The latest newsletter from proActive has hit the stands (metaphorical, screens really). There’s the second half of an interview I did with Richard Parry-Jones in which he talks about the UK auto industry and the role of government support. I also interviewed Dr Robert Hentschel, the recently appointed Director of Lotus Engineering. And there’s some interesting stuff about achieving vehicle mass reduction, as well as some insight into hybrid and electric vehicle testing at Lotus. Follow the link below for a reet rivetin’ read.
Posts Tagged ‘lotus engineering’
Richard Parry-Jones
January 26th, 2010 |
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I interviewed ex-Ford engineering supremo Richard Parry-Jones yesterday – the interview will first appear in the next edition of the Lotus Engineering publication proActive. If you know your Ford history, he was a key figure in the development of the 1998 Ford Focus and it was certainly interesting to hear his views on product development generally, as well as matters such as the challenges facing the auto industry, the ’50-metre test’ and what Jackie Stewart taught him, and the UK government initiative that is the ‘Automotive Council’. His time management in ‘semi-retirement’ (he left Ford at the end of ’07) sounded pretty good – I won’t go through the lengthy list of outdoor sports he participates in.
We did the interview down the telephone as he drove from his home in Wales to London. Fair play, he could have been sat in an office with a cup of tea – very composed and clear. In what was near perfect timing, we finished the interview as he reached a tube station in London to park. Was he taking the tube? No, he was transferring to a Brompton fold-away bicycle, which he maintains is the best way to get around central London. Fascinating bloke.
Lotus proActive
October 26th, 2009 |
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The latest edition of the newsletter we put together for Lotus Engineering is out. There’s an interesting piece on a range extender engine Lotus has developed specifically for series hybrids, as well as a useful summary of a seminar looking at low carbon technologies. Also included is an interview I did with Oskar Goitia from Mondragon’s automotive division. I found some of the history behind the Basque-based workers’ cooperative particularly fascinating.
Lotus proActive
August 20th, 2009 |
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The latest proActive – Lotus Engineering’s e-magazine that we do for them – has just gone live. There’s a fancy online viewer now which I just tried and seems to do the job pretty well. But if you want to download the pdf in the traditional way, there’s a PDF icon in the far right of the screen – when you are in the viewer – that gives you that option. You can even select all or just a part of it to download.
The latest Lotus proActive is out
June 19th, 2009 |
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The latest edition of Lotus Engineering’s proActive e-magazine is now out and available for free download. It includes a particularly interesting feature on City Cars first published in Automotive Engineer that is well worth a read. It’s key reading for anyone seriously interested in the segment and the fundamentals that drive design in small cars.
What else is in the latest edition? As John Cleese would say in Monty Python, ‘And now for something completely different…’
I interviewed the head of a company in the Netherlands that is about to commission the world’s largest second generation biofuel manufacturing plant (BioMCN makes bio-methanol from glycerine that is a by-product of biodiesel production). BioMCN’s CEO, Rob Voncken, was certainly an interesting interviewee: a trained scientist with a business brain who is also motivated by the idea of doing something good for the environment.
He was charming and cool as a cucumber when I talked to him, but it’s quite a project he is in charge of. He could be forgiven a bit of stress as commercial production inauguration approaches. The business opportunity? In the short-term it’s about substituting bio-ethanol for bio-methanol in the gasoline alcohol blend (it can be mixed and we get ‘A85′ rather than E85 with all its food chain incursion woes). There are some pretty powerful interests behind ethanol though.
And there’s also a fascinating insider view from the Lotus marketing department on how they approached the press launch for the Evora. It’s clearly a highly targeted exercise and they don’t do model launches often, so when they do, they put some serious thought into it. And they don’t exactly scrimp judging by the pic of the hotel on Loch Lomond. I just hope the Scottish weather was kind.
If you are signed up already for proActive, you should automatically receive an email with a link for the pdf. If not, why not get yourself signed up – it’s free.