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BMW names new CEO, chairman and head of development

Big changes are afoot in the top ranks at BMW, as the Bavarian automaker has announced not just one, but several appointments in the top floors of its towering headquarters in Munich in what the company itself is referring as "a generational change" in its leadership. The biggest change relates to the chairman of BMW's management board – German-speak for the company's chief executive officer. Effective at the end of the company's Annual General Meeting on May 13, 2015, the company will be run by Harald Kruger. The 49-year-old mechanical engineer has been with BMW since 1992 and has sat on its board since 2008, and has until now been responsible for production for the entire BMW Group. The chairmanship of the board of management currently belongs to Dr. Norbert Reithofer, whom the management is endorsing to chair the supervisory board (which Americans might call the board of directors). That role in turn is currently held by Professor Joachim Milberg, who will step down from his position in order to make way for Reithofer to take his place. Milberg is earmarked to remain with the company to oversee its corporate social responsibility and charitable activities. BMW has also announced the appointment of Klaus Frohlich to serve as its head of development with immediate effect. In his new capacity, Frohlich replaces Dr. Herbert Diess, who in turn has left Munich to take over the Volkswagen passenger car division. Below you'll find statements from both BMW and VW on their new appointments. BMW Group takes steps to initiate a generational change at the head of the Board of Management and Supervisory Board 09.12.2014 - Harald Kruger to become Chairman of the Board of Management in May 2015 - Dr. Norbert Reithofer proposed to succeed as Chairman of the Supervisory Board - Prof. Joachim Milberg to take leading role in the BMW Group's worldwide CSR activities and charitable foundations - Klaus Frohlich appointed to Board of Management with responsibility for Development Munich . At its meeting today, the Supervisory Board of BMW AG took the first steps to initiate a generational change at the head of the company's Board of Management and Supervisory Board. Harald Kruger will become Chairman of the Board of Management effective the end of the Annual General Meeting on 13 May 2015. The current Chairman of the Board of Management, Dr. Norbert Reithofer, will be put forward for election to the Supervisory Board at the 2015 Annual General Meeting.

Everybody's doing flying cars, so why aren't we soaring over traffic already?

"Where's my flying car?" has been the meme for impending technology that never materializes since before there were memes. And the trough of disillusionment for vehicles that can take to sky continues to nosedive, despite a nonstop fascination with flying cars and a recent rash of announcements about the technology, particularly from traditional automakers. Earlier this month, Toyota applied for an eye-popping patent for a flying car that has wheels with spring-loaded pop-out helicopter rotors. The patent filing says the wheels/rotors would be electrically powered, while in on-land mode the vehicle would have differential steering like tracked vehicles such as tanks and bulldozers. At an airshow in July, Aston Martin unveiled its Volante Vision Concept, an autonomous hybrid-electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicle it developed with Rolls-Royce. Aston says the Volante can fly at top speeds of around 200 mph and bills it as a luxury car for the skies. Audi used the Geneva Motor Show in March to unveil a flying car concept called the Pop.Up Next it developed with Airbus and Italdesign. If the Pop.Up Next, an electric and autonomous quadcopter/city car combo, gets stuck in traffic, an app can be used to summon an Airbus-developed drone to pick up the passenger compartment pod, leaving the chassis behind. Audi said that the Pop.Up Next is a "flexible on-demand concept that could open up mobility in the third dimension to people in cities." But Audi also acknowledged that at this point it has no plans to develop it. The cash-stoked, skies-the-limit Silicon Valley tech crowd is also bullish on flying cars. The startup Kitty Hawk that's backed by Google co-founder Larry Page announced in June that it's taking pre-orders for its single-seat electric Flyer that's powered by 10 propellers and is capable of vertical takeoffs and landings. The current version can only fly up to 20 mph and 10 feet in the air and has a flight time of just 12 to 20 minutes on a full charge. The Flyer is considered a recreational vehicle, so doesn't require a pilot's license. Uber says it plans to launch its more ambitious Elevate program and UberAIR service in 2023. "Uber customers will be able to push a button and get a flight on-demand with uberAIR in Dallas, Los Angeles and a third international market," Uber Elevate promises on its website.

VW joins Daimler's protest of new A/C refrigerant as EU deadline for compliance passes

The case of Dupont and Honeywell's refrigerant R-1234yf is doing the exact opposite of keeping things cool. The two chemical companies have spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing R-1234yf to replace R-134a, the new refrigerant shown to be 99.7-percent kinder to the environment than the one it is meant to succeed. Part of that development has been years of testing by governments, outside safety agencies and automakers to approve the chemical for use in cars. It passed the protocols necessary for the European Union to declare that new and significantly revised cars from 2013 onward needed to use R-1234yf, and mandated that every car as of 2017 must use it.
Enter Daimler AG. The automaker created a head-on collision test with a B-Class at their Sindelfingen test track that would lead to the pressurized refrigerant being sprayed on the engine. The result in 20 out of 20 test was that the refrigerant burst into flames as soon as it hit the hot engine, while Daimler says that R-134a does not catch fire in the same test. Another unexpected result of the R-1234yf test was the release of hydrogen flouride, a chemical far more deadly to humans than hydrogen cyanide, emitted in such amounts that it that turned the windshield white as it began to eat into the glass.
Said a Daimler engineer in a Reuters piece, "It was scarcely believable. The most complicated lab tests conducted using the most sensitive measuring instruments around found nothing and all we do is drive a car around a couple of times, open a tiny hole in the refrigerant line and the next thing you know the car is on fire." So Daimler said it wouldn't use the refrigerant, and it recalled the cars it had already shipped with R-1234yf.