TOLEDO, OH—Public officials here are spending millions to purchase and clean up land in an attempt to persuade Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to keep, if not expand, production of the Jeep Wrangler in the city.
WASHINGTON—Investment in equipment and software is expected to grow 5 percent in 2015, according to the latest economic outlook released by the Equipment Leasing & Finance Foundation.
FAIRFIELD, CT—Henry Ford was fond of saying that “nothing was particularly hard if you divided it into small jobs.” He followed his own advice, built the world’s first large-scale assembly lines that cranked out millions of Model Ts every year, and left his competitors in the dust. GE engineers are now taking Ford’s advice to the extreme and breaking down the factory into even smaller pieces: bits and bytes.
CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA—The California Energy Commission awarded a $3 million grant to Proterra to develop and manufacture the next-generation of battery-powered buses here.
ARLINGTON, TX—GM is looking to boost production of sport-utility vehicles with a $1.3 billion expansion at its assembly plant here. The company intends to add 1.2 million square feet of space to the existing facility over the next three years, and is expected to create 589 new jobs.
MIDLAND, MI—XALT Energy LLC has signed a $1 billion multiyear deal to supply lithium batteries to a Chinese electric bus manufacturer. The battery manufacturer is expected to hire 300 people as a result of the order.
OAK RIDGE, TN—With an aim toward automotive applications, APLAIR Manufacturing Systems will commercialize a new weld inspection technology developed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.