Cost remains the boss

Engineers on their way to the SAE World Congress cannot escape cost-reduction pressures. But vehicle efficiency, biofuels, and “green” materials are also capturing their attention.

Cost-reduction pressures continue to dominate the work life of automotive engineers in 2007, followed by the drive to improve vehicle fuel efficiency, according to this year's SAE/DuPont Engineering Survey.

Alternatively powered vehicles and active-collision-avoidance safety technologies were cited as the innovations expected to have the greatest overall impact on the automotive industry in the next 10 years, according to the survey.