Planning for the future is necessary for every manufacturer. Sometimes it involves making plans for the next year or two, or maybe the next five or 10. But, looking 20 years into the future? That's reserved for select companies, like luxury-car manufacturer Bentley Motors Ltd.
LANCASTER, CA—Construction has begun on a solar energy project at BYD’s Coach & Bus assembly plant here. When fully operational, the project is expected to save the factory more than $100,000 per year in electricity costs.
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s proposed budget would reportedly kill a loan program that assisted automakers such as Ford and Tesla in producing more environmentally friendly vehicles, including Tesla’s all-electric Model S.
NEW BRAUNFELS, TX—Continental will invest about $110 million to build a new 215,000-square-foot assembly plant here to make products for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The factory will retain approximately 450 jobs in Texas and add more than 130 new positions to the city.
BEIJING—Airbus has shut down a factory in China that accounts for almost 10 percent of the production of its most popular jet, as precautions taken to contain the coronavirus outbreak ricochet across global industries.
GIBSON COUNTY, IN —Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana has announced a $1 million commitment over the next four years to a new, regional workforce program in Gibson County.
VANTAA, FINLAND—Japanese electronic component manufacturer, Murata, has completed and inaugurated its new MEMS sensor manufacturing facility in Finland.
DETROIT—General Motors plans to invest more than $2 billion in its Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant to produce a variety of electric vehicles, including pickup trucks and SUVs.
MUNICH—BMW AG sees artificial intelligence (AI) as a way to improve productivity and efficiency at its assembly plants. The automaker is using the technology for a variety of quality-related applications, such as error proofing and inspection tasks.