Search Results for: cars

BY KEITH NUTHALL and MARK ROWE

AS auto manufacturers start to realise the utility of incorporating parts and components using nanotechnology to improve their performance, the European Union (EU) is looking hard at special regulations to protect the public and the environment from nanoparticles.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

IMAGINATION and guile continue to help fraudsters milk hundreds of millions of Euros from the European Union’s (EU) well-stocked budgets, explains the latest report from EU anti-fraud agency OLAF, writes Keith Nuthall.

OLAF spends a lot of money sniffing out fraud in the institutions and programmes of the EU and the payment of duties earmarked to fund this spending.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has formally proposed that the European Union (EU) adopts the global technical standard for electric vehicles – as agreed in 1997 by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). Assuming the EU Council of Ministers and European Parliament agree, then EU countries will have the same rules for manufacturing electric cars – preventing national rules impeding the sale of cars from different member states.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) case involving Volvo looks likely to reduce the protection of sacked auto dealers recovering indemnity payments from their former auto maker suppliers. Court advocate general Yves Bot has formally advised that under EU directive 86/653/EEC on self-employed commercial agents, that auto manufacturers can withhold indemnities, even when the grounds for refusing repayment was a different contract infringement than the problem that sparked a dealer’s initial dismissal.…

BY WANG FANGQING

THE RASH of strikes that have hit China’s auto sector are certainly insufficient to persuade manufacturers to scale back their expansion plans, but the long term lessons are clear: China is no longer a bargain basement labor market of placid easily-pleased workers.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH,PAUL RIGG,LEE ADENDOORF,MAKKI MARSEILLES,E BLAKE BERRY,FLORENCE LABEDAYS,SYMON ROSS and KEITH NUTHALL

WATER utilities are maybe used to getting bad press. After all, we all need water, and we need and want it to be clean. When a water supplier fails, it is easy to make complaints and see them amplified in newspapers, television, radio and the Internet.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

FOR growing markets such as electric cars, keeping regulatory standards simple can make or break a new technology. It can also give manufacturers a head start in the race to dominate a new market, if they are located in countries where rules are relatively straightforward and similar to those in other jurisdictions.…

BY LAWRENCE J SPEER

RECYCLING initiatives at Renault have boosted the use of recycled plastics in new cars and cut purchasing costs on some parts, but have yet to bring major cost savings for the French carmaker.

"If we order a piece in recycled plastic, we systematically insist on paying less than if it was made from virgin plastic," Fabrice Abraham, Renault’s recycling engineering manager, said during a recent environmental seminar in Paris.…

BY EMMA JACKSON

PAINT companies looking for an edge may very well find themselves turning to robots, as the industry in the Asia-Pacific region increasingly embraces automation. Cost effective, efficient and consistent, robots are indeed replacing employees in paint manufacturing processes and applications of coatings to products such as cars and machinery.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission – the executive body of the European Union (EU) today formally launched its bid to develop common technical standards for electric vehicle rechargers. It told the continent’s standards bodies, the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CEN) and the European Electrotechnical Standardization Committee (CENELEC), and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to develop a common charging system for electric cars, as well as scooters and bicycles.…