![Toyota Scion iQ Electric Car Coming in 2012 [PICS]](http://sebastianmourra.com/wp/wp-content/themes/thedawn/images/no-image.png)
If you’re looking for a cute car, this micro-subcompact fits the bill nicely. But if you have a long commute, you might want to wait until battery technology improves. Toyota says the Scion iQ can only go 50 miles on a charge. That means this car will be hard-pressed to compete against the similar Nissan Leaf, whose battery can propel it about twice as far until it needs charging.
It’s great news that this car has gone beyond the concept stage and will be sold in the U.S., but its price will be the determining factor in its success. Toyota just teamed up with Tesla Motors, but we’re wondering if one of the obvious benefits of that partnership — the exchange of battery technology — will bear fruit in the Scion iQ.
That 50-mile range suggests it’s not using the full complement of batteries inside the Tesla Roadster. Perhaps that’s a good thing, because the Roadster’s lithium-ion batteries are one of the items that pushes its price up to well into the six figures.
We’ve contacted Toyota to find out when this electric rollerskate will be available and at what price. The automaker hasn’t shared that information with anyone yet, so we’re not holding our collective breath.
As you’ll notice in our gallery below, the iQ is scarcely larger than a golf cart:
[via cars, Electric Car, Toyota Scion iQ, Vehicles
For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:
The iconic Haynes Manuals, those encyclopedic tomes containing all the DIY knowledge any shade-tree mechanic needs to repair his or her car, are finally going to be available in digital form.
Called Haynes MOL (Manuals Online), the products will give home mechanics the same trusted information they’ve expected from print manuals for more than 50 years.
The manuals have been a mainstay in the home garage, containing hundreds of pictures and step-by-step instructions. They show readers how to do everything from a simple oil change to replacing a power steering pump.
Haynes Manuals are an empowering way for many car owners to save money and learn a lot about internal combustion engines as they maintain and repair their own vehicles — just as this writer did throughout college with the help of several Haynes Manuals and a string of clunkers.
The company has never before published online car repair manuals, but it has now begun demonstrating an electronic version of the manuals to major auto-repair retailers in the United States.
So why online manuals now? As it turns out, Haynes acquired digital shop Vivid Holding BV three years ago, and the online books represent a collaboration between the Haynes editorial team and Vivid’s tech team.
Haynes will begin its MOL roll-out with the 50 most popular Haynes titles, which will be for sale by subscription in the fall of 2011. The MOLs will also be tablet- and mobile-friendly. As the launch continues, more titles will be added. Print manual sales will also continue.
You’ll be able to purchase the manuals at Haynes.com or from any Haynes retailer’s website.
More About: car repais, diy, haynes, haynes manual, haynes manuals, haynes manuals online, online books
For more Dev & Design coverage:
Sunday was Indy 500 day, and our thoughts turned to fast cars, the latest automotive tech, the 100th anniversary of the Indianapolis 500, and … world-record truck jumping?
That’s what happened at turn 4 of the Indianapolis 500 race track, when stunt driver and Top Gear star Tanner Faust warmed up the crowd by setting a new jumping distance world record for a 4-wheeled vehicle.
Driving down a huge ramp designed look like a Hot Wheels “V-Drop” track as part of a “Fearless at the 500″ promotion, Faust picked up enough speed to launch his specially modified “Pro 2″ truck a world-record 332 feet. That was more than enough to beat the previous record of 301 feet.
Until the day of the jump, Faust’s identity was kept secret. He’d been practicing for months — he tells his story in this video, revealed for the first time on Sunday:
And the video teaser that led up to the jump:
More About: cars, Indianapolis 500, indy 500 2011, indy 500 truck jump 2011, jump, Memorial Day weekend, Tanner Faust, trending, truck jump 2011, video
For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:
Toyota has teamed up with Salesforce.com to create Toyota Friend, a private social network for owners of Toyota cars.
The network will be accessible through PCs, tablets and smartphones, giving Toyota customers the ability to connect with their dealerships, cars and Toyota itself. For example, your car could send you an alert when its battery needs recharging, and you would be able to connect to your dealership to get maintenance tips and service information.
Toyota Friend will primarily be a private network for Toyota car owners, but customers will be able to connect and expand the experience through public social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
The network will be powered by enterprise social network Salesforce.com’s Chatter and Toyota’s telematics platform. The first cars to be shipped with social networking capabilities will be Toyota’s first battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid cars, which are coming next year.
On the financial side, Salesforce.com will invest 223 million yen ($2.7 million) and Toyota Motor Company will invest 442 million yen ($5.4 million) in Toyota Media Service, which oversees Toyota’s global cloud platform development. Microsoft, which entered a strategic partnership with TMC in April, aiming to bring internet services to Toyota vehicles, will invest 350 million yen ($4.3 million) in the platform.
