This book explores the generation of technological knowledge and the introduction of technological change. Antonelli makes his mark in this new area of debate by arguing that increasing returns in the production of knowledge apply. By putting forward a general, interpretative framework, Antonelli enables understanding of the economic and institutional determinants of technological innovation.

The globalization of the motor vehicle industry--specifically, cars and light trucks--has engendered new forms of competition and cooperation with less regard for national boundaries than ever before. The DaimlerChrysler merger, the GM-Toyota joint venture, the Renault equity stake in Nissan, the Ford takeover of Mazda, Jaguar, and Volvo cars, and direct foreign investments in Mexico, Mercosur (Mercado Com DEGREESD'un del Sur), China, and India--developments like these are almost impossible to keep up with. Hiraoka, a prize-winning analyst of manufacturing excellence in the automotive industry, surveys them and their causes and presents a clarifying picture with thoroughness and depth.

Hiraoka's explanation of the various factors contributing to globalization of the motor vehicle industry provides the background information necessary to gain perspective on recent events. These developments include e-commerce networks, alliances with local and far-flung parts suppliers, low-cost mass production and distribution systems, the launching of hybrid products in mature economies, and the buildup of capacity in emerging markets. His analysis ranges widely, delving into managerial reactions to regional free-trade blocks, currency crises, government shifts away from central planning and trade protectionism, the vicissitudes of business cycles in emerging markets, and the juxtaposition of Japan's prolonged recession and the booming American motor vehicle market. Corporate decision-makers, labor leaders, policy analysts, researchers, students, and industry observers will benefit from understanding the global characteristics of today's motor vehicle industry.

This study examines a crucial period in European integration, ending in the early 1990s, when significant progress was made towards the dream of a unified European market. It shows how European automakers were part of these changes and how their influence within the institutions of the European Union (EU) yielded a wide range of policy compromises governing a single European car market.
The book begins by reviewing the history of the EU and the logic of regional free trade, and goes on to develop a political explanation for the kinds of changes that actually occurred. The author argues that European automakers enjoyed a privileged place in the political arena, albeit one much transformed by the new institutions of the EU. Therefore, these firms often significantly influenced regional policy outcomes. The argument is applied to policymaking in the important areas of environmental regulation, trade, subsidies, and anti-trust regulation.
This work lies at the intersection of business, economics, and political science and is of interest to both experts and non-specialists with an interest in the tremendous economic and political changes brought about by the creation of a united Europe and, more generally, by the worldwide process of regional economic integration. Academics, professionals, businessmen, and leaders in government all have something to learn from the way in which firms and governments combined to build the largest car market in the world.
Roland Stephen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, North Carolina State University.

A fascinating and well-researched look at the British motor industry which will appeal to both academic readers and practitioners alike. Why are there now no major car manufacturers in Britain? Whisler considers this and the surrounding issues, making valuable comparisons with overseas manufacturers operating both in the UK and abroad, which provide us with additional interest and insight. Based upon careful use of company archives, this book covers in particular the issues of product development, quality, design, and range, ensuring that The British Motor Industry is destined to make a distinctive contribution to our understanding of the performance of UK manufacturers.

This comprehensive chronology of the automobile covers its engineering as well as the social, cultural, and political impact of the car from the invention of the wheel to the O.J. Simpson car chase. It examines the auto industry, the road and roadside, the car in popular culture, gasoline/fuel history, the spatial transformation of cities, air pollution, critics of car culture, traffic accidents, the globalization of car culture, and much more. This is a reference guide for students and scholars of transportation history as well as anyone who has ever asked When did Japan export the first car to the U.S.? or When and how was smog discovered? or What make of car did Chuck Berry drive?

Nearly every country that produces cars views the automobile industry as strategically important because of its direct economic significance and because it serves as a bell-weather for innovation in employment conditions. In this book, industrial relations experts from eleven countries consider the state of the industry worldwide. They are particularly interested in assessing whether the loudly heralded model of lean production initiated by Toyota has become pervasive.

The contributors focus on employment practices: the way work is organized, how workers and managers interact, the way worker representatives respond to lean production strategies, and the nature of the adaptation and innovation process itself. Global competition and changing technological possibilities are pressuring other industries to transform their employment practices and the auto industry may be an important harbinger of what is to come.

