Automotive News Europe - September 2011 - 53

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS EUROPE

OEM

LEANER, GREENER AND MORE HIGH-TECH
How Europe’s car and component plants are changing for the better
DOUGLAS A. BOLDUC
dbolduc@crain.com

uropean factories are being upgraded to make them greener, leaner and more capable of working with hightech materials such as carbon fiber. It’s all part of the industry’s effort to boost the sustainability of their plants while also improving their productivity and creativity to gain a competitive advantage over rivals. To become more environmentally friendly, Renault, Audi, Ford, Toyota and Daimler and others are turning to solar fields and wind turbines in Europe. Since early 2010, Audi has dedicated 27,000 square meters of roof space at its facilities in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm, both in Germany, to generate electricity from the sun, resulting in CO2 savings of more than 1,000 metric tons a year. “We can produce more than 1,900 megawatt hours of electrical energy each year (in Neckarsulm). This corresponds to the electrical consumption of 418 four-person households,” Bernd Martin, Audi’s head of environmental protection, said in a release. Toyota says it will slash 25 percent off its heating bill and cut emissions by 20 metric tons a year because of a new solar structure installed this summer on the wall of its car assembly plant in Valenciennes, France. When sunlight hits the 12-by-33 meter solar wall, the panels absorb the heat, which warms the interior of the building up to 9 degrees Celsius during cold weather. Also this summer, Toyota started generating energy from 17,000 solar panels at its plant in Burnaston, England. The system has

the capacity to save 2,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions from the complex each year, and realize an energy saving equivalent to 4.6 million kilowatt hours – roughly the power needed to build 7,000 cars a year. In late 2009, Ford started getting power from two 150-meter-tall wind turbines at its plant in Genk, Belgium. Each wind turbine can generate two megawatts – enough to power 2,300 private homes. The wind turbines provide a significant part of the electrical power needed in the Genk plant, which makes the Ford Mondeo, S-Max and Galaxy models. The rest of the plant’s power comes from renewable energy sources, helping the factory save about 40,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions each year. Meanwhile, Ford’s engine plant in Dagenham, England, has met all of its electricity needs with power from two wind turbines since 2004. Dagenham tapped into a third wind turbine last month. The new turbine covers all the electricity needs of the plant’s newly installed production line for the 1.4- and 1.6-liter Duratorq TDCi diesels. Leaner output Besides making their factories greener, automakers are also making them more efficient and high tech. Volkswagen Group plans to tap into the energy produced by its press shops, manufacturing boss Michael Macht said. “With a press, you first have to raise the die – and that takes energy. We can recapture a part of this energy during the lowering and braking of the die, since the new press lines have direct drive servo systems with highly dynamic torque motors. There is a great dynamic and all kinds of potential with this issue,” Macht told Automotive News Europe sister publication Automobilwoche. VW is also an industry leader when it comes to using so-called “megaplatforms,” which allow automakers to gain scale, increase flexibility and boost margins by rolling out a seemingly endless variety of models that are virtually identical under the skin. By 2018 VW Group plans to make 40 models, generating production of 6 million vehicles using its Modular Transverse Toolkit. “With the toolkit strategy, we aim to reduce onetime-expenditure and unit costs by 20 percent each, and assembly hours – the time each takes to manufacture – by 30 per-

cent,” VW brand product development boss Ulrich Hackenberg told ANE. A typical assembly plant produces about 250,000 vehicles a year, while fewer than 100,000 units of individual models are made sometimes, according to consultancy Oliver Wyman. Data from analysts IHS Automotive shows that the number of models produced on a platform will rise to 3.2 from about 2.6 last year and 2.2 in 2002. For years, the magic word has been “standardization.” Automakers must now develop a joint strategic blueprint otherwise they won’t be able to produce several vehicle models on the same assembly line all over the world, as Ford does with the new Focus, which by 2012 will be rolling out of plants in Germany, Russia, the United States, China and Thailand. New capabilities The plant of the future also will need to be able to work with cutting-edge materials such as carbon fiber. This will result in less stamping, welding and painting at factories as the use of the lightweight material grows (see related story, page 76). “Look at the carbon technology. You don’t need a body shell, welding robots or a paint shop. Instead, carbon involves weaving,” BMW Chief Financial Officer Friedrich Eichiner told ANE. BMW is getting ready for this by investing 530 million euros to upgrade plants in Leipzig and Landshut, Germany, as well as opening a joint venture facility with carbon fiber specialist SGL Group in Moses Lake, Washington. The plants will process the carbon fiber that BMW says will be crucial to the success of its i3 and i8 electric cars, starting with the launch of the i3 in 2013. Eichiner said that he believes BMW’s investment in innovation will give it a competitive advantage over rivals Audi and Mercedes-Benz. “The BMW i3 and i8 are the best examples,” he said. “They don’t merely involve conversions, that is, electric motors installed in traditional bodies. The BMW i3 is the first high-volume vehicle whose body is made of carbon fiber to a large degree. That’s a revolution in automobile manufacturing. In addition, we systematically organized the value added chain to be sustainable.” Harald Hamprecht, Luca Ciferri and Henning Krogh contributed

Ford uses power from two 150-meter-tall wind turbines to cover much of its electricity needs to produce the Ford Mondeo, S-Max and Galaxy in Genk, Belgium.

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