Company News: Chrysler will boost fuel efficiency

With higher government fuel economy requirements looming and gas costing about $3 per gallon, Chrysler Group on Thursday announced new measures to boost mileage for its cars and trucks.

The company announced that its new family of V-6 engines would have the ability to drop to three cylinders when less power is needed, raising the fuel economy by 6 to 8 percent.

The company also plans to place its new two-mode hybrid powertrain in more vehicles in its fleet, put a clean diesel engine in the 2009 Jeep Cherokee sport utility vehicle, and alter its 5.7-liter Hemi and 4.7-liter V-8 engines for better gas mileage.

Frank Klegon, executive vice president for product development, said the company is making the investments in anticipation of stronger government fuel economy requirements.

“We’re moving forward with real urgency to improve fuel efficiency across our entire lineup,” Klegon said.

Congress is wrangling over increased government fuel economy standards for automakers. A Senate bill would require a manufacturer’s fleetwide average of 35 miles per gallon for passenger cars, pickup trucks, sport utility vehicles and vans by 2020, an increase of about 10 mpg from current levels. Under the plan, automakers would need to boost fuel economy by 4 percent per year from 2020 to 2030.

“A raft of orders at the Paris Air Show this week has boosted Airbus’ fortunes and handed the European planemaker back the lead in overall airplane sales bookings for 2007 from rival Boeing Co. — at least so far.

Airbus landed dozens of new orders Thursday from Asia and Latin America for its narrow-bodied A320 and its A330 models, following a string of other deals unveiled at the industry’s premier gathering at Le Bourget.

Thursday’s sales brought Airbus to at least 600 firm orders for the year so far, including some 400 firm orders this week. Boeing has booked a total of 510 firm orders during 2007, according to an update on the company’s Web site.

“United Airlines said Thursday that human error caused the computer outage a day earlier that halted all of its departures for two hours and wreaked havoc with its schedule systemwide.

Close to 300 flights were delayed or canceled Thursday after United’s flight operations computer system Unimatic, which supplies information to pilots, shut down from approximately 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. CDT. Chief Operating Officer Pete McDonald said the error occurred during routine system testing.