Automotive

Westminster council has placed a dozen JuicePoint recharging posts for electric vehicles. Drivers of electric cars can pay an annual fee of £75 and pull up to any of the street posts. These posts are in addition to 48 charging points already found in the council’s parking lots.

A recent report by the councils suggests the following cars and vans can use the points already - or very soon:

• G-Wiz
• Mega City
• Electric SmartCar
• Modec
• Faraday
• Mega van
• Piaggio Porter
• Toyota Amberjac
• Cleanova
• Think City Car
• Ford Think
• Citroen Berlingo

EcoMark from Westminster Council

Helen Walters over at Business Week points to a motorbike that’s look been stripped down to the basic features. Designed by Branko Lukic of NonObject, the nUCLEUS is an alternative fuel motorbike concept that looks like it will flip if you passed the wheels of a juggernaut at speed. Helen says that Lukic’s concepts are not necessarily meant to be produced, but designed to start a conversation about received design wisdom.

On the site, the designer says:

It’s a motorcycle built on the antagonistic principle of “square against air”. And yet, despite its unique appearance and apparent opposition to aerodynamic design, nUCLEUS ended up being surprisingly nimble. The square side-view hides the fact that these pieces of metal are simply… fierce blades that cut through air. nUCLEUS also boasts a thin comfortable saddle and horse-like behavior system - a new way to connect with your vehicle: it gets up on its hind legs in action, and rests down squarely while locked or at rest.

BusinessWeek
Non Object

This week’s New Yorker includes an interesting analysis of the success of Toyota, the car manufacturer that recently surprised many by selling 160,000 more automobiles in this year’s first quarter than GM, the world’s leader in automobile sales for 77 years running. These first quarter results may mean the end of GM’s run as annual sales leader, a significant event in the history of the automobile industry. New Yorker’s James Surowiecki discusses how this shift reflects Toyota’s quiet domination as the industry’s most profