Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk said Thursday the electric-car company is expanding its network of “Supercharger” stations in California and across the country, and that Tesla Model S owners eventually will be able to drive from Los Angeles to New York using only the company’s network of fast charging stations.
The Supercharger stations are also adding solar power and grid storage, which means they’d be both carbon-neutral and able to function if the nation’s vast electric grid crashed.
“The aftermarket industry must develop effective ‘connected car’ alternatives to assure that drivers have a real choice when it comes to auto repairs, maintenance and parts,” according to AAIA’s Chief Information Officer.
Ten years from now, Jiffy Lube and NAPA franchise owners will stand desolate in front of their stores, watching sedan after minivan pull into the dealership next door. At least, that is the fear of independent automotive services companies contemplating tomorrow’s connected car.
Ford engineers are using 3D mapping in what is believed to be the technology’s first application in the auto industry to better analyze rear axle parts of F-Series pickups during assembly, leading to a smoother, quieter ride for drivers of Ford trucks.
Similar to Google Earth, which uses three-dimensional imaging to map the world, Ford’s photogrammetric pattern reader (PPR) uses a pair of digital cameras to combine photos of the axle gears into a series of 3D pictures that are compared against an ideal computer model of the gears. Gears that don’t meet “Built Ford Tough” specifications are discarded.
After Forbes magazine proclaimed BMW the most powerful car maker, BrandZ top 100 comes and says that this year BMW lost the title to the Japanese manufacturer, Toyota.
South Korea made BMW, Mercedes, and Audi’s life easier by passing certain laws to help reduce the price of European vehicles, another law in Asia might do the opposite.
In 2011, South Korea implemented a trade pact agreement that has helped European car makers offer ever more cheap cars.
