2011 Honda Insight – Click above for high-res image gallery
The slow-selling hasn’t exactly stolen any of the ‘ thunder since its introduction last year, and with new green cars like the and ready to join the battle, the future of Honda’s hybrid hatch doesn’t look too bright. Still, the Japanese automaker has given the Insight a host of improvements for the 2011 model year, including a new base model that retails for $18,950 (including the $750 destination charge).
So, what do you losegain with the base Insight? For starters, a downgraded stereo system is on hand, with a single CD player and two – yes, two – speakers. Audiophiles need not apply. Remote entry is standard on the base Insight, but if you want amenities like cruise control, a USB audio interface, center armrest and floor mats, you’ll need to opt for the mid-grade LX trim. In other words, the new price leader is something of a municipal and fleet special. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the pricier EX now comes standard with steering wheel-mounted audio controls and can be optioned with navigation.
The Insight’s 1.3-liter inline-four with Honda’s Integrated Motor Assist carries over largely unchanged, with fuel economy rated at 40/43 miles per gallon, city/highway. 2011 Insight models are arriving at Honda dealers as you read this, and for the full details on what’s new, for Honda’s press release.
2011 Nissan Leaf – Click above for high-res image gallery
At the start of November, the 41 contenders for the 2011 award . Today, for the first time ever, Europe’s most coveted automotive award went to vehicle that that relies upon electrical juice flowing from its lithium-ion battery pack as its sole source of motivation. That battery-powered vehicle, the , marks the automaker’s first win since the took home the award way back in 1993. Head juror Hakan Matson proclaims that the Leaf is “a breakthrough for electric cars” and that it “is the first electric vehicle that can match conventional cars in many respects.” chief executive officer Carlos Ghosn accepted the honor and responded with:
This award recognises the pioneering zero-emission Nissan Leaf as competitive to conventional cars in terms of safety, performance, spaciousness and handling. It also reflects Nissan’s standing as an innovative and exciting brand with a clear vision of the future of transportation, which we call sustainable mobility.
The Leaf faced strong competition from the Alfa Romeo Giulietta, Citroën C3/DS3, Dacia Duster, C-Max, Opel/Vauxhall Meriva and /V60. Early predictions by some of the motoring press suggested that the pair of models from Citroën or perhaps even the lone Alfa Romeo vehicle would capture the award, but that’s not how the jury of 57 automotive journalists ended up seeing it, and the electric Nissan Leaf grabbed the top spot. Last year, the snatched the Car of the Year title away from second-place finisher, the . In 2009, the Opel/Vauxhall Insignia just beat out the for the honor.
The Leaf also recently won from the UK’s TheGreenCarWebsite and was named . Hat tip to Matt!
Fiat’s recent introduction of the two-cylinder has not swayed to reconsider placing a two-piston mill in its own city car. If anything, Fiat’s TwinAir debut has convinced VW that two-cylinder engines are simply too costly and complicated to develop.
VW actively pursues engine downsizing, witnessed by its use of and but, according to the company’s research and development chief, Ulrich Hackenburg, downsizing is and dropping the cylinder count to just two is not in the automaker’s near-term plans.
Hackenberg told Autocar that further downsizing is not practical, framing it:
Improvements can now only be made in performance and economy, not in making the engines any smaller. Instead, the Up will make use of three-cylinder engines that will really advance the technology and make strong use of it.
VW technical boss, Michael Hinz, added that even three-cylinder engines can be challenging to develop, stating:
I’ve seen two-cylinder cars running, but from a production point of view it’d be very hard. Even three-cylinder engines are very expensive as they’re not as smooth or refined as we’d like. But we’re not going to abandon them.
If Fiat can produce a two-cylinder engine, then other automakers could, too. However, VW displays no immediate interest in tackling the complicated development of a two-pot engine, instead electing to stick with motors packing three pistons or more.
The Unplugged Tour is officially over after traveling to 12 cities across the country. Chevy is calling it a success with a total of 6,384 lucky participants spending time behind the wheel. The tour traveled 4,124 miles and made sure to stop in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, which are part of the initial launch markets.
