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DaimlerChrysler and the companies it owns have agreed to jointly develop and swap parts totalling $13 billion, according to Reuters, quoting the Korea Economic Daily, and itself quoted in just-auto.com. This is not exactly news, except in the volume, which is larger than the annual parts purchases by GM ($11 billion) and Ford ($10 billion). However, Chrysler and Mitsubishi are being integrated into a single organization in terms of manufacturing and engineering, and Hyundai/Kia, while retaining its independence (Chrysler is a division of DCX with Mercedes executives, while Mitsubishi is 1/3 owned by DCX but still has Mercedes executives) is also sharing key components and will probably share auto platforms as well. Most of GM and Ford parts and platform sharing is between different divisions in the same company, e.g. between Ford and Jaguar, or Chevrolet and Cadillac.
The Canadian Auto Workers have done something the (USA) United Auto Workers have not: won the right to represent 1,100 Freightliner workers even as (or maybe because) DaimlerChrysler has downsized the weakened commercial truck maker and marketer. The CAW is also in negotiations with DCX to keep Chrysler's Windsor Road plant open.
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After the Canadian Auto Workers gained new commitments to job security from Ford, the company chose to convert its Ontario factory to a flexible structure so it can pound out different models at the same time. Meanwhile, Ford is recalling 400,000 Taurus/Sables with adjustable pedals because the brake and gas pedal are too close together, so that it is too easy to hit both while trying for just one.
Daytona 500 winner Ward Burton led the way for Dodge by driving his No. 22 Caterpillar Dodge Intrepid R/T to a 10th-place finish in Sunday's EA Sports 500 NASCAR Winston Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway.
Working with crew chief Frankie Stoddard for the first time this season, Burton recorded his seventh top 10 of the 2002 campaign and moved to 25th in the series standings. Bill Davis Racing teammate Scott Wimmer, subbing for Kenny Wallace, finished 17th in the No. 23 Hills Bros Coffee Dodge Intrepid R/T.
Kyle Petty finished 16th in his No. 45 Sprint Dodge Intrepid R/T and continued his streak of solid finishes. In six of the past seven races, Petty has finished 15th, 13th, 17th, 16th, 15th and 16th and has moved to 21st in the series standings.
Sterling Marlin withdrew from racing for the balance of the 2002 season prior to the EA Sports 500 at Talladega. Injuries sustained in a racing accident at Kansas City forced Marlin to sit out the rest of the 2002 campaign. Marlin led the NASCAR Winston Cup point standings for 25 straight races (Rockingham through Richmond). He lost 216 points in the five races prior to his withdrawal, going from a 95-point lead after Bristol to fifth in points after Kansas, his final race of the 2002 season. Marlin scored 14 top-10 finishes in the 29 races he ran in 2002, including 19 top-15 finishes. Marlin ended a 162-race streak of consecutive starts by missing Sunday's race.
Jamie McMurray subbed for Marlin and finished 26th in his NASCAR Winston Cup debut. McMurray will drive a third Dodge for Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates in 2003.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. won Sunday's race in a Chevrolet and that tied Chevy and Ford with 10 victories each in 2002. Dodge has six and Pontiac four. Ford leads Chevy 200-181 in the manufacturers standings. Dodge is third with 144 points and Pontiac trails with 135.
Bill Elliott, who finished 19th Sunday in his No. 9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Intrepid R/T, leads the way for Dodge with an eighth-place ranking in the standings. Elliott is only 28 points out of sixth, 82 out of fifth and 229 points behind the leader.
Rumor has powerhouse Penske lining up behind Dodge for the next season, but many have criticized NASCAR rules and suggested that winners and losers are determined almost as much by the NASCAR leaders as by skill and vehicle design.
DaimlerChrysler will launch the world's first fleet of fuel cell passenger cars in the United States and Europe in 2003, the company said. The fuel cell vehicles, based on the Mercedes-Benz A-Class passenger car, will be called the "F-Cell".
"With these vehicles, we become the first manufacturer to put fuel cell cars on the road," said Prof. Ferdinand Panik, head of Fuel Cell Development at DaimlerChrysler. "The hydrogen-powered F-Cell cars are genuine zero-emission vehicles which have left the research stage and are now going to field testing."
Honda and Toyota have both announced fuel cell fleets. Toyota's is already operational in the US, leased to municipalities and companies, while Honda, like Mercedes, is claiming to be the first company to sell fuel cell vehicles.
The hydrogen fuel is combined with oxygen from the air in the fuel cell to produce electricity and drive an electric motor. The Mercedes-Benz A-Class F-Cell, the first cars to grow out of the research stage and to go on the road, are being manufactured under near-standard conditions and will be operated and tested by customers in everyday use within the framework of government-sponsored international cooperative ventures. DaimlerChrysler is testing a fuel cell-powered Sprinter van in a delivery fleet and will begin delivering fuel cell-powered Citaro buses to 10 European cities next year.
In the "F-Cell", the entire fuel cell system is accommodated in the sandwich floor of the long-wheelbase A-Class. Its tanks supply compressed hydrogen directly to the fuel cell system, giving the "F-Cell" a cruising range of about 90 miles. Hydrogen consumption is equivalent to 56 mpg gasoline.
The electric motor has an output of 65 kW. The vehicle accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in about 16 seconds and gets a top speed of around 87 mph. This performance makes the "F-Cell" suitable for everyday use. In addition, the vehicle has zero smog and greenhouse gas emissions and is extraordinarily quiet in operation.
Ford is going to go back to its old slogan of "Quality is Job One," which, while it did not apparently increase quality much, did wonders for the perceptions of quality - which is more important from a sales point of view.
As a personal note, I did once work in a Ford plant in Edison, New Jersey, during the original "Quality is Job One" campaign. This plant made Escorts before they were based on the Mazda 323, so you can imagine how proud I was to work in the quality area - admittedly in a clerical role. I quickly found out that quality was, indeed, Job One - but that Job One is industry jargon for the first day of production of a new car. So all the quality problems of the original Ford Escort, and they were legion, were indeed Job One. They were fixed when Ford switched to the Mazda platform for the Escort...and fixed even better for those who got the optional Mazda 1.8 liter engine instead of the Ford 1.9 liter engine.
In short, "Quality is Job One" means "We'll fix it when we start making a different new car."
Volkswagen, which pioneered the use of recyclable and recycled materials in production cars, now plans to add a particulate trap to its diesel engines to address concerns over carcinogens. VW is, to our knowledge, the only company which still sells diesel engines in passenger cars in the United States.
Notes: In Europe, diesels account for about half of sales, but American gasoline industry subsidies and relatively low fuel taxes make the purchase of a diesel car economically unrewarding except in unusual cases. (Diesel trucks are a different story, since gas mileage going from 10 to 18 mpg is rather more dramatic than going from 35 to 45. Likewise, many work trucks remain in use by the original owner for over 200,000 miles, allowing the diesel's better gas mileage and lower maintenance to pay off.)
Los Angeles has purchased five Honda FCX fuel cell vehicles, and is currently working with prototypes. Though Toyota was the first to deliver fuel cell vehicles to American customers, Toyota works by lease, and Honda sells by retail. (Honda was also the first to introduce a hybrid-electric vehicle to the American public, but Toyota was the first to sell one in the world - in Japan - and continues to have the most environmentally friendly hybrid, the Prius).
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