More About: car, cars, Salesforce, social network, social networking, Toyota, Toyota Friend
For more Business & Marketing coverage:
Google’s self-driving cars might soon become more than a pet project. The company is quietly lobbying legislators to make Nevada the first state to allow autonomous vehicles on public roads.
Google has created a line of self-driving hybrids, including six Toyota Priuses and an Audi TT. The vehicles have been tested on more than 140,000 miles of California roads, at least 1,000 of which were driven fully autonomously.
The company has hired Las Vegas-based lobbyist David Goldwater to promote the two bills, which should come to a vote before the state legislature’s session ends in June. One bill is an amendment to an existing electric vehicle law; the amendment would permit for the licensing and testing of self-driving cars; the second is an exemption that would allow for texting while driving.
Goldwater said in an address to the Nevada State Assembly on April 7 that self-driving vehicles are safer, more fuel-efficient and aid economic development.
To see one of Google’s autonomous cars in action, check out the above video taken at a TED conference in Long Beach, California, earlier this year.
Thumbnail courtesy of Jennifer Lee
For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:
It wasn’t long ago when Jaguar presented its C-X75 electric supercar as a concept at the 2010 Paris Motor Show. Now the company says the car’s going into production, hitting the streets in 2013.
If you missed its rollout as a concept car, here’s a quick review: This thing is a monster. It’s a plug-in hybrid electric car that works like the Chevy Volt, running on electric power that’s replenished by a gasoline engine. But that’s where the similarity ends.
This road rocket has a 145kW electric motor on each wheel, powering it from 0 to 60 mph in less than 3 seconds with a top speed of at least 200 mph. According to Top Gear, those motors are expected to generate roughly 800 horsepower.
When it runs out of battery power (after traveling about 30 miles), the car’s batteries are recharged by a turbocharged four-cylinder gasoline engine. Unfortunately, the twin micro-jet engines that recharged the concept car didn’t quite make it into the production model, but Top Gear says, “the fiery cannons of goodness might make it into a later section of the production run.” See what the twin microturbines look like through the rear window in the gallery below.
Want one? The lowest estimated price we’ve seen for the Jaguar C-X75 is in the neighborhood of $1.1 million. Snap one up quick when 2013 rolls around, because Jaguar is only making 250 of them.
See those microturbines peeking out the rear window?
Move over, here comes that electro-jag going 200 mph.
Looks like a flying saucer from this angle
For a million bucks+, this baby better have a good GPS on board.
These two micro-jet engines won’t be in the car at first, but might appear in later production runs.
No gull-wings here, but watch Jay Leno open the doors in the video below.
And here’s what Jay Leno thought of the Electro-Jag:
Graphics courtesy Jaguar
More About: electric cars, Exotic, future, Jaguar C-X75
For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:
The Range Rover Evoque Pulse of the City project is out with a new offering: a choose your own adventure film called Being Henry.
The film keeps with the theme of mingling tech and art with advertising. Starring Leo Fitzpatrick (The Wire) and directed by Nick Gordon (Levi’s, Sony, Doritos), Being Henry is housed on a dedicated Adobe Flash site. It’s basically composed of multiple videos that seamlessly switch when the viewer clicks on Henry and drags him toward a certain decision. The dragging sequence is done via a series of JPEGs that cut smoothly into the live action.
Henry is an everyman character that the viewer manipulates through a series of choices, resulting in nine storylines and 32 different endings. (Check out the above video for a taste of what kinds of things happen in all the possible stories.)
So where’s the product tie-in, you may ask? Well, every choice you make — taking chances, looking for love, etc. — apparently determines your ideal Range Rover Evoque, which you’re presented with at the end of the film.
The Range Rover Evoque Pulse of the City is the same project that brought you OK Go’s new project, a video for “Back From Kathmandu” in which the band wrote its name across Los Angeles using the Range Rover Pulse of the City app.
This new film recalls musician Andy Grammer’s debut video for “Keep Your Head Up” (for which he won an OMA), which also let viewers choose their own path through the narrative — but with a product to sell.
What do you think of this kind of advertising? If you checked out the video, did the final car actually reflect your personality?
More About: Film, Flash, MARKETING, Range Rover Evoque Pulse of the City, range-rover-evoque, video
For more Business & Marketing coverage:
Chosen as one of the winning projects among 1,000 contestants worldwide, this concept car design was honored at the 10th Michelin Challenge Design 2011.
Lukovic calls his design “Supersonic,” and although the car won’t travel past the speed of sound, it looks like it could. Designed to resemble a supersonic aircraft, the car’s two back wheels each have an electric motor attached, driving the narrow, rocket-like vehicle that carries two people — a driver and one passenger — with one sitting in front of the other.
