Automotive & Aviation Industry Archives

Rolls-Royce appoints prominent tech executive Warren East as CEO

April 22, 2015 By Jeff Suchon Leave a Comment

Aircraft engine manufacturing company Rolls-Royce on Wednesday announced the appointment of Warren East, the most successful technology executives of the UK, as its Chief Executive Official.

East will succeed incumbent CEO John Rishton who is retiring in July after four years of service.

With East’s appointment, the company is expecting to restore its fortunes after being marred by declining profits, job cuts and canceled orders for almost a year.

East held the post of chief executive of ARM from 2001 to 2013. During his tenure, he has overseen the company’s expansion as a leading microchips developer for the likes of tech giants Apple and Samsung.

He was associated with Rolls-Royce as a non-executive director since January 2014.

Rolls-Royce shares increased to an eight-month high during early trading. JP Morgan upgraded the company’s stock to “hold” from “underweight”.

According to the analysts at JP Morgan, 53-year-old East would bring a revamped vigor to the civil aviation engines development and also to the challenges posed by the shrinking budgets of the western defense and a lower price of oil that has squeezed the customers’ participation in the oil gas and marine sectors.

Excited over the new role, East said that it was a golden opportunity that he could not refuse.

“The transformations absolutely need to continue and be driven through to conclusion,” East said before starting the new innings.

He, however, refused to provide details about his strategy before he finally takes over the new role.

Tesla Motors to introduce all-wheel drive to its Model S sedans

April 8, 2015 By Stephanie James Leave a Comment

Electric car making company Tesla Motors is leaving no stone unturned to successfully make a mark among the mainstream luxury car buyers. In this regard, the company has introduced all-wheel-drive as well as more power and range to the base version of its only model.

The newly introduced features at the Model S lineup’s low end will come along with nearly a seven percent increase in price, to USD 75,000 for those buying the cars. The base price of the lease will increase to USD 838 a month from USD 796 for 12,000 miles a year.

Palo Alto-based Tesla Motors will be stopping the sale of the old base Model S called the 60 on Wednesday. The USD 70,000 rear-drive car having a 380-horsepower motor could go 208 miles with a single charge and from zero to 60 mph in just 5.9 seconds.

The 70D, a new all-wheel-drive model, can go a government-certified 240 miles per charge. It possesses 514 horsepower and has the capability to go from zero to 60 in 5.2 seconds. The buyers also get free accessibility to Tesla’s vast network of quick-charging stations and several other standard features.

Elon Musk, chief executive official, says with a USD 7,500 federal tax credit that takes the price to USD 67,500, along with the tax credits in some states, the new version will give tough competition price-wise to the Mercedes E-Class or the midsize 5-Series of BMW, when the customer add in savings from denying buying gasoline. BMW’s 5 Series price begins nearly USD 50,000 and the E-Class is priced at roughly USD 52,000.

Tesla needs approximately USD 6,500 due at signing for its lease of 12,000-mile. On the other hand, BMW needs just more than USD 4,300.

According to Musk, there are no plans of spending more on marketing in order to match rival companies BMW and Mercedes even if he’s trying to woo more mass-market customers.

Musk said that the firm will be continuing hosting events for customers but “there are no plans yet to do advertising or endorsements or any discounting.”

Tesla Motors shares increased USD 3.02, or 1.5 percent, to USD 206.27 during the morning trading. The company’s shares have fallen nearly four percent over the past year.

Tesla Motors delivers record 10,030 cars in Q1 this year

April 3, 2015 By Stephanie James Leave a Comment

Auto maker Tesla Motors Inc has announced that the company has delivered a record 10,030 cars during the first quarter.

According to the car maker, this is a 55 percent rise as compared to the number of deliveries made in the first quarter of 2014.

The number of new car deliveries will be published by the company within three days of quarter end. According to the company, the three days time has been decided as several inaccurate sources of information are often used by others in publishing the final figures of vehicle deliveries.

Tesla is expecting to deliver nearly 55,000 cars worldwide this year. This is an increase of approximately 74 percent.

The stock of the company has been battered in 2015 by the investors who are concerned about its failure to hit the sales targets in China as well as the departures in 2014 of two top Tesla executives in that nation.

Elon Musk, chief executive official of electric car maker Tesla Motors, took to the micro-blogging site Twitter earlier in the week to post several optimistic statements about the sagging operations of the company in China.

Up to close of USD 191 on Thursday, the stock had tumbled 14.1 percent in 2015.

Tesla Motors is going to offer upgrades on its vehicle models, such as hands-free steering on its Model S sedan in three months, roughly a year ahead of other automobile companies.

Tesla self-driving cars: Elon Musk promises autopilot sedans this summer

March 21, 2015 By Kyle Mills

The self-driving cars have become a largely talked topic in the auto industry. Almost every driver commuting at long distances want to have a special autonomous driving facility in their cars.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has taken a major step in this direction when on Thursday he announced introduction of autonomous technology in the vehicles by this summer.

