> Home / January 1970

Toyota Builds a Hybrid For T. Boone Pickens

January 1, 1970

LOS ANGELES - T. Boone Pickens, your car is ready.
Toyota rolled into the Los Angeles Auto Show with what it says is the world’s first and only compressed natural gas hybrid vehicle, a car that gets 33 mpg and, if nothing else, shows a lowered Camry looks pretty sweet on 19-inch wheels. Toyota has no immediate plans to mass produce the car, a concept vehicle the company says it built to show the versatility of the Hybrid Synergy Drive system more commonly found in the ubiquitous Prius.
That’s not to say Toyota isn’t covering all the bets when it comes to deciding the fuel of the future, suggesting we might see a gassy Camry after all.
“In the near future, growing demand for liquid petroleum simply and effectively will exceed supply,” says Chris Hostetter, VP of advanced product planning. “Before that occurs, automakers must look to vehicles powered by alternative fuels. We [...]

continue article > > .

The Jersey Turnpike is No Match for the Roadster

January 1, 1970

After a large coffee at the Dunkin’ Donuts on the corner of Boulevard and Main in Hasbrouck Heights, NJ, I was ready for anything. When the Tesla Roadster (cue the arch angels) pulled into the DD parking lot, though, I could barely contain myself. The car’s presence was immediately felt.  The other drivers on the road hit the breaks, turning their heads in awe.
Apart from being behind the wheel of a Roadster with 1.5 drivetrain, this was not going to be your ordinary test drive. The night before temperatures dipped down into the low 30’s, flurries were in the air, and maple leaves covered the neighborhood roads.
The conditions were perfect!
We all know the Roadster can handle everyday road courses and the picturesque highways of Northern California; we have seen the photos and videos in addition to having read the stories. I wanted know how the Roadster would handle [...]

continue article > > .

The Jersey Turnpike is No Match for the Tesla Roadster

January 1, 1970

After a large coffee at the Dunkin Doughnuts on the corner of Boulevard and Main in Hasbrouck Heights, NJ, I was ready for anything. When the Tesla Roadster (cue the arch angels) pulled into the DD parking lot, though, I could barely contain myself. The car’s presence was immediately felt.  The other drivers on the road hit the breaks, turning their heads in awe.
Apart from being behind the wheel of a Roadster with 1.5 drivetrain, this was not going to be your ordinary test drive. The night before temperatures dipped down into the low 30’s, flurries were in the air, and maple leaves covered the neighborhood roads.
The conditions were perfect!
We all know the Roadster can handle everyday road courses and the picturesque highways of Northern California; we have seen the photos and videos in addition to having read the stories. I wanted know how the Roadster would handle [...]

continue article > > .

Nissan Brings Japanese Minicars to the U.S.

January 1, 1970

LOS ANGELES — The first box opened at the Los Angeles Auto Show Wednesday contained another box — Nissan’s funky little Cube city car.
The Cube looks looks like a big marshmallow and brings Japan’s love of small cars to America, where the 30-plus-mpg wonder rolls into showrooms next fall. As the name implies, the Cube is nothing more than a box on wheels that Nissan design chief Shiro Nakamura called “clever, witty and fun, with a unique blend of fashion and function.”
He forgot to say “adorable,” in a “What the hell is that?” kind of way.
The car that made its worldwide debut today is the third generation of a car that’s been wildly successful in Japan. By bringing it to America, Nissan is betting the Cube will be a hit with the same urban hipsters who bought the first-gen Scion XB, another car that looked like the box it came [...]

continue article > > .

Trans Pacific Flights Get Leaner and Greener

January 1, 1970

Forgive us for sometimes wondering if the airline industry is simply throwing green ideas against the wall and seeing what sticks. Every week seems to bring talk of a new landing procedure, a better pre-flight system, or an improved fueling method. There are lots of great ideas out there, but at the end of the day do they really add up to anything?
The answer is yes. Earlier this week,
United Airlinesflew a plane across the Pacific using set of fuel saving procedures know as ASPIRE. The ambitious ASPIRE program uses everything from advanced navigation technology, improved airspace design, and simplified ground procedures to create a comprehensive, gate-to-gate flight program. If results from the United flight and two earlier tests are any indication, it has the potential to save millions of gallons of fuel and dramatically cut CO2 emissions.

