The federal government enacted some pretty tough standards for the auto industry and soon those standards will be required on heavier over the road equipment. Newer electric cars are being displayed for the public with reduced cost and better efficiency, time will tell what affect that will have on the industry. One of the major awards presented to Automobile manufactures is the J.D. Powers Award [2] this award has as several different categories. The biggest is the Vehicle Dependability study [3], this study is conducted on cars over a 3yr period and records problems in 177 different areas, as reported by the vehicle owners, the study I referenced is from 2012 to 2015.
Before the invention of the combustion engine, Henry Ford was the first man to invent a steam-powered engine in 1865, after his great discovery, Karl Benz created the combustion engine in 1886 and people started using it until this day. Oil is a depleted source of energy and ultimately the world needs another source of energy for their transportation. However, sales of Hybrids still face hard increment. Although car manufacturers are strongly advertising to their new Hybrid cars, few people think that Hybrids are the best choice. (Glinton, 2011) thinks otherwise: “That’s far from the truth” he said, “Hybrid sales are under 3 percent of 13 million cars sold in the U.S.”.
Lamborghini fixed the problem of the clutch by replacing Ferrari’s clutch with his tractor’s clutch. Lamborghini decided to tell Ferrari about imperfections of his car and hoe to repair them. Considering Ferrari was the top dog of car businesses, he did not like a tractor mechanic telling about the imperfections about sports cars. Ferrari thought that Lamborghini did not know a thing about his cars or the cars in general. He told Lamborghini that go repair your tractors, you cannot fix my cars or you even can ride them properly.
The Volkswagen Group broke the trust of its customers and damaged its long-standing brand through high tech unethical practices. “The modern car is nothing more than a mobile computer that combines processors, sensors, backbones, and data links” (Grier, 2015). In a push to sell more diesel vehicles in the United States and exploit their technological engineering, Volkswagen Group created and outfitted vehicles with a computer software device that would know when a vehicle was being tested for emissions and would then manipulate test results to show lower emission. While the Volkswagen Diesel Scandal first came to light in September 2015 after the Environmental Protection Agency found the nefarious software during vehicle testing, the Volkswagen Group has once again come under scrutiny for utilizing humans and monkeys in diesel fume testing as of January 2018. Through legal, ethical and biblical perspectives, the Volkswagen Group’s business practices will be analyzed.
The alliance’s success depended on Nissan getting back to profitability. through various changes to regain its profitability and competitiveness. Before Nissan got into alliance with Renault it was in significant debt problem. The amount in debt amounted to $11.2 billion and this prevented Nissan from making necessary investments in its aging product line. (http://www.nissan-global.com) Although Nissan has recorded a success in automobile technology but rather it forget to focus also on style /design, its products were too old to compete with others in the market (for example, micra in Europe)although micra (March) was nine years old and only a few updates it still competed for 25% of the Japanese market and for the similar portion of European market( Ghosn,2002) and most product lines weren’t much different from micra suffered from similar problems hence the reason for its financial difficulty.
Challenges and Opportunities There were many reasons for the slow adoption of electric cars and the first obstacle was the price of electric cars. Electric cars were usually more expensive than the traditional internal-combustion vehicles. Another challenge that arises with electric cars were estimating what the cost was of owning an electric car. Consumers were not sure how much it would cost to charge their electric car while at home or away from home. Also, consumers did not know how much maintenance and repairs would cost if they owned an electric car.
For example, living in the United States of America. A consumer would be more persuaded to purchase an electric car as they have several charging poles on each block where as Lebanon for instance, there is not enough electricity to keep a home going let alone consist of an electric car charger. On the other hand, gasoline cars do not face this issue and therefore consumers internationally are attracted more towards gasoline cars due to their extreme convenience. A person in Lebanon would not be gravitated towards purchasing an electric car due to the lack of charging poles and high up keep. In contrary, in America it would be cheaper to handle and maintain an electric car due to the services the country
Damian Carrington of The Guardian News and Media, says on emissions that “It has been revealed by new research showing a minimum of 38,000 people a year die early due to the failure of diesel vehicles to meet official limits in real driving conditions.” Meaning that people are dying because of the failure of our tests to be accurate partially due to not testing duing the regeneration cycles. The way to fix this is first to test during those cycles, and as Peter M Mcclintock of The New York Times says is to “Test Emissions Where Cars Pollute: On the Road.” which is exactly the title of his article. In it he says that “This technology already exists. Remote sensing devices on the roadside can measure emissions as a vehicle passes by, without impeding traffic flow, often without the driver or vehicle even knowing they have been tested, and without the vehicle owner waiting in line at an inspection
The affected cars are fitted with a software that makes the engines produce far fewer toxic emission in official tests than on the road. German regulators have given Volkswagen till November to have a technical detail of the remedy. Volkswagen planned to repair the three models of diesel engines that involved updating of the software but were plan was deemed insufficient and regulators ordered a recall. Volkswagen will begin to recall the cars and start repair works in January. In the past, Volkswagen was dominated by strong personalities with a top-down style of decision making that could have contributed to decisions that led to the scandal.
As it turns out, Volkswagen may not be the only carmaker that sold diesel-powered cars which exceeded allowed emissions levels. A report from Transport & Environment drops the bomb, claiming more carmakers sell vehicles which exceed the European limit for air pollution. During the past three years, Transport & Environment (T&E), with the support of the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT – the organization that alerted US authorities to its concerns over VW), has exposed several ways carmakers manipulate emissions tests in Europe for both air pollution and CO2 emissions. Automakers are said to charge the car’s battery before a test, deduct 4 percent from each test result and use incorrect laboratory settings for the inertia of the vehicle. While the companies admit these tricks, they claim they are “legitimate flexibilities”.