Car sales across Europe slipped to 14.48 million units last year from 14.72 million in 2008, according to provisional figures from ACEA, the industry’s trade association.

Annual volume grew 23% to 3.09 million in Germany and 11% to 2.05 million in France. Sales declined to 2.16 million in Italy (-0.2%), 2.13 million in the U.K. (-6%) and 1.16 million in Spain (-18%).

Sales were flat at 319,900 in Poland and grew by 12.5% to 143,700 in the Czech Republic. Demand was down sharply in other major markets in eastern Europe, plunging 59% to 285,500 in Romania and 50% to 158,300 in Hungary.

ACEA says full-year sales among Europe’s largest carmakers rose 0.7% to 3.04 million for Volkswagen, 2% to 1.46 million for Ford, 3.9% to 1.29 million for Renault and 6.3% to 1.18 million for Fiat. Year-on-year volume for PSA was flat at 1.87 million. Demand fell nearly 9% to 1.41 million for General Motors.

Renault SA says the company will stop manufacturing its Clio small car in Slovenia and Spain, making its plant in Flins, France, the sole production location for the current-series car.

The move is an obvious bow to pressure from the French government to protect jobs in Renault’s home market. Renault produced 8,000 Clios in Spain and 17,000 in Slovenia in the first half of 2009. Yesterday French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared, “We are not putting a lot of money on the table to help our carmakers in order to see all factories go abroad.”

EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes says her office has already asked the French government for an explanation, noting she takes a tough position against “knee-jerk protectionism.”

Renault has been criticized by the government for negotiating with Turkish joint venture partner Oyak to make the next-generation Clio 4 in Bursa. Renault insists no decision has been made and said yesterday that a compromise with the French government was possible.

France owns 15% of Renault and gave the company a low-interest €3 billion loan last February. The loan, similar to one of equal size given to PSA Peugeot Citroen, required the company to pledge not to close any plants in France for the duration of the loan.

The government later agreed to leave it to the companies’ “moral obligation” to preserve jobs after the European Union’s competition commission said the loans might violate EU regulations against stifling free competition. Kroes says the French government’s latest position is an “apparent contradiction” to its promise last year that loans to French carmakers would not affect their ability to relocate operations.

New-car sales in Russia fell 49% last year to a four-year low of 1.47 million vehicles, according to the Association of European Businesses. The group cautions that volume may not improve this year. Sales in 2008 reached a record high 2.9 million units.

Carmakers are hoping that a new €1,700-per-car government scrappage scheme that begins in March will help revive sales this year.

An optimistic AvtoVAZ, the country’s largest carmaker, said earlier this week it expects to boost output by 50% to 446,000 vehicles in 2010. AvtoVAZ is 25% owned by Renault SA, which has promised to contribute €240 million worth of technology and help the company develop a new small car for its Lada brand.

The top-selling brands in Russia last year were Lada, Chevrolet, Ford, Hyundai and Toyota. Nine of the 10 most popular models last year were produced in Russia, according to the AEB.

OAO GAZ is looking for a foreign partner to help improve its technology and overhaul its production system even as it holds talks with lenders to restructure its debt.

GAZ President Bo Andersson tells Bloomberg News that the Russian maker of trucks and commercial vehicles has good dealers and a solid customer base but is struggling with outdated technology. He says the company’s most immediate focus is on its commercial vehicles. He adds that GAZ might be interested in a carmaking partnership, but not immediately.

Some media reports say General Motors Co. decided against selling its Adam Opel GmbH unit to Magna International Inc. because GAZ was a part of the Canadian company’s consortium. Andersson, GM’s former vice president of global purchasing, joined GAZ last June.

GAZ, which is Russia’s second-largest carmaker after OAO AvtoVAZ, is owned by Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire and associate of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Last year the company built only 90,000 vehicles, down from 285,000 units in 2007. The company is struggling to make payments on about €690 million in debt.

About one in 10 Americans say they would probably or definitely consider buying an all-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle. But most remain uninformed about the technologies, according to a new report from Ernst & Young’s Global Automotive Center.

The biggest attraction of either technology is the potential to reduce spending on fuel, according to the study. Environmental impact, safety and government incentives also rank high. Only about 5% say they would buy a hybrid or EV to make a statement.

