factory

As shown by its roughly half-million references in Google, Tesla’s lithium-ion cell and battery Gigafactory is a big deal. And deservedly so. Producing the same volume of lithium-ion cells in one building in 2020 as were produced by the whole industry during 2013 should allow substantial...

Honda opens the first carmaker-run wind farm in Brazil.

Tesla completes a retooling of its Fremont, California, factory.

Back in 2011, we visited 'Rouge'--the Ford plant responsible for churning out F-150 pickup trucks in their tens of thousands each year. Alongside the F-150 itself, now more efficient than ever, Rouge is an example of how automotive facilities are being cleaned up, as well as the products they...

The 210,000 plug-in electric vehicles sold around the world last year used a lot of lithium-ion batteries. But if startup automaker Tesla Motors has its way, it will soon need as many lithium-ion cells (of the 18650 format it uses) as are now built worldwide. That's why the company plans to release...

It’s been just a week since Californian automaker Coda Automotive opened up its first showroom in LA’s Westside in the Westfield Century Mall -- but now Coda bosses have confirmed that it has signed a deal to open a final assembly plant in Benicia, California. The deal, which Coda has...

You hardly need us to tell you that there’s been an ongoing race to become the king of plug-in vehicles between Nissan and General Motors ever since the two firms launched their 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Chevrolet Volt. But with both cars battling it out on the forecourt both firms can worry...

We don’t hear “death of Detroit” stories as often now as we did a year ago. When GM and Chrysler plunged into bankruptcy and the entire U.S. industry laid off tens of thousands of workers in one year, the effects on an already battered Detroit region were dire. And they led to a...

During the Detroit Auto Show in January, we visited the Think electric-car assembly plant in Elkhart, Indiana. It's not necessarily a place you'd expect to find electric cars being put together, but the rows of electric two-seat hatchbacks in blue, red, and black turned out to be surprisingly...

A green roof is not at its most photogenic in a Michigan winter. In fact, it's hardly green at all--more like gray and brown--though it still insulates the building below just as well. But while some of the green aspects of Ford's showcase Rouge assembly plant have succumbed to the January weather...

Car assembly will never be the cleanest of processes, despite the efforts of people like Gordon Murray whose i-Stream production method for his T25 and T27 microcars is said to reduce the energy of car production by as much as 80 percent. Still, some companies do make the effort to bring down the...

Many houses, stores, and factories across the U.S. now have arrays of photovoltaic solar cells mounted on their roofs. These days, that's hardly news. But Ford's announcement that it will install half a megawatt of power-generating solar panels at its Wayne, Michigan, assembly plant has a new...

Think of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and very little seems conventional about it. With a range of 40 miles per charge and a range-extending gasoline engine used to provide extra power when the battery pack is depleted, Chevrolet is keen to push the car’s green credentials. Built at the Hamtramck...

The convoluted twists and turns of possible Prius production in the U.S. have taken another unexpected bend. A Toyota executive has now told Reuters that the company intends to build the quintessential hybrid in the States, but not until its next generation is launched. That would be in 2016, since...

The lithium-ion battery pack for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicles officially went into volume production today. The 16-kilowatt-hour battery pack, containing 220 lithium-ion cells made by Korea's LG Chem, will be assembled in a 160,000-square-foot factory in Brownstown...