Yesterday, Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) announced that it will launch a voluntary safety recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that will impact roughly 96,000 Toyota and Scion vehicles sold in the U.S. thanks to possible brake problems.

The problem occurs in extremely cold temperatures in the 2009 and 2010 Toyota Corolla and Corolla Matrix, along with the 2008 and 2009 Scion xD vehicles, all of which come equipped with 1.8 liter engines. Toyota will notify vehicle owners from 19 affected states in early September 2009. Toyota dealers will install a newly designed intake air connector to correct the problem.

Shares of the nation's largest automaker, General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM), have been soaring in premarket despite posting a large first quarter loss, as the company surprised Wall Street by reporting a smaller than expected loss per share.

For the quarter, General Motors said it swung to a loss of $3.3 billion, hurt by continued weakness in U.S., waning demand for its sport utility vehicles, and a supplier strike. The company stated that the strike, which started two months ago at American Axle and Manufacturing Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AXL), came with charges that totaled $800 million, and slashed vehicles production by 100,000.

Weighed down by those costs, GM posted a net loss of $5.74 per share, compared with a profit of 11 cents a share a year-earlier. However, excluding one-time items, the automaker reported a loss of 62 cents per share. Going into today's earnings announcement, analysts had been expecting the company to show a much higher loss of $1.60 per share.

In a recent survey jointly conducted by The British Council and a China daily, 84% of young Chinese want to purchase a car (despite the fact that 80% of them are concerned with global warning).

General Motors Corporation (NYSE: GM) hopes to capitalize on that 84%. Shanghai General Motors' joint venture with Shanghai Automotive have announced the creation of interest-free car loans, as they fight for additional market share in the competitive Chinese market. In the first six months of 2007, General Motor brands have lagged in China behind the sales increases for passenger vehicles. Sales for Shanghai GM were up 12%, while overall car sales in China climbed 26%.

The "Buick Elite Wealth-Management Program," as its called, will try to lure buyers into financing in a nation where many prefer to buy cars with cash. GM officials said they were unaware of the initiative before it was announced to the Chinese media, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Nissan North America (NASDAQ: NSANY) is using better automation to streamline its automotive production. A move that may help the company's bottom line.

In pursuit of absolute manufacturing floor intelligence, Nissan North America is utilizing progressive automation technology to track and control the manufacture of full size vehicles in its new plant in Canton Mississippi. Motion System Design has reported that Nissan is utilizing readily available components from EMC (NYSE: EMC), Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and GE Fanuc (NYSE: GE) to integrate Nissan's Canton operations starting from parts ordering and going right on through final assembly. GE Fanuc Cimplicity software is at the heart of Nissan's Production Management Control System (PMCS). GE Fanuc is a unit of GE Infrastructure.

The PMCS interchanges data with over 1 million individual data points within the manufacturing stream. Oversight is accomplished with a minimum of engineering staff by utilizing carefully planned and heavily integrated software over a span of more than 300 plant floor operating stations. Additionally, the system does double duty by keeping constant watch over energy consumption parameters and by monitoring waste destruction and removal. In all, the high tech system oversees the manufacture of 400,000 vehicles at peak production capacity within Nissan's Canton facility.

Read the Motion System Design article here.