Ford Motor Company lost $1.28 Billion in operations in it’s second quarter, making waves in the stock markets today.

Ford took a write down on $8 billion to write off asset values, as it plans to re-organize and begin operation in the 3^rd quarter.

The majority of the losses came as a result of a downturn in sales of it’s North American truck operations. Ford’s truck operations provided high margins and stable growth. Unfortunately $4 a gallon gas prices did in the F-150 the best selling vehicle for the past 20 years.

Ford plans to bring over 6 small vehicles from Europe, as well as re-tool several truck plants to manufacture smaller vehicles beginning in December.

Ford plans to re-invent it’s Mercury lineup by the end of 2010. With no new product, the brand has been in limbo and has been seen as a brand Ford might do away with.

Ford also announced it is not closing it’s Ranger plant until 2011 and plans to double production of 4 cylinder engines by 2010. It also plans to double production of hybrid vehicles by 2011.

Ford CEO Don Leclair confirmed this has been the worst quarter in the companies history and they are not sure when the company will return to profitability.

Ford has about $38 billion in cash and available credit lines, which suggests that the company will not go under for some considerable time to come.

It has been reported in a recent mandatory filing of AutoNation, the dealer group with 321 dealerships across 15 states that Bill Gates ex-CEO of Microsoft Corp. has bought a significant amount of shares belonging to the group. At the latest market valuation, the 9.9 million shares under the control of Gates is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $90 million and change.

The dealer holding group has sold 328,963 vehicles this past year.

Bill Gates as part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has purchased 2.6% of the company. Cascade Investments LLC, also controlled by Gates owns 2.9% of the company.

The largest shareholder in the firm AutoNation is hedge fund manager Edward Lampert.  He owns 39.9% of AutoNation. Lampert became famous when he bought out Kmart to turn around and sell it to Sears Holdings Co.

Computer entrepreneur Michael Dell also announced in May, he is looking to form a dealership holding company with Jeffrey Ranchor, the president of Sonic Automotive.

CEO Rick Wagoner has confirmed that the new upcoming electric car, that has made headlines across the world will be powered by a 1.4L engine.

The 1.4L engine is the same global engine that would essentially power the upcoming Chevy Cruze and several vehicles in GM’s European division. The Chevy Cruze making it’s debut in 2009 in Europe is expected to have a version of the 140hp 1.4L global engine.

Both the Volt and the Cruze will be built on a Delta platform, which is a common platform with several GM, Saturn and Opel vehicles.

GM has confirmed fuel mileage to be around 50mpg when in hybrid mode, and the range of the vehicle with no gasoline used to be 40 miles. This is when the battery packs of the vehicle power the car instead of the gas motor. The distance of battery reliance depends on the technology used in the lithium battery pack the Volt will receive.

The gasoline engine will act as a supplementary power unit, such as a giant alternator and the vehicles will be powered mainly by the battery packs and electric motor.

This means, that it really is of no consequence, which engine GM opts for to make the Volt with, as long as it is semi fuel efficient.

This engine combination will open up a whole new level of vehicle performance tuning, as electric motors offer extremely powerful low end torque, which will help with off the line performance.