Archive for International News

The latest generation Megane has been given the Renault Sport touch. Under the hood is a 250 horsepower twin-scroll turbocharged 2.0 liter inline-4 motor that puts out 340Nm of torque at 3,000rpm, with 80% of that available from as low as 1,900rpm. That puts it well over the power figures that the Mk6 Golf GTI manages to make.

The engine is mated to a 6-speed manual transmission, and provides for a 0 to 100km/h acceleration time of about 6.1 seconds. The 2.0 liter turbo engine is claimed to be 25% new compared to the Megane F1 Team R26 engine. It has new intake ports, reinforced pistons and conrods, new air-air and water-oil intercoolers, sodium-cooled valves, and new piston ring carriers.

The Megane RS is one of the few C-segment hot hatches that actually gives the buyer the option of two chassis configurations – the Sport chassis which is more of an everyday hot hatch kinda thing, and the Cup chassis which is more track-focused, perhaps like the Civic Type R. The Cup option even has an optional mechanical LSD provided by GKN Driveline, which is seen as something that’s getting abit rare lately with cheaper performance cars. The pure LSD is slowly being replaced by e-LSDs.

There’s also a cool tool called the Renault Sport Monitor, which is basically an on-board telemetry system. It provides various readings (controllable via the steering wheel) such as turbo boost pressure, oil temp, brake status, real-time engine performance data, a G-meter, a stopwatch with memory functions and various counter features such as 0 to 100km/h acceleration times and 400m times.

Look after the jump for a full gallery and video of the car.

Click here to read the rest of New Megane Renault Sport: details and photos

Nissan has launched facelift versions of the Latio hatchback and sedan in our neighbouring country of Thailand, where the two models are called the Tiida and Tiida Latio respectively. The facelift has already been out for quite sometime actually, on sale in its country of origin Japan and even Singapore.

Basically Nissan has found a grille that ‘works’ along the way of its various experimentation with styling and are now sticking the Nissan Murano’s grille onto pretty much everything they have. Edaran Tan Chong Motor has yet to do anything about its locally assembled Latio and Latio Sport here.

The front grille is differentiated between the sedan and hatchback by its colour – dark and light grey respectively. There is also a new front bumper design. Look after the jump for a gallery of nice images that Nissan Thailand sent over.

Click here to read the rest of Nissan Latio facelifted in Thailand, where’s ours?

The last time there was an update to the Auris and covered on this blog, the 1.4 liter model was replaced with the new Dual VVT-i 1.33 liter engine with auto start-stop capabilities. This happened just late last year.

Now it’s time for a mid-life facelift, with the Auris now featuring new headlamps, taillamps, bumper, grille, alloy wheels and hood design. That’s considered to be quite major considering a typical Toyota mid-life model change these days.

On the inside some materials have changed. The 1.8 liter engine has been upgraded to Dual VVT-i, and is mated to a CVT transmission with paddle shifts. So far the facelifted Auris has only been launched in Japan but expect the updates to roll out in Europe soon. No word yet about a facelift to the Toyota Blade, the Auris’s more premium counterpart in Japan with 2.4 and 3.5 liter engines.

Next up will probably come an update to the sedan variant of the Auris platform – the Corolla and Corolla Altis! But for now, look after the jump for a full gallery.

Click here to read the rest of Toyota Auris gets facelifted in Japan

Want a cheap “landaulet”? Get a Daihatsu Basket Concept when it goes into production. Right now it’s just a concept little lifestyle “K-truck” with a removable soft top over the rear seats. There’s even a little boot deck behind the rear seats for tools and stuff in case the Basket is used to carry stuff, like another tool commonly used by people with the same name, the common basket.

And then we also have this fridge on wheels that’s called the Daihatsu DecaDeca. There is no B-pillar and both the front and rear doors swing outwards towards the front and rear of the van respectively. And like most K-vehicles in Japan, it is powered by a 660cc engine. And it’s nice that both the DecaDeca and the Basket do have a certain family resemblance about them.

Pininfarina is a name that has been heavily associated with Ferrari, but it’s going to have its own car soon. They are scheduled to introduce their new all-electric Bluecar in 2011.

