A group of Japanese companies which control 70% of the global carbon fiber market want to increase the usage of carbon fiber in automobiles. Carbon fiber can deliver the same strength as steel at just one fifth an equivalent amount of steel’s weight, but carbon fiber applications in automobiles currently account only for less than 1 percent of the carbon fiber production.

Traditionally carbon fiber has been reserved for more expensive cars such as the BMW M3 with its carbon fiber roof, and the NIssan GT-R with its carbon fiber engine underguard and radiator panel. But it may soon trickle down to more mass-production cars - Toyota displayed the Toyota 1/X Concept car at the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show last year. It uses a carbon fiber reinforced plastic body frame, has the same interior size as a Toyota Prius, but only weighs one third the weight.

Carbon fiber is expensive because of cost of materials, cost of manufacturing and time needed for manufacturing. It requires lots of energy to heat and treat the fibers, and molding the material takes hours. There is also a relatively high level of wastage. One of the companies - Teijin - intends to speed up the production process via a 10 minute molding process, but this looks like an eternity compared to sheet metal stamping which needs roughly only a second.

With rising gas prices, cutting down vehicle weight is one way to improve fuel economy. Together with gradually improved carbon fiber molding processes, may see more application of carbon fiber in cars.

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Toyota has launched the latest generation Toyota Alphard MPV, and this time around the Alphard also gets a twin with minor exterior differences portraying a more aggressive look called the Toyota Vellfire.

Toyota has been known to do this with its JDM cars - the Toyota Noah has an evil twin called the Toyota Voxy, and the Toyota Allion’s twin is called the Toyota Premio.

As expected, the new Toyota Alphard is a slightly toned down production version of the Toyota FT-MV concept showed at last year’s 2007 Tokyo Motor Show. Toyota says the Alphard design represents “elegance and refinement”, while the Vellfire represents “power and innovation”.

The name Vellfire was derived by combining the words velvet and fire. The vehicles have slightly different front and rear looks, with the Vellfire having two-stepped headlamps at the front, and clear lense tail lamps at the rear. Both vehicles also feature rear wipers that fold away into the roof spoiler so that the rear looks cleaner when you do not need the rear wipers.

The Alphard (and Vellfire) is larger now, with a longer wheelbase of 2,950mm versus the previous generation’s 2,900mm wheelbase.

Each MPV has two engine choices - either a 2AZ-FE 2.4 liter DOHC VVT-i inline-4 engine mated to a Super CVT-i stepless gearbox with the option of 7 virtual gear ratios, or a 2GR-FE 3.5 liter V6 engine with a 6-speed Super ECT transmission.

The MPVs feature S-VCS (Steering-assisted Vehicle Stability Control) which can correct steering angles as well as adjust power and brake in efforts to stabilize the MPV.

More images of the two MPVs and a video of the Vellfire after the jump.

Click here to read the rest of New generation Toyota Alphard and Vellfire

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Ferrari has unveiled the name of the F149, and as expected its called the Ferrari California. Along with the name announcement, the boys at Maranello have released three photos of the car with its top down, which reveals that it is a convertible. The rear three quarter review also gives us a little glimpse of the car’s interior. It is a Grand Tourer car, with the engine mounted at the front.

The engine under the hood is a 4.3 liter V8 engine making 460 PS at 7,500rpm, which is quite an impressive state of tune because as compared to BMW’s new V8 in the M3, the Ferrari engine produces a similiar horsepower to liter ratio but achieves the horsepower at about 1,000rpm lower. Other neat tricks Ferrari has used to extract the most power out of this engine include direct injection and a “flat crankshaft”.

I’m not completely sure what that is at the moment, but with some Googling I found out apparently a flat crankshaft in a V8 usually refers to a flat-plane crankshaft as opposed to a cross-plane crankshaft with throws spaced 180 degrees apart rather than a cross-plane’s 90 degree spaced throws. This results in a sound that is smoother and of a higher pitch than a typical V8 rumble.

This engine is mated to a 7-speed dual clutch transmission, the first production usage of a dual clutch gearbox in a Ferrari! No shift times have been revealed, but expect this to be known later when the full details about the car is released. What is revealed is the car’s 0 to 100km/h time, which is said to be under 4 seconds.

The Ferrari California also has Ferrari’s F1-Trac traction control system, tuned for a typical GT car’s driving conditions. The rear suspension uses a new multilink setup. Brakes are Brembos featuring carbon-ceramic discs as standard equipment. It is available with a convertible hard top only, with no current plans for a roofed coupe.

More details to be published as they are revealed, but for the moment check out the two more photos of the car after the jump. Check out the rear exhaust design in particular, they look like they took a page out of the Lexus IS-F’s book.

Click here to read the rest of F149 GT revealed to be new Ferrari California!

The Entrepreneurial and Cooperatives Development Ministry is proposing that individual taxi driver licenses be issued to help taxi drivers earn more.

Taxi drivers currently have to work for companies who hold these taxi licenses. These individual licenses would have terms and conditions set which have to met such as maintenance and services schedules. Drivers also have to be part of an association or cooperative.

Once an individual license is obtained, the driver can then buy his own taxi via a loan from the Transport Development Fund. There is currently an allocation of RM60 million for taxi loans, but the MInistry is seeking for this to be increased to RM100 million.

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Robert Bosch CEO Bernd Bohr says the company wants to be the world’s leading supplier of hybrid technology, and has increased its hybrid technology engineering staff to a total of 400, up from just 100 a few years ago.

According to Bohr, the number one position is quite possible for Bosch because Japanese automotive suppliers have been focusing on providing components for hybrid systems rather than complete systems. Japanese automakers integrate these components into systems they have designed in-house.

Bosch will also start producing lithium ion battery cells through a partnership to be announced later this year to reduce warranty issues and as a synergy for its hybrid technology development plans.

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Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive badging will soon be phased out, according to Toyota Motor Sales USA’s president Jim Lentz. Instead, future hybrid-only models by Toyota will have Prius badging, and conventionally powered cars that also have a hybrid model added to its range like the Lexus RX will just be called the RX Hybrid.

It seems that the marketing dollars spent on building the Hybrid Synergy Drive badging into a brand is not really working, with consumers being focused on the Prius name instead. Toyota wants to expand its hybrid-only passenger car range into a few models rather than the current one-model range, and all of these cars will be called Prius, perhaps as a suffix or something similiar.

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The Renault-Nissan Alliance and Bajaj Auto will form a new joint-venture in India, held 50% by Bajaj Auto, 25% by Renault and 25% by Nissan. The new joint venture will develop and produce a new low cost car called the ULC, which would have a price tag of USD2,500 onwards. Not sure what ULC stands for at this moment, but I’m guessing something to the lines of Ultra Low Cost.

The Bajaj ULC will most likely be a production version of the Bajaj Lite concept car (shown above) displayed at the New Delhi Auto Show earlier this year. The Bajaj Lite concept featured a 2-cylinder engine and driven to the wheels via what Bajaj says is a new type of transmission that is a cross between a manual and an automatic.

That sounds like a manual with a computer controlled clutch like the Savvy’s AMT gearbox to me, but we’ll see what Bajaj has up its sleeves. Could a centrifugal clutch like a bike’s (Bajaj is a bike maker) be used on a car? Actually, it has been used in the past, but we’re talking about cars from the 1930s here.

Bajaj managing director Rajiv Bajaj was quoted referring to the Lite concept to say, “It will be priced competitively but not sell on the pricing. Offering the customer twice the fuel economy is more effective than offering half the price.”

Two more photos of the Bajaj Lite concept after the jump.

Click here to read the rest of Renault-Nissan and Bajaj team up for USD2,500 car

According to Entrepreneur and Cooperative Development Minister Datuk Noh Omar, his ministry will be approaching to discuss the development of a new type of taxi to replace the the bulk of the aging taxis that we currently use, which use the Proton Saga/Iswara models. The new taxi would be an exclusive model designed to be a cab and not based on a passenger car model.

An idealistic thought, but in reality as it is a mass-produced model like the new second generation Proton Saga can only barely touch the RM30K price tag, and with the impending higher fuel prices, taxi operators already have to deal with that as it is and it is not realistic to burden them with a higher purchase cost that would like be associated with this specially developed cab because of its limited volume.

Even in the UK, cabs in most areas use passenger car models, and only the city of London has special London Taxi Cabs built by London Taxis International. The latest model is the LTI TX4, powered by a 2.5 liter VM Motori diesel (360Nm at 2,000rpm) mated to a 5-speed auto or a 5-speed manual.

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Ferrari S.P.A. filed a trademark application back in late 2006 which may give us a clue to the name of the new Ferrari GT car. The registration for the name FERRARI GT CALIFORNIA was approved in the US sometime in February this year.

Some other new bits of unconfirmed info - according to a report by US magazine AutoWeek, the engine mounted at the front of the new F149 will be a 4.3 liter V8 based on the F430 engine’s block, but will feature direct injection, a new throttle body, new intake designs, new cylinder head designs, and a new valvetrain.

This should be exciting for those who love to take in technical bits of info about engines, and a contender for next year’s International Engine of The Year awards.

Source: USPTO, Registration Cert

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Ferrari puts up Ferrari F149 GT teaser site

BMW has conquered the 2008 International Engine Of The Year awards again, with the N54 Bi-Turbo in the BMW 335i and the BMW 135i taking home the overall award and the 2.5 liter to 3 liter, and other BMW engines winning the 1.4 liter to 1.8 liter award, the 3 liter to 4 liter award, the above 4 liter award, and the best new engine award. Find out more about the results after the jump.

Click here to read the rest of International Engine of The Year 2008 Results