"This book has two main strengths. First, its approach gives a sense of the texture and variety of the implementation of lean production, the forces that shape it in practice, and the alternatives that may be available. Second, the book's international focus provides a wealth of fascinating material concerning the influence of national conditions on the shaping of production practices." Harley Shaiken, author of Work Transformed: Automation and Labor in the Computer AgeNearly every country that produces cars views the automobile industry as strategically important because of its direct economic significance and because it serves as a bellwether for innovation in employment conditions. In this book, industrial relations experts from eleven countries consider the state of the industry worldwide. They are particularly interested in assessing whether the loudly heralded model of lean production initiated by Toyota has become pervasive.The contributors focus on employment practices: the way work is organized, how workers and managers interact, the way worker representatives respond to lean production strategies, and the nature of the adaptation and innovation process itself."

This study of CAMI Automotive, a unionized joint venture between General Motors and Suzuki, is the most comprehensive ever undertaken of a lean production plant. James Rinehart, Christopher Huxley, and David Robertson address a topic that has inspired fierce debate in industrial relations, sociology, labor studies, and human resource management. Heralded as a model of lean production when it opened in 1989, CAMI promised workers something different from traditional plants a humane environment, empowerment, and cooperative labor-management relations. However, the enthusiasm workers felt during the orientation and early phases of production steadily declined, as did their involvement in participatory activities. Workers came to describe CAMI as "just another car factory." Union challenges and shopfloor resistance to key elements of the lean system grew, capped by a five-week strike in 1992. The authors attribute workers' disillusionment to lean production itself rather than to North American managers' inadequate implementation."

In Comeback, Pulitzer Prize-winners Paul Ingrassia and Joseph B. White take us to the boardrooms, the executive offices, and the shop floors of the auto business to reconstruct, in riveting detail, how America's premier industry stumbled, fell, and picked itself up again. The story begins in 1982, when Honda started building cars in Marysville, Ohio, and the entire U.S. car industry seemed to be on the brink of extinction. It ends just over a decade later, with a remarkable turn of the tables, as Japan's car industry falters and America's Big Three emerge as formidable global competitors.

Comeback is a story propelled by larger-than-life characters -- Lee Iacocca, Henry Ford II, Don Petersen, Roger Smith, among many others -- and their greed, pride, and sheer refusal to face facts. But it is also a story full of dedicated, unlikely heroes who struggled to make the Big Three change before it was too late.

The decline of the British motor industry is one of the most spectacular developments in Britain's economic history. Conflicting explanations have been offered by scholars from different disciplines to produce a complex debate, which this 1995 study attempts to unravel. Placing the industry firmly in a European context, Roy Church re-examines the critical assessment of the achievements of the industry both before and after the onset of its decline in the 1960s, and goes on to test the various explanations which have been offered to account for this decline. He examines the role of government, of the trade unions, of management and of the multinationals, each of which has been seen as a major player in the demise of the British-owned industry. This concise and lucid review of the debate will be invaluable to students of modern British and European economic history.

Are state and local economic incentives to attract new firms worthwhile? Mitsubishi Motors in Illinois provides in-depth analysis of the incentives offered to land Diamond-Star Motors, the plant's labor force, supplier organization, and its community impact to answer this question. The authors conclude with a benefit-cost analysis of the incentive package at the community and at the state level. Written in nontechnical language, the book is intended for planners and administrators in state and local government, economic and business development officers, and international corporate management, as well as economists and public policy analysts.

Although much research has been compiled separately on the various issues surrounding the establishment of Japanese auto manufacturing plants in the United States, this work is unique for its direct surveys of workers, suppliers, members of the community, and city and state leaders involved in the negotiations. Data on the local housing impact are drawn from detailed examination of loan applications in the community during the major hiring period at the plant. While some results confirm previous work, the authors find many differences, particularly in the composition of the labor force and the effect of just-in-time production methods on supplier location. The book provides a comprehensive view of the community and regional impact of a Japanese auto manufacturing plant which can be used as a model for planning economic development strategies to attract new firms to states and communities. Written in nontechnical language, the book is intended for planners and administrators in state and local government, economic and business development officers, and international corporate management, as well as economists and public policy analysts.

