Ingolstadt - The Audi car manufacturer will be expanding its’ Ingolstadt location and has purchased a 40 acre plot. On the premises of the industrial park, Münchsmünster will be under a different press plant, and assembly lines for body panels and an aluminum foundry are to be developed, announced the corporate group on Tuesday. The first development of 27 hectares of land will start later this year. "The…

Reuters reported that Audi AG plans to increase the capacity at its Indian plant by 50%, the head of its India unit said, as it looks to become the country's biggest luxury vehicle brand. Mr Michael Perschke head of Audi India said that the Volkswagen AG owned carmaker plans to increase capacity at its Aurangabad plant in western India to 9,000 vehicles from 6,000 vehicles by the end of 2012. Audi sold just…

Audi is poised to switch to lightweight aluminium construction for future models from the A4 upwards. By the middle of the next decade only the A3 and forthcoming A1 families will be based on conventional steel monocoque chassis. An Audi source told Autocar that the company ‘will shift quite quickly to hybrid aluminium construction’ for the next-generation A6 and A4 models, after rolling it out on the next…

Amid a spate of new capacity and capability, automakers and their suppliers are responding to demand and meeting their own objectives. There are many reasons that automakers add metalcasting capacity, but all of these generally amount to two necessities: the producers require more casting volume and better casting quality to meet changing demand. Each of these is on display among the many projects recently…

German auto parts supplier Hella is preparing for a long low in the industry, and plans to cut around 900 jobs at its headquarters in Lippstadt by the end of 2023. Administration and development are affected, a specialist said on Tuesday. “The general market environment has now changed significantly again. Therefore, there is no way around further structural adjustments,” explained CEO Rolf Breidenbach.…

Fast and accurate installation and mounting of wheels Using manual assembly methods to mount wheels onto cars in continuous operation is extremely costly for automotive manufacturers - due mainly to the fact that several assembly workers are required to perform this work. IBG Automation GmbH (Neuenrade, Germany), an automation solutions provider, has designed a sophisticated assembly system for the…

At our conference, get to know which steel technologies are the best for innovative auto applications and find the optimum steel materials for alternative powertrains such as EVs and HEVs. Presentations will center around following topics: • Market trends and outlook, e.g. new steel alloys and EVs • Lightweight solutions realised through steel • Optimum steel materials, e.g. processing of stainless steels •…

Rolf Frech to be Board Member for Engineering Bentley Motors announced today the appointment of Rolf Frech (53) as its new Board Member for Engineering. Frech joins from Porsche AG where he was Director for Complete Vehicle Engineering and Quality. He succeeds Dr Ulrich Eichhorn, who is to take up the position of Managing Director with the Verband der Automobilindustrie (VDA), the German Association of the…

BMW 3 Series sedan engines : fascinating drive technology spanning five vehicle generations. In 1975, the sporty midrange BMW 3 Series established a new vehicle category. Innovative engines rendered it a forerunner for state-of-the-art technology. For 36 years now, the BMW 3 Series has profited more than almost any other model series from its fascinating drive technology. During a period spanning five…

The BMW 328 is considered the most successful and best-looking sports car of the 1930s. The BMW 328's success was the result of its design parameters - through the use of systematic lightweight construction, aerodynamic lines, opti-mum engine types and outstanding suspension technology, it laid the foundation stone for a new vehicle concept, by which performance only leads to success if combined with…