Eight of the world’s top 25 corporate investors in research and development are automakers. The industry ranks third overall, ahead of software, aerospace and electronics manufacturers.
In fact, Ford and GM each invested more in R&D last year than Boeing, Amgen and Google. And 80 cents of every dollar AAPC’s members invest in R&D is spent here in the U.S. That’s one reason why a recent study by the National Science Foundation found that nearly one in 10 engineers and scientists employed in the private sector works for an automaker or an auto supplier.
All this investment in R&D has translated into unprecedented improvements in passenger safety, air quality, fuel efficiency and new products and features. Last year was the safest year on our highways ever recorded, despite the fact that Americans drove nearly 3 trillion miles. Auto emissions are 99 percent cleaner than they were in the 1970s, and our members’ vehicles will be 30 percent more fuel efficient in 2016 than they were just last year.
Today, American car buyers can choose from more than 150 hybrid, all-electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and Chrysler, Ford and GM alone are putting millions of flex fuel vehicles on the road each year.
As oxymorons go, "aerodynamic pickup truck" ranks right up there with" military intelligence" and "jumbo shrimp." But General Motors thinks it can prove that it accomplished the task on this one.
The look of its pickup trucks is so important that General Motors put its best man on the job: the guy who does the Corvettes. Fresh from the task of designing the 2014 Stingray, Tom Peters took on the task of freshening up — and toughening up — the Chevrolet Silverado and its fraternal twin, the GMC Sierra.
“A fist in the wind” is how Mr. Peters describes the pickups’ design.
General Motors Company ( GM ) unveiled a state-of-the-art enterprise data center at Warren, Mich. The company invested $130 million for this data center, which will act as the computing backbone for the automaker.
