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A Suzuki Jimny EV Could Come To Europe 2030 As Suzuki Plans EVs
The Suzuki Jimny may get a literal power boost as a fully-electric model by 2030 now that Suzuki is investing billions into electrification. After a relatively long period of uncertainty regarding its stance on EVs, Suzuki is earmarking nearly $35 billion to produce a lineup of five EV models that will go on sale in Europe by the end of the decade, and one of them could be a Jimny EV.
Suzuki’s multi-billion jump into EVs will expand across markets in Japan, Europe and India, according to Reuters, but its debut fully-electric models will first be introduced in its home country of Japan in 2023. Europe and India are set to follow in 2024, and within the following six years, Suzuki expects to have between five to six EV models available in these markets.
The news comes not long after the debut of Suzuki’s EV concept SUV, called the eVX, which was unveiled in India at the Auto Expo 2023. The eVX builds off an actual production model that Suzuki says will be introduced in 2025, although it’s unclear where it’ll be sold.
The company is now following up the debut of the eVX concept with plans to make a new batch of EVs. One of these looks a lot like a Jimny, which tracks given the Jimny’s popularity around the world. It’s also a good idea for Suzuki to make a Jimny EV sooner rather than later, because a Chinese Jimny EV from SAIC-GM-Wuling looms on the horizon. It’s hard to tell right now whether the Jimny EV that Suzuki teased is a five- or three-door model, though the addition of a battery could require the extra space of the bigger Jimny 5-Door.
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Then again, the Japanese carmaker’s plan is apparently all about going small and light, so it’s possible that Suzuki will find a way to stuff the battery into the ladder frame of the smaller combustion-powered Jimny. The three-door, that is — or two-door as most of us in the U.S. would refer to it.
And just like every other Jimny model we’ve lusted after since the return of the little off-roader, the U.S. is not likely to get the Jimny EV. I suppose it’s for the best, because, really, who wants a capable-yet-adorable fully-electric SUV from Suzuki when we’ve got all these Hummer EVs to go around?
Airport Worker Sucked Into Jet Engine Was Warned to Stand Back
Last month, the National Transportation Safety Board released its preliminary report on a shocking incident that took place at Alabama’s Montgomery Regional Airport. On New Year’s Eve, 2022, an Envoy Air worker was killed after being sucked into the jet engine of an Embraer 170. NTSB investigators have now laid out the sequence of events that led to the accident.
The plane involved in the fatal incident had landed after a flight from Dallas-Fort Worth to Montgomery. While the American Eagle flight was uneventful, the Embraer’s auxiliary power unit (APU) was inoperative during the flight. The APU powers all of the aircraft’s non-propulsion equipment, including electrical, pneumatic and hydraulic systems. As a result, the pilots elected to leave the small airliner’s jet engines running until the plane was connected to ground power.
Reportedly, the ground crew was briefed twice that the plane’s jet engines would be running while the plane was parked. The first officer on the flight even reminded the ramp agents about this through the cockpit window. The NTSB report states:
“The ground crew reported that a safety briefing was held about 10 minutes before the airplane arrived at the gate. A second safety “huddle” was held shortly before the airplane arrived at the gate, to reiterate that the engines would remain running until ground power was connected. It was also discussed that the airplane should not be approached, and the diamond of safety cones should not be set until the engines were off, spooled down, and the airplane’s rotating beacon light had been extinguished by the flight crew.”
According to the NTSB, despite these multiple warnings, video surveillance footage from the airport shows the unnamed ramp agent walking around the Embraer airplane and stepping in front of the number-one jet engine while it was still running. The footage shows the agent being pulled off their feet and into the turbine. The pilots felt the plane shake violently, and engine number one automatically shut down.
According to other workers on the scene, the ramp agent had already been pushed over once by the engine’s exhaust and warned to stay clear of the engines before the fatal incident took place.
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The report notes that the American Eagle employee manual specifies “the ingestion zone for all aircraft types is 15 feet,” and that personnel should not enter the ingestion zone until an aircraft’s engine or engines have fully spooled down and come to a stop.
The NTSB’s findings are preliminary, and more information may come to light as the investigation continues.
