Every two years, thousands of car enthusiasts and journalists flock to see what’s new at the Paris Auto Show. This year however, it’s more than just about what’s new. It’s about what’s green.
The Chevrolet Volt is undoubtedly the most popular car in the world that doesn’t yet exist. The vehicle moved one more step toward reality at this morning’s official unveiling of the production Volt.
The drop in oil prices—more than $50 off the record high price of $147.27 a barrel on July 11—raises questions about how soon auto companies will deliver on exciting plans for “game-changing” alternative vehicles.
The Volkswagen Golf—or VW Rabbit, as it's known in North America,—may be the most flexible and widely used car in the world—its underlying architecture has spawned a phenomenal volume of other cars. The Golf's underpinnings are used in more than 3 million cars a year, sold under the Volkswagen, Audi, Seat, and Skoda brands. Now, as VW gets ready to unveil the sixth generation Golf at next month’s Paris Auto Show, the company will reveal a plug-in hybrid concept.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain has come under fire from the United Auto Workers over his daughter's Toyota Prius—and how exactly she paid for it. McCain originally told The New York Times that he had purchased the imported hybrid sedan for daughter Meghan, but recently changed his tune in an interview with a local Detroit newscast, saying that she "bought it, I believe, herself."
A new report says that New York City hybrid taxis are “unfit and unsafe” for their duties, endangering 240 million passengers and tens of thousands of drivers. And the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, a taxi-fleet trade association that commissioned the 43-page report, has sued the city over the issue. The first deputy taxi commissioner Andrew Salkin fought back at a City Council hearing held yesterday. He said, “Taxicabs with improved gas mileage are fully performing, saving drivers money and doing so safely.”
Toyota has always been a patient company that plans for the long term. After 10 years and countless billions of dollars, its efforts to dominate the market for hybrid cars continue to pay off.
The auto market’s gloom continued last month, although August brought slightly higher overall sales than July. In total, 1.25 million cars and trucks left dealerships in August, a 10 percent increase over the previous month but down 15 percent from August 2007.
Audi announced a 4,800-mile American driving tour, known as the Audi Mileage Marathon, yesterday in an effort to promote the arrival of the carmaker’s TDI clean-diesel technology in the US. “Think of it as the ultimate efficiency test,” said Marcel Barro, an automotive journalist and Marathon participant.
Over the past year, GM has teased the public with successive glimpses of more and more of the much-hyped Chevy Volt. Now, the first set of photos of the whole car—shown behind the development team executives—have been “leaked” on several enthusiast websites.
