News From the Auto Industry

Jim Queen, GM’s vice president for engineering, told the paper the moves have cut engineering costs by 48 percent in six years. The move will begin in May, bringing GM’s North American vehicle design and engineering staff into one center.

An avowed environmentalist (who nonetheless heads a company that sells its share of fuel-needy full-size SUVs), Ford says that by 2004 cars will run 99% cleaner and require half as much fuel as cars of the 1960s.

Indeed, the industry is in “an all-out incentive war,” says Ford.

Here’s his checklist on how the industry can do the wrong things:

He spoke at a J.D. Power & Associates’ conference along with two other top auto executives: Ford Motor Co. CEO and Chairman William Clay Ford Jr. and DaimlerChrysler AG’s Chrysler Group COO Wolfgang Bernhard.