Chrysler Group is celebrating the opening of its new transmission plant in Tipton, Indiana.

The company last year announced plans to acquire the 782,000-square-foot facility, investing $162 million to build a global hub for assembling the new nine-speed transmission used in the Jeep Cherokee, Chrysler 200 and other models.

Up to 850 new jobs will be required to bring the plant up to full capacity, at which point it will ship approximately 800,000 transmissions to vehicle assembly facilities in the US and abroad.

“With the startup of [Tipton Transmission Plant], we are enhancing the status of this region as the largest transmission installation in the world,” said CEO Sergio Marchionne. “Just recently, we reached the landmark numbers of 17 million four-speed transmissions and three million six-speed transmissions built in Kokomo.”

The Tipton plant is part of Chrysler’s transmission production network in north-central Indiana, where 2,600 people have been hired and more than $1.6 billion invested since 2009. The company employes more than 7,000 people at its five plants in the region.

Parent company Fiat Chrysler Automobiles recently announced an ambitious five-year plan, aiming to double Jeep sales by 2018. All Jeep models are currently produced in the US, however manufacturing operations will eventually expand globally to meet the distribution goals.

BMW is reportedly considering a switch to four-cylinder engines for future M3 and M4 models.

The M division head of product management, Carsten Pries, suggests the company could achieve acceptable performance out of fewer cylinders if the platform sheds weight.

“We do not start our design process with a power output in mind,” the executive told Motoring. “We have a set of characteristics that a new model must meet. For sure, you could see a future [M3] powered by a four-cylinder engine.”

Although the idea may seem repugnant to some purists, the original E30 M3 was powered by a 2.3-liter four-cylinder engine. It was also much lighter than following generations, weighing in below 3,000 pounds.

Reports surrounding the M2 consistently point to a six-cylinder mill under the hood, despite the lighter 2-Series platform being a logical starting place for a four-cylinder mill rather than the larger and heftier 3-Series. Both model families are just entering new generations, however, leaving BMW plenty of time to explore development possibilities.

General Motors has announced that backup cameras will become a standard feature on all Buick models beginning with the 2015 model year.

All automakers that sell consumer vehicles in the US market will have to follow the same route eventually, though the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration mandate does not take effect until May of 2018.

The announcement is also not a significant change for Buick itself, as the company has already integrated backup cameras as a standard feature on all of its current models except for the LaCrosse.

Separate reports suggest more than three out of four new vehicles sold in the US are equipped with backup cameras, though an average of 210 annual fatalities — mostly children and the elderly — are still blamed on backover crashes.

Ahead of the backup camera requirement, automakers are shifting their focus to marketing other forms of safety gadgetry. Buick is among the brands that offers optional forward collision warnings, blind-spot alerts, lane departure warning and rear cross-traffic detection, among other features.

Automotive industry suppliers have reportedly voted General Motors as the worst automaker to deal with.

In a Tier 1 supplier survey conducted by research firm Planning Perspectives Inc, respondents were asked to rate their interactions with the biggest automakers in the US. Subjects include communications, trustworthiness, flexibility and handling of intellectual property, among other criteria.

More than half of the suppliers generally outlined their relationship with General Motors as “poor to very poor,” with a notable unwillingness to adjust prices due to unexpected jumps in material costs.

“As a result, GM is now the least preferred customer of suppliers,” PPI said, as quoted by Reuters.

The ranking is particularly significant amid the company’s ongoing recall crisis, which centers around an ignition switch produced by supplier Delphi. Reports suggest overly aggressive cost-cutting strategies played a role, putting pressure on suppliers to shave costs in every way possible. The practices have been blamed on quality deficiencies and production approval for component designs that were known to have fallen short of GM’s original specifications.

GM has vowed to place a top priority on safety, splitting off an “integrity” unit as a separate entity from the core engineering operations. It is unclear if the company is working to improve supplier relations as part of its quest to produce safer vehicles.

General Motors has announced pricing information for its OnStar in-vehicle Wi-Fi service powered by AT&T’s 4G LTE network.

Customers will be able to sign up for several different monthly plans, ranging from 200MB for $10 per month to 5GB for $50. OnStar subscribers receive a $5 monthly discount on the 200MB and 1GB tiers.

Unsurprisingly, the pricing structure matches AT&T’s own rates for mobile broadband service for individual devices such as tablets and notebooks. Service directly from AT&T for a mobile hotspot is limited to a 5GB plan, however, rather than the lower tiers offered via GM.

For existing AT&T customers, a supported vehicle can be added to a Mobile Share Plan as an extra device for $10 per month to share the data pool.

The upgraded connectivity suite will be available later this year for the 2015 model year, initially launching for the Chevrolet Corvette, Impala, Malibu and Volt, ahead of a wider rollout. The automaker is offering a free trial period of three months or 3GB to promote the new service.