Car Design China Award Winners at Umeå

CDN 中国汽车设计大赛获奖选手在 Umeå Two of the Car Design China Award 2012 winners won the fantastic prize of a two-week fully funded placement at Sweden's Umeå Institute of Design to mix with like-minded young designers and learn new skills with some of the latest technology available. We spoke to Umeå's Programme Director for Transportation Design Education Demian Horst to find out how Fang Siyuan of Zhengzhou University of Light Industry and Huang Hongliang of Huazhong University of Science and Technology got on. After arriving on 21 September the two students joined up with the course's 20 international students – including two Chinese students – in the studio before undertaking their first task, which was to join both transport classes in a sketch workshop with BMWDesignworksUSA designer and Umeå alumnus Tommy Forsgren.

Lexus NX compact SUV production starts – first UK deliveries October 2014

The first Lexus NX rolls off the production line We’re not entirely sure the new Lexus NX – revealed in production guise at the Beijing Motor Show in April - will be one of the most driver-focused compact SUVs, but it is a car that should see Lexus sales rise considerably. And the NX is now starting to roll off the production line at Lexus’s Miyata plant in Japan, and Lexus say they already have 6,500 orders for the NX in Japan, and a more modest 350 in the UK. The big seller in the UK – in the absence of a diesel NX – will be the NX 300h with its hybrid setup of a 2.5 litre petrol engine, electric motor and CVT gearbox, but despite promises of good economy (55.4mpg) the real world economy is likely to be significantly less, although its high headline economy will help BIK rates for business buyers.

Autodesk Automotive Days - Munich 2009

Autodesk's Automotive Days design conferences, launched in Munich in 2008, have highlighted the key growth area of digital prototyping. And at last month's conference the focus was once again broadened to include coverage of conceptual design and creative visualization (at the very beginning of the design process) and design for manufacture - at the culmination of the process. Speakers from Autodesk outlined the innovative features of their latest product suites, while keynote presentations from leading automotive designers such as Frank Stephenson of McLaren and Volvo's Rickard Franklin showed in fascinating detail how the benefits of these software systems were being maximized in busy corporate design studios.