Findings from a study of the sustainability of car manufacturing of 17 of the world's leading car companies have just been published by a leading European research team.

Key findings from the study Sustainable Value in Automobile Manufacturing include, how Asian car manufacturers are outperforming their North American, and many of their European counterparts, in using their economic, environmental and social resources more efficiently.

The report, which covers the period between 1999 and 2007, has been created by researchers at Queen's Management School in Belfast, alongside colleagues from the Euromed Management School, in Marseille, and the Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment (IZT) in Berlin.

It provides a full account of the societal impacts of car production, including issues such as the volume of greenhouse gas emissions from production facilities and the number of work accidents recorded by a company.

In the report Asian car manufacturers including Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan, Honda, and to a lesser extent, Suzuki have all out-performed their North American competitors.

In stark contract to the Asian manufacturers, both North American carmakers Ford and General Motors (GM) lie well into negative territory, with GM showing the most striking downside trend.

There is a mixed picture among European manufacturers. While BMW tops the ranking of all 17 manufacturers in most of the years assessed, other European carmakers PSA (Peugeot, Citroën), Renault, Volkswagen and DaimlerChrysler/Daimler AG only occasionally keep pace with the industry leaders. FIAT Auto consistently falls behind throughout the entire review period.

Professor Frank Figge, of the Queen's Management School and one of the study’s authors, said: "Economic crisis, energy crisis, climate crisis and recent global developments have affected the automobile industry like few other sectors. Never before has it been as important for car manufacturers to employ their economic, environmental and social resources wisely - and efficiently.”

Both study and extensive information on the Sustainable Value approach are available at www.sustainablevalue.com.