Look who’s building hybrids
Clean, green union machines
Jeff Morales remembered the skepticism with which Kansas City Assembly Plant workers greeted the introduction of the Ford Escape Hybrid three years ago.
“People weren’t too sure that this thing would even sell, and they didn’t really understand the technology, either,” said the UAW Local 249 member and 13-year veteran utility repairman who road tests hybrids as they roll off the final line at the KCAP facility in Claycomo, Mo.
This skepticism has long since disappeared, though, as Local 249 members began to realize that Ford could sell every one of the 20,000 hybrid SUVs they could build — and more.
Today KCAP workers are putting in 10-hour days, five days a week and still can’t meet the demand for the Escape Hybrid, its siblings, the Mercury Mariner and Mazda Tribute hybrids, and their older brothers, the standard Escape, Mariner and Tribute. Management is requesting an additional 16 Saturdays to the plant’s 2008 production schedule.
With pump prices staying high, Americans are clearly shifting their buying patterns toward smaller and more fuel-efficient vehicles.
And Kansas City isn’t the only place where UAW members are kicking out fuel efficient cars and trucks to meet this new consumer demand.
Besides Escapes, Mariners and Tributes, UAW members in Fairfax, Kan., and Arlington, Texas, are building five other hybrid models, including the Saturn Aura, Chevrolet Malibu, GMC Yukon and Chevrolet Tahoe.
In fact, the Tahoe was just named Green Car Journal’s 2008 Green Car of the Year. The Tahoe uses a new General Motors’ transmission that began production in October at the company’s Baltimore Transmission plant.
GM’s two-mode transmission represents the only hybrid transmission designed and built in the United States by a major automaker. The Baltimore plant will also be supplying two modes for the Chrysler Aspen and Dodge Durango SUV hybrids.
Meanwhile, Chrysler is also improving its fuel efficiency and emissions by moving in a different direction. Its Jeep Grand Cherokee has a diesel engine which uses bio-fuel.
Lack of access to sufficient numbers of transmissions, as well as storage batteries, has prevented KCAP from producing even more hybrid SUVs to meet market demand. However, Local 249’s leadership reports that Ford’s supplier of storage batteries is expected to ramp up production enough to allow KCAP to increase hybrid production from four an hour to 10 an hour, or 50,000 a year.
And Morales expects there will be a buyer for every one of them.
