Toyota Cut Their Management Board For A Half
Toyota Motor Corp. as the biggest automaker plans to cut at least 17 members of theihr board from the current number of 27 personnel. This decision is expected to improve the decision making after they have experienced some product recalls. Currently Toyota has 27 directors including the president, six executive vice president, chairman, and 15 senior managin directors. People said that the reduction will include cutting the number of their executive vice presidents.
This changes will be made in around April before the shareholder meeting in June. The move is announced by Akio Toyoda as the president. This is the first time since Toyota more than doubled their board members from 58 years ago to speed up the decision making. Even there is an economic recovery in U.S. and rising demand for Toyota’s vehicles, they said that they earn less thatn third of their record in March 2008 with $ 20.4 billion.
Last Month, Toyoda said that Toyota will anounce their goal for 2020 in April. Keisuke Kirimoto, the Toyota spokesman said, “Nothing has been decided yet on this personnel changes.” Toyota’s plan to cut their board members was earlier reported by Tokyo Shimbun news.
Toyota Cut Their Management Board For A Half is a post from: Automotive News and Review
Aventador LP700-4 Unveil Its Carbon Fiber Monocoque
The engineers from Sant’Agata has been pretty kind to give a glimpse to the world about their carbon fiber reinforced polymer monocoque. Maybe it still sounds unfamiliar to most of us. For your information, that thing will be the backbone of the Lamborghini Murcielago replacement, the Aventador LP700-4. It uses a high expensive tech material that should offering some serious rigidity to the car, buat still keeping the weight low at the same time.
Lamborghini are saying that the Aventador’s entire body structure will come to the market with an incredibly lightweight of only 505 pounds. The monocoque itself that you see in the picture above will take only 324.5 pounds of that 505. Actually, using a CFRP for the body structure of a vehicle is not a new thing, but Lamborghini said that they have go further to the process by making the molds themselves from a carbon fiber instead of the generally used metal.
I still have no picture on how will the body structure works and what will be the difference in the final product. But it will be surely interesting to see if the carbon fiber inside a carbon fiber is taking action on somewhere in Italy.
Aventador LP700-4 Unveil Its Carbon Fiber Monocoque is a post from: Automotive News and Review
Audi Plants Struggle, People Waiting For Their Cars
Volkswagen Group expect to be the number one in global sales, luxury sales, as well as profits. However if they want to reach the auto sales zenith, Volkswagen have to make an extra room for Audi production. Bloomberg said that Audi is struggling to fulfil the demand for A3 and A6 while their users waiting three to four months. Peter Schwarzenbauer, Audi’s sales boss said that their factory are running full throttle.
If that is true, it means that if the sales continue to grow, it will be difficult to estimate how long the waiting times will be reduced. But why would the customers leaving Audi for something like BMW and Mercedes-Benz? All those automakers has reported record sales last month, and that is with the buyers have waiting up to six month for a brand new car like the BMW X3.
While those three manufacturers are struggling to meet the demand, experts said that Audi is in the toughest condition with the waiting times up to two months longer than the other two. Let’s see how will Volkswagen Group address the problem about the time? Audi is reportedly contributed around 47 percent of the overall product of VW for the past nine months.
Audi Plants Struggle, People Waiting For Their Cars is a post from: Automotive News and Review
New Lancia Stratos For 0k
Pininfarina and Michael Stoschek has unveiled the new Lancia Stratos. They said that there is a possibility that the production will be limited if there was enough demand. Some reports said that the prospective buyers have already lining up to order this car.
The latest reports are indicating that since they are unveiling the coachbuilt custom, there are about 40 customers in around Europe who approached Stoschek and Pininfarina to express their desire to buy one of the car for themselves. Stoschek is the German enthusiast who commissioned this Lancia Stratos in the first place.
This Pininfarina and Stoschek couple are reportedly saying that although the cost of the car is nearly 4 million to developing and building the first example, they claimed that they will offer this neo retro supercar at around $ 540k. The price is including $ 135k for a Ferrari F430 car which is presumably used, and an additional $ 405k to convert it into a New Lancia Stratos like in the picture above. This is a great choice if you have a spare half million dolars of money as well as an empty space for a car in your garage.
New Lancia Stratos For $ 500k is a post from: Automotive News and Review
Ram Trucks Won’t Be Available On Hybrid
Chrysler was promising that they will provide the Ram hybrid pickup truck. Unfortunately, this will be a bad news for you who are waiting on the hybrid truck. Ram Trucs CEO, Fred Diaz, told PluginCars.com that the truckers don’t want to buy htbrids. One-sided opinion I think. I don’t think that the truck buyers are that much anti-hybrid as they don’t want to use more money to bring the hybrid technology to the pickups.
However, Diaz might see the General Motors’ hybrid trucks which have failed to succeed in the market, and he think that it is an indication that Chryslers’ won’t either unless they are offering an extremely considerable price, and I don’t think that this possibility is high.
For the moment, the only Ram hybrid pickup trucks will bring the plug in models which is recently announced. These models were developed with the federal stimulus funds with a $ 48 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and another $ 5 million grant by the Canadian government. There are a total 140 PHEV Ram trucks that will be offered to the customers for some upcoming months. However, there is also a good news from Diaz claims that other technologies from Fiat will make their way to Ram trucks.
Ram Trucks Won’t Be Available On Hybrid is a post from: Automotive News and Review