Ford is to cut its workforce in Victoria by 240 after a slump in demand for larger cars, and competitor Toyota will reduce hours for manufacturing staff in the wake of the Japanese earthquake disaster.

Freescale Semiconductor has entered into a strategic alliance with Fuji Electric to collaborate on insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) technology and products for hybrid electric and electric vehicles (HEV and EV).

Toyota announced they would suspend production for five days and slow production over the "next few weeks," because of shortfall in parts availability. Honda meanwhile said it would extend a production slowdown for a week.

Renesas Electronics America will sell its semiconductor wafer fabrication facility in Roseville, California, to Telefunken Semiconductors. The sale price is approximately US$53 million, and the closing for the sale is planned for May 2, 2011. Telefunken also will enter into a supply agreement with Renesas for manufacturing services at the Roseville factory.

Firms across the world fear shortages of parts that used to be made in the Japanese factories now shuttered because of power and water shortages, or because of road and port closures, following the quake and the floods. And carmakers, whose products often contain some 20,000 individual parts, are expected to be among those worst hit.

Toyota Motors, the word's biggest carmaker, will slow production at some of its factories in North America due to a shortage of parts. Toyota has already halted production at all of its 12 assembly plants in Japan until 26 March.

General Motors has announced plans to temporarily idle its pick-up truck plant in Louisiana due to a parts shortage stemming from the crisis in Japan.

Cheap sensors and network availability are not only making individual cars smarter, but they're also boosting the brainpower the environment cars drive in.

Rising demand for vehicles in China has boosted profits at Infineon. Back orders are expected to last through summer.

Infineon Technologies has announced the Volkswagen AG Business Unit Braunschweig will use Infineon's Hall sensors in electric power steering systems for vehicles.

The Certitude software enables engineers to raise the quality of verification environments and IP design components required to develop microcontroller unit solutions for automotive electronics applications.

Globalfoundries and the Institute of Microelectronics (IME), a research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, are joining hands to develop MEMS capacitive sensor platform technology for power-efficient and highly sensitive motion sensing applications that are relevant to consumer electronics, automotive and aerospace industries.

"With the Embedded Initiative, Altera is enabling designers in markets such as automotive, industrial, military and wireless to easily leverage a rich ecosystem of processor, OS and IP support all through a single design flow, and to reduce overall system cost..."

In addition to the ISO/TS16949 certification, Grace has successfully rolled out its Automotive Zero Defect Program, which offers a set of tighter process control measures during wafer processing.

Freescale has prequalified all three densities of Spansion Multi-I/O SPI, 32-megabits (Mb), 64Mb and 128Mb devices with all three densities shipping in volume production today.

Silicon Valley may be an epicenter of the nascent electric car industry, but don't expect the battery revolution to mimic the computer revolution, one of IBM's top energy storage scientists advises.

Automobile demand in Japan and elsewhere has outpaced chip supplies from STMicroelectronics, a Hitachi spokesman said, adding that Nissan had not asked Hitachi for compensation for the disruption.

Analysts expect that it recovered to pre-recession levels in the just-ended quarter, as manufacturers ramp up production of electronics that use TI chips and build inventories.

Hitachi's delay in supplying electronic controls to Nissan was caused by STMicroelectronics' failure to meet a microchip order.

Engine control units made by Hitachi couldn't be delivered on time to Nissan because ICs needed to make them were not available from a supplier, Hitachi said.

Toshiba plans to expand manufacturing capacity at its plant in Houston, Texas for production of high-performance drive motors for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs).

Toyota Motor halted production at a car plant in Guangzhou, China, after one of its suppliers was shut down by a strike.

Anhui Jianghuai Automobile and Changan Automobile aim to poach the talent nurtured by Japan's top automakers.

Infineon Technologies has raised its 2010 outlook for a second time this year on higher demand from automotive and industrial customers for chip cards and security applications. The chipmaker's fiscal second-quarter net income was 79 million euros (US$104.2 million) compared with net lossES of 239 million euros a year earlier.

STMicroelectronics, Europe's largest semiconductor company, swung to profits of US$57 million in the first quarter of 2010 from losses of US$541 million a year ago. First-quarter revenues rose 40% to US$2.32 billion, led particularly by demand for chips used in cars and computers.

Elpida Memory has filed a lawsuit in the US against Infineon Technologies and Best Buy, in response to a complaint filed earlier brought against it.

Ford Motor has signed a US$1.8 billion deal to sell its Volvo brand to Geely in a move seen as emblematic of the shift in the global car industry's centre of gravity from the US and western Europe to China.

BYD has massive expansion plans for 2010 and would consider building a plant in the US, the company said a day after announcing annual profits had tripled. The automaker will put aside 10 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) this year to grow its business.

Samyang Optics has said it will sell electric cars produced by US-based ZAP in South Korea from April. It also expects to eventually assemble electric cars using ZAP's technology.

Toyota Motor aims to double its global output of gas-electric hybrid cars to one million units in 2011, as it fights to stay in the lead in the growing market for low-emission cars.

Carmakers emerging from a savage crisis hope to lure drivers to electric cars in the coming years, but cost, range and safety considerations mean many are still cautious, holding back from predicting an early sales boom.

Infineon Technologies has said revenues will grow by a better-than-expected "high single digit" in the quarter ending December 31, 2009 on improved sales in the automotive and industrial units.

Melloy, which produces 550 tonnes of castings mainly for the automotive industry, took steps to reduce its carbon emissions and save money by investing in greener technology. It says its customers are receiving the same quality product produced with a massive 45% less carbon.

Panasonic, which runs a hybrid and electric car battery joint venture with Toyota, has secured a controlling stake in rechargeable battery maker Sanyo.

Passenger car sales at Ford Motor's China joint venture will likely rise by close to 50% in 2009, partly due to government incentives for purchases of small vehicles, according to Nigel Harris, general manager of the joint venture.

The Numonyx eMMC architecture is comprised of an embedded storage solution with multi-media card interface, flash memory device and host controller – all in a small BGA package. With interface speeds of up to 52MB per second, Numonyx eMMC also allows for an interface voltage of either 1.8V or 3.3V.

South Korea's exports fell for a tenth consecutive month as global demand for the nation's automobiles, mobile phones, textiles and steel faltered.