Chevy Volt

Fortune has come out with its list of the "100 Best Companies to Work For," and California-based firms claim six out of the top 20 spots, including No. 1, Google. Notably, one of the reasons Google made it into the top spot was because "everything was up at Google last year," including revenue, profits and hiring, the magazine said. Still, revenue reportedly was lower than expected in the fourth quarter, and on Thursday Google's stock fell nearly 60 points in after-hours trading.

California is at risk of losing more than 70,000 jobs in the U.S. auto supply chain unless China curtails its “predatory” trading practices, the Alliance for American Manufacturing said Tuesday. The left-leaning alliance announced the release of three reports Tuesday morning that collectively accuse China of issuing illegal subsidies, rigging its tax laws and manipulating its currency. The reports conclude that these practices that have killed an estimated 400,000 U.S. jobs since 2000 and put 1.6 million more at risk in the future.

General Motors Corp. provided a sneak peak this week of the new design for its hotly anticipated Chevy Volt gasoline-electric hybrid. The automaker released a photo purporting to show the Volt's aerodynamic new lines but looking mostly like a blur with a Chevy badge. What's also not perfectly clear is whether GM will be ready to unveil the redesigned Volt at the big Detroit auto show next month.

Toyota Motor Corp. has joined the growing ranks of automakers planning to bring advanced battery-powered vehicles to showrooms in the near future. The Japanese automaker said it planned to have a plug-in version of its popular Prius hybrid for sale in the U.S. in three years. "The target is 2012 to be coming to market with them," Irving Miller, a group vice president for Toyota's U.S. sales unit, said at a Los Angeles conference on climate change, Bloomberg News reported. Before that, "we're going to study the challenges of consumer demand," he said.

"Detropia" comes at you with the economically ravaged Motor City of Detroit clinging to its perch like a canary in a coal mine, gasping for breath. The new documentary from acclaimed filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady examines the detritus of a major American city that has been imploding for years. It is a striking and moving study of "what was" versus "what it has become" as the filmmakers try to get at the whys. That the title suggests something other than utopia is made clear from the first frame.

As Rick Wagoner rides off to whatever biz-school sinecure he's destined for, his nine years at the helm of General Motors Corp. will be evaluated in many ways and by many hands. And yet, fairly or not, auto company chief executives are best remembered for the cars produced during their tenure. People still refer to the Cadillac Cimarron as a "Roger Smith" car, and the Ford Mustang will somehow always belong eternally to Lee Iacocca.

The new General Motors poses something of a conflict of interest for taxpayers. The restructuring brokered by the Obama administration left the public owning 61% of the company, so the more profitable it becomes, the better the return will be on the public's investment. At the same time, taxpayers in the market for a car don't want to maximize their local GM dealer's profits, at least not until they drive away from the showroom. The bottom line, though, is clear: Now that we co-own GM, we're in favor of anything that boosts sales of its cars and trucks.

Having won the blessing of a federal judge, a new version of General Motors is expected to emerge from bankruptcy this week with fewer brands, dealerships and debts. Those cost-cutting measures will certainly help the reorganized company; in fact, without them, GM may have been unsalvageable. But they don't guarantee success either.

The pork barrel has gone high-tech. Generous tax credits for buyers of plug-in electric vehicles were among the incentives larded into the Wall Street bailout package this month to ensure its passage by Congress. Buyers will be eligible for a tax credit of up to $7,500 based on the power of their batteries. Many environmentalists see the vehicles as the next big advance in fuel economy. Unlike hybrids currently sold in the U.S.