PRESS RELEASE -
What if we could redirect plastics from landfill and use them to create innovative materials, and then put them in the all-new Ford F-150, part of Ford F-Series, America’s best-selling truck? We could make a big difference.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
The British Metals Recycling Association (BMRA) is calling on car manufacturers to ensure that using lightweight materials to achieve greenhouse gas reductions doesn't impede circular manufacturing processes, edie reports.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
Concept cars are always great fodder for gawking at automobile shows, and in turn they do a fine job of generating buzz and stellar photographs. But at this week's North American International Automobile Show (NAIAS) in Detroit, one concept car suggested a game-changer: Sustainability and affordability can work together and finally offer consumers a compelling gasoline-free driving option.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
This week at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Ford is showcasing its latest innovations — aimed not only at advancing its vehicles, but at helping to change the way the world moves.With the Ford Smart Mobility plan, the automaker is focusing on leading-edge work in connectivity, mobility, autonomous vehicles, the customer experience and big data. Ford also announced 25 mobility experiments it’s conducting around the world this year, testing breakthrough transportation ideas to create better customer experiences, more flexible user-ship models and social collaboration that can reward customers.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
Toyota has announced it will invite royalty-free use of approximately 5,680 hydrogen fuel cell related patents held globally, including critical technologies developed for the new Toyota Mirai.The list includes around 1,970 patents related to fuel cell stacks, 290 associated with high-pressure hydrogen tanks, 3,350 related to fuel cell system software control and 70 patents related to hydrogen production and supply.
MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Cooper Tire & Rubber Company — the Ohio-based parent company of a global family of companies that specialize in the design, manufacture, marketing and sales of passenger car and light truck tires — has completed tire builds using rubber derived from guayule plants and new guayule-related materials. The company says the tires are being evaluated by Cooper’s technical team using rigorous wheel, road and track tests, which are ongoing, but to date suggest tire performance that is at least equal to tires made of components derived from traditional rubber, derived from the Hevea rubber plant.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
As more and more organizations are finding ways to create fuel from waste — case in point: Italy is about to become the first country to require cars and trucks to run on biofuel made from agricultural waste — Chevrolet says its 2015 Bi-fuel Impala will be able to run on leftovers, table scraps and, oh, yeah, grains from brewing beer (welcome to the present, Back to the Future fans!).
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
Ford’s Oakville Assembly plant now sends no operational waste-to-landfill, an achievement that gives Ford Motor Company the distinction of becoming landfill-free at all its manufacturing facilities in Canada.Oakville Assembly is the first Ford assembly plant in North America to achieve this environmental designation.The Essex Engine Plant received landfill-free status in 2012 and Windsor Engine Plant in 2013. A total of 21 Ford facilities around the globe maintain zero waste-to-landfill status. By Ford’s definition, this means that those facilities do not send any operational waste to a landfill.
INNOVATION & TECHNOLOGY -
British luxury carmaker Bentley Motors announced this week it has become the first automotive manufacturer to earn the triple Carbon Trust Standard, having separately secured group’s Standards for Carbon, Water and Waste through significant reductions in these three key areas at its Crewe, Cheshire headquarters.Bentley joins Marks & Spencer, PwC, AkzoNobel Decorative Paints and Ireland’s ABP Food Group as one of only 11 companies to date to achieve the triple standard from the Carbon Trust, one of the world’s leading independent authorities on delivering carbon reduction and achieving greater resource efficiency.
COLLABORATION & CO-CREATION -
Ford Motor Company announced today the C-MAX Solar Energi Concept, a first-of-its-kind sun-powered vehicle with the potential to deliver the best features of a plug-in hybrid without relying on the electric grid for fuel. The concept car will be exhibited at the 2014 International CES in Las Vegas next week.Instead of powering its battery from an electrical outlet, the C-MAX Solar Energi Concept harnesses the power of the sun by using a special concentrator that acts as a magnifying glass, directing rays to solar panels on the vehicle roof.
