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Energy

High-Performance Hybrid Headlines Lexus’s Re-Engineered RX Lineup

Electrification is a pillar of Lexus’s “next chapter.” The fifth-generation Lexus RX progresses this objective, offering four new powertrains including a...

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Mechanical & Fluid Systems

A Darker Side of the Chip-Shortage Story

The effects of the global semiconductor shortage on new-vehicle availability, and industry profits, are well known. But an even more significant effect of the “chip” shortage has been going on...

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Articles
Software

Dimensional Metrology Beyond the CMM

In the world of high-volume automotive cylinder-head production, the yields realized from casting processes count for a lot.

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Green Design & Manufacturing

Environmental Testing Preps for Tighter Regulations

Most engineers are used to the steady winds of change in refrigerant regulations as global agreements lead to new standards from the U.S. EPA and its counterparts in Europe and Asia. At...

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Connectivity

The Haters Go After Toyota

Want your company to be the target of haters? Here’s a sure way to do it, as proven in 2022.

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Green Design & Manufacturing

Gearing Dana for the EV Future

As Dana Inc. transitions further into electrified systems, it pays to have a Mechatronics engineer leading the company’s technology charge. Giulio Ornella, Dana’s VP of Global Engineering, has been...

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Articles
Test & Measurement

Proposed Standards and Methods for Leak Testing Lithium-Ion Battery Packs

Battery packs, whether made of prismatic, cylindrical, or pouch cells, are cooled by common automotive thermal management systems.

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Articles
Energy

Powering Light Electric Vehicles

Light Electric Vehicles (LEVs) such as golf carts have been traditionally powered by lead-acid batteries.

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Articles
Energy

Meeting the Challenge of Electric Vehicle Battery Cell Innovation

Today, batteries are the new engine for innovative electric vehicle (EV) development.

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Energy

Are You Prepared for Scope 3?

Suppliers’ heads keep spinning. If the challenges of inflation, energy costs, logistics and labor scarcity weren’t enough chaos, here comes another hurdle: The ongoing push for de-carbonization —...

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Articles
Manned Systems

Tension and the Electric Takeover

Something happened in September 2022 that can be seen as emblematic of the auto industry’s accelerating transition to electrification: Tesla’s Model Y was Europe’s best-selling vehicle. An EV as an...

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Unmanned Systems

2023 Toyota Prius Turns Heads at Los Angeles Auto Show

Toyota has pushed aside talk about the decline of auto shows by taking over the buzz of the Los Angeles auto show by introducing the sleekest, most luxurious and capable Prius hybrid...

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Energy

Cadillac's Future-Tech Flagship

Restoring the Cadillac brand to its golden-age pinnacle, when it stood equal among Europe’s ultra-luxury greats, has long been an intermittent dream within GM. The grandiose ‘Sixteen’ concept in 2003...

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Transportation

TRD Spells Capability for Toyota’s Latest Tundra

When Toyota decided it was time to update their capable but aging Tundra, the company knew that the new truck needed to be far more than just a quick reskin. To stay competitive in the...

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News
Government

A New A/C Refrigerant Joins the Global Warming Fight

A tri-part blend refrigerant, R-456A, has been introduced as a service replacement for the original refrigerant in R-134a automotive air conditioning systems.

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Energy

Volvo Leads the Shift to ‘Driver Understanding’

Volvo started teasing out some of the details of its all-electric replacement for the XC90 SUV, dubbed the EX90.

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Data Acquisition

Accessibility: The Future of Mobility

In August 1975, I headed west from Michigan in my new Chevy Van, personally customized for living on the road. My destination was the University of California, Berkeley, where I was enrolled to pursue...

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Unmanned Systems

Going the Last Mile

Pizza is a subject that puts a smile on most faces but for Matteo Del Sorbo, the delight extends far beyond the actual pie.

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Articles
Manned Systems

Hopeful but Closer Scrutiny for SAE Level 4 Automation

As the auto industry and its suppliers, along with technology developers and startups, recalibrate for what appears to be a new and more pragmatic phase of automated-driving...

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News
Unmanned Systems

Autonomous Transit Bus Nears Its First Year of Operation

Since May 2022, Michigan State University students, faculty and staff have been able to ride within campus boundaries on an autonomous electric bus, one of the largest automated-driving...

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Connectivity

May Mobility Starts ADA-Compliant AV Transit for Rural Area

Automated-driving system developer May Mobility confirmed in late September that it launched what it called the first public-transit project to deploy American Disability Act...

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Supplier Eye
Power

Good News and Bad News for Auto Suppliers in 2023

The Fall season brings the annual rite of passage for the industry — setting budgets for the next calendar year. The balance of building revenue forecasts driven by vehicle demand, while...

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Regulations/Standards

Engineering Sustainability

Watching a junked school bus being fed into a mammoth hammer mill, which loudly pummeled the bus into fragments of metal, rubber, and plastic, was a sight I’ll never forget. I was visiting Huron Valley Metals,...

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Automotive

Closing the Loop on EV Battery Recycling

Development of a robust electric vehicle (EV) battery recycling industry has moved from a net-positive sideline to a necessity as automakers, and their suppliers, transition away from internal...

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Articles
Energy

Unzipping the Future of Sustainable Electronics

Electronic-systems designers are facing a serious reckoning: How to significantly reduce the environmental impact of more and more electronic content in new vehicles?

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Manufacturing & Prototyping

Keeping Your Silicon Cool

Onboard electronics continue to evolve rapidly. Components are smaller. Systems are more complex. The sophisticated electronics components that make up modern vehicles require precision heat dissipation for...

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Motion Control

EAxles Gain Traction for Truck Electrification

Development of electrified drivelines is rapidly ramping up at OEMs and tier one suppliers. With a wide variety of vehicles suddenly in need of electrified drivelines capable of matching or...

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News
Green Design & Manufacturing

Ford Puts More ‘Super’ into the All-New 2023 Super Duty

Customer woes had the full attention of the teams developing Ford’s 2023 Super Duty. But when the all-new truck reached the testing phase, another human stressor surfaced....

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News
Power

New 300-Mm Wafer Fab Is Key to Bosch’s Chip Future

A new semiconductor plant is the single largest investment made by Robert Bosch AG in the 122-year-old company’s history. The facility, in Dresden, Germany, is welcome news to...

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