Word: gm
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...same time, GM, DaimlerChrysler and BMW have teamed up to open a research and technical center in the Detroit suburbs that probably won't yield vehicles until 2010. So the carmakers are looking for incremental improvements in software, electronics, battery storage and even the internal combustion engine itself to make hybrids even more efficient. That latter includes high-compression combustion engines that run without spark plugs. Mike Gauthier, director of corporate technology for Siemens VDO, an auto electronics company in Auburn Hills, Michigan, says future hybrids also will use more sophisticated combustion engines as well as more complex electrical components...
Contrary to the assertions of company executives, PBGC officials and members of Congress, one company after another on the 1990 Top 50 disappeared. To be sure, many are still around. Like General Motors. That year, the PBGC reported a $1.9 billion deficit in GM's pension plans. Today, by GM's reckoning, the deficit is $10 billion. The PBGC estimates it at $31 billion. As for the pension-fund deficit, if GM or any other company can't come up with the money, the PBGC will cover retirement checks up to a fixed amount--$45,600 this year--or until...
That may include the world's largest automaker--General Motors. Although GM chairman Rick Wagoner has insisted that "we don't consider bankruptcy to be a viable business strategy," some on Wall Street are skeptical, given the company's array of problems. Their view was reinforced when GM, the company that dominated the American economy through the 20th century, announced on Oct. 17 that it had reached a precedent-setting agreement with the United Auto Workers leadership to rescind $1 billion worth of health-care benefits for its retirees. If ratified by the union membership, the retrenchment will hasten...
...incentives weren't there. Most automakers claimed consumers cared about fuel economy less than 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...
...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 Brasil...