JOLIET, IL—Lion Electric Co. recently celebrated the official opening of a 900,000-square-foot facility here that will assemble battery-powered school buses and trucks.
For decades, General Motors was king of the highway and queen of the rails. In addition to mass-producing buses, cars and trucks, the automaker was once the largest locomotive builder in the world. At a massive factory just west of Chicago, GM’s Electro-Motive Division (EMD) assembled powerful machines that helped transition American railroads from steam to diesel.
Once upon a time, many of the fuel gauges, speedometers and other mechanical instruments used in automobiles and other vehicles were made ion the North Side of Chicago by Stewart-Warner Corp.
Up until a few decades ago, instrument panels in most vehicles consisted of a smattering of simple analog buttons, dials, gauges, knobs and needles. Today, mechanical speedometers and tachometers have gone the way of bench seats, hood ornaments, hub caps and running boards.
America's newest national park recently opened on the South Side of Chicago. The Pullman National Monument celebrates the unique history of a company that mass-produced freight and passenger rail cars at the site from 1881 to 1981.
Additive manufacturing is a popular alternative to traditional plastic injection molding, metal casting and metal stamping, because it enables engineers to consolidate parts and produce components in complex shapes.
Today, gas stations are a ubiquitous part of the urban landscape. They are found at numerous intersections and off-ramps. But, once upon a time, service stations were few and far between. As a result, one of the biggest fears of early motorists was running out of gas while on a long-distance road trip.