MAY 5, 2014 • 51

February, Nissan said it is studying a plan toput a diesel in its mid-sized Frontier pickup.

VW’s Skorupski says Volkswagen can testi-fy to growing U.S. interest in diesels.

The mid-sized 2014 Volkswagen Passatdiesel delivers 43 mpg in highway driving,according to EPA figures. But the model ischallenged by a $2,000 sticker-price premi-um over the standard gasoline-engine ver-sion Passat.

Volkswagen planners assumed early onthat the diesel version would enjoy a 15 to 20percent take rate among American con-sumers, who have never cottoned to dieselengines as Europeans have, partially be-

cause of the high price of diesel fuelhere. Diesel fuel in Europe is typi-cally as much as 10 percent cheaperthan gasoline.

But Skorupski reports the Passatdiesel is now running at 30 percentof the sales mix.

In March, he points out, with TVcommercials offering a $1,000 re-bate on it, the diesel accounted for40 percent of sales.

“We were pleasantly surprised,” Skorupskiadmits.

Meanwhile, new technologies are rising.Hydrogen fuel cells have long been her-

alded as a promising power source for EVs.U.S. industry officials, however, have rou-tinely dismissed fuel cells as being at least adecade away from retail showroom reality

— mostly because there is no na-tional infrastructure for hydrogenrefueling.

But both Toyota and Hyundaiplan to sell hydrogen fuel cell-pow-ered EVs in California dealershipsnext year.

“We wanted to stop the debateabout whether the technology isready,” says Mike O’Brien, HyundaiMotor America’s vice president of

corporate and product planning. “It’s ready. And we want to move ahead

and get past all the naysayers. “We can sell cars based on the number of

hydrogen fueling stations that are availabletoday. More will be available tomorrow.”

Forecasters also got a surprise this year onthe outlook for aluminum as a green-vehicle

technology. Ford revealed in January that itwill build the body of its 2015 F-150 pickupout of aluminum.

Ford has said it will use aluminum on oth-er vehicles. And rival GM says it will use alu-minum on trucks by 2018.

Until now, the conventional wisdom hasbeen that although aluminum offers signifi-cant fuel-efficiency gains over steel throughweight loss, it is also more expensive thansteel. And it has been considered to be chal-lenging to work with in high-volume pro-duction.

Ford’s plan for the F-150 shows the indus-try shredding another past assumptionabout green technology.

That will probably continue as the indus-try’s strategies for producing greener vehi-cles evolve.c

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GREEN

O’Brien: Readyfor fuel cell EVs

lence incentive program that paysquarterly bonuses for meeting vari-ous performance targets.

GM is among a handful of au-tomakers, including Hyundai Mo-tor America, rethinking how theygather and process customer feed-back. Customer satisfaction sur-veys have been a mainstay of the in-dustry for decades.

The new survey is an attempt toget information to dealers quickerthan the 30 to 60 days it now typi-cally takes to get customer-satisfac-tion feedback, the sources said.

When asked about the new pro-gram, GM spokeswoman SusanWaun wrote in an e-mail, “Together

with our dealer partners, we are al-ways looking at better ways to gar-ner rich, timely customer feedbackto provide the best overall cus-tomer experience in the industry.We have nothing new to announceat this time.”

Hyundai, tooGM plans to continue sending the

long form to customers during thepilot, in part, because of dealer in-centives attached to customer sat-isfaction scores, the sources said.

Dealers must hit their customer-service rating targets, along with in-creasing year-over-year sales, toqualify for a quarterly bonus underGM’s Standards for Excellence in-centive program. Quarterly payoutsrange from around $10,000 for asmall dealership to more than$150,000 for big stores.

About nine months ago, Hyundaiwas one of the first U.S. automakers

to offer a customer satisfaction sur-vey to its dealers that combinedquestions with an opportunity forconsumers to write a review.

Today, 701 of Hyundai’s 826 U.S.dealers have signed up for the vol-untary program, said Barry Ratzlaff,Hyundai executive director of Cus-tomer Connect, Blue Link and ser-vice business development.

The program is helping dealersstockpile consumer reviews thatreputation-management vendorSureCritic posts to participatingdealerships’ SureCritic pages forpublic viewing.

For example, in the fourth quarterlast year, dealerships in the pro-gram generated 4,000 total reviewsfrom the service customers who re-ceived the customer satisfactionsurvey, he said. That total jumpedto 10,000 in the first quarter of thisyear.

Online reviews and ratings areimportant because shoppers in-creasingly use them to decidewhere to shop.

Short and simpleHyundai’s new survey, which is e-

mailed to service customers, hastwo links. The first takes the cus-tomer to a 30-question question-naire hosted on its own site.

The second link takes the cus-tomer to a site that wants to knowjust three things. It asks the cus-tomer to rate the service from onestar (worst) to five stars; it asks if thecustomer would recommend thedealer to a friend or family mem-ber; and it asks the customer towrite a review about his or her ex-perience.

So far this year, Hyundai dealersin the program have attained an ag-gregate score of 4.7 stars, Ratzlaffsaid.

Hyundai doesn’t pay incentivesto dealers for their service satisfac-tion performance, but it does forcustomer satisfaction with theirsales experiences, Ratzlaff said.

For that reason, Hyundai is takinga more cautious approach and of-fering the survey with a review linkonly to service customers and notsales customers. The latter get onlya long form, he said.c

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SURVEYNew approaches to getting feedback

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The new survey is an attempt to get information to dealers quicker than the 30 to 60 days it now typicallytakes to get customer-satisfactionfeedback, the sources said.

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