Fiat Focusing on Natural Gas Before Electric Cars - Design News / EETimes Article
Posted by Machines Italia | 21 May 2012
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Though not the flashiest Italian car manufacturer, automotive firm Fiat has long been a staple of the country's industrial sector, providing vehicles to a wider mass market than its local brethren: —the Ferraris, Maseratis and Lamborghinis that cater only to the elite.
As such, the firm's research and development center, with a main base in Orbassano, Turin, is constantly thinking up ways to reinvent its automotive products in cost effective ways, from their physical design to their fuel efficiency, safety features and beyond.
Established in 1978 as the Fiat Group reference center for innovation, the Centro Ricerche Fiat (CRF) is responsible for almost all of the company's technological growth. Its 1,000-strong staff (600 of whom are engineers) is permanently engaged in looking to substitute car components and materials, while maximizing sustainability, safe mobility, telematics, mechatronics and even optics.
"Italy loves cars and of course many young engineers love working on cars," said general manager of the CRF, Stefano Re Fiorentin. Besides its main site in Orbassano, the CRF boasts three decentralized branches in Bari, Trento and Foggia, with one more site dealing exclusively with the advanced research of optics and plastics for lighting systems at Udine.
