There are many issues that are currently facing the American Automotive industry, especially in terms of environmental factors. The automotive industry has been around for a very long time, and is a relatively stable industry, but there are still areas where automotive companies need to adapt and if they fail to do so, they will be at a disadvantage against their peers, both here in America and also globally. In this essay I will break down a few of the issues that I believe are plaguing the American Automotive Industry.
Since the 1960’s there have been many government acts passed that aim to increase the safety of vehicles, and decrease the environmental effect that they have on the world (Automotive Industry Analysis, pg 1). It is no secret that car’s emissions cause serious environmental issues with their pollution, and as this information has come out, there have been more and more Acts that place limits on automobile companies or force them to research ways to create more environmentally green cars.
This need to create ecofriendly cars has meant that many American automobile companies have had to overhaul their processes; not only in investing money to find cleaner sources of energy and ways to fuel cars, but also because they have established protocol and procedures already that will also need to be overhauled. This is clearly a difficult demand for long established companies, many of which are American, because in order to keep up not only with the law but also with
Today’s society now has a greater concern for the environment which can affect the automobile industry. More people want hybrid or fuel efficient cars to decrease their carbon footprint. People also want to see businesses take on more corporate social responsibility as well as continuing advances in technology.
Every day, millions of Americans turn on the engines of their cars and drive to school or work. What these people do not realize is that the vehicles they operate greatly pollute the planet. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent website post, “Environmental Impacts from Automobiles”,
The United States of America is one of the biggest automobile markets in the world. This trend has also created awareness for environmentalist to bring attention to rising level of pollution and emission within the cities and metropolis. As response, the U.S. Government is encouraging the automobile manufacturers to produce clean and renewable alternative vehicles that will drastically reduce pollution and emission. Subsequently, the automobile industry has witnessed a gradual introduction of environmental friendly vehicles that use clean and renewable energy to encourage less pollution and safer environment. The manufactures of these vehicles have introduced into the market three categories of electric passenger car
Cars and truck account for 20% of all U.S. global warming emissions, where more than 24 pounds per gallon of carbon dioxide and other global warming gases come right out of the car’s tailpipe (“Union of Concerned scientists”). This frightening statistic is part of the reason why the federal government has put in place many policies and incentives such as the Clean Air Act, The National Program for greenhouse gas emissions, Catalytic Converter Federal Laws, and incentives of $12,000 in California to get people to upgrade to more fuel-efficient cars. With such programs and incentives put in places, it is also important that car companies such as Toyota and Ford also take action to further cut pollution rates. They have done so by
According to the Environmental Protection article at www.eponline.com, it states that the environmental issues top the list of challenges in the automotive industry, outranking the cost reduction for the first time in 14 years. The survey was conducted by DuPont and the Society of the Automotive Industry. The survey results included the following results and statistics:
This paper covers the current environmental challenges the face the American auto industry as a whole and the impact that has.
The auto industry is a very important part of our culture. Vehicles are used to get people from place to place in a timely manner. Without cars, we would be reduced to walking, riding, bicycles, or even using animals. Cars are a necessary evil because we use them in our everyday lives; however they contribute greatly to pollutants being released into the environment. U.S. companies along with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have been working to find solutions to this problem. With the 253 million cars and trucks on U.S. roads, having an average age of 11.4 years, the auto industry must find ways of making cars more environmentally friendly (Hirsch, 2014).
The impact of the automobile and the auto-centered transport system on the American environment has been enormous. From the manufacturing process to the junkyard, cars—and all motorized vehicles for that matter—consume resources; pollute the air, land, and water; and transform space. The building of automobiles requires gathering vast quantities of metal, glass, plastics, rubber, and other materials, and then assembling thousands of vehicles through human and machine labor. The production process itself consumes enormous amounts of energy, and the factory output produces its own array of pollutants.
A particularly vigorous debate within the topic of sustainability involves the automobile and its future. Compared to other sources of environmental degradation, the automobile is relatively young. That said, automobiles powered by internal combustion engines (ICEs) are one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gasses. The automobile’s proliferation, while not complete across all levels of income, is extremely thorough in geographic terms.
The modern automobile was refined in Germany and France in the late 1800s, American however, dominated the industry via Henry Ford who built his first Car in 19896 and went on to revolutionize the automobile industry by inventing the assembly line. The major automobile companies in the American Industry are global corporations. Notable are following companies with some of the cars they produce; General Motors - Produces Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick and Cadillac; Daimler Chrysler - Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge, Maybach; Ford Motor Company - Ford, Lincoln, Volvo; Toyota Motor Company – Pirus, Corolla, Hilux; Honda Motor Company – Ballade, Jazz, CRV.
Contributing 3 percent to 3.5 percent to the overall Gross Domestic Product, the automotive industry is essential to the United States’ economy.1 The automotive industry would critically affect our national economy if it ceased to exist. In 2008 through 2010, the automotive industry suffered a crisis. Many things lead up to the crisis, putting the economy into an unstable condition and putting distress into the minds of the American people. This forced some of the country’s automakers to go into bankruptcy, causing a fall in the workforce. Eventually, the crisis was solved, and the economy returned to its stable state. This whole disaster started through one event. Fueled by the 2008 recession, the automotive industry suffered a crisis that hurt the United States’ national economy.
Growing environmental concern and pressures for car companies to undertake sustainable practices has led to uncertainty (De Moraes, 2016). Movement in regulation and consumer preferences towards environmentally friendly production has a cost burden (Hirsh, Kakkar, Singh and Wilk, 2015). Encouraging companies to misrepresent data; Volkswagen falsified emissions tests (The Economist, 2015a).
There is a serious problem facing the world right now. It is air pollution. The number one contributor to this epidemic is automobile emissions. We have all heard of the issues that are involved with air pollution including the depletion of the o-zone layer, the green house effect, and acid rain. The problem has been scoped from every imaginable angle, and now it is time to solve the problem. I propose that each of the ‘Big Three’ (Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler) car manufacturers be required to have 10% of their product line as EV’s By the year 2010. I propose this because it will be the start of cleaner air, EV advancement, and awareness of EV’s and how they work.
When it comes to reducing carbon emissions that severely harm the environment, the automotive industry plays an important role. Penna and Geels stated that one of the biggest challenge society confront is climate change requiring improvement in carbon use by many industries and sectors. (2015). In the US, the amount of drivers aged 65 years old and over has increased by 17.3% from 1982 to 2003 (Meyer, 2009). According to Statistics Canada, Licensed drives increased from 15.964 to 21.674 (35.7%) from 1985 to 2004. Thus, trends show that more and more people are driving every day what also mean that more emissions are being generated every day too. To fix this giant issue, car industries need to find the most effective way since they still have to produce millions of cars. I strongly believe that eliminating the totality of carbon emission produced by cars can be successfully accomplished in a near future with the correct and viable “green” management strategy. What if one of the thousand car companies who are responsible for this problem can do it in a record time? BMW Group will have decreased the half of the carbon emissions (CO²) with their new fleet of cars in less than 3 years from now, taking 1995 as a base year (BMW Sustainable Report, 2014). With successful sustainable development, BMW Group has been able to reduce by 38% from 1995 to 2014 their vehicles carbon emissions (CO²) (BMW Sustainable Report, 2014). In Addition, BMW technology is presently considered as the
The ecological environment necessitates clean, renewable energy sources, which requires automakers to design motors with these new fuel sources in mind. The legal environment imposes stricter regulations on vehicle