Sheet Metal Stamping Simulation

While Detroit and Michigan are recovering from the recession and auto industry meltdown, the South is surging with two new assembly plants slated to open this year.

The 2012 Volkswagen Passat, a close sibling of the resigned Jetta in 2011 but larger and with a substantially lower price than last year’s model, was unveiled at the Detroit auto show.

The vast changes will include a transfer of manufacturing locations to the new U.S. VW plant in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Ford sales in India, spearheaded by the Ford Figo, nearly tripled last year to more than 83 000 units.

Ford India has been named "Manufacturer of the Year 2011" for its innovative practices in manufacturing and engineering excellence. The prizes were awarded at a ceremony in Mumbai last Friday.

Auto manufacturers have begun an invasion of the Consumer Electronics Show that will only grow in magnitude and significance in future years.

Ford CEO Alan Mulally showed off the Ford Focus EV during his keynote presentation. The sedan will be differentiated from the competing Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt by having double the charge rate (6.6 kilowatts). Ford's Nancy Gioia said a fully depleted battery can be recharged in 3-4 hours. Ford will begin manufacturing the vehicle at the end of this year, and will roll it out to 19 target cities during 2012. The all-electric vehicle will have an estimated driving range of 80-100 miles.

FOR the past two years the Detroit motor show has been a dismal affair. But this year the parties were in full swing again. Helped by government bail-outs and with debt burdens lightened by bankruptcy, Chrysler and GM are back on their feet; Ford, the other member of Detroit’s Big Three, is thriving. It took America’s car industry 20 years and a world war to recover the three-quarters of production wiped out by the 1929 crash. By comparison, the aftermath of the latest recession has been surprisingly comfortable.

By nearly every measure of success, Michigan's auto industry is now competitive.

Auto sales are on the upswing; corporate earnings are positive; productivity levels are on par with Japanese competitors; and quality is vastly improved, among other key benchmarks. Of course getting to this point hasn't been easy. Two of Detroit's automakers went bankrupt; thousands of jobs were lost; investors lost money; and many of the brands people loved have been eliminated.

Electric vehicles are nothing new. They were invented sometime during the 1830s in Scotland and later produced on a bigger level by France and Great Britain. In 1895 America began their interest in electric vehicles with a handful of companies producing them. It did not take long for them to die off because by the 1920s America had many more miles of roadway which called for the need of longer range vehicles, oil was a lot more affordable, starter motors were invented so hand cranks were not needed and the mass production of the internal combustion engines by Henry Ford.

Ford reduced its automotive operations’ debt by $12.8 billion last year, lowering annual interest costs by almost $1 billion. Ford, which will release fourth-quarter financial results this month, has said the auto operations would end 2010 with more cash than debt after a profitable year and a $1 billion dividend from the credit unit.

Philippines - The local arm of Ford Motor Co. hit record sales to both domestic and export markets in 2010 due to the strong demand for vehicles across its lineup, the automotive firm said in a statement on June 13.

The business case against small cars is strong. Simplified, it goes like this: Americans don't want them, won't pay the dramatically higher prices required for them to be profitable — and don't need them because gas still is cheap.And, all else equal, the laws of physics still mean small cars are less safe than big cars in crashes.

etail sales and industrial production both rose in December, indicating that the U.S. economic recovery is picking up as the new year begins.

Purchases climbed 0.6 percent, capping the biggest annual increase in more than a decade, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. Output at factories, mines and utilities increased 0.8 percent, the most in five months, according to data from the Federal Reserve.

It's a good time to be an engineer looking for a job at an automotive company. That's because Ford recently announced that it plans to add 7000 hourly and salaried jobs between this year and the next across the U.S.In nine cities including Detroit, Ford is searching for engineers specializing in batteries, system controls, software, and energy storage to advance the technology of electric vehicles.

General Motors (GM.N) is planning to build small battery electric vehicles in China within two years, and to increase overall production in China to meet local demand, executives said on Monday.

The small "city" type battery electric vehicles are expected to be exported at some point, possibly even to the United States, Tim Lee, GM's chief of international operations said on the sidelines of the Detroit auto show.

"We are probably within a couple of years of being in ... production on battery electric vehicles specifically for China," Lee said told reporters.

GM, which completed the largest ever IPO last year, is focusing on China and the United States as two critical markets.

Louisiana regulators say contaminated soil has been cleaned up at a former General Motors plant where headlights were built.

When Lear Corp. (LEA-N109.362.622.45%) turned out the lights nearly two years ago at a plant in Ajax, Ont., that made seats for GM pickup trucks, Steve Batchelor knew it was game over. There was no hope of it ever reopening, he believed. “We were finished.”

In the grim days of May, 2009, leading up the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by General Motors Corp., it was hard to see how the auto industry could be turned around.