Yang analyzes the impact of globalization on national economic boundaries, using the automobile industry to contrast three different economic systems. Corporations emerge as new players in international relations. Their corporate policies and manufacturer-supplier linkages influence the international division of labor among modern nations. Their competitive strategy affects the ability of governments to regulate national economies. Scholars in international, regional, and developmental economics will find this work provides interesting material on global competition.

In less than 30 years, the Japanese automobile industry has risen from obscurity to become the world's leading automobile producer. This bibliography, which lists over 600 English-language titles, focuses on the Japanese automobile industry and its development in the postwar era, especially the period of mass expansion from 1980 to the present. It touches particularly on topics pertaining to the Japanese automobile industry as it relates to the U.S. automobile industry, including the operation of the two industries, Japanese transplants in the United States, and government trade issues. It also features case studies of major Japanese automobile manufacturers. Coverage includes books, articles, conference papers, periodicals, government documents, and audio-visual materials. Entries are fully annotated, and the work is indexed.

For three years, journalists Joseph and Suzy Fucini closely observed the interactions between American managers and workers and their top Japanese bosses at a new state-of-the-art Mazda auto plant in Michigan. They found that for all its strengths, the team system requires sacrifice of individual interests to the good of the group, and that no matter how hard an individual tries to become Japanese, advancement, for both managers and workers alike, will be limited by the fact that they are not Japanese.

Safety has been ranked as the number one concern for the acceptance and adoption of automated vehicles since safety has driven some of the most complex requirements in the development of self-driving vehicles. Recent fatal accidents involving self-driving vehicles have uncovered issues in the way some automated vehicle companies approach the design, testing, verification, and validation of their products. Traditionally, automotive safety follows functional safety concepts as detailed in the standard ISO 26262. However, automated driving safety goes beyond this standard and includes other safety concepts such as safety of the intended functionality (SOTIF) and multi-agent safety. The Role of ISO 26262 addresses the concept of safety for self-driving vehicles through the inclusion of 10 recent and highly relevent SAE technical papers. Topics that these papers feature include model-based systems engineering (MBSE) and the use of SysML language in a management-based approach to safety. As the fourth title in a series on automated vehicle safety, each will contain introductory content by the Editor with 10 SAE technical papers specifically chosen to illuminate the specific safety topic of that book.

The automobile industry is evolving rapidly on a worldwide basis. All of the biggest, most successful firms have become totally global in nature. Plunkett's Automobile Industry Almanac will be your complete guide to this immense, fascinating industry. This exciting new book is a complete reference tool for everything you need to know.

This book seeks to make an original contribution to the knowledge base underpinning ultrasonic metal welding (USMW), particularly for the manufacturing of lithium-ion (li-ion) battery cells, modules, and packs as used in electric vehicles. The contributors to the book represent a team of leading experts in the field. Since its commercialization in the early 1990s, the lithium-ion (li-ion) battery has seen rapid growth due to its advantages of high voltage and high power/energy density. The growth has become particularly strong during the past decade with the development of li-ion battery powered electric vehicles. The book focuses mainly on two-layer and multi-layer aluminum (with and without anodizing) and copper (with and without nickel coating) welding configurations. Thus, its value to the practitioners in li-ion batteries and battery electric vehicles is self-evident. The theories and methods presented in the book are highly transferable and extendable to all other li-ion battery applications, and can be of significant values to battery manufacturers and the electric vehicle industry in general. Furthermore, the new knowledge generated can drive the development of such innovative technologies as single-sided USMW, and thermally enhanced USMW for multiple layers of thick-sheets and hard-to-weld materials. It is expected that the book may have even broader implications in understanding and developing more effective solid state joining processes such as cladding, impact welding, friction stir welding, and ultrasonic consolidations for additive manufacturing, which are all strongly governed by the similar solid-state physics.

Since the early seventies, the development of the automobile has been characterized by a steady increase in the deployment of onboard electronics systems and software. This trend continues unabated and is driven by rising end-user demands and increasingly stringent environmental requirements. Today, almost every function onboard the modern vehicle is electronically controlled or monitored. The software-based implementation of vehicle functions provides for unparalleled freedoms of concept and design. However, automobile development calls for the accommodation of contrasting prerequisites - such as higher demands on safety and reliability vs. lower cost ceilings, longer product life cycles vs. shorter development times - along with growling proliferation of model variants. Automotive Software Engineering has established its position at the center of these seemingly conflicting opposites. This book provides background basics as well as numerous suggestions, rare insights, and cases in point concerning those processes, methods, and tools that contribute to the surefooted mastery of the use of electronic systems and software in the contemporary automobile.