The biggest obstacles to considering a plug-in hybrid or EV are cost, driving range and ability to recharge the vehicle. The study notes that consumers have a far higher expectation about driving range than the distance they actually drive per day.

Seven in 10 drivers polled drive less than 50 km per day, but about 60% of them say they would not consider a plug-in or EV with a range less than 100 km per charge. About one-third of American consumers demand a vehicle with a range of more than three times that distance.

U.S.-based Dow Kokam LLC, a lithium-ion battery maker, has acquired Societe de Vehicles Electriques, the former subsidiary of France’s Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault.

Dow Kokam was created last year by Dow Chemical Co. and South Korea’s TK Advanced Battery LLC. The deal gives the venture an immediate presence in Europe, where several carmakers plan to introduce all-electric and hybrid-electric vehicles over the next few years.

Dow Kokam plans to open a lithium-ion battery plant near Dow headquarters in mid-Michigan in 2012. The facility will have capacity to equip about 35,000 EVs per year.

Toyota Motor Corp. says it has created a new group to develop batteries with higher performance than the lithium-ion batteries it will introduce in 2012.

Toyota’s Prius hybrid sedan is powered by nickel-metal-hydride batteries. It describes lithium-ion batteries as a “step forward” but declares, “We need batteries that offer far superior performance.” Toyota made the same point last summer, saying that EVs cannot become a mainstream option to conventionally powered vehicles without dramatic improvements in the cost, capacity and recycle time of lithium-ion batteries.

Toyota created the new battery R&D division earlier this month and has staffed it with about 50 engineers. They are assigned to pursue advanced batteries and the production processes needed to make them in high volumes.

Hitachi Ltd. and Hitachi Vehicle Energy Ltd. say they have developed a lithium-ion battery design that has 4-5 times the capacity of the lithium-ion batteries the company has been developing until now.

The partners say the new battery is well-suited for used in plug-in hybrid electrics that can run in both all-electric and electric-hybrid modes.

Hitachi says the battery has improved reliability and an electrical capacity of 25 amp-hours that would enable it to power a car for about 20 km in all-EV mode. The company attributes the improvement in part to a new electrode design it says can simultaneously boost a battery’s energy and power. Hitachi offers no details about the technology except to say its design optimizes electrode thickness and the composition of its active materials.

Hitachi says it became the world’s first mass producer of automotive lithium-ion batteries and has made about 900,000 lithium-ion cells for vehicle use since 2000. Most of its output has been deployed in hybrid buses and trucks. The company plans to begin shipping samples of the new battery this spring to carmakers in Japan and elsewhere.

Researchers in Sweden have developed a system of lasers and a light-sensitive diode that determines road traction conditions hundreds of times per second, reports The Engineer.

The technology was developed by Friction, a research consortium sponsored by the European Union. The system, named Road Eye, assesses reflection of infrared lasers operating at two wavelengths to detect the difference between dry asphalt and asphalt covered with water, snow or ice.

The program evaluated several alternate approaches. One involved a camera that detects polarized light reflected from the road 25 meters ahead. Researchers say the system is 80% accurate at discerning the difference between wet and icy road surfaces but works well only when there is good ambient light. Another system relied upon radar operating at 24 GHz and a continuing analysis of reflected waves at two polarization angles.

The Engineer says the Friction project’s two automotive partners, Fiat and Volvo, and other carmakers will introduce friction-sensing safety devices on cars within a few years.

BMW AG says it will offer a turbocharged inline six-cylinder engine in its top-end 740i sedan this year. Every 7 Series car sold in the U.S. since 1992 has been equipped with a V-8 engine, according to Automotive News.

General Motors Co. says it will not offer dual-clutch transmissions until after 2012, reports Wards.com. The company blames the delay on cash constraints before and during its bankruptcy last year.

Vice Chairman Bob Lutz tells reporters at the Detroit auto show that GM also wants to develop a dry-clutch system that will work with its 2.0- and 2.4-liter engines. Typically, a wet-clutch design is required for engines that big.

Dual-clutch transmissions, which enable the drive to shift automatically or manually without depressing a clutch pedal, approximate the fuel efficiency of a manual transmission. They are rare in the U.S.