Sound like Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is getting serious about sustainability and profits at FCA. According to Allpar within the next 5 years.
http://www.allpar.com/corporate/chrysler-group/2014-five-year-plan.htmlFCA’s top four architectures are used in 48% of its vehicles; in 2018, the plan is for them to cover 70% of vehicles. FCA had 18 architecture families in 2013; 95% of volume came from 12 of them. The plan is to reduce that number to 15 total families in 2018, with 95% of volume coming from nine of them. This should increase development speed, quality, and manufacturing flexibility, while cutting costs.
Likewise, standardized component families can be used across many architectures the difference between a cross-car beam, used by all compact-wide cars, and a switch which can be used by just about any vehicle. A goal is to reduce the number of part families from 1,200 to 550 by 2018, to slash development costs and to increase volume discounts, saving 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion) by the end of 2018.
N.B. on a related note.
The venerable Pentastar V6 will soon get some changes according to Pentastars.com.
http://www.pentastars.com/engines/future.phpWhile the MultiAir 2 was reportedly tested on the Pentastar V6, the increased power was apparently not worth the cost over the efficient, cost-effective dual cam phasing system, which will be updated instead.
“The pug” is likely to get direct injection, at long last, coinciding with cleaner American gasoline. Engineers are also likely to make some changes to increase durability and reliability, having years of warranty data to work from, and to push performance in some areas where they may have been more conservative before.
