The final thesis "Business valuation of the company Automotive Lighting s.r.o." is divided into the theoretical and the practical part. The theoretical part is first focused on general issues of valuation. Its following parts then theoretically describe the general method of business valuation. The practical part is dedicated to the application of methods described in the theoretical part. Only the discounted cash flow to equity method (representing income valuation methods) and the EV/EBITDA multiple method (representing market methods) are applied due to the scope of the thesis. The property approach is represented by the equity book value. The thesis concludes with the final value statement.

This diploma thesis deals with the comparison of developmental trends of the automotive industry in China and India most of all from the perspective of current significant changes in geographic allocation of automotive production capacities and continual attenuation of position of traditional automotive centers. The first chapter discusses economic significance of the automotive industry and related economic and environmental challenges. The second chapter is focused on impact of the globalization process on systemic and geographic organization of the automotive industry. Next chapters analyze and compare the automotive industry in China and India focused on historical predispositions and current developmental trends. The last chapter compares future potential of both countries in the global automotive industry, identifies main competitive advantages and analyzes possibilities of future development.

This master thesis deals with increasing importance of Chinese and Indian car manufacturers. The aim is to present possible ways how European manufacturers would respond to new competition from China and India. The first chapter defines theoretical basis of the thesis. The second chapter analyses in detail current situation of the European automotive industry. The third chapter focuses on development of the industry in China and similarly, there is India analysed in the fourth chapter. The last chapter presents alternative approaches of European manufacturers and their prospective adaptation to the new competition.

Many North American urban dwellers find lakeshore cottaging to be an attractive activity. On a typical summer weekend in most North American cities large numbers of cottagers make automobile trips ranging in length from only a few miles to several hundred miles in order to reach their cottages. Many cottagers from the Greater Vancouver area travel greater distances to reach their cottages than do cottagers from other large cities. A large portion of these distant cottage areas were developed in the nineteen sixties and early seventies when personal transportation was very inexpensive. The mid nineteen seventies have been the scene of substantial increases in energy costs with subsequent rises in the cost of transportation. When the possibility of further energy price increases is considered it appears that there is a distinct possibility of these distant cottages experiencing a drastic decline in use. This would have a number of implications for planners in British Columbia with one of the most important being the increase in demand for cottaging (or similar activities) close to Vancouver. In order to determine the magnitude of the response of cottagers to transportation cost increases questionnaires were mailed to four different groups of cottagers who resided in Greater Vancouver. Three of these groups consisted of cottagers who owned cottages on the British Columbia mainland at varying distances from Vancouver (the cottages of the first group were located about seventy miles from Vancouver while the third group's cottages were located about 330 miles from Vancouver). The fourth group consisted of Vancouver cottagers who owned cottages on Vancouver Island. The data collected measured responses to recent gasoline price increases, responses to ferry fare increases, and cottagers' anticipated responses to future gasoline price increases. It was found that cottagers had responded to both the ferry fare increases and gasoline price increases with reductions in the use of their cottage. The data was also used to estimate the effect of future gasoline price increases on cottage use. The study reveals that the costs of reaching distant cottages is presently at a level such that further increases could severely curtail the use of these cottages. These findings can be considered in conjunction with estimated future trends for energy prices to determine the magnitude of the effect of transportation costs on cottaging at a given time. This result could then be used to plan for alternative opportunities closer to Vancouver. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

The master thesis focuses on the analysis of B2B marketing communications on Czech automotive market. The analysis is applied on the brands of Skoda, Volkswagen, Ford, Citroën and Mercedes-Benz. The thesis describes instruments and methods of business-to-business communications used by automotive companies and it compares the effectiveness of the communications of particular brands.

This thesis provides a bridge between analytical modeling and neural network modeling. Two different approaches have been explored. Both approaches rely on embedding radial basis function (RBF) modules in the approximate model of the plant so that they can be trained to compensate for modeling uncertainty. One approach has led to the development of a model-based recurrent neural network (MBRNN) for modeling nonlinear dynamic systems. The RBF modules take the form of activation functions in the MBRNN network, that is formu1ulated according to a linearized state-space model of the plant. This network is trained to represent the process nonlinearities through modifying the activation functions of its nodes, while keeping the original topology of the neural network intact. The performance of the MBRNN is demonstrated via several examples. The results indicate that it requires much shorter training than needed by ordinary recurrent networks. The utility of the MBRNN is tested in fault diagnosis of the IFAC Benchmark Problem and its performance is compared with ‘black box’ neural solutions. The results indicate that the MBRNN provides better results than ‘black box’ neural networks, and that with training it improves the results from other model-based residual generators. The second approach incorporates RBF modules in the nonlinear estimation model to enhance the performance of the extended Kalman filter (EKF) in coping with the uncertainty of this model. In this method, single-input single-output radial basis function (RBF) modules are embedded within the nonlinear estimation model to provide additional degrees of freedom for model adaptation. The weights of the embedded RBF modules are. adapted by the EKF concurrent with state estimation. This modeling compensation method is tested in application to an induction motor benchmark problem. Simulation results indicate that the RBF modules provide the means to model the uncertain components of the estimation model within their range of variation. The utility of the embedded RBF-based nonlinear adaptive observer was tested in fault diagnosis of a throttle sensor fault in an internal combustion engine. The test results show that this observer enhances the residuals obtained for fault diagnosis.

The topic of the project has been about the future of luxury mobility and how the brand Rolls-Royce could evolve alongthe technological advancements until the year 2038. As luxury is changing from being about possession to the experience of luxury, the goal was to design a vehicle that could support both new internal and external experiences about the vehicle. The identified obstacle that could limit the scope of new experiences in an autonomous vehicle is motion sickness. As cities grow and technology develops the future cities are crowded so personal space, and privacy is being limited.During the process, the tools used varied from form exploration through sketching, concept principle testing and finalization in 3d software as well as visualization tools to communicate the proposed solutions. Working out of the Rolls-Royce designstudio provided brand insight but also expertise in the field of color & materials as well as advice on engineering solutions from the design team.The result Rolls-Royce Luxe Nomad is a vehicle for exploring the world outside the urban areas. Going far and beyond in search of new and unique experiences but also making the trip there as enjoyable as possible. The concept provides a solution inspired by high-speed trains that could limit those effects. Through understanding the future customers need of privacy a method of controlling the amount of insight was developed to enhance the user experience and giving them an increased sense of control of their space.

The repair of automobiles is a critical aspect in vehicle ownership and is potential source of volatile toxic compounds being brought into a home when repairs are conducted in an attached garage. The goal of this study was to assess the impact of the repair of automobiles in an attached garage on the exposure of the home mechanic and degradation of indoor air. Five common automotive tasks were performed in two garages with the garage door either opened 30.5 centimeters (n=5) or closed (n=4). The exposure to the home mechanic, the behavior of contaminants within the garage, and infiltration of contaminants in the home were the determinants of interest. Integrative sampling incorporating charcoal sorbent sampling tubes analyzed by gas chromatography and directs reading photo ionization detectors were used to assess exposure. The tasks with the greatest contributions to the home mechanic’s exposure were found to be brake pad replacement and oil change; these generated 95th percentile concentrations of 51.2 ppm and 12.8 ppm, respectively, with the garage door closed. In contrast, the tasks of refueling and shock replacement had 95th percentile contributions of 0.85 ppm and 2.99 ppm, respectively, in the closed garage. Equations were fitted to the aggregated concentrations during decay to estimate general ventilation (Q/V) in a closed garage. The contaminants within the garage were not found to infiltrate into the home as the average concentrations within the home never exceeded 1 ppm. It was found that automotive repair work in a closed garage may constitute up to 18% of threshold limit value of toluene over a 105 minute exposure at home. Automotive repair inside an attached garage has the potential to make a significant contribution to a mechanic’s daily exposure and should be incorporated into occupational exposure assessments of volatile organic compounds.

