plants – All about car

A contractor works on the yet-to-be-completed engine production line at a Ford factory on January 13, 2015 in Dagenham, England.Carl Court / Getty Ford will eliminate about 20 per cent of its workforce across Europe and close six factories in a sweeping overhaul aimed at reviving the money-losing region as the company also moves to prepare for the future of electric and self-driving cars.The restructuring will involve reducing its manufacturing footprint in Europe to 18 facilities by the end of 2020 from 24 at the beginning of this year.Germany, the U.K. and Russia will be hardest hit by the cuts, which total about 12,000 regular staff as well as workers employed at joint ventures, Ford said Thursday.Separating employees and closing plants are the hardest decisions we make, Stuart Rowley, Fords president of Europe, said in a statement. We are moving forward and focused on building a long-term sustainable future.The cutbacks are a key part of Chief Executive Officer Jim Hacketts US$11-billion restructuring, which also includes 7,000 salaried job cuts worldwide. Hackett, 64, is trying to boost Fords bottom line by exiting the slow-selling sedan market in the U.S. to focus on high-profit sport-utility vehicles and trucks.In Europe, where Ford is the top-selling brand in the U.K., the automaker also is backing away from the traditional passenger-car business to focus on commercial vans and trucks.We have a winning hand in Europe and its called commercial vehicles, then-Chief Financial Officer Bob Shanks said at a May 15 Goldman Sachs conference in New York. Well have a smaller portfolio of passenger vehicles.Ford is cutting costs as it pours billions into electric and self-driving cars that are seen as the future of the auto industry. The company is close to sealing a deal with Volkswagen to join forces to develop these
Origin: Ford will close six European plants as part of global downsizing

VWs power bank for electric cars—the companys solution for a mobile quick-charging station.Handout / Volkswagen In about a year, Volkswagen Group may catch up to Tesla’s capacity to make electric cars. VW said Tuesday it is building two plants in China to produce a total of 600,000 vehicles on its dedicated battery-car platform, MEB. The new factories in Anting and Foshan will open a few months after Germany’s Zwickau, which will assemble as many as 330,000 cars annually and is slated to get started by year-end. Following through with plans to reach this level of scale will likely leave Tesla trailing behind. Its lone vehicle assembly plant operating in Fremont, California, can make about 500,000 cars. The electric-car leader expects to start output on the outskirts of Shanghai at the end of this year and produce 250,000 vehicles a year initially. VW has little time to lose after Tesla resolved manufacturing problems in Fremont and its battery factory near Reno, Nevada, which may start also building Model Y crossovers. While Model 3 sedan deliveries tailed off in the first quarter following a strong second half of 2018, CEO Elon Musk has dismissed concerns about demand and stuck to a forecast for as many as 400,000 vehicle deliveries this year. VW plans to produce some 70 battery-powered models across its 12 auto brands by 2028 and make 22 million electric cars over the next decade. CEO Herbert Diess, who says alternative technologies like fuel-cell cars will struggle to compete, is helming the auto industry’s biggest effort in the transition from combustion engines costing some 30 billion euros (US$34 billion). Volkswagen leads the competition on e-mobility, Diess said in speech notes at the company’s annual meeting in Berlin. As a company, we’ll make a success of the electric car—with the right products, superior underpinnings and global economies of scale. The German automaker, which is also considering sites for more electric-car plants, this month opened reservations for its electric ID3 hatchback. It’s garnered more than 15,000 orders from buyers putting down 1,000-euro deposits. Tesla, meanwhile, is mulling a factory in Germany, Musk said in a tweet last month. Last year, he stated that Europe’s No. 1 market was the leading choice for a car and battery site in
Origin: VW adds electric-car plants in China to overtake Tesla numbers