After countless rumors, the Scuderia has finally made an official announcement regarding the team’s future driver lineup, with Sebastian Vettel confirmed as driver for the 2015 season. The announcement was made a few minutes after the team officially announced that Fernando Alonso will leave the team at the end of this season. [Read the full article…]
Following the 2012 scandal, when Hyundai and Kia were accused of breaking the “Clean Air Act” and of making fake mileage claims for some of their models, the two carmakers reached an agreement with EPA and the Department of Justice and will pay the biggest civil penalty in the history of the United States. The “Clean Air Act” was first introduced in 1963 as a federal law that controls air pollution and which forces carmakers to comply with EPA standards and to release the correct fuel efficiency numbers.
The penalty given to Hyundai and Kia is worth $100 million, but the two carmakers will have to spend an additional $50 million to establish an independent fuel economy certification group that will prevent similar things from happening in the future. But the part that will cost them the most will be returning a total of 4.75 greenhouse gas emission credits they claimed in the past, which are estimated at a total of around $200 million. [Read the full article…]
Starting with November 1, the Electronic Stability Control system became mandatory for all new vehicles sold in the European Union that weight less than 3.5 tons. Starting with November 1, 2015, the new law will also apply to all other vehicles.
According to stats provided by Bosch, the company that invented the system and introduced it in 1995, 84% of all new vehicles sold in the EU were already available with ESC as standard. The system is widely regarded as one of the most important safety innovations in the history of the automobile and many reports showed that more than 80 percent of all crashes caused by the driver losing control could be avoided if all vehicles came with ESC. In 2011 alone, the system prevented more than 33,000 accidents and saved more than 1,000 human lives, according to another study by Bosch. These results were reported in the European Union only, in a time when the system was offered as standard on only 40 percent of new cars. [Read the full article…]
The German giant has just officially announced the opening of a new production facility in Tianjin, a large city in northern China. The factory will build DSG automatic transmissions for models sold in China and can produce up to 450,000 units per year, a capacity which is scheduled to be extended to 1.2 million units by 2016.
The Tianjin facility is Volkswagen’s 107 production site worldwide and it was finished after a $330 million (265 million Euros) investment. By opening this facility, Volkswagen created around 5,500 jobs in the area. According to the German carmaker, the DSG transmissions built in Tianjin will be used on the Chinese versions of the Volkswagen Tiguan, Golf and Audi Q3. The transmission will be used alongside the 2.0 TSI engine which is also being manufactured in China, at the Changchun and Shanghai facilities. Combined with the DSG transmission, the petrol engine gets better mileage and also has an important reduction in CO2 emissions. [Read the full article…]
According to the most recent edition of Manager Magazine’s annual list of wealthiest people in Germany, the Quandt family are now in number 1 spot, with a combined worth of 31 billion Euros (almost $40 billion). Johanna Quandt, 88, is the widow of German industrialist Herbert Quandt, the man responsible for saving BMW during its crisis in the 1960s and together with her two children own 46.7 percent in the German carmaker. The family are also important shareholders in several other German companies such as chemical maker Altana and graphite and carbon company SGL Carbon. The Quandts also managed to overtake the owners of the Aldi supermarket chain for the first time in 10 years. [Read the full article…]
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