WeightReduction

Speaking outside its Electronics Research Lab in Palo Alto, CA, Volkswagen chairman Dr. Martin Winterkorn reconfirmed the automaker's commitment to bring electric vehicles to market in 2013, beginning with the eGolf compact and eUp! city car. Drawing a faint parallel to the original Beetle, ...

We've brought you stories before about the commitments by BMW and Mercedes to utilize carbon fiber as much as possible in future vehicles. We've also provided a study by Toyota which concludes that carbon fiber may not be as green ...

As the automotive industry continually searches for methods to reduce weight from vehicles, even the lowly seat has finally gotten itself a makeover. Lear Technologies claims that its new Evolution Seat can cut weight by as much as 25 pounds while maintaining all the bum-cushioning comforts ...

Affordability as the watchword Tuesday as automotive engineers at the SAE World Congress discussed how to meet the new 2016 corporate average fuel economy standards. Automakers will have to get their fleets to an average of 34.1 miles per gallon (35.5 equivalent with other factors for the EPA CO2 ...

The Jeep Liberty is not a particularly large vehicle, but Chrysler engineers managed to pack a lot of mass into it nonetheless. The current Liberty weighs in at nearly 4,300 pounds! At the Chrysler business plan meeting today, product development SVP Scott Kunselman revealed that aerodynamics and ...

As much as we like the Audi A5 with it's lovely lines and proportions and good driving dynamics, we have to admit that it's a bit porky. The lightest version currently available in the U.S. market is the 3.2-liter V6 quattro at ...

The next generation of BMW's 3-series looks like it will get some major revisions when it arrives in about two years. The new model is expected to be the first in the range to get new turbocharged three cylinder engines in both gas and diesel variants. The three-cylinder engines will likely be ...

In the grand scheme of things, the facilities and products of Lamborghini don't really amount to a hill of beans. After all, the company only has one main factory that produces a few thousand cars a year. While those cars are high-powered and consume a lot of fuel per mile driven, Lamborghini ...

French seat manufacturer Faurecia has announced a new seat design that eliminates completely the use of polyurethane foam. The model, called Sustainable Comfort Seat, has two sheets of injection-molded thermoplastic polyurethane instead of classic foam. The new process not only saves weight, it's ...

The "zoom-zoom" brand is, as always, just a little bit different from everyone else. While most of its Japanese competitors are focused on building hybrids or shifting to plug-ins of various types, Mazda is taking what it hopes will be a more cost effective approach: losing weight and going diesel. ...