ORGANIZATIONAL GOVERNANCE -
General Motors last week announced that Mary Barra will replace Dan Akerson as CEO on January 15, 2014 — making her the first woman to lead a major automaker. Barra currently serves an executive vice president in the company’s global product development unit.With more than 30 years' experience at GM, Barra rose through a series of manufacturing, engineering and senior staff positions, the company says. Notably, Barra helped to facilitate GM’s turnaround after its 2009 bankruptcy and reorganization.“With an amazing portfolio of cars and trucks and the strongest financial performance in our recent history, this is an exciting time at today’s GM,” said Barra in a GM news release. “I’m honored to lead the best team in the business and to keep our momentum at full speed.”
COLLABORATION & CO-CREATION -
The Coca-Cola Company and Ford Motor Company have teamed up to fuel more sustainable design by collaborating on a first-ever interior fabric made from the same renewable material used to produce Coke’s PlantBottle packaging.
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
Heading into this year’s Sustainable Brands conference, I was looking forward to driving BMW’s electric prototype that was on display. In hindsight, however, the technical highlight of the show for me was the Tesla Model S. You know, the ones that people were actually driving, with coffee cups in the console and crumbs in the backseat.
The General Motors Enterprise Data Center in Warren, Michigan recently received Gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, putting it among the fewer than 5 percent of data centers in the U.S. to achieve such certification. This marks the company’s fifth LEED-certified facility.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS -
Seven motorsports facilities operated by the International Speedway Corporation (ISC) received the NASCAR Green track operator award during the recent 2013 NASCAR Green Summit.The award recognizes motorsports facilities for ongoing contributions to developing effective and sustainable green policies and practices. Now in its fifth consecutive year, the 2013 NASCAR Green Summit examined the substantive initiatives that have helped NASCAR make notable strides toward reducing the impacts of its sporting events nationwide.These facilities were recognized for their individual efforts:Auto Club Speedway of Southern California
While August was a robust month for passenger vehicle sales in the U.S. — registering a 17 percent increase compared to August 2012 — there were remarkable jumps in sales of clean diesel and hybrid cars, with diesels showing a 41.8 percent increase and hybrids experiencing a 38.1 percent increase compared to this time last year, according to data compiled by Hybrid Cars.com and Baum and Associates.For clean diesels, August’s 41.8 percent increase was preceded by a 38.1 percent in July 2013 over July 2012. It was the 32nd monthly increase in diesel car sales in the past 36 months, with 27 of those months registering double-digit increases.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY -
General Motors has made an additional donation of scrap sound-absorption material from its Chevy Malibu and Buick Verano models to a Detroit nonprofit for use as insulation in waterproof, self-heating coats that become sleeping bags for the homeless.
Toyota plans to keep pressing the advantages of its renewed mojo in the U.S. market with sportier hybrids, a greater emphasis on customer care and the possible addition of more production in Mexico to supply U.S. customers.The company has seen its market share in the U.S. slip from a peak of 17 percent in 2009 to around 14 percent this year through July, as it was afflicted by natural disasters, its safety-recall fiasco, and intensified competition that took advantage of Toyota's weakness.
In June, the Tesla Model S outsold several well-established vehicle brands in California — including Porsche, Buick and Lincoln — according to a recent report from the California New Car Dealers Association (CNCDA), using data sourced from Polk.The electric car company also outsold Cadillac and both Jaguar and Land Rover combined. Even Infiniti — a long-established, full-luxury brand — posted only 51 more registrations.
CODA Energy has partnered with Energy Vault and Growing Energy Labs (GELI), to deploy the first Eco-Station, a solar integrated electric vehicle (EV) fast-charging station optimized by energy storage, in the San Francisco Bay Area.CODA says the charging station will incorporate a 175 kW solar array, DC fast charging, a 40kWh CODA Core UDP energy storage system, and GELI's intelligent Energy Operating System (EOS) software.DC charging refuels a typical EV battery in 30-60 minutes and improves the usability of EVs by extending their effective range and enabling road trips. However, CODA says these stations require high quantities of power to operate, which is expensive to run during peak hours and can add up to hundreds or thousands of dollars per month.