This book introduces the issues and problems that arise when implementing smart energy management for sustainable manufacturing in the automotive manufacturing industry and the analytical tools and applications to deal with them. It uses a number of illustrative examples to explain energy management in automotive manufacturing, which involves most types of manufacturing technology and various levels of energy consumption. It demonstrates how analytical tools can help improve energy management processes, including forecasting, consumption, and performance analysis, emerging new technology identification as well as investment decisions for establishing smart energy consumption practices. It also details practical energy management systems, making it a valuable resource for professionals involved in real energy management processes, and allowing readers to implement the procedures and applications presented.

Winner of the 2005 Business History Review Newcomen Award for best book in business history, The Struggle for Control of the Modern Corporation provides a fascinating historical overview of decision-making and political struggle within one of America's largest and most important corporations. Drawing on primary historical material, Robert Freeland examines the changes in General Motors' organization between the years 1924 and 1970. He takes issue with the well-known argument of business historian Alfred Chandler and economist Oliver Wiliamson, who contend that GM's multidivisional corporate structure emerged and survived because it was more efficient than alternative forms of organization. This book illustrates that for most of its history, GM intentionally violated the fundamental axioms of efficient organization put forth by these analysts. It did so in order to create cooperation and managerial consent to corporate policies. Freeland uses the GM case to re-examine existing theories of corporate governance, arguing that the decentralized organizational structure advocated by efficiency theorists may actually undermine cooperation, and thus foster organizational decline.

John Cuthbert Long's Roy D. Chapin is a thorough and detailed biography of a remarkable, but little-known Detroit automobile industry pioneer. Historians should include Roy Dikeman Chapin (February 23, 1880-February 16, 1936) in any listing of significant American auto industry pioneers, along with the Duryea brothers, Ransom E. Olds, Henry Leland, Henry Ford, William C. Durant, and the Dodge brothers. Outside the cloister of automotive historians, Roy Chapin is an unknown. This is in part because no company or car bore his name. Unlike many contemporary auto pioneers, Roy Chapin was a modest man who did not promote himself. Even Long's superb biography of Chapin is not well-known because it was privately printed in 1945 with a small press run. In reprinting this volume, Wayne State University Press is making an important contribution to automotive history.

This book examines Foreign Direct Investment of major Korean automotive companies in Europe, with particular reference to how economic integration has affected the motivations and patterns of FDI and industrial location. The book is a valuable source of information on FDI, the automobile industry in Europe and South Korea and business decision-making process in general.

"Pick a good model and stay with it," Henry Ford once said. No, he was not talking about cars; he was talking about marriage. Was Clara Bryant Ford a "good model"? Her husband of fifty-nine years seems to have thought so. He called her "The Believer," and indeed Clara's unwavering support of Henry's pursuits and her patient tolerance of the quirks and obsessions that accompanied her husband's genius made it possible for him to change the world. In telling the story of "Clara Ford", author Ford Bryan also charts the course of the growing automobile industry and the life of the enigmatic man at its helm. But the book's heart is Clara herself-daughter, sister, wife, mother, and grandmother; cook, gardener, and dancer; modest philanthropist and quiet role model. Clara is newly revealed in accounts and documents gleaned from personal papers, oral histories, and archival material never made public until now.

Henry Martyn Leland (1843-1932) is one of the most outstanding figures in automotive history. Best known for developing the Cadillac and the Lincoln, Leland was among the pioneers who set Detroit on its course as the automobile capital of the world. Master of Precision is the fascinating first hand account of Leland's life and work during the early days of the automobile industry. Trained in New England factories known for their precision manufacturing, Henry Leland was an expert machinist before he began to reshape automobile production. Affectionately called "Uncle Henry" and the "Grand Old Man of Detroit," he was a demanding but highly-respected employer who set new standards of precision, quality, and performance. First published in 1966 by Wayne State University Press, Master of Precision was re-released in 1996 in celebration of the centennial of automobile manufacturing in North America.