," he added, since hydrogen comes from the slurry itself.
As part of a suite of second generation biofuel alternatives, green gasoline approaches like aqueous phase reforming are generating interest across the academic and industrial communities because they yield a product that is compatible with existing infrastructure, closer than many other alternatives in their net energy yield, and most importantly, can be crafted from plants grown in marginal soils, like switchgrass, or from agricultural waste.
While several years of further development will be needed to refine the process and scale it for production, the promise of gasoline and other petrochemicals from renewable plants has led to broad industrial interest.
Virent's process, called BioForming, is allowing the company to address one of the key goals of NSF's SBIR program, commercialization, and a broader NSF target, American competitiveness. A recent alliance with one of the world's largest energy companies aims to bring these alternative fuels to market, and investment from major automotive and agricultural companies from around the world are broadening the company's impact.
Related site:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/09/two-independent.html#more
Toyota Launches Re-branded Genuine Motor Oil
teamcar - Unlike European carmakers that rely on off the shelf motor oil, Japanese manufacturers are known for coming up with their own unique formulation, just perfect for their engines. Toyota first introduced their own brand genuine motor oil in 1989 with just two grades, the TGMO SG 20W-50 for petrol engines and the TGMO CD-40 for all the Toyota diesel engine vehicles.
Over the years there has been changed and improvements made to the TGMO in order to suit the new developed engines by Toyota and to meet the expectations of the market. Today, there are five different grades of the TGMO in our product line-up – it ranges from the fully synthetics, minerals and diesel grades, all developed specially for Toyota vehicles for better fuel efficiency and the ease of driving experience.
They have also come up with new fully synthetic formulation called the TGMO SM/CF that replaces the SL/CF fully synthetic mix. The new packaging design comes with a new bottle and cap design for both the 4-litre and the 1-litre packages.
The TGMO bottles also come with new colors; the gold bottle is for the other variants. Security features are also being improved to prevent counterfeit and recycling of the bottles. On the bottle cap there is an embossed Toyota logo and another logo on the foil seals underneath. A part from that, the Toyota Genuine Parts logo is also being embossed at the base of the bottle.
The new TGMO will be available at all UMW Toyota Service Branches, 3S Dealers as well as authorized parts dealers. In conjunction with the new branding of the TGMO, the company we will be running a three-month campaign starting from September till November, in line with the holiday season.
Sourced by: Malaysian Motor Trader 10th Sept 2008
