Honda Aircraft Company, Inc., plans to establish its world headquarters in Greensboro, North Carolina, with construction of a new 215,000 square foot headquarters facility and hangar at Piedmont Triad International (PTI) airport. The company also confirmed plans to manufacture its advanced light jet, HondaJet, at a new plant to be constructed adjacent to its new headquarters. Further details about the production facility, including the size, scope of operations and construction timetable, will be announced at a later date. Honda plans to begin delivery of HondaJet to customers in 2010.
Initial investment for construction of the new headquarters facility and hangar will be about $40 million, plus approximately $20 million for equipment, bringing the total initial investment to $60 million. Details of additional investment for the HondaJet manufacturing facility will be announced at a later date.
Total Honda Aircraft Company employment, including all engineering, sales and marketing, manufacturing and support activities, will increase to more than 300 associates by the time the manufacturing plant reaches full capacity.
Honda Aircraft Company's new headquarters will serve as the home for all HondaJet research, product engineering, sales and marketing, and service support, and will replace the company's existing 32,000 square foot hangar and office complex, also located at PTI airport. Construction of the new facility, to include a 147,000 square foot airplane hangar and approximately 68,000 square feet of office space, will begin immediately, and is scheduled to be completed in November of this year.
HondaJet employs a number of innovative new technologies and design features - including an all composite fuselage and a unique over-the-wing engine mount (OTWEM) configuration - to set new standards for performance, comfort and quality in the growing "light jet" segment of the market.
Honda's first-ever commercial aircraft delivers 30-35 percent better cruising fuel efficiency than comparable jets, along with a class-topping cruise speed of 420 knots (450 mph) and a more spacious cabin with room for up to eight people. The customer base for HondaJet is composed of owner-pilots, corporate travel operators and air taxi companies. In November, Popular Science magazine selected HondaJet as the winner of the publication's 2006 "Best of What's New" award in the Aviation & Space category.
All major assembly and testing of the prototype HondaJet has been conducted at the company's existing Greensboro facility, which opened in 2001 as an extension of Honda's global R&D operations. The decision to commercialize HondaJet was announced in July 2006, followed by the establishment of Honda Aircraft Company, Inc. on August 4, 2006. The company has received well more than 100 customer orders for the $3.65 million HondaJet since its launch on October 17, 2006.
The HondaJet production facility will become Honda's seventeenth major manufacturing plant in North America, including two currently under construction in Indiana and Ontario, Canada. Honda already has a major North Carolina manufacturing facility, near Swepsonville, producing general purpose engines, lawn mowers and other power equipment products. The $188 million facility, opened in 1984, employs 580 associates and has the capacity to produce 2 million engines and 380,000 lawn mowers annually.
The U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology held the first Congressional conversation with climate scientists who authored that 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report released last weekend in Paris (2/2/07).
The report, entitled Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change, prepared by Working Group I of (IPCC), has been widely acknowledged as a comprehensive appraisal of the current state of scientific knowledge of climate change. Over 400 other scientists served as contributing authors. In total, the Working Group One assessment received over 30,000 comments, testified Dr. Susan Solomon, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group I.
A robotic exoskeleton controlled by the wearer's own nervous system could help users regain limb function, which is encouraging news for people with partial nervous system impairment, say University of Michigan researchers.
The ankle exoskeleton developed at U-M was worn by healthy subjects to measure how the device affected ankle function. The U-M team has no plans to build a commercial exoskeleton, but their results suggest promising applications for rehabilitation and physical therapy, and a similar approach could be used by other groups who do build such technology.
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., has developed the industry's first thermally-enhanced chip-on-film (TECOF) package for the display driver IC (DDI) used in large-screen, high-resolution LCD TVs. The new DDI package improves thermal heat dissipation by 20 percent over a conventional COF package, allowing the DDI to last longer and operate with greater reliability.
In work that could lead to completely new devices, systems and applications in computing and telecommunications, MIT researchers are bringing the long-sought goal of "optics on a chip" one step closer to market.
In the January 2007 inaugural issue of the journal Nature Photonics, the team reports a novel way to integrate photonic circuitry on a silicon chip. Adding the power and speed of light waves to traditional electronics could achieve system performance inconceivable by electronic means alone.