cars

Car Body Design CBD provides selected daily news from the automotive and design worlds, publishes original projects created by emerging designers, links to automotive design and engineering technical publications, and offers free design tutorials. Great resource for automotive designers, engineers and enthusiasts.

The good news for the automotive industry is that it is expecting a worldwide burst of growth. The bad news: many middle-class suppliers are not able to keep up with this dynamic and will lose their self-employment.

“In the next 15 years, this might concern up to 20 percent of the middle-class suppliers”, a study by car-expert Ferdinand Dudenhöffer from the University of Duisburg-Essen shows.

Based on his calculations, 57 millions cars will be sold this year. Until 2025, the number should rise to 91 million. Interestingly, the markets with the greatest growth are positioned in Asia. Until 2025, the sales in China and India will be accounting for about 40 percent of the whole world market. One reason is the low vehicle density in Asia. For example: from 1000 Chinese people only 24 (2.4%) have got a car. In comparison: from 1000 Germans, 523(52.3%) have a car.

Those who want to keep up with the growing process must expand to Asia and work in cooperation with the factories there, says Peter Faulhaber, head of the consultancy “Struktur Management Partner” in Cologne, who was also involved in the study. “To supply China with exports from Germany is illusionary”, Faulhaber says. A survey amongst 180 suppliers, car and bank managers showed that the middle-class suppliers strongly underestimate this dynamic. They plan with too little shares of sales for Asia.

In conclusion: Those who miss the growth in Asia will be unable to keep up with the market and lose market shares. Five percent sales growth per year will be needed in order to not lose shares. Those who can’t achieve these five percent downgrades his cost position and takes the risk to become a candidate for takeover. Experts say that it is necessary to develop a fitting strategy for the Asian market to prevent this.

What is your assessment? Will Asia have taken over the majority of the world market by 2025?

What do you think of a Foursquare-like service for spotting cars around the world? CarZar, the world’s first location-based social automotive app, was unveiled at the 2010 Paris Motor Show. The CarZar’s purpose is to make it possible for consumers to share their passion for cars through a location-based car-spotting app that is social, useful and global.

“CarZar is another in a long line of location-based services, like Foursquare and Gowalla, that enables millions of users to spot and share millions of vehicle images, and their locations. You can download the CarZar app onto your iPhone, snap a vehicle image, and CarZar tags the location, enabling users to share the image and their status, as well as vehicle information and comments, with friends across the social community, while earning points to become the CarZar of their favorite brand or type of vehicle.”

You can also receive badges too for different car makes and models. The CarZar is a free app for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

origin: http://blog.laptopmag.com/

The fiat branch that is operating in Brazil is going to reveal its newest car on the Sao Paolo automobile fair in October.

The Fiat Mio is an all electric, 2.50 meter long car that is developed on the basis of user ideas that were shared on an online website where the design could be edited, commented and distributed.

17 000 members from over 140 countries have shared their thoughts in the web and developed Fiat’s newest creation that will be released this year. The result should be a customer friendly car, especially in terms of design and eco-friendliness.

What do you think of the car? Is the two-seater it going to be a success? Discuss here!

sources: autoevolution, auto-motor-und-sport.de

Profits of U.S. company General Motors rose to almost 1.3 billion of this year’s second quarter.

Contrary to the loss of 12.9 billion in the second quarter of 2009, the income of the company has gone up rapidly which is also conditioned by selling a higher amount of shares in the last months.

However, the results in Europe are still unsatisfying: a $160 million loss still shows where issues problems have to be fixed. Results of the home market though look a lot better after 12 percent more cars were sold.

Also with focus on the Chinese market, GM will try to keep pace and establish their position as second biggest car seller in China, behind Volkswagen.

Source: autonews

Nissan has revealed plans for their new car „Leaf“ to contain a battery that can last up to eight years or over 100 000 miles. This is part of their attempt to release an affordable all-electric car on the market.

Consumer concerns about durability of the “rechargeable engine” are the reason for the company to announce that the car can keep the pace with normal gas automobiles and will have a similar lifetime. The “Leaf”, which will be on sale in the United States from December, will cost around $ 25, 000 (after tax credit) and can be charged in one of 15,000 charging stations that (will) spread all over the country.

source: autonews.com