According to the company, the autonomous technology would allow the drivers to hand over the control of their cars on “major roads” such as highways.

The maker of high-end electric cars said that there will be a software update and not a mechanical change after which Tesla’s Model S sedans will be able to start driving themselves in a hands-free mode, for at least part of the time. The company terms the autonomous driving mode as autopilot.

In the meanwhile, some industry experts have raised serious objections about the legalities of such autonomous driving technology. Moreover, they are also skeptical that Model S owners attempting the autopilot mode would not run afoul of the current regulations.

Addressing the concerns, Tesla spokesperson Alexis Georgeson said, “There was nothing in our autopilot system that is in conflict with current regulations.”

According to Georgeson, the system has been designed in such a way that it can be used by an alert driver.

“We don’t intend to get rid of the pilot. This is about releasing the driver from the tiring tasks so that they can focus more and provide better input,” she said.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has earlier said that “any autonomous vehicle would need to meet applicable federal motor vehicle safety standards. The agency will have the appropriate policies and regulations in place to ensure the safety of these types of vehicles.”

Adecco Posts Slowdown in Revenue Growth

December 8, 2014 By Stephanie James

The leading staffing firm by sales in the world, Adecco, stated that it’s hurt by sluggish revenue growth for the third quarter of the year because of the slow performance of its Germany and France operations.

Europe, which happens to be one of the main drivers of revenue for the company, is currently struggling to sustain economic growth with a review conducted lately saying that euro zone business activity revealed a sluggish growth rate for October.

Adecco said that the bleak growth of its revenue has driven it to take fewer part-time staff which experts say can likely pose a threat to the company’s profitability target for 2014.

The largest market of Adecco is France which experienced a lower than expected profit growth dragging the recent third quarter results. The revenues in this country went down by 3% compared to the flat sales that it disclosed during the second quarter.

Meanwhile, profits in Germany edged up by 1% only as some of its stakeholders delayed their projects and postponed their investments.

Patrick De Maeseneire, the chief executive of Adecco, said that the management is still hoping for a fast revenue growth in 2015 but understands that it’s kind of improbable given the tumbling European GDP estimates.

De Maeseneire said that the company will rule out purchases for its staffing business until the end of next year and declared a recent 250-million euro buyback arrangement by the end of its current buyback program.

Puma Back On Track Because of Their Successful Footwear Sales

December 4, 2014 By Kyle Mills

Puma, a German company that is popular in producing sportswear, has been recently reported to have some good news on their sales report from the previous years. This increasing sales growth is due to its success in its newly produced footwear and Arnesal shirts.

When Puma shifted its focus on producing some fashion apparels before, it does not seem to be successful and now that Puma is getting itself back into sportswear, they were expecting a good return from their deals with Arsenal as an effective sportswear brand.

Despite the fact that Puma is now having some successful trend in its comeback in the sports apparel, they still decided to cut their annual sales forecast. This is in preparation of their company for marketing costs in recovering their brand names to the market against the Adidas and Nike, 2 major brands of sportswear in the world.

Puma was able to get the position as supplier to Arsenal Footclub this season and a lot were expecting to have a better quality sportswear than before.

The sales of its footwear were expected to be higher than the previous sales because of the high demand of consumers. Thanks to the effective marketing strategies and popular brand ambassadors featuring sports icon. The demands for Arsenal shirts were also reported to be high due to these marketing efforts.

Now, Puma is expecting to have a slow growth in their sales as time goes by but still preparing themselves for future changes. Analysts were also expecting that Puma will have some good results in the incoming years as the sales margin seems to show a stable growth.

Acer Swings Back Into Profits in Third-Quarter of 2014

November 15, 2014 By Doyle Buehler

The net profit of the Taiwanese personal computer producer Acer Inc was able to swing back all through the third-quarter of the year.

What helped the company go over analyst estimates are its cost-cutting efforts and the recovery in the overall market for personal computers.

Acer’s net profit rose at NT$651 million or US$21.31 million for the quarter that covered July to September which is way higher than the analyst estimates at NT$477.5 million. This result compared with the company’s loss of T$13.1 billion during the same period last year.

August and September revenues for Acer went down against the year earlier but the decline went at a slower rate than the double-digit declines which the company went through during the first half of 2014.

Since the introduction of smartphones and tablets, the personal computers market went sluggish because more and more people are falling in love with the idea of the portability of those devices.

While there’s a decline in the sales of personal computers, Acer showed signs of growth during the past few months with Intel predicting that the market will have a healthy fourth-quarter. This is mainly forecasted by the PC chip leader because of the heavy replacements of the old personal computers that are done by many businesses.

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