#Efficiencies

Nokia isn’t having a good day, what with Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess likening it to an Edsel or Tucker. The VW chief contrasted the phone maker with sales leader Apple when discussing his company’s future, claiming VW will need to move much faster if it’s to stay at the front of the pack.

To further this goal, some things will need to move to the back burner.

General Motors won’t move ahead with a planned expansion of its Warren, Michigan design center, nor will its Pontiac propulsion center get the makeover GM once favored. While a shiny new parking garage became a reality before CEO Mary Barra’s aggressive cost-cutting program could kibosh it, the automaker’s planned workforce reduction might render many of those parking spaces redundant.

You need cash if you’re going to make it in this industry, and Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda wants more of it. The automaker’s top executive, who characterizes the dangers facing his company in the same manner of a military general defending the Japanese mainland, has launched an all-out assault on what he fears is Toyota’s biggest threat: unnecessary expense.

“With our rivals and the rules of competition also changing, a life-or-death battle has begun in a world of unknowns,” Toyoda said during a fiscal update last week. “Cost reduction is crucial. It is a fight to restore our original strength.”

To shore up his business’s finances in preparation for new investments, Toyoda has seven warriors ready to slash costs wherever savings can be found.