ASPIRE is a fairly complex, interwoven series of procedures, but these can be [...]

continue article > > .

Honda’s Still Pimping Hydrogen, This Time in a Cool Car

January 1, 1970

LOS ANGELES — Honda surprised everyone here at the L.A. Auto Show today when it rolled out a radical three-seat supercar concept vehicle that runs on hydrogen, a fuel fast becoming a footnote in automotive history.
Honda stands almost alone in clinging to the belief hydrogen is the fuel of the future, and the FC Sport that made its worldwide premiere today places the automaker firmly at the forefront of fuel cell vehicle design. Although the FC is nothing more than a styling exercise that will almost certainly never see production, that slick bodywork is the only thing revolutionary about it. All of the technology beneath the skin already exists in the FCX Clarity fuel cell sedan currently being leased to select customers in Southern California.
The Clarity raised the bar for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles when it appeared at last year’s show, and Honda VP Dan Bonawitz says the company wants [...]

continue article > > .

Start Saving Now for Your Mini-E EV

January 1, 1970

LOS ANGELES — The only thing surprising about the full-electric Mini-E that BMW unveiled weeks after we’d already shown it to you is how much it’ll cost to put one in your driveway — $850 a month.
That’s how much BMW is charging the 500 people who will be lucky — and affluent — enough to get one of the sweet little EVs when they hit the road in L.A. and New York as early as the end of the year.  BMW says it’s absolutely committed to electric drivetrains, but the cost of battery technology "among other things" is so high it simply can’t offer the car for less.
Too bad, because cost aside, it might just be the perfect urban EV.
Leasing the Mini-E is little more than a real-world R&D program for BMW, which says it will use real-world drivers to further develop the EV with an eye toward production. Even [...]

continue article > > .

Nissan Will Try and Make the Red Dragon Greener

January 1, 1970

Nissan Motor is heading to China with new plans for electric vehicles. The president of the car company’s China division, Yasuaki Hashimoto, said at the Guangzhou International Auto Show that the company will start selling electric cars in the country by 2012, according to Bloomberg. Nissan, though always having been comparatively behind in hybrid technology, has consistently been on the heels of the front runners and with this new development looks poised like a late breaking Derby horse to make things a little interesting if not neck and neck.
In 2000, Nissan rolled out its Tino Hybrid car in Japan and only the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight beat it to market. Nissan’s Tino full-hybrid car sported a 100-hp gasoline engine, two electric motors, a lithium-ion battery pack and regenerative braking features. The Tino Hybrid increased fuel efficiency by 50-percent while decreasing pollutants by 50-percent over the standard Tino.  In [...]

continue article > > .

Toyota Demands Site Remove Fan-Submitted Photos

January 1, 1970

To the owner of DesktopNexus.com—a site dedicated to sharing user-submitted desktop wallpaper—it sounded as if the attorney from the Toyota Motor Corporation on the phone was reading from a script. He was basically repeating the same demand that Toyota had made over the course of six months in several emails: The car giant wanted Harry Maugans to remove all images on his site containing a Toyota, Lexus and Scion gallery. 
What wasn’t clear—because Toyota did not submit a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notification—was whether Toyota was claiming ownership of any image containing one of their cars. That radical claim would be enough to shivers down the spine of any gearhead on the net.
“I asked them for all the information that would be included in a DMCA request, including who owned the image,” Maugans told Wired.com. The attorney, who identified himself as Garrett Biggs, told Maugans that if he wanted [...]

continue article > > .

Airbus Tries to Turn Down the Volume

January 1, 1970

Living next to an airport is no picnic. Sure, you’ll never miss a flight because you’re stuck in traffic, but you’re constantly dealing with jet fuel fumes, a house that shakes with each and every takeoff and the near constant roar of giant aircraft engines.
The
Airbus Noise Technology Centre, or ANTC, a collaboration between the European jet maker and the University of Southampton’s School of Engineering Sciences, is working on the noise problem. For years the school has collaborated with Airbus on different projects, and now it’s taking the partnership up a notch, rolling out a bunch of advanced technologies and research projects in order to meet some very aggressive noise-reduction targets.
The ANTC has plenty on its plate, but
GreenAir Onlinesays its number one priority is figuring out how to meet a target of cutting
“perceived” noise in half by 2020, and eliminating all noise nuisance
outside of airport bounds within the same [...]

continue article > > .

Next Page »