Automotive Design & Production

Auto Versus the Volcano

While the ultra small vehicle (USV) is and of itself interesting, the real argument that the writers make is that it is the surrounding context of the vehicle that need to be considered, particularly as issues related to increasingly crowded and congested cities and energy use are taken into account, things that could be considered externalities. While it is important to focus on efforts to design, engineer and produce better products, be they plug-in hybrids, fuel-cell powered vehicles, or U...

Detroit Gets Back in the Game

Japanese, German and Korean producers introduced hundreds of new products with great exterior styling, high-performance powertrains, and elegant interiors that mirrored luxury vehicles in subcompact models. Today's market is very exciting. It is one of the most competitive product and technology periods in history. When evaluating the still-large market of full size trucks, the domestics continue to dominate. Although this market has shrunk, it will remain significant. finally they have real ...

Mustang Still Matters

The modern design of Ford Mustang provides Mustang with aggressive, forward direction, like it's ready to jump, in the words of Darrell Behmer, Mustang chief designer. The car is available with a new all-aluminum double-overhead cam, 3.7-liter Duratec 24-valve engine that produces 305 hp, and when mated to a six-speed automatic transmission 31 mpg on the highway. The engine, which is manufactured at Ford Cleveland Engine Plant No. 1, features twin independent variable camshaft timing that all...

Looking @ Autodesk 2011

Fast Machining for Aluminum Forgings

Gm Pursues Augmented Reality

Thomas Seder sees a big part of the automotive interior that's not being put to the use that it could be. And so he, along with researchers at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Southern California, as well as his colleagues in the Vehicle Development Laboratory at GM Research and Planning, are undertaking a project that may not go into production before mid-decade, but will likely have a significant effect when it does. They are coating the windshield with a series of transparent phosphor...

High Speed Carbon Fiber Molding

Still Swinging

How to Hit a Curveball: Confront and Overcome the Unexpected in Business, by Scott R. Singer with Mark Levine, is reviewed.

Clarifying Steel

The Future of Automotive Transportation

This is what the future of automotive transportation looks like. Or at least it is one possibility. Specifically, it is a General Motors EN-V concept, the Jiao, or Pride, model. EN-V signifies "Electric Networked-Vehicle." The vehicle was designed at a GM European design studio. The vehicle is operating at the World Expo 2010 Shanghai at the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp Group (SAIC)-GM pavilion. Clay Dean, director of Advanced Design for GM, acknowledges that this is not the version of f...

Rethinking the Seat

Faurecia (faurecia.com) has developed a concept seat -- the Sustainable Comfort Seat -- that, explains Amit Kulkarni, lead engineer, Innovation Project Management, Automotive Seating, is "significantly lighter" than a conventional seat structure. What's more, it has an ultrathin design about an inch less than a conventional seat which opens up space in the second row. It has a seat structure that is made of continuous fiber thermoplastic material. These are glass fibers in a polymer matrix. T...

Plm What You Need to Know

PLM is about product, lifecycle, and management. Products are the raison d'etre of manufacturing, so naturally the basis of PLM is integrated computer-aided design/manufacturing/engineering (CAD/CAM/CAE). PLM is not a static concept technology, or strategy. Once "just" a set of applications on all engineer's desktop, PLM is a strategic element of your business, says Ken Amann, director of research for CIMdata. While you can operate more efficiently with enterprise resource planning (ERP), and...

Laser the Disk Advantage

Although TRUMPF Inc's laser division has a full array of industrial laser types and while David Havrilla, manager of Products and Applications, believes that there are appropriate tools for appropriate tasks, when it comes to high-power applications typical of both OEM and supplier welding operations, the disk laser oftentimes provides the sorts of advantages that cannot be readily overcome by the other types of lasers in their portfolio. Havrilla says that TRUMPF is on its third generation o...

The Future Is and Costs Green

Toyota is testing the plug-in version of the Prius hybrid, with plans to go commercial in 2012. If the market is going to make a move toward Sustainable Mobility, then it is going to have to make some adjustments along the way. There are plenty of issues that need to be addressed and assessed as moves are made toward Sustainable Mobility -- the real thing, not the slogan. One of the knocks that Toyota has had on the Prius from a cadre of folks that warn something more than a highly efficient ...

F-Series Super Duty: More Than Brute Force

A truck as a technological tour-de-force is what the 2011 Ford Super Duty is, particularly with regard to its powertrain. Before looking at the engines, it is worth noting that developing a transmission that can readily handle the characteristics of both a diesel and a gas engine is no mean feat. The transmission offers full automatic operation of manual selection of the gears. A key characteristic of the engine is the large 105-mm bore and short 95-mm stroke. The former facilitates the use o...

Kia and the 2011 Sorento

There area couple of points that Tom Loveless, VP of Sales, Kia Motors America, makes that are germane to how Kia is going to further establish itself in the market: value and design-led transformation. While it could be argued that it is a matter of timing, in point of fact, not speculation, the first product to roll off the line at Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia in the city of West Point, was a 2011 Sorento. While pricing isn't available as of this writing, the base price is said to be in...

Objects of Interest