La conception d’une boîte de vitesses impose le choix initial d’une architecture, solution de principe de l’objet à concevoir. Ce choix s’avère très structurant et a un impact très fort sur les critères de performance de la boîte de vitesse sans que l’ingénieur ait une visibilité claire sur cet impact. Une fois l’architecture choisie, il est possible par des techniques d’optimisation continue d’optimiser les critères de performance et le respect de contraintes vis-à-vis d’un cahier des charges. Ce genre d’optimisation a pour but de déterminer de manière optimale des dimensions structurantes de la boîte de vitesses comme par exemple les positions des axes de lignes d’arbres dans l’espace ou les diamètres des pignons. L’objectif de cette thèse est d’apporter des techniques scientifiques permettant de choisir l’architecture optimale vis-à-vis de ce cahier des charges. Le développement d’une telle méthode vise à obtenir des boîtes plus performantes, mais également de réduire les temps de développement d’ingénierie en s’assurant par des méthodes scientifiques du respect des contraintes exprimées dans le cahier des charges, et ce dès le choix de l’architecture, chose faite par essais-erreurs dans le cycle de conception habituel. / In the design process of a new gearbox, a choice has to be made between several competing technical solutions referred to as architectures. The purpose of multicriteria architecture optimization is to define the best technical solution in order to meet some given specifications. In the case of automotive gearboxes, the number of technical solutions is so high that it is humanly impossible for an engineer to test every possibility.It is more convenient to computationally generate all the gearbox architectures and select them with an automated analysis of performance and viability for the main criterion. These viable architectures are at this step only described by their kinematic functions, and a second stage considers the discrete spatial positioning of components in order to determine the viable ones for each architecture. Then, the design engineercan compare the viable architectures according to their performance and select the most interesting one.This PhD. propose a novel framework for gearbox synthesis from kinematic specifications and engineering rules and knowledge, using a specific graph as model for gearbox architectures.

Friction Bit Joining (FBJ) is a new technology used primarily in joining dissimilar metals. Its primary use has been focused in the automotive industry to provide an alternative joining process to welding. As automotive manufacturing has continually pushed toward using dissimilar materials, new joining processes have been needed to replace traditional welding practices that do not perform well when materials are not weld compatible. FBJ meets these needs perfectly as it provides strength as well as the ability to join materials of almost any kind.The purpose of this research was to explore different applications of the FBJ process. Traditionally FBJ has used a steel bit to drill through a thin piece of aluminum and weld to a piece of steel behind the aluminum. This research explored a different application of FBJ by using a steel bit to drill through multiple pieces of aluminum and weld to a small steel bit on the backside of the aluminum. The primary goal of this research was to answer two questions. (1) How does drilling impact peak weld strength and (2) Does an optimal shank diameter exist in terms of peak weld strength? As in other research, no universal parameters were found for optimization of lap shear, cross tension and t-peel tests. Drilling was found to be an important factor in peak weld strength. Number of flutes on the consumable steel bit was varied to see the impact of better and worse chip clearance ability. Increasing number of flutes was found to positively impact peak weld strength to a point. Optimal number of flutes was found to be different for each type of testing. It was found that there was an optimal bit head to bit shank diameter ratio that optimized peak weld strength. Again the optimal diameter was different for each test. Bits of different diameters were created and then tested to measure the impact of varying shank diameters on peak weld strength. It was found that there was a strength tradeoff between two localized joint areas in diameter testing. Decreasing the shank diameter increased the amount of overlap formed by the bit head over the top coupon. This shifted strength to the bit head region. While this strengthened the bit head region of the joint, strength was sacrificed in the bit-nut intersection. This tradeoff was consistently found in all test types.