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Ford's cars being held up in Chinese ports in trade tensions with U.S.

BEIJING — Ford Motor Co's imported vehicles are being held up at Chinese ports, three people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, underscoring how U.S. goods are facing increased customs scrutiny in China amid a tense trade standoff. The three people said Ford and Lincoln vehicles were facing unusual delays at customs, with officials asking for extra technical checks. Two of the people said U.S.-made models of some German carmakers, mainly SUVs, being brought into China, were also affected. Ford was being asked to do extra checks on emission components, said a China-based Ford executive familiar with the matter, asking not be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. China's customs agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The holdups add to a growing list of American products facing issues at China's borders, as officials try to avert a full-blown trade war. Some trade experts said they believe Beijing is sending a defiant warning to Washington in response to sweeping U.S. trade demands made on China last week. Reuters reported Tuesday that China had ramped up inspections of pork shipped from the United States, after the country's customs agency said it would step up quarantine checks on American apples and logs. The second person, a China-based industry official with knowledge of the matter, said the delays for Ford — as well as some U.S.-made cars from BMW and Mercedes-Benz — had been going on for the last two weeks. "Customs pretends there are technical non-conformities of some nature that won't allow them to clear these U.S.-made cars through customs, but the U.S.-China trade frictions must be the background to this," he said. "Although no one will officially admit it." Responding to a request for comment from Reuters, a BMW spokesman said that "U.S.-made BMW cars have not been delayed at the ports as of last week and before." A Daimler spokeswoman said it was "monitoring the situation closely" regarding ongoing trade talks between China and the United States, but that she could not speculate further on other matters. The third person said the Ford issue, which had been noted by the United States government, and other holdups facing American goods, were clearly related to the trade dispute. A Ford spokeswoman in Shanghai when asked about the matter said: "We are closely monitoring our situation at the port." She declined to comment further.

Aluminum lightweighting does, in fact, save fuel

When the best-selling US truck sheds the equivalent weight of three football fullbacks by shifting to aluminum, folks start paying attention. Oak Ridge National Laboratory took a closer look at whether the reduced fuel consumption from a lighter aluminum body makes up for the fact that producing aluminum is far more energy intensive than steel. And the results of the study are pretty encouraging. In a nutshell, the energy needed to produce a vehicle's raw materials accounts for about 10 percent of a typical vehicle's carbon footprint during its total lifecycle, and that number is up from six percent because of advancements in fuel economy (fuel use is down to about 68 percent of total emissions from about 75 percent). Still, even with that higher material-extraction share, the fuel-efficiency gains from aluminum compared to steel will offset the additional vehicle-extraction energy in just 12,000 miles of driving, according to the study. That means that, from an environmental standpoint, aluminum vehicles are playing with the house's money after just one year on the road. Aluminum-sheet construction got topical real quickly earlier this year when Ford said the 2015 F-150 pickup truck would go to a 93-percent aluminum body construction. In addition to aluminum being less corrosive than steel, that change caused the F-150 to shed 700 pounds from its curb weight. And it looks like the Explorer and Expedition SUVs may go on an aluminum diet next. Take a look at SAE International's synopsis of the Oak Ridge Lab's study below. Life Cycle Energy and Environmental Assessment of Aluminum-Intensive Vehicle Design Advanced lightweight materials are increasingly being incorporated into new vehicle designs by automakers to enhance performance and assist in complying with increasing requirements of corporate average fuel economy standards. To assess the primary energy and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) implications of vehicle designs utilizing these materials, this study examines the potential life cycle impacts of two lightweight material alternative vehicle designs, i.e., steel and aluminum of a typical passenger vehicle operated today in North America. LCA for three common alternative lightweight vehicle designs are evaluated: current production ("Baseline"), an advanced high strength steel and aluminum design ("LWSV"), and an aluminum-intensive design (AIV).

Ford partnering with MIT, Stanford on autonomous vehicle research

Ask any car engineer what's the biggest variable in achieving fuel economy targets, and he'll tell you "the driver." If one human can't understand human driving behavior enough to be certain about an innocuous number like miles per gallon, how is an autonomous car supposed to figure out what hundreds of other drivers are going to do in the course of a day? Ford has enlisted the help of Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to find out.
Starting with the automated Fusion Hybrid introduced in December, MIT will be developing algorithms that driverless cars can use to "predict actions of other vehicles and pedestrians" and objects within the three-dimensional map provided by its four LIDAR sensors.
The Stanford team will research how to extend the 'vision' of that LIDAR array beyond obstructions while driving, analogous to the way a driver uses the entire width of a lane to see what's ahead of a larger vehicle in front. Ford says it wants to "provide the vehicle with common sense" as part of its Blueprint for Mobility, preparing for an autonomous world from 2025 and beyond.