Major Developments Major Developments by Calendar Year

Manufacturers in the automotive industry are constantly looking for new ways to maintain their competitiveness. Only developing innovative products as soon as possible could make a difference. To be top seller in the market, manufacturers have to suffer various pressures like reducing product development time, safety issues, fuel efficiency, warranty costs, and styling. These goals are set to meet the increased demands and expectations.

Time-to-market policy is a critical issue in manufacturing industry. As per this policy competitor manufacturer has to launch his product as soon as possible. It all because if the same design is launched by other manufacturer before them in market, then the value of this innovation will get lost. A few days delay could result in a loss of millions of dollars loss. So, to reduce automotive development time and to achieve desired goals, manufactures are using engineering simulation technologies. Simulation technologies includes following major steps:

1. Integrated simulation
2. Refining ride
3. Racecar design
4. CFD for design improvement
5. Advanced aerodynamics
6. Engine development

Manufacturers, to win the race of competitiveness in the automotive market did make all these developments. This race to market yields many profits to customers like lower engineering costs, reduced prototypes tooling costs, and best product from core teams.

(more…)

Hybrid vehicles are a kind of automobiles which use two or more distinct power sources to move the vehicle. It is generally referred as a hybrid electric vehicle.

Hybrid cars were introduced since 1902 and they had a tremendous effect on automotive field. In the year of 2005, many major changes were implemented in hybrid car industry. With this development, about 200,000 hybrids cars of different models were launched and sold in the year of 2005. There has been an estimation to sell 3 million cars year within a decade.

Toyota and Honda were the leading manufactures in this global hybrid market. The Toyota Prius was the super seller brand over all other hybrid car models. About 107,897 units were sold in the year 2005. It represented 52 percent sale of the total hybrid car market. The next most popular hybrid was the Honda Civic Hybrid, of which over 25,000 vehicles were sold.

This fast sales growth in hybrid car market clearly shows that a new trend towards the hybrid car adoption is emerging.