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Environmental Challenges : American Auto Industry

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Environmental Challenges: American Auto Industry Although the first steam powered automobile dates back to the 1760s, it was not until 1789 when Oliver Evans was granted the first automobile patent in America. During the 19th century, the car industry had seen a big transformation with great improvements such as hand brakes, better steering and multi-speed transition. (1) By the beginning of the 1900s, cars were the preferred mean of transportation. Dominating this industry were Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, also known as Today, the United States ranks second on the list of motor vehicles manufacturers, with over 12 million cars manufactured in 2015. With the increase of global competition, the manufacturers of vehicles in the US had been negatively affected. Japanese, Korean and German-based competitors generated significant pressure on the US automotive manufacturers during the late 1980s and early 2000s. However, this pressure has also resulted in innovation and higher productivity from some domestic players. The perception and understanding of this threat by the “big three” affected their response. For instance, Ford financial weakness after 1982 made them more proactive to respond to this change by applying a lean production methodology, whereas GM didn’t see the need to focus on changing dramatically their production until 1992 (Baily, M., Farrell, D., & Greenberg, E., 2005). Global warming has been the focus of attention for quite some time,

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