Nepal Plane Crash Kills at Least 68
A plane crashed into a river gorge in central Nepal on Sunday, killing at least 68 people and sending Nepalese authorities into a scramble to determine what brought the aircraft down.
The Yeti Airlines turboprop hit the gorge of the Seti River about a mile from its destination, Pokhara International Airport, according to Brig. Gen. Krishna Prasad Bhandari, the spokesman for the Nepalese army. Photos and TV footage showed black plumes of smoke and fire at the site, with crowds swarming around the wreckage.
Gen. Bhandari said that as of Sunday evening the rescue team had retrieved 68 bodies and that search operations had been suspended until Monday morning. There were 72 passengers aboard, including four crew members.
“It’s dark now and the crash site is a river gorge where it’s difficult to work at night,” he said.
Rescue teams worked to retrieve bodies at the crash site of a Yeti Airlines plane.
Photo:
Rohit Giri/REUTERS
The passenger list included 53 Nepalese, five Indians, four Russians, two South Koreans, and one each from Australia, Argentina, France and Ireland, Nepal’s civil aviation authority said. The names of all passengers were released by the aviation regulator on its Twitter account.
Tribhuban Poudel, a 37-year-old publisher and editor of a local newspaper in Pokhara, had been traveling home on the morning of the Nepali Hindu festival of Maghe Sankranti to celebrate with his family after attending a gathering of journalists in Kathmandu, according to his friend Manoj Basnet, a Kathmandu-based media executive.
“He had risen in his life through struggles and was ever available to help whoever he could, including his friends,” Mr. Basnet said. Mr. Poudel is survived by his mother, wife and a 3-year-old son.
The aviation authority said flight number YT-691 took off from the capital of Kathmandu at 10:32 a.m. local time for what is usually a 30-minute journey. The plane’s last communication with the Pokhara airport tower was at 10:50 a.m. from the Seti River gorge, and it crashed soon after.
A Yeti Airlines plane in Pokhara last year.
Photo:
NICOLAS ECONOMOU/REUTERS
Flightradar24, a flight-tracking site, said that the ATR 72-500 aircraft was 15 years old and equipped with an old transponder that had unreliable data. In a Twitter post, the website said that the transponder stopped transmitting position data at 10:50 a.m., and that the last signal from the transponder was received at 10:57 a.m.
The plane was made by aircraft manufacturer ATR, a joint venture between
Airbus SE
and
Leonardo
SpA.
Pokhara is a popular tourist destination, with many flocking to the lakeside city for hiking and yoga. Nepal relies heavily on revenue from tourists, with the industry making up about 6.7% of the country’s GDP, according to the World Bank. In 2019, the tourism industry supported over one million jobs in Nepal.
Nepalese Prime Minister
Pushpa Kamal Dahal
called an emergency cabinet meeting in the aftermath of the crash. The government has formed a five-member probe committee of retired government officials and air-safety experts to ascertain the cause of the crash and give recommendations to avoid such an incident the future, the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation said. The probe committee will have 45 days to present its report.
Rescue workers sifted through the wreckage of the Yeti Airlines turboprop.
Photo:
yunish gurung/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Plane crashes in Nepal have occurred in recent years, with poor weather conditions sometimes being blamed. Nepal is home to eight of the world’s 14 highest mountain peaks, including Mount Everest.
Last May, a Tara Air flight carrying 22 people crashed into the Himalayan mountains, killing all aboard. The plane, which had departed from Pokhara, went down after swerving due to inclement weather, government officials said.
In 2018, a US-Bangla Airlines flight from the capital city of Bangladesh crash-landed and caught fire at Kathmandu Airport, killing 51 of the 71 people aboard. A government investigation blamed the crash on pilot error, saying that he was under severe emotional distress.
On Sunday Mr. Basnet recalled his last words with Mr. Poudel about two months back. “He asked me when I planned to visit Pokhara the next time,” Mr. Basnet said.
Mr. Poudel had helped Mr. Basnet with local contacts and business leads when he was trying to find his footing as a media professional in Pokhara about a decade ago, Mr. Basnet recalled. They hadn’t seen each other in a while, but Mr. Poudel told him he had been keeping up on Mr. Basnet’s posts on social media.
“You are doing really good in life. Continue doing good,” Mr. Basnet remembered his friend telling him.
Write to Krishna Pokharel at krishna.pokharel@wsj.com and Shan Li at shan.li@wsj.com
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Cloud shot up in front of Hawaiian Airlines plane that hit severe turbulence last month | Air transport
A cloud shot up vertically like a plume of smoke in a matter of seconds before a Hawaiian Airlines flight last month hit severe turbulence and 25 people on board were injured, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The captain of the 18 December flight from Phoenix to Honolulu told investigators that flight conditions had been smooth with clear skies when the cloud shot up in front of the plane and there was no time to change course, the report said.
He called the lead flight attendant and told her there might be turbulence. Within one to three seconds, the plane “encountered severe turbulence”, the report states.
Shortly afterward, the lead flight attendant told the crew there were multiple injuries in the passenger cabin.
Of the 291 passengers and crew on board, 25 were injured, including four passengers and two crew members who were seriously hurt, the report says. The plane sustained minor damage.
Tiffany Reyes, one of the passengers taken to hospitals, said the next day that she had just gotten back to her seat from the bathroom and was about to buckle her seatbelt when the flight dipped.
In an instant, Reyes said she found herself on the aisle floor, staring up at caved-in ceiling panels and a cracked bathroom sign that was hanging.
“I asked everyone around me, ‘Was that me?’” Reyes said. “They said I had apparently flown into the ceiling and slammed into the ground.”
Reyes said she initially thought something had hit the plane and it was crashing, and that they were going to die, because she had never encountered anything so violent on a flight.
“That’s the most terrifying experience I’ve been through in my whole 40 years of life,” Reyes said.
Hawaiian Airlines’ chief operating officer, Jon Snook, said at the time that such turbulence was unusual, noting that the airline had not experienced anything like it in recent history. The fasten-seatbelts sign was on at the time.
Cloud shot up in front of Hawaiian Airlines plane that hit severe turbulence last month | Air transport
A cloud shot up vertically like a plume of smoke in a matter of seconds before a Hawaiian Airlines flight last month hit severe turbulence and 25 people on board were injured, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The captain of the 18 December flight from Phoenix to Honolulu told investigators that flight conditions had been smooth with clear skies when the cloud shot up in front of the plane and there was no time to change course, the report said.
He called the lead flight attendant and told her there might be turbulence. Within one to three seconds, the plane “encountered severe turbulence”, the report states.
Shortly afterward, the lead flight attendant told the crew there were multiple injuries in the passenger cabin.
Of the 291 passengers and crew on board, 25 were injured, including four passengers and two crew members who were seriously hurt, the report says. The plane sustained minor damage.
Tiffany Reyes, one of the passengers taken to hospitals, said the next day that she had just gotten back to her seat from the bathroom and was about to buckle her seatbelt when the flight dipped.
In an instant, Reyes said she found herself on the aisle floor, staring up at caved-in ceiling panels and a cracked bathroom sign that was hanging.
“I asked everyone around me, ‘Was that me?’” Reyes said. “They said I had apparently flown into the ceiling and slammed into the ground.”
Reyes said she initially thought something had hit the plane and it was crashing, and that they were going to die, because she had never encountered anything so violent on a flight.
“That’s the most terrifying experience I’ve been through in my whole 40 years of life,” Reyes said.
Hawaiian Airlines’ chief operating officer, Jon Snook, said at the time that such turbulence was unusual, noting that the airline had not experienced anything like it in recent history. The fasten-seatbelts sign was on at the time.
Elon Musk Sends Subtle Message to Disenchanted Tesla Shareholders
Elon Musk is used to facing critics, haters and detractors.
He even likes these battles very much.
Sometimes he even tends to provoke his supposed enemies. The Techno King, as he’s known at Tesla (TSLA) – Get Free Report, likes to turn his opponents’ attacks into counterattacks. The serial entrepreneur is never as lethal as when he is on defense.
These adversaries he knows them. He knows their angles of attack. Certainly some of these criticisms annoy him but he always finds the line of response to repel the detractors.
He can also count on his legion of fans, many of whom are Tesla die-hard fans. They believe in his promises of transforming the world and beyond our civilization. They applaud his iconoclastic side and do not hesitate to cry genius when he announces a new product. The billionaire always knew he could count on these admirers.
The Revolt of the Retail Investor
But what he never anticipated was that some of these fans would come after him. He therefore never prepared for it because he always counted on their loyalty to him. It turns out that Musk was wrong.
For several weeks now, the CEO of Tesla has been the target of repeated criticism from some retail investors. Investor Leo KuGuan, who is the car maker’s third largest individual shareholder after Musk and Oracle (ORCL) – Get Free Report co-founder Larry Ellison, went so far as to sound a revolt against Musk.
“I am 100% in Tesla bc I believe in Elon Musk and Tesla,” KoGuan wrote on Twitter on Jan. 7. “But he is killing SH and Tesla. If I knew I wouldn’t invest in Tesla.”
“Elon invested ≈$200mm but took out $40B, Larry invested $1B, I invested over $3B, I have no choice but to act and speak out. I cry out to U for help!”
The criticisms of these investors are the consequence of Tesla’s stock market rout. In 2022, Tesla stock lost 65% of its value, translating to more than $600 billion in market capitalization evaporated in a year. Tesla’s market value is currently $357 billion, down from over $1 trillion at the start of 2022. Over the first four trading sessions of 2023, Tesla shares lost 8.2% to $113.06.
While Musk attributes this stock market disaster to macroeconomic factors like the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hike to fight inflation and the energy crisis in Europe, many Tesla shareholders believe that his acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion is the big problem.
They claim that when Musk set his sights on the social media platform, he completely left Tesla behind. Worse, he has alienated many Tesla buyers by attacking progressives and Democrats on Twitter regularly.
Tesla Outperforms Its Rivals
Retail investors together own 41.9% of Tesla shares as of Dec. 5, according to WallStreetZen. Institutional investors hold the biggest block with 43.01% of the shares. The balance is held by the company’s executives, ie 15%.
While Musk once responded to some criticism a while back, he’s been quiet lately. This is no doubt due to the fact that he must observe the quiet period until the publication of the company’s earnings on January 25. Until that date, the management team musk remain silent so as not to influence the share price to the benefit of certain shareholders or to the detriment of others.
But Musk has just found a subtle and striking way to respond to the criticism, which has turned violent in recent days. The entrepreneur has just retweeted a chart which shows that of all the major automakers present on the American market, only Tesla and General Motors (GM) – Get Free Report have managed to increase their sales of light vehicles in 2022 compared to 2021. All the rest of the vehicle manufacturers have seen their sales decrease compared to 2021.
Tesla saw its sales increase by 44% over one year while those of GM only increased by 3%.
Musk said nothing else.
Getting Results—and Money—When Airlines Cancel Flights
Canceled or delayed flights can cost travelers money. Getting an airline to pay you back for expenses like hotel stays and rental cars isn’t impossible, but it can involve lots of legwork.
Southwest pledged to provide refunds to passengers on canceled or significantly delayed flights between Dec. 24 and Jan. 2, but the airline is also providing reimbursement for additional expenses including the cost of staying at a hotel or renting a car. Passengers were also given 25,000 frequent-flier points in a move by Southwest executives to win them back.
Airline passengers “have very few rights,” said
Paul Hudson,
president of FlyersRights, a consumer advocacy organization. Getting the remuneration that passengers believe they are entitled to can come down to perseverance and communicating extensively with the airline over an extended period.
Here’s what travelers need to know about their rights on domestic flights in the U.S. and how to get reimbursed.
My flight was canceled. Can I get a refund?
Airline customers are entitled to a refund if a flight is canceled for any reason or “significantly delayed” and they opt not to travel, according to rules from the Transportation Department. This policy extends to nonrefundable tickets. The DOT determines on a case-by-case basis whether passengers are entitled to a refund for a delayed flight.
