DETROIT (Bloomberg) — The black Ford Explorer had a warning for the test driver at the lab in Dearborn, Mich.: “It is important for you to recheck your blood glucose now.”
The driver’s blood-sugar reading was 81 milligrams per deciliter at 6:32 a.m., the robotic female voice said in the prototype demonstration.
When he replied that it has fallen to 71, close to where he can have lightheadedness or blurry vision, the car instructed him to take some glucose tablets and check again after 30 minutes.
Then it signs off: “Have a nice drive.”
For Ford Motor Co., medical monitoring is the next key to a burst of car sales. About 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day and 26 million Americans have diabetes.
Author: Staff (Page 92 of 202)
This comes a bit late but better late than never!
Toyota is taking product development authority away from Japanese bosses and putting it in the hands of North American executives as part of a larger change aimed at fixing quality control issues that hurt the automaker’s reputation last year.
Until now, vehicles produced and designed and developed in North America had to be approved by chief engineers in Japan. Vehicles unique to the North American market such as the Venza, Sienna, Avalon, Tacoma and Tundra will no longer require painstaking and frustrating sign-offs from Japan at each step of the development processes.
“We are going to implement the process from design to preparation for production to development, cost planning, and identifying and selecting suppliers,” said Inaba, CEO of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. “All these processes are going to be 100 percent done here, without going back to Japan for approval.”
The changes come too late to affect the development of the redesigned 2012 Toyota Camry due this fall, however upcoming models based in North America, such as the next Tundra pickup, will see the result of the new structure.
Ford’s Mustang Cobra Jet program has been incredibly popular for the Ford Racing division. The Cobra Jet for 2012 Featured a supercharged 5.4-liter aluminum V8 with 430 horsepower. Ford built 50 of them and sold the caged, competition-ready Stangs for $91,900 each.
And now it appears they’re working on another. It’s unclear from these photos if the bubble here is blocked off by an intercooler / radiator, or if it’s blocked to move air. (Or if they simply wanted to reduce visibility to Camaro levels.) Either way, that’s either a lot of room, or a lot of cooling and it’s totally awesome.
(Also, am I the only one who thinks this grille looks like it belongs on a Mini Cooper?)
Honda’s American plants look to hit near full speed by August. There has to be a sigh of relief for dealers nationwide as shortages were expected to last much longer.
From the Detroit Free Press:
Honda’s North American factories will return to near-normal production in August, the company said Thursday, much faster than expected following supply disruptions.
The flow of auto parts was interrupted after Japanese factories were damaged by a huge earthquake and tsunami on March 11, or stricken by the power outages that followed. Shortages have affected nearly every carmaker, but have struck hardest at Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp.
Last month, Honda cut production to about half the normal level because of falling parts supplies. It warned dealers of model shortages and said full production might not resume until the end of the year.
But Honda now says that the situation in Japan is improving. Factories can ramp up to full production on a plant-by-plant basis — except for those that build the new Civic compact.
When the new Lamborghini Aventador was introduced, earlier this year, it included a feature that allows a driver to slightly raise the nose to prevent the front wing from scraping on speed bumps or steep driveways.
For the Italian maker, that’s about as big a concession as it has ever made for day-to-day driving – most owners pulling their Gallardos and Murcielagos out of the garage only on weekends or special occasions.
But that’s about to change, according to Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann, who has confirmed an earlier report in TheDetroitBureau.com that the maker is developing what he has dubbed “an everyday car.”
“We are going to have a third model,” the German-born, Italian-reared executive announced during a conference sponsored by the Reuters news service. “It has to be an everyday car. We want to have a car which is able to be used on a daily basis.”
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