TPT November 2015

Global Marketplace

Now the old Hummer plant has been resurrected and AM General’s hourly workers – members of the oldest United Automobile Workers (UAW) local in the nation – are building German luxury SUVs for a specific clientele: consumers in China. In the process, wrote Mr Vlasic, the US factory believed to be one of a kind in shipping its entire output for sale in the Chinese market “has become an example of how a modest-size Rust Belt manufacturer can find its niche in an increasingly global automotive industry.” (“In Former Hummer Plant in Indiana, Mercedes Turns Out SUVs for China,” 11 August) As recounted by Mr Vlasic, theAMGeneral plant was only eight years old when GM went bankrupt. Some 1,000 workers were laid off. The plant started its slow recovery in 2011, building a van for handicapped people for the start-up company MV-1. But production was too small to warrant recalling very many of AM General’s workers. And its plant was considerably larger than required for making just the MV-1 van. T he R- class and the C hina connection At this point, as the auto industry in the US was beginning to stir, fortune was also about to favour AM General. The German automaker Daimler, parent company of Mercedes-Benz, was running short on production capacity for SUVs at its factory in Alabama. Mercedes officials in 2014 started scouting other sites for one of their models, the R-class. The major variable in the equation fell into place. Mr Vlasic wrote: “The R-class had never caught on with American consumers, and sales in the United States were discontinued a few years ago. But the sleek, station-wagon-shaped model was a hit in China, and Mercedes was determined to keep building it.” Jason Hoff, the head of Mercedes operations in the United States, deemed it impractical to relocate the supply base for the R-class from North America to China. That would have been far too expensive, he told Mr Vlasic. Instead, Mercedes signed a multi-year contract to have AM General assemble the R-class in Mishawaka, using parts shipped into the facility from suppliers throughout North America and Europe. Now, the plant is building between 70 and 100 vehicles a day, mostly R-class SUVs as well as a small number of MV-1 vans. “They had a lot of experience here and a very good work force,” Mr Hoff said. “And the facility is very flexible and can integrate our product quite well.” For another distinguishing feature of the Mishawaka story, an AM General spokesman said that the company did not need any financial incentives from state or local government to retool the plant for the new model. › Bernard Swiecki, of the Center for Automotive Research, told the Times that the Mercedes-Benz initiative was a sign of an industry with the wind at its back. The centre estimates that, in 2010 and into 2011, capacity utilisation at auto plants in North America – the US, Canada and Mexico – had fallen to about 70 per cent. In 2012, when the economic recovery began, that rose to 91 per cent. In 2014 it grew to 96 per cent.

that. According to the researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who developed the method, graphene coatings have, unlike polymer coatings, proved in laboratory tests to be highly durable. The discovery could be important for the energy industry worldwide. Most power plants – whether they utilise coal, natural gas or nuclear fission – make electricity by generating steam that turns a turbine. That steam is condensed back to water, and the cycle begins again. But the MIT researchers assert that the condensers that collect the steam are quite inefficient. Professors Evelyn Wang and Jing Kong, graduate student Daniel Preston, and their teammates believe that the improvement they achieved in condenser heat transfer could lead to an overall improvement in power plant efficiency of two to three per cent. Mr Preston said that this is sufficient to make a significant dent in global carbon emissions. Citing data from the Electric Power Research Institute (Palo Alto, California), he told R&D , “That translates into millions of dollars per power plant per year.” The goal of much research has been to enhance droplet formation on the surface of condensers – coiled metal tubes, often made of copper – by making them water-repellent. The fragility of polymer coatings in the heat and humidity of power plants led the MIT colleagues to consider graphene, known to be hydrophobic by nature. › Mr Preston said that, because the graphene coating process – chemical vapour deposition – has already been tested extensively, the new method could be ready for testing under real-world conditions “in as little as a year.” In his view the process should readily adapt to power plant-sized condenser coils. Automotive German automaker Daimler implements a winning idea for a shuttered Hummer plant in Indiana: turning out luxury Mercedes-Benz SUVs for China exclusively The steady comeback of the US auto industry has revived underused factories across the country as carmakers strive to meet growing demand. But, as noted by Bill Vlasic of the New York Times , in this industry on the rebound the revival of one particular idled plant – in Mishawaka, in northern Indiana – stands out. This past summer, AM General – the maker of Humvee military vehicles – commenced production of a Mercedes-Benz sport utility vehicle in a sprawling factory that once built Hummer SUVs for General Motors. The plant ground to a halt when GM went bankrupt in 2009, shutting down the Hummer brand as a condition of a $49 billion government bailout.

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N ovember 2015