According to the BBC he Ford Motor Company has said in a letter to it’s employees at their Southampton UK plant that future Ford Transit production was “under review” and may be cut in half and/or moved abroad.

Ford at Southampton employs about 1350 people and produces over 70,000 Ford Transit vans a year.

The Transit has long been the staple van in use for light haulage and multi-drop deliveries in the UK beating off most competition and having a reputation pretty-good reliability in the face of constant ‘misuse’.

Ford has been making the Transit at Southampton since 1971 and is largely supplied with body panel pressing from Frod at Dagenham so I’d guess there could be a possibility of jobs being at risk there too. Aparently, the current rumour suggests 50% of production could be moved to Turkey.

As I wrote earlier this month, the MEGA battery-electric van factory in Channas, France burnt to the ground on the first of December. Obviously things, to my UK eyes looked bleak for MEGA. The rest of Aixam’s lines were still able to make cars but I thought that the MEGA line could be out of action for months. Despite this, a confident press release at the time mentioned that MEGA had already rented a new building. Surely false optimism, I thought.

But no, as of the 18th of December, incredibly there is a new MEGA van on the production line at the new factory!

Orders received end of November will certainly be delivered within the end of
January 2008 – which means less than 8 weeks delivery time. People will
work hard between Christmas and New Year’s Day to speed up the
rehabilitation.

Well, I’ll never be able to accuse the French of being work-shy. Any British company faced with such a crisis of a destroyed factory and line would surely have either gone out of business or at least suspended the line. It must take some true grit and determination to get a line back in production in just three weeks.

I wish MEGA every success with their facelift MEGA Van model line.

You can read the full press release HERE

Et la version française est ICI

In the early morning of Saturday, the MEGA van factory in Chanas, South of Lyon, France was destroyed by fire.

MEGA is a brand of the Aixam microcar company which produces minivans which fall under the ’sans permis’ category in France. The vehicles are available either with a fuel efficient Kubota diesel or a completely battery-electric drive train. The vehicles are exported to several countries in the EU including the UK.

While the entire MEGA line has been destroyed by the fire, the other Aixam lines at other sites remain in operation. As for the MEGA line, Aixam certainly aren’t sitting around crying about it. They’ve already rented a new building and intend to set up the MEGA line there as soon as possible. In the mean time they claim extensive stocks will help them to overcome any supply issues.

The Official Aixam-MEGA Press Release:

A fire occurred Saturday Dec. 1, at six o’clock in the morning on the
site of Chanas in France. The MEGA production plant was totally
destroyed. Nevertheless, the offices and other plants have not been
damaged.
An investigation is underway to determine the causes.
This plant consisted of two assembly lines: the MEGA line and a small
AIXAM line of about twenty vehicles a day.
The company has a large stock and the site of the AIX-LES-BAINS – which
usually manufactures 50 vehicles AIXAM per day - will increase its
production. Thus there will be no impact on the delivery of AIXAM
vehicles to the end customer.
Arrangements have already been taken by AIXAM MEGA board: a building
located in Chanas area has already been rented and the assembly line MEGA
will soon restart there. The AIXAM assembly line will follow but anyhow
AIX-LES-BAINS will offset its forecasted production. No technical
unemployment is scheduled on site.
Once permission is given, the site will be cleared away, a permit shall
be deposited in order to rebuild a new building.
The company AIXAM MEGA continues its vehicle production to meet still
better the needs of its customers.

Now, I’m always suspicious when something bad happens to Electric Vehicles, like when the General Motors EV-1s were recalled and scrapped against the customer’s wishes. Although there’s always the chance that some malicious ‘oil-lobby’ vested interest could be responsible, I’m sure there is a more mundane explanation such as a stray cigarette-end or even arson(!)

It will be interesting to see what the fire investigation turns up, that is, if I can even find out the outcome. Indeed, the only source I have for information on this fire is the Aixam-MEGA press release. I’ve been all over looking for another news source (Google News France etc). If anyone happens to find another source, please let me know.

I hope that the MEGA line gets back to full swing as soon as possible as what the world needs right now is more super-efficient and battery electric vehicles to compensate for the ever increasing cost of oil. Hopefully, the relative simplicity of the MEGA design will help with the swift recover.