| Ford announces Chevy Volt competitor, C-Max Energi and HP TouchPad tablet coming July 1 for $499 |
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The new van-like compact car, due out next year, will be available in the U.S. in two hybrid versions. One of those, the C-Max Energi, will be a plug-in hybrid with capabilities similar to those of GM's (GM, Fortune 500) Volt but with a much longer total driving range. The other version, the C-Max Hybrid, will be a standard hybrid, similar to the Toyota (TOYOF) Prius or Ford's (F, Fortune 500) Escape Hybrid.The cars are scheduled to go into production in Michigan next year. Gasoline and diesel-powered versions of the C-Max are already on sale in Europe but aren't planned for the U.S.Including these vehicles, Ford said it will triple production of "electrified" vehicles in the U.S. by 2013. Electrified vehicles include purely electric plug-in cars like the upcoming Ford Focus Electric and hybrid cars like the Fusion Hybrid sedan. [Read the full article] NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Heartland Payment Systems' stock surged Thursday, benefiting from a Senate card fees vote that delivered a blow to credit card companies.Shares of Heartland (HPY), which processes payment transactions, jumped 8% to $20. The stock jump comes a day after the Senate blocked a move to delay legislation that would cut fees that banks charge to retailers every time a customer swipes a card.It will benefit Heartland and other merchant acquirers, as well as retailers, because they're able to control the amount of fees that they collect on purchases, according to James Friedman, an analyst with Susquehanna Financial Group."Heartland, the merchant acquirer, sets the price in the debit card world," said Friedman, whose company is a market maker for Heartland's stock.It wasn't just Heartland getting a boost from the Senate vote. [Read the full article] At a S&P Housing Summit in New York, Shiller on Thursday reiterated his fears of falling home prices. It's not a forecast, he said, just a comment on his understanding of housing market trends.He explained that speculative markets, like stocks or commodities, act like random walks. They go up and down all the time. Housing market direction tends to be more consistent."I worry that this is a real and continuing downturn, like in Japan," Shiller said. "It had a boom in the 1980s that peaked in 1991. Prices declined in the major cities for 15 straight years after that."The U.S. housing market is hard to predict because the boom and bust it went through was unique. Shiller has studied historical price data back to the 1890s and found nothing like it."This is the biggest housing boom and bust in U.S. history," he said. "The bubble was unique. [Read the full article] 
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