Lukovic envisions a future where lithium-ion batteries are much smaller, compact enough to remove from the vehicle and take with you, charging them inside the home or office just as you do with your cellphones now. And check out that glass on the top and sides — it’s a photosensitive liquid crystal canopy with adjustable transparency for filtering bright sunlight or prying eyes.
One of our favorite features is the autonomous ability to drive itself that Lukovic calls “automatic pilot (driver) mode,” a capability we’re thinking will be commonplace 10 years from now. In that case, maybe the driver’s seat could swivel around to face the passenger seat, where the car’s two occupants could enjoy their morning coffee and quiet conversation while reading their tablets on the way to work.
So this is how we’re going to get around the year 2021? Let’s hope so. Check out the gallery below and let us know if you think this is an accurate vision of the future or a pipe dream.
The canopy opens from the front.
Controls are mounted on a thick stalk that projects into your lap. Maybe it’ll be retractable when you place the car in autopilot mode.
Check out that photosensitive glass, already available today but not quite cost-effective enough for ordinary cars. Yet.
The car’s narrow design is more aerodynamic, necessitating this single-file seating arrangement.
It vaguely resembles those “streamlined” locomotives from the art deco era.
Stunning looks.
Could this be the electro-tryke of the future?
Graphics courtesy Marko Lukovic
More About: cars, Design Concepts, electric cars, Marko Lukovic, road rocket, supersonic, trending
For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:
The Nissan Leaf won the 2011 World Car of the Year award at the New York International Auto Show, beating out the short list of three finalists — the Audi A8 and the BMW 5 Series. The Leaf was the first electric vehicle to win the award.
According to the jurors, Nissan‘s electric car has a lot going for it:
“The Leaf is the gateway to a brave new electric world from Nissan. This 5-seater, 5-door hatchback is the world’s first, purpose-built, mass-produced electric car. Dropped onto a unique platform and body, the Leaf’s lithium-ion battery modules and electric motor generate 108hp and 206 lb ft of torque, propelling the hatch from zero to 60mph in 11.5 seconds and a top speed of 90mph. It has a range of over 100 miles on a full charge (claims Nissan), takes around 8 hours to recharge using 220-240V power supply and produces zero tailpipe emissions. Its low center of gravity produced sharp turn-in with almost no body roll and no understeer. The good news? It feels just like a normal car, only quieter.”
We think another reason the Leaf deserves the New York International Auto Show‘s World Car of the Year award is because of its Carwings system that leverages crowdsourcing to enhance its fuel economy.
What happened to the Chevy Volt, which costs $8,200 more than the $32,780 Nissan Leaf? It was still deemed cool enough to win the Green Car of the Year award at that same auto show.
We’ve driven the Volt and, as the jurors said about the Nissan Leaf, the Volt feels like a normal car, too. What really makes it feel normal is after you’ve run down its batteries, its gasoline engine allows it to keep going for just as many miles as conventional vehicles.
More About: Chevy Volt, electric cars, ev, Nissan Leaf, world car of the year award
For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:
The Mercedes A-Class was once a stubby mini-MPV (multi-purpose vehicle), but now it’s the hatchback of the future. Behold, the Mercedes-Benz Concept A-Class.
This is one cool car. What really caught our eyes is that dash-mounted tablet, along with those red-backlit gauges and swooping controls inside.
The exterior is forward-looking, too, with an aircraft-like skin that its designers say takes its “cues from aviation.” No longer looking like the current A-Class‘s resemblance to a chopped-off AMC Gremlin from the ’70s, now it’s spruced up with LED headlights, an aggressive grill that looks like a cross between a hungry shark and an angry bird, and angular cuts that vaguely suggest shiny muscles.
Take a look at the video below for more details about this upcoming pocket rocket, which Mercedes says is “on the road now.” We beg to differ – concept cars might be on the road, but usually not in any discernible volume, and remember this caveat: a lot can change between concept and reality.
However, we’re hoping Mercedes keeps most of these details — especially that high-tech interior — and we’re holding out for an electric version, and maybe even a 17-inch touchscreen on board like that Tesla Model S Sedan will have.
That shift handle looks like the throttle control on a jet aircraft.
You can almost hear it snarling at you.
It looks like it’s crouched, ready to pounce.
Interesting angles.
Even the seats are redesigned.
Plenty of cargo space in the back.
Mercedes says it’s “on the road now,” but the company didn’t mention how many of the concept cars have been built.
Graphics courtesy Autoblog, Mercedes
More About: A-Class, concept car, futuristic cars, gallery, mercedes, Mercedes-Benz Concept A-Class, trending
For more Tech & Gadgets coverage:
