Delphi (DPHIQ) plans to cut as many as 8,500 salaried workers, or 25% of its white-collar workforce globally, and is seeking to keep just eight of its plants as part of a massive restructuring of the automotive parts supplier.

Delphi also asked a U.S. bankruptcy court judge in New York to void its labor contracts, a step that its unions including the UAW have said could trigger a strike.

Delphi Chief Executive Steve Miller said that the company continues to negotiate with its unions. "We have made considerable progress in recent weeks, and we intend to stay at it until we are finished," he said in a statement.

But the United Auto Workers blasted the move and said it could stall talks.

The new regulations followed President Bush's declaration in January that the U.S. is "addicted to oil," and his call for a 75 percent reduction in Mideast oil imports by 2025. Manufacturers will begin implementing the rules as average gas prices exceed $2.50 a gallon and many consumers are seeking more fuel-efficient vehicles such as hybrids and flexible-fuel pickups and SUVs.

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"After the Bush administration acknowledged our oil addiction, one might have expected a slam dunk, but this is an air ball," said David Friedman, research director for the Clean Vehicles Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. His group estimated it would only save two weeks of gasoline a year over the next two decades.

The new rules do not apply to passenger cars, which must meet a 27.5 mile per gallon average.

Under the CAFE system, automakers now must meet an average of 21.6 mpg for their 2006 model year light trucks. That average will rise to 22.2 mpg for 2007 vehicles.

Under the new rules, the fleetwide average would reach 24 mpg by 2011, when the largest SUVs will be included in the calculation. The program will be phased in through 2010, with automakers having the option of complying under the old system or using new system.

If automakers use the old system, the targets would be 22.5 mpg in 2008, 23.1 mpg in 2009 and 23.5 mpg in 2010. All manufacturers would need to use the new system in 2011.

Gas prices could be marching toward $3 a gallon by summer and drivers are already starting to feel it at the pump.

Worries that ethanol could be in short supply this spring helped push the average price of gas in California to $2.70 a gallon on Friday, 20 cents higher than a month ago and a 33-cent jump from a year ago.

Prices could go even higher as more regions and oil companies begin using ethanol instead of the fuel-cleaning additive MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl, because of underground water contamination fears.

"The shift from MTBE to ethanol is causing problems up and down the entire supply chain," said Sean Comey, who tracks gasoline prices for the American Automobile Association. "Unfortunately, there are some troubling signs on the horizon."

"There's a whole new breed of collector that has emerged in the last three-four years," Sheehan says. "Almost all make the kind of money you cannot comprehend."

This new collector, he says buys the latest to one-up collector buddies. The owner may drive the car, sometimes at racetracks rented out to car clubs, sometimes to the latest trendy restaurant. But piling on miles hurts resale value.

Ferrari, the Italian make with an esteemed racing tradition, says North America is its most important market and nearly three in 10 of its North American cars go to California. Mattioli's Beverly Hills shop sells more Ferraris than any dealer in the country.

"It has to do definitely with the attitude of people living in Southern California, who are very open-minded," says Manfred Fitzgerald, director of brand and design for Lamborghini.

If ethanol becomes a considerable part of our energy mix, we may be replacing the Middle East dependency with a fix for Brazilian fuel.

Brazil exports of ethanol grew by 20.7 percent to more than 145 million liters in February over last year, according to the Energy Management Institute. The United States, which is in need of an MTBE replacement, was the primary client, purchasing 79 million liters, up nearly 500 percent over the previous year.

The average wholesale price of ethanol stands at $2.43, which in some areas is up over 80 percent from this time last year. We will have to substantially increase domestic production if that price is to fall back to previous levels.

While Mr. Bush set 2025 as the target date for replacing three-fourths of the oil imported from the Middle East with American ethanol, Brazil already satisfies nearly half of its domestic passenger vehicle fuel demand with ethanol.

After decades of government intervention and subsidies, the industry here is a thriving free market business, complete with ethanol pumps at every filling station in Latin America's largest country. Millions of cars run on either ethanol, gas or any combination of the two. And there's plenty more land available for sugar cane cultivation as the planet's biggest sugar producer gears up to become its undisputed long-term ethanol supplier.

Homeowners and motorists got bad news yesterday as futures prices of crude oil, gasoline and natural gas rose and the American Automobile Association said gasoline at the pumps on Long Island rose by three cents in the past week.

For gasoline prices, at least one expert thinks this is just the beginning of a runup that will peak around Memorial Day weekend and again around Labor Day. "I think there are parts of the country that could see spike highs approaching $4 a gallon," said Mark Routt of Energy Security Analysis Inc., a consulting company in Wakefield, Mass.

Among his reasons: In the short term are shutdowns of refineries for maintenance or repairs, including part of a facility in St. Croix, the Virgin Islands, that's a key supplier to this region. Longer term, it will be a switch by refiners, largely voluntary, from the polluting MTBE to ethanol, a corn product, as an octane booster in gasoline. The shift, mandated by law last year in New York, will increase demand for - and the price of - ethanol, he said. "The supply pool just didn't increase overnight but the demand did," he said.

A 6.5-litre V12 engine lies at the heart of the LP640, where LP stands for 'longitudinale posteriore', which refers to the V12 unit mounted lengthways behind the cockpit.

With deeper and wider cylinder bores than the previous 6.2-litre V12, the new 6.5 ups power to an imperious 631bhp at 8,000 good-for-the-soul revs per minute.

Coupled to a new six-speed gearbox, which can also be ordered with Lambo's e-gear sequential paddle shift, the LP640 howls from 0-62mph in 3.4 seconds - 0.4 seconds quicker than the 6.2-litre model.

And it's helped on its way by an electronic launch-control device called, rather brilliantly, Thrust.

Called TomTom Buddies, the feature lets you track your mates wherever you go – and in return, they get to track you too.

All you do is invite other TomTom users -- you'll have to shun your Garmin and Navman chums - to be your authorised 'buddy'. The idea is that the Buddies service will be like an exclusive club through which you can send each other text messages and locations you think are interesting.

If you feel like being a loner for a bit you can select the privacy option which lets you hide your location. Plus, if any of your Buddies keep sending you naff Points of Interest -- dodgy McDonald drive-ins, for example -- you can delete them.

Despite our regular jabs, social networking has legs. So it makes great sense for companies to look at social networking sites as both an advertising and content venue. One of the finest examples we have seen, is a new site called CarSpace. Launched by auto comparison site, Edmunds.com, CarSpace is a social network for auto enthusiasts who like to write about cars, chat about cars, blog about cars, post and search for pictures of cars, repair or customize or wash and wax their cars, and generally meet share personal profiles to meet like-minded souls. eStrategyOne thinks CarSpace is an outstanding idea, and we will race you anytime.

Inspired by its unique aviation heritage, Saab produced one of the sensations at this year’s Geneva Show with the Aero X concept - a two-seater sports coupe that breaks with automotive design convention both outside and inside to make a unique statement in performance car design. First, there are no doors…or windscreen pillars. That's because the Saab Aero X adopts a cockpit canopy, just as you would see on a Saab jet aircraft. It offers the Aero X pilot full 180 degree vision, and also facilitates entry and exit from its low-slung cabin. Thrust for the all-wheel drive Saab Aero X also comes from a powerplant with a difference. The 400 bhp, twin-turbo, BioPower V6 engine is fuelled entirely by bioethanol, a sustainable energy source that is kinder to the environment by cutting fossil CO2 emissions. The 'green power' of this advanced engine gives new meaning to the phrase 'performance with responsibility'.

In all, 25 VIPs are participating in the fourth annual "Red Carpet, Green Cars" event sponsored by Toyota Motor Corp. and the environmental organization Global Green USA. McDormand, Phoenix, Gyllenhaal, Jennifer Aniston and George Clooney are all expected to arrive at the Oscars in Toyota or Lexus hybrids, including the Toyota Prius, Lexus RX crossover and a hybrid version of the Toyota Camry, which goes on sale in May.

Event spokeswoman Kathy Kniss said the program began with just four participants in 2002, but interest in fuel-efficient vehicles has grown exponentially since then.

Other automakers are also getting into the act. Ford Motor Co. said Cathy Schulman, the producer of best-picture nominee "Crash," plans to arrive in a hybrid Mercury Mariner, while best-supporting-actor nominee Gyllenhaal's entourage is scheduled to show up in a Ford Excursion powered by clean-burning biodiesel.

General Motors Corp. also will be bringing VIPs to the ceremony, but its focus will be on luxury rather than fuel efficiency. GM spokeswoman Ryndee Carney said a fleet of 50 Cadillacs - mostly 2007 Escalade SUVs - will be used to pick up and drop off celebrities. Carney said the automaker also will run ads during the broadcast featuring GM's two other luxury brands, Hummer and Saab.

According to the report, a Fit hybrid would be priced at about $11,790, which the paper said would make it the world's first hybrid car priced under 2 million yen, or about $16,840.

Honda already has Accord and Civic hybrids and the groundbreaking Insight, the first gas-electric hybrid car on the U.S. market. If the Fit hybrid does go on sale at under $12,000, that price would sharply undercut the hybrid offerings of Honda's rival Toyota. The standard gasoline-engined Fit is set to go on sale in the United States later this year.