Word: forde
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...such as Standard & Poor's. The findings aren't reassuring. According to S&P, Sara Lee Corp. of Chicago, a global maker of food products, ended 2004 with a pension deficit of $1.5 billion. The company's pension plans held enough assets to cover 69.8% of promised retirement pay. Ford Motor Co.'s deficit came in at $12.3 billion. It could write retirement checks for 83% of money owed. ExxonMobil Corp. was down $11.5 billion, with enough money to issue retirement checks covering 61% of promised benefits. Exxon had extracted $1.6 billion from its pension plans in 1986 because they...
Hybrids may be the coolest fuel savers, but gas-gulping SUVs could be a lot more efficient too. The Union of Concerned Scientists has come up with a design that achieves 35% better fuel economy than the best-selling Ford Explorer. For only $760 more, that green SUV could be on the road. Combining the usual body-on-frame design into a lighter "unibody" would boost fuel economy as much as 8%. Add a sixth gear to the transmission, lower-friction lubricants and electronic valve controls, and you would be up another 17%. Even redesigning side mirrors to cut wind...
...about performance. Detroit's dismal sales have also forced companies to trim costs and cut back on fuel-saving technologies. But the next generation of SUVs and pickups won't guzzle quite so much fuel. GM says its 2007 full-size models will get 9% better mileage. The 2006 Ford Explorer boosts mileage 10%, thanks to improvements like a six-speed transmission. Chrysler is reducing the electrical demand of the rear defroster, gaining one-tenth of an m.p.g. Little things like that won't erase our energy woes, but they're a start...
...tanks with ethyl alcohol, or ethanol, which is one of two fuel options used in a new generation of Brazilian cars called Flex. The cars work like traditional vehicles but can run on either gasoline or ethanol derived from sugar cane--a commodity in abundance in Brazil. Volkswagen, Ford, Fiat and GM all produce Flex lines. In May sales of Flex vehicles overtook gasoline models for the first time. By August, Flex sales had risen 61.7%. "I am hard pressed to think of any other technology that has been such a success so quickly," says Barry Engle, president of Ford...
...adding hydrogen to the mix and a system that puts electric motors at the wheels. The frenzy to churn out hybrids and their technological cousins is so fierce that archrivals GM, DaimlerChrysler and BMW have teamed up to build a research and technical center in the Detroit suburbs. And Ford is so desperate to fill 200 open jobs in its hybrid program that it's competing with Toyota to hire engineers from the software and aerospace industries. The stakes are high: Ford and GM announced third-quarter losses of nearly $2 billion combined last week, thanks in part to plunging...