EoW July 2011

Transat lant ic Cable

❈ Also in the Free Press , auto editor Mark Phelan reported that, in marked contrast to that point in 2010, in late spring of this year compact cars were “flying out” of US dealerships. He noted that a new vehicle can be expected to spend about 60 days on the lot before selling. Quick sales (fewer “days to turn,” in industry jargon) generally mean a model is selling well: at a good price, and without much outlay for incentives and promotions. From data supplied by AutoObserver.com, Mr Phelan identified a few days-to-turn champs: Ford Focus, selling in 54 days; Volkswagen Jetta, 40 days; Chevy Cruze, 32 days; and the Hyundai Elantra, which “barely has time to get dusty in its average 12 days at the dealership.” According to the data those compacts are not only selling faster than the industry average; they all sold in less time in April than they did in March. The average wait for all compacts was 51 days, down from 63 in March. Compacts as a class and most individual models sold faster this year than in 2010. “The numbers are very telling,” AutoObserver analyst and senior editor Bill Visnic told the Free Press (22 nd May). “The shift to smaller cars is real.” ❈ The top-selling compact cars in the US – Corolla and Matrix hatchbacks – are made by Toyota, which has recalled more than 14 million vehicles across the world in the past year and a half, mainly in response to complaints about acceleration and braking problems. In February, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began examining 2009 and 2010 model Corollas after receiving about 80 complaints, many of them mentioning a perception, or sensation, that the cars were drifting off-course. On 20 th May, the federal agency declared that any such problems with the Corolla are not attributable to parts failure but to individual driver preferences as to the “feel” of a steering wheel. The Japanese auto maker offers a repair to any of its customers who are dissatisfied with the electronic power steering on the Corolla.

This has made it possible for VW to drop the price of the car to roughly $20,000, making it competitive with the Honda Accord and Hyundai Sonata. The new factory is “a key driver of our long-term success in the US,” Michael Macht, VW’s top manufacturing officer, said at the event to open the plant. Built at a former military base on the outskirts of Chattanooga, the complex is designed to build 150,000 Passat sedans each year and can be expanded to as many as 300,000 units, according to Mr Macht. ❈ Volkswagen’s CEO Martin Winterkorn told the Wall Street Journal that VW is on track to achieve its highest global sales ever in 2011, and it has not wavered from its goal of being the top auto maker in the world in sales by 2018. If an American-built Audi figures in that projection, it will be the only luxury car from VW to originate in the United States. Asked by the Journal ’s Mike Ramsey if Porsche SE (controlled by Volkswagen, which also owns the Bentley, Bugatti and Lamborghini marques) might build any vehicles there, Mr Winterkorn said no. Meanwhile the new-version VW Passat, with a sticker price some $7,000 below that on current models built in Germany, is set to arrive at American dealerships in the third quarter of this year. ❈ Nick Bunkley of the International Herald Tribune (24 th May) recalled that, in February, Volkswagen drew attention to its new Passat with a Super Bowl commercial featuring a pint- sized Darth Vader. At the Chattanooga plant on opening day the youngster reprised his role of the power-mad fiend of the “Star Wars” saga and, flanked by an army of storm troopers, used the Force to raise a wall and expose the plant floor to the audience. Taken together with the commercial (streamed more than 15 million times on YouTube), this performance strongly suggests that Volkswagen has embraced its inner aggressor. But in the view of Jack R Nerad, executive market analyst for the vehicle information provider Kelley Blue Book, the Passat initiative in the US is “a very daunting effort.” Mr Nerad told the Tribune : “If they’re going to grow to the level that they want to, they’re going to have to take it out of somebody else’s hide. That’s a tough task, because there are no weak sisters in this market.” Elsewhere in automotive . . . ❈ Ford Motor Co said on 18 th May that it had reached an agreement to sell its Milan, Michigan, plant and blow- moulded fuel tank operations and equipment to French auto supplier Inergy Automotive Systems, a subsidiary of Compagnie Plastic Omnium. The business acquired by Inergy, from 1 st June, was producing 1.3 million fuel systems annually. The plant, which employs about 500, was part of Visteon when Ford spun off its parts division in 2000. The facility was one of 23 plants that Ford in 2005 agreed to take back under a business named Automotive Components Holdings. As reported by Detroit Free Press business writer Brent Snavely, since then Ford has been trying to either sell or close those plants. A tentative deal to sell the Milan plant to Flex-N-Gate (Urbana, Illinois) fell through in 2009.

Technology

In ‘a paradigm shift in metallurgy,’ scientists nd an inexpensive way to make formable metallic glass

Stronger than steel or titanium – and just as tough – metallic glass (an “amorphous metal” with a non-crystalline structure) is very nearly the ideal material for everything from cellphone cases to aircraft parts. But it presents formidable challenges in processing. Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena have developed a technique for producing metallic glass parts by means of the same inexpensive processes used to produce plastic parts. The method reportedly enables them to heat a piece of metallic glass at a rate of a million degrees per second and then, in just a few milliseconds, mould it into any shape. “We’ve redefined how you process metals,” said William Johnson, leader of the team of researchers who published

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EuroWire – July 2011