Archive / automotive

• A PERSONAL VIEW: Are car dealer networks really up to the task of maintaining increasingly complex diesel aftertreatment systems?

  14 July 2016

  A personal viewpoint by Anthony Smith, Director, MediaTechnical Ltd
  
  A year ago if I’d been asked this question, my response would have been an undoubted ‘yes’. Now though, personal experience leads me to worry that things are not as they should be within the dealer networks; that we have perhaps gone too far down the pathway of allowing warning lights and ECU codes to be the primary factor in fault tracing. For largely isolated components such as tyre pressure or fluid level warnings, blown bulbs and so on, this abstract/reductionist approach is fine. But with highly complex systems such as ...
  
  

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• Aftermarket game-changer

  14 March 2016

  Unprecedented longevity and the rapid model year changeovers of today’s cars are challenging the traditional aftermarket business of the large automakers. In response, as Anthony Smith reports, a recently published white paper by Ricardo Strategic Consulting outlines how new strategies can be developed to protect customer satisfaction, brand loyalty and profits.
  
  There can be no doubt that the vehicles of today are lasting much longer than they used to. In 2014, for example, new vehicle registrations in the US outpaced scrappage by a staggering 42 percent. As a result of this ongoing trend, the average age of all operational light vehicles ...
  
  

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