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Adam Davis13 Mar 2014
NEWS

Ford to invest in engineering

Keynote speeches at Cars of Tomorrow conference highlight contrasts between post-manufacturing plans of local car-makers

Ford has revealed it will announce the expansion of its Australian-based engineering operations in the third quarter of this year.

Ford Motor Company’s Asia Pacific product development chief Trevor Worthington said at this week’s ‘Cars of Tomorrow -- Reinventing the automotive industry’ conference that as the region’s most mature product development centre, Australia will be used to further grow the engineering capabilities of the region.

“Australia is really the mature location we use in terms of growing our capability all through Asia Pacific,” said Worthington, the Shanghai-based Australian who notches up 30 years with Ford next year and oversaw the creation of the Territory and FG Falcon as Ford Australia’s product development boss.

“We’re going to make an announcement in the third quarter of this year around what we’re doing with the layout and the software we’re bringing in and the hardware that will be brought in to support it.”

Ford said last week that it expects to be Australia’s largest automotive employer by 2018 -- following the end of Holden and Toyota production here in 2017 – despite the closure of its Geelong and Broadmeadows manufacturing plants by October 2016.

Ford has committed to an ongoing Australian design, engineering, sales and marketing presence totalling about 1500 staff after it sheds about 1200 factory workers.

Meantime, Holden will axe 1600 plant workers in Adelaide as well as 1300 factory and engineering jobs in Melbourne, where it will retain only a global design centre, while Toyota will axe about 2500 staff in Melbourne, leaving it without a local design and engineering presence.

Speaking at the Society of Automotive Engineers Australasia-hosted (SAE), which was part of the Victorian government-backed Australian Automotive Week, Worthington said further investment in Ford’s Victorian-based product development facilities would secure Australia’s position in the US car-maker’s local, regional and global vehicle engineering programs.

He said Ford Australia’s “fully capable global facility” would continue to increase its product design and engineering capabilities post-manufacturing, and that the global Ranger ute and India-market Figo hatch demonstrated its ability to deliver high-quality vehicles cost-effectively.

“The result of all that we’ve done over the last 15 years is a PD [product development] team here in Victoria that’s well integrated into doing business in Asia and globally,” he said.

“And I guess the core capabilities that we’ve got and the quality of the outcomes that we’ve produced and are in progress... are the strongest possible indicator that we believe this asset has great utility for the future.

“It is clear that that more you do this the better you get.”

Ford’s Australian product development team is one of only four ‘PD hubs’ Ford has globally and has grown from 500 engineers and 200 technicians in 2004 to a current 1100 engineers/scientists and 350 technicians.

Worthington attributes the growth to Ford Australia’s success in bringing quality products to market, citing the Territory -- the first local vehicle to come with stability control, a reversing camera and side curtain airbags -- as another example of the Blue Oval’s local engineering capability.

Based at Broadmeadows, Geelong and its nearby You Yangs proving ground, Ford Australia’s PD operations can handle the end-to-end development process, “from concept to final surface signoff for regional and global projects”.

But Worthington said it is virtual engineering capability “that is perhaps the most intriguing -- and is attracting the investment in both hardware infrastructure and software.

“Our Virtual Reality lab allows global teams to see the same model and experience the same environment simultaneously around the world,” he said.

Worthington also said Ford Australia’s long-established relationships with local universities and other research and advanced engineering channels, with a focus on developing future concepts and nurturing fresh talent, would continue.

While the future of Holden’s Lang Lang proving ground remains uncertain, Worthington said Ford’s You Yangs facility will continue to conduct complete product testing.

“We have a dynamometer and thermal wind tunnel, which means that cold weather testing can now be completed in-house.”

More broadly, Worthington indicated that Ford’s proprietary turbo-petrol engine technology, EcoBoost, is the primary near-term focus for the company, with over two million engines already built.

Longer-term, Ford Australia will be heavily involved with Ford’s mobility plans, which include vehicle-to-vehicle and infrastructure communication with a view to a self-driving future by 2025 and beyond, though he was keen to point out that the driver should always have final control.

“Ford sees a world where cars communicate with each other and the world around them to improve safety and reduce traffic congestion while achieving major environmental benefits.”

Just how much of a role Ford’s Australian operations play in that process remains to be seen, but with the upcoming investment there was an air of buoyancy in Worthington’s words.

This was in contrast to the speech by Holden design manager Frank Rudolph, who said GM Australia Design had already effectively transitioned to a “mentoring role” within the Asia Pacific region.

“The digital age facilitates global sharing... we’ve transitioned to a global studio [where] we do advanced work and have an exchange of talent and mentoring,” he said.

“This has been something strategically that we’ve been doing over the years and we like to think that we’re basically through the transition period already.

“We’d like to think that that may keep ourselves in a position where they can’t afford to lose us.”

General Motors’ Australian design team employs 116 staff and is one of only six such GM facilities globally – and one of just two that can fabricate and manufacture vehicles.

Rather than detail the future, Rudolph was keen to expand on what the design centre has been capable of in the past, focusing on its EN-V future city concept vehicle which was revealed at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

Other previous design jobs undertaken by Holden design include the Chevrolet Adra concept unveiled at last month’s Delhi motor show and the GMC Denali XT concept for the 2008 Chicago show.

Rudolph’s speech hinted that such global projects were the way forward for Holden design, focusing on the public’s future mobility demands -- including effective electrification and intuitive car-to-car and infrastructure communications – and how such vehicles will look.

Holden has confirmed it is involved in the design of the next-generation Commodore due in 2017 – an imported model expected to ride on a new front-wheel drive global architecture.

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Written byAdam Davis
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