Toyota has kept its title of most valuable brand in a recent annual survey and report - the Kanter Millward Brown Top 100 Most Valuable Brands. It is the 12th time in fourteen years that Toyota has come out on top of all the car brands listed. However in the last few years, automotive marques have been overtaken by other brands in the valuation list. In 2017 there were six … [Read more...]
BMW Self Driving Consortium
Over the last few weeks, Motoring Weekly has been publishing articles about the companies behind the scenes of autonomous vehicle development. Most are unknown to the general public, however this article covers a name that everyone knows about: BMW. Firstly though, it is important to define what “autonomous” means and the levels of autonomy that the industry has agreed on - … [Read more...]
German Manufacturers Charged with Collusion
Well this is a damaging blow to the “vorsprung durch technik” aka progress through technology line spun by one German manufacturer. The EU has expanded on the VW Group emissions testing scandal by laying more charges against VW, Audi and Porsche along with BMW and Mercedes-Benz, in other words, pretty much all of Germany’s mainstream manufacturers! In the original issue, … [Read more...]
Rack and Pinion Steering
Rack and Pinion Steering on cars is one of those inventions that appeared early on in the life of the automobile and was taken from another source. Many early components on cars started out life being used by other machines before being enhanced and evolving into something far more complex. The simplest explanation of how it works is that the steering column has a classical … [Read more...]
BMW Takes Control of China JV
Times, they are a changing. China, where there is a massive growth in car sales as the economy grows and the population becomes wealthier, has been looking at market forces and investments. China, like Japan up to 70 odd years ago, was a closed market and to enter it, a company needed to have a majority local partner. That meant that all the European and US car manufacturers … [Read more...]