While airlines are required to provide refunds in these circumstances if requested, they aren’t barred from offering other forms of redress first. Carriers will often offer a passenger the opportunity to rebook on another flight or a voucher or credit that could be used for future travel.
In these situations, customers will need to speak with an airline representative and request an “involuntary refund,” Mr. Hudson said. Not all customer-service staff will be familiar with this phrase, he warned, but he described it as “the magic words” to use to get a refund quickly.
I had to stay in a hotel because of a flight delay. Am I entitled to reimbursement?
Additional compensation beyond a refund of airfare and other fees isn’t required by the DOT. Still, most airlines have policies on what they will cover.
If a plane has a technical issue or the flight isn’t properly staffed, an airline’s compensation policy typically will kick in. If the delay or cancellation is due to weather, passengers may be out of luck getting assistance.
The DOT maintains a dashboard spelling out what is covered under the customer-service policies at the 10 largest domestic airlines in the U.S. in cases where cancellations or delays were under the carrier’s control. Each of these major airlines has put these policies in writing, making the commitments enforceable, a DOT spokeswoman said in an email.
My checked luggage went missing. What does the airline owe me?
If a checked bag is delayed, missing or damaged, the airline is liable and must reimburse the traveler. For domestic flights, airlines are only required to cover up to $3,800.
Apart from being required to reimburse passengers for the value of items that were lost or damaged, carriers must also compensate people for incidental expenses such as purchasing replacement clothing or medications. Airlines cannot set an arbitrary daily limit for those expenses, though they can require receipts or other proof for valuable items that were lost, according to the DOT.
I can’t rebook with my airline. Are they required to book me on another airline?
Before the airline industry was deregulated in the U.S. in the 1970s, carriers were required to rebook passengers with other airlines in instances where flights were canceled or delayed. “Now, it’s strictly voluntary,” said Mr. Hudson.
Some carriers have formal relationships with other airlines that allow them to rebook reservations at no additional cost, whereas others may buy tickets from competitors for stranded passengers. Southwest said it bought tickets on other airlines during its meltdown, and
Spirit
did the same during its 2021 meltdown.
I was bumped from my flight by my airline. Is that allowed?
Airlines have come under fire in recent years for the practice of overselling flights and then bumping passengers. The practice is allowed, as long as you haven’t boarded the plane. If you’ve already boarded, the airline can remove you from the flight for safety, security or health reasons.
If a passenger is involuntarily bumped, the carrier must provide a written statement of the flier’s rights and how the company decides who is bumped. They may be provided a refund, but they aren’t guaranteed additional compensation.
To be eligible for compensation, the traveler must have a confirmed reservation, have checked in on time and have arrived at the departure gate on time, the DOT states on its website.
If all those conditions apply—and the airline cannot rebook the passenger on a flight that gets them to their destination within one hour of their original scheduled arrival—compensation is calculated based on the price of the original ticket, the length of the delay and whether the flight is domestic or international. Compensation ranges from up to $775 for short delays to no more than $1,550 for longer delays.
Write to Jacob Passy at jacob.passy@wsj.com
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Southwest Airlines Gears Up for a Normal Flight Schedule on Friday After Mass Cancellations
Southwest Airlines Co.
LUV 3.70%
executives said the airline is gearing up to resume its full flying schedule on Friday, removing limits on ticket sales and rebuilding crew schedules after an operational meltdown led it to cancel thousands of flights over the past week.
Executives also pledged to continue work to update technology systems that company and labor officials have blamed for exacerbating Southwest’s troubles, leaving scheduling systems jammed and crews dispersed as the airline struggled to rebound from a winter storm.
“I can’t imagine that it doesn’t boost the focus in certain areas, maybe shift priorities based on what we learned,” Chief Executive
Bob Jordan
told reporters Thursday. “This has been an incredible disruption, and we can’t have this again.”
Southwest canceled nearly two-thirds of its flights Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, as part of an effort to dig out from a cascading meltdown after last week’s severe winter storm threw operations into disarray. While other airlines were able to recover from the brutal weather within a few days, Southwest continued to spiral.
Southwest has canceled nearly 16,000 flights in the past week, according to FlightAware. The airline scrubbed 39 flights scheduled for Friday that Chief Operating Officer
Andrew Watterson
said it was unable to staff, but executives said they believe they are ready for a smooth operation Friday.
Mr. Jordan told employees Thursday morning in a video message that shrinking Southwest’s operations had helped, with 95% of its flights on time on Wednesday. “Together we did what we needed to do to set ourselves up to operate our regular schedule tomorrow,” he said.
As it works to resume normal operations, Southwest faces heightened scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers, who have said they are closely monitoring the airline’s response to the crisis.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Thursday wrote to Mr. Jordan, describing the disruption as “unacceptable.” He reiterated his expectation that the airline will assist stranded passengers, honor commitments to cover passengers’ expenses, issue prompt refunds and ensure passengers are reunited with their bags. The airline has said it is providing those accommodations now.
Union leaders who represent Southwest pilots, flight attendants and other workers have faulted what they said was the airline’s lack of investment in technology over the years for many of its problems. Executives have acknowledged the need to upgrade inadequate platforms, such as the SkySolver system that it uses to redo crew schedules during disruptions and that was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problems over the weekend.
Baggage Stuck in Southwest Airlines Cancellation Fiasco
Mr. Watterson said Thursday in a call with reporters that the upgrading process had already been under way. Southwest has made crew-scheduling its own department, hired more staff and made what he described as incremental improvements to current systems as it began to look for replacements. He said the “modest work” that had been done had started to pay off this fall, but that the winter storm created unique challenges.
While the airline has started to contemplate the broader questions of what it could have done differently, executives said their more immediate task this week has been to piece the airline back together—making sure that pilots and flight attendants are where they need to be, reuniting bags with their owners and ensuring that planes are tuned up and ready to go.
In an effort to make sure the airline is ready for Friday, Southwest added some flights for passengers on Thursday and ferried planes and crew to position them, Mr. Watterson said.
Ticket sales resumed, executives said, after the airline had limited bookings on remaining flights for much of this week, hoping to avoid a scenario where customers bought seats on flights that would ultimately be canceled. The airline also wanted to make sure seats would be available to take pilots and flight attendants where they had to be on Friday, Mr. Watterson said.
Southwest Airlines was ferrying planes and crew to make sure the company was ready for a full flying schedule.
Photo:
Matt York/Associated Press
To get to this point, Southwest sought volunteers to help work through a deluge of tasks to repair schedules for pilots and flight attendants.
At the height of the disruption, the airline’s crew schedulers had to revert to manually assigning pilots and flight attendants to flights when automated software couldn’t keep pace with the volume of changes. Even with the smaller schedule, the group was overwhelmed by the remaining workload, Mr. Watterson told employees this week.
Former crew schedulers working in other areas of the business stepped in to triage inbound phone calls, according to an internal memo Wednesday from
Lee Kinnebrew,
Southwest’s vice president of flight operations, and
Brendan Conlon,
vice president of crew scheduling. Other employee groups were being trained to support overwhelmed schedulers.
Mr. Watterson said the “volunteer army” has been trained on systems and could be called on to pitch in again if the airline begins to see signs that current technology is becoming overwhelmed, as it works on broader fixes. Airline executives said they are confident that existing technology systems can handle the airline’s normal operations while it works on a plan to update them.
Southwest’s ground-operations staff worked to scan thousands of missing bags to figure out where they had ended up. The airline set up new call centers to investigate lost items and update customers, Mr. Kinnebrew and Mr. Conlon wrote. The final step was to coordinate with FedEx Corp. and other delivery companies to truck bags between airports and reduce the strain on Southwest’s remaining flights this week, they wrote.
Running a smaller schedule introduced some new technical challenges, executives said. Planes can’t stay parked for long before they need to be put into short- or long-term storage, so the airline had to rotate through its fleet to ensure that aircraft weren’t sitting idle too long. Maintenance workers had to fan out to different locations to perform checks and regular work on planes that weren’t in their usual locations,
Kurt Kinder,
vice president of maintenance operations, wrote to employees Wednesday.
Write to Alison Sider at alison.sider@wsj.com
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