After driving the Volt in Tacoma, Washington, professional test pilot Normal Howell remarked that “It is very well sorted out… very, very mature in all aspects of vehicle dynamics and driver interface, and I’m very impressed.” Chevy created a Driver Scrapbook section on the Volt’s website allowing people to share their driving impressions of the Volt at .
Oshkosh Extreme Racing Light Concept Vehicle (LCV) – Click above for high-res image gallery, for video
Yep, that’s a diesel hybrid Light Concept Vehicle (LCV) from the Extreme Racing team competing in the 43rd running of the Tecate SCORE Baja 1000. “Light” in this case is relative, of course. Oshkosh builds a large variety of bigger machines, ranging from fire trucks to rigs capable of hauling up to 70 tons.
Now, the Oshkosh outfit didn’t win the event. In fact, only one of its two entries finished, and it was six and a half hours too late to be scored. It was, though, an opportunity to see how Oshkosh’s hybrid system would hold up to the rigors of off-road abuse. In that department the race was a success.
According to the Oshkosh, the hybrid system uses a diesel engine to send power to a generator which, in turn, directly powers the wheels (Though not stated, we imagine there’s an electric motor involved for each set of wheels.) In place of batteries, the setup relies on ultracapacitors to store and deliver energy. The arrangement is said to reduce fuel consumption by 20 percent thanks to the elimination of components such as the torque converter, automatic transmission, transfer case and driveshafts. To get a better look at this beast, check out the gallery below or the video of it in action .
By the year 2020, hopes to be the “leading premium seller of electric vehicles,” Franciscus van Meel, the automaker’s manager for electric mobility, told AutoWeek during a recent technical workshop at the company’s headquarters in Ingolstadt, Germany. In addition to launching a number of hybrid vehicles (including the and ) over the next few years, Audi plans to debut a plug-in hybrid in 2014.
Exactly what sort of plug-in hybrid we’ll actually see hasn’t been disclosed just yet, but the whole business is part of Audi’s division – the folks that gave us beauties like the -based e-tron supercar (pictured above) that debuted at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show.
Furthermore, Audi’s board member for technology, Michael Dick, says that by 2020, he wants to see the automaker’s internal combustion engines improve efficiency by 30 percent, with 5 percent of the brand’s lineup to be purely electric. That’s a tall order, indeed, but with parent company AG aiming to be the number one producer of hybrid and electric cars before the end of the next decade, the four-ringed automaker’s quest for electrification isn’t as far-fetched as you might think.
After yesterday’s 99 miles per gallon (equivalent) EPA rating for the , had to be eager to get the numbers for the from the government – if for no other reason than because these efficiency stickers are the last thing .
Today, GM shared the official numbers with the world, and they range from 37 miles per gallon to 93 mpge (equivalent) combined to 60 mpg “composite.” Sixty mpg composite is a “combined, combined” number, and will be completely different for everyone. You might want to think of it as a lifetime figure, since it accounts for both electricity and gasoline consumed. Oh, and it’s also best in class for compact cars. The Volt’s official electric-only range will be 35 miles, but GM, like Nissan, has been giving a range recently of 25-50 miles recently. The Volt now has an official total range of 379 miles, with 344 miles of that being extended range (i.e., gas) driving. As Tony DiSalle, Chevrolet product marketing director, said, “If you try to boil it down to a single number, it gets quite difficult.”
Doug Parks, Chevrolet Volt Global Vehicle Line Executive, said he is “quite pleased” with the numbers and understands that it is a complicated story to tell. GM and the EPA worked together to come up with this label to figure in all of the different modes that impact the vehicle’s efficiency. We’ve heard that the 2011 Volt will have a temporary EPA label, but Parks told us that what you see above will likely be what we see in next year, saying “Our intent was not to do something that was a one-year deal. Our hope is that this is very similar to the path that everyone will go down in the future. We tried to make the label look as similar as it can to next year.”
So, what about that . Well, that was a different way to calculate things. “230 by itself was never intended to be a composite number,” Parks said.
When the the use of gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol content (E15) for model year 2007 and newer vehicles in mid-October, critics immediately with a wave of concerns. Some argued that drivers would have a difficult time to pump into their vehicles, while other were concerned that insufficient testing had been conducted by the EPA and to limit the sale of E15 to flex fuel vehicles only. For nearly two years, the E15 battle has waged on, with supporters convinced that increased ethanol content would be and opponents .
The E15 battle is far from over. The EPA’s next move is determining whether or not the gasoline-ethanol blended fuel is acceptable for 2001 to 2006 model-year vehicles. The EPA’s decision was initially expected to come in December, but due to some mechanical failures in test vehicles unrelated to the fueling system, the Energy Department will require more time to analyze E15 use in older vehicles and the EPA will be forced to push back its decision until January.
As far as we know, the first production models are . , though, has received the details on what the government agency has rated its all-electric at, and it looks good: a combined rating of 99 miles per gallon (equivalent) which breaks down into 106 city/92 highway. The official EPA range for the car is 73 miles, which (we know it ), and the annual electric cost is estimated at $561. The Leaf is the first vehicle to get this new label, Nissan spokesperson Katherine Zachary told AutoblogGreen that 99 mpg puts the Leaf way in front into the “best” fuel efficiency rating for mid-size vehicle class. It’ll be interesting to see how Nissan uses this in upcoming advertisements, especially since the company has called the car a compact in the past.
So, how does the EPA calculate mpg for an electric car? Nissan’s presser says the EPA uses a formula where 33.7 kWhs are equivalent to one gallon of gasoline energy. Also, the EPA determined the Leaf’s efficiency is 3.4 miles per kWh, another number you can easily beat while driving, as the driver info screen can prove. Since the Leaf has a 24 kWh battery pack and can go, officially, 73 miles, then, the EPA says, it could theoretically go 99 miles if it had a 33.7 kWh pack (and everything else about the car remained the same). Make sense?
Maybe, but the car will also have another label from the Federal Trade Commission that it applies to all alternative fuel vehicles. That sticker will show that the Leaf gets 96 to 110 miles of range, so don’t trust everything you see. Check out Nissan’s official press release after the jump for more details.
Instead of getting suckered into the Wagon Queen Family Truckster, a pea green calamity with excessive wood paneling and eight sealed-beam headlamps, a wiser move for Clark Griswold would have been to hold off until the first wave of high-performance station wagons rolled into showrooms. As it happened, just a few years after Clark traded in his Oldsmobile, sedans like the and spawned the enthusiast-targeted Volvo 740 Turbo Wagon and BMW M5 Touring. Both five-doors would have given Christy Brinkley a serious run in her red .Those early gussied-up family haulers were the predecessors to the , , and . None were intended to be volume models (in fact, two never made it to the States). Instead, each was fabricated to act as a flagship ambassador, a proof-of-concept to the performance capability of the five-door chassis and to deliver unchallenged bragging rights. Automakers didn’t build fast wagons because they had to – they built them because they could.
, a company no longer content with letting others lead segments it once dominated, wanted to get into the frothy action. The luxury automaker felt an obligation to do “the right thing” and push for its own very unique five-door. The vision was clear – Cadillac wanted to build a CTS-V Wagon – and the concept was simple, making it difficult for management to contest (at the time, the organization was functioning inside circled-wagons). Since the platform and powertrain were already in existence, the ceremonial mating would be accomplished at minimal cost and everything could be completed at breakneck speed. Less than one year later, the all-new CTS-V Wagon is here.
Spirit of Ecstasy sculpture by Priory Fine Arts – Click above for high-res image gallery
Though hood ornaments were once commonplace on high-end automobiles, they’ve all but completely gone the way of the dodo. sedans still use the simple but iconic three-pointed star, and its upscale sister brand has its own Double-M. Some owners opt for the Flying B ornament, but the leaping cat is even less common. Few carry the mantle as proudly as though.
The Spirit of Ecstasy has been the Rolls-Royce mascot for decades, and remains so today. Back in its heyday, though, Rolls dealers often displayed oversized sculptures – a couple of feet tall or more – of the Spirit in their showrooms. Afficionados, however, can still get these to display in their homes or offices thanks to an English studio called Priory Fine Arts.
Priory crafts replicas of the classic statuettes out of brass, optionally plated in silver or gold. You can get your hands on one for $3,150. The price is listed as negotiable, but the precious-metal leaf will undoubtedly add a few extra greenbacks. Have a closer look at the continuation sculptures – soon to celebrate the centenary of the 1911 original – in the gallery below, or follow the links to inquire about ordering your own.
Designer Thanva Tivawong has come up with a solution for all you impatient drivers out there. What if you knew exactly when a stoplight was going to change from green to yellow, or more importantly, from red to green? In theory, traffic would be expedited and drivers would be less likely to try to beat yellow lights in the rush to make good time. That’s exactly the logic behind the hourglass stoplight concept you see above. As time soldiers on, the pixels in the light drain from top to bottom. When time’s up, the light changes color and the process starts all over again.
There are a couple of problems with this notion. First, colorblind drivers are left completely in the cold. More importantly, we’re also concerned about the idea of basically turning every intersection into a drag strip, complete with fully-functional Christmas trees. It’d be great for the street racing scene, sure, but we don’t want to give the granny in the lane next to us an excuse to lay down her best ETA when the light goes green.
Ducati Diavel posing with Mercedes-Benz CLS63 AMG – Click above for high-res image gallery
At this point, we’re going to go ahead and file this one away in the Highly Unlikely File, but here we go anyway. According to Autocar, which has been known to publish a few whoppers every now and again, the between AMG, high-performance division, and Italian motorcycle manufacturer could eventually lead to a full-blown takeover of the two-wheeled brand by its new German partners.
For now, all AMG and Ducati are saying is that they are looking at further ways to combine forces in mutually beneficial ways, which will soon include AMG sponsorship of Ducati’s MotoGP racing efforts. According to “inside sources” at Ducati, however, Autocar suggests that the partnership could lead to AMG-branded, Italian-built motorcycles as a way to improve the “green” image of the three-lettered in-house tuners of three-pointed stars.
The British magazine’s unnamed “insiders” also suggest that many employees at the Bologna-based factory would welcome AMG’s ownership and the newfound resources it would bring. Just so long as it’s not another so-called merger of equals… for the full press release from Ducati announcing the current partnership.
may be raking in the awards with its right now, but isn’t exactly going unnoticed for its efforts on the green front. The GreenBlue Oval has won Nielsen’s first Automotive Green Marketer of the Year award. The honor is given to brands that help shape consumer awareness of environmental themes, and Ford beat out , , and for this year’s pick in the automotive category. According to Nielsen, the campaigns for both the and helped tip the scales in the Ford direction. Additionally, Nielsen says that FoMoCo’s decision to sponsor this year’s hybrid-oriented American Idol helped out quite a bit as well.
This isn’t just some popularity contest, though. Nielsen dug through three research studies to determine each manufacturer’s effectiveness in green advertising. All told, over 7,000 participants were involved in the research. for the press release.
Lexus ‘Darkcasting’ – Click above to watch the teaser video
is continuing its “Darker Side of Green” advertising campaign for the new CT200h with a new video series. Comedian Whitney Cummings will interview a host of unique personalities as they drive the new hybrid hatch through their home cities. Each episode will focus on a different locality, with hotspots like San Francisco, Miami and New Orleans taking center stage.
Don’t expect the interviewees to be hardcore driving aficionados, either. Instead, Lexus has handpicked a few movers and shakers from each community to spend a little time behind the wheel of the company’s newest hybrid.
The automaker is calling the video series “Darkcasting,” and the interviews will be shot in a total of six cities across the United States. Eventually, the series will be found at the campaign web site, but the impatient among you can check out the quick trailer . The full press blast is there, too.