The production Bluecar that was unveiled at this year’s Geneva Motor Show is a 5-door 4-seater compact MPV powered by a Lithium Polymer battery pack, which along with a supercapacity energy storage system can enable the car to deliver 250km of driving range. It would take a few hours to recharge the batteries (via a 230V power outlet) and Pininfarina revealed the batteries will have a life-span of 200,000 km. For once, a car manufacturer that’s honest about the lifespan of the battery they’re putting into their cars!

The Bluecar EV also has solar panels on the roof which can help recharge the batteries. The vehicle will be produced as part of a joint venture with French industrialist Vincent Bollore. Bollore may be interested in manufacturing his own batteries for the Bluecar in France. Regarding the matter, Pininfarina’s CEO, Silvio Pietro Agnori told Italian press, “Bollore is probably interested in providing the battery to the world, and we are interested in designing electric cars for other manufacturers.”

Nissan will officially launch the Nissan Roox compact car at the upcoming Tokyo Motor Show. The Roox will join other vehicles like the Nissan Land Glider Concept and the Nissan NV200 Vanette Taxi at the show. It measures 3,395mm long, 1,475mm wide, 1,735 m high and has a wheelbase of 2,400mm long which is only about 1cm longer than a Viva’s wheelbase so you have an idea of the size of this car. Interior length is rated at 2,085mm while width is figured at 1,365mm.

Unfortunately the Japanese auto maker did not disclose information pertaining to the drivetrain but did say that the Roox “ranks as the most spacious in its class”. It’s quite clear what the focus is here – a sufficiently big box to move around in. It’s probably going to get a 660cc engine since it looks like a Japanese K-car.

Apart from a drink cooler fitted inside the upper glove box, a storage box under the passenger seat for items like children’s toys and dirty shoes, dual airbags and front SRS side airbags and foldable rear seats, the Roox also has double sliding rear doors that can also be opened remotely with a ‘keyfob’. Nissan will present a “Highway Edition” version at the event. More information to be revealed soon.

It’s done – HUMMER has been sold to a relatively unknown Chinese company called Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery or rather just simply Tengzhong. The sale includes the HUMMER brand, trademarks, tradenames, and the intellectual property rights necessary to manufacture HUMMER vehicles. Dealer agreements with the existing HUMMER dealership network will also be transfered to the investment vehicle which will buy HUMMER. Tengzhong owns 80% of this takeover vehicle while a private investor Suolang Duoji holds the remaining 20%.

The transaction does not involve the transfer of any technology related to U.S. military HUMMERs or Humvees. What they’re getting is the “domesticated” models like the H2, H3 and H3T. With the new capital to be injected by Tengzhong, HUMMER will work on smaller and more efficient vehicles like a production version of the HX Concept.

Under the agreement, GM’s Shreveport assembly plant would continue to contract assemble the H3 and H3T and AM General’s Mishawaka assembly plant will continue to assemble the H2.  Both facilities will produce the vehicles until June 2011, with an optional one year extension until June 2012.

After that it’s pretty much anyone’s guess what will happen to these plants, but you can probably expect production to be moved to China, or at least a new production base to be set up there in complements to the US plants.

I love most stuff from Google. I use Google Apps and Gmail for my email, I communicate with Google Talk, and I use the mainstream Google Search for my search needs. A piece of interesting news surfaced last week – in typical Google fashion of dipping their grubby mits into nearly every part of your life, apparently Google is working on a way to improve plug-in hybrid car charging. The project is called RechargeIT.org.

They are n the early stages of looking at ways to write software that would fully integrate plug-in hybrid vehicles to the power grid in order to minimize the strain on the grid. Right now of course usage is maximum during the day, especially working hours. Things get much more easy at night when the lights are off and everybody is in bed.

“We are doing some preliminary work. We have begun some work on smart charging of electric vehicles and how you would integrate large number of electric vehicles into the grid successfully. We have done a little bit of work on the software side looking at how you would write a computer code to manage this sort of charging infrastructure,” said Dan Reicher, Google’s director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives.

Managing power requirements of the grid has become very important. A scenario that the Google rep gave was a hot day in July when 5 million Californians come home. You don’t want all of them plugging in their Teslas at the same time! The grid management technology that Google is developing will allow power companies to allow the owners to opt into a system where the power company can turn off a certain number of vehicles to charge, and turn them on later. This is so the number of vehicles that can charge at any one time can be manageable. In return, the vehicle owner could get some kind of credit or discount from the power company, as turning on backup power sources for the grid can be cost inefficient for the power company.

RechargeIT.org includes a controlled Driving Experiment where plug-in hybrid vehicles owned by Google were used by its employees in a free car-share program. Usage patterns were monitored (using an embedded Linux and GPS system) and the average economy reported was over 93 mpg on average and 115 mpg during city trips.

In the process of building its large datacenters, managing electricity has become somewhat of an acquired expertise for the search company. To handle the massive volume of Google search queries daily, Google needs many many servers and these servers need to be powered. They’ve put alot of work into ensuring their servers are as efficient as possible, even down to minimizing the losses of converting AC to DC.

An all-new fourth generation Honda StepWGN was launched in Japan last week. You can expect probably expect some units to arrive in Malaysia early next year as there is an “active” importer for the StepWGN – USF-Hicom Sdn Bhd which brings in a few Honda MPVs that Honda Malaysia does not bring in. The third generation went for RM180,000 for the 2.0 liter model when it was first announced by USF.

The new Honda StepWGN is like its predecessors, a tall and boxy MPV. These bodyshapes are pretty much acquired tastes compared to sleeker-looking people movers but there are definitely advantages to the simple box – it serves its function well. A big box allows for a straight-ish and tall roofline means consistently good headroom which enhances passenger comfort. The new StepWGN seats a total of 8 in its 3 rows.

With the new model, the StepWGN grows in length (4,690mm) and height (1,815mm) but the width and wheelbase of 2,855mm remains the same, leading me to believe this is a reengineering of the third generation’s platform, which was launched in 2005.

The cabin height is a pretty tall 1,395mm thanks to its high roof and low floor packaging, and the cabin feels very airy thanks to the larger windows and the massive 1,400mm by 840mm skyroof.

Under the hood is the sole engine option of a 2.0 liter R20A SOHC i-VTEC engine mated to either a CVT for front wheel drive or a 5-speed auto for all-wheel drive options. This is the same engine that you can find in the Honda CR-V in Malaysia. The R20A puts out 150 PS and 193Nm of torque, which should be just about enough for a full load though you won’t be making swift progress on the roads. There used to be a 2.4 liter model with the 3rd gen but that is no longer available.

Click here to read the rest of 2009 Honda StepWGN launched in Japan

A pretty sharp reader managed to point out that the words found on the Toyota FT-86 boxer engine is actually D-4S Boxer and not C-45 Boxer. Now this makes so much sense, and also gives us an idea of the kind of technology that’s going to be found in the new engine. We can also predict its power output based on other engines that have featured D-4S and high compression in the past, like the 2GR-FSE.

The fact that the production version of the FT-86 coupe will feature D-4S is not new actually. Sometime earlier this year at the Tokyo Auto Salon, Akio Toyoda said that the production car will not be coming very soon because a new boxer engine with Toyota D-4S technology was still being developed. The Subaru version of the FT-86 (if it’s still going to be produced) will also feature its own Subaru D-4S Boxer engine.

D-4S is basically an advanced variant of Toyota’s D-4 direct injection system. You might have noticed D-4D badging on local Toyota Hilux pickups – that’s their diesel direct injection. D-4 is basically gasoline direct injection, and D-4S stands for D-4 Superior. D-4S combines both direct injection and conventional port injection for each cylinder which means two injectors per cylinder, or eight injectors if the engine is a 4-cylinder boxer like the FT-86 production car will have. The system will pick between the two types of injectors according to needs (here’s a good story on how it works).

In the 2GR-FSE 3.5 liter D-4S V6 engine, it allowed Toyota to tune the engine for very impressive torque to liter ratio figures for a normally aspirated engine. 377Nm of torque from a 3.5 liter engine while maintaining good emission, refinement and fuel consumption figures is not easy to get.

It won’t surprise me if the 2.0 liter D-4S Boxer engine in the production Toyota FT-86 coupe may make over 160 to 170 horsepower and around 210 to 215Nm of torque, which exceeds what regular 2.0 liter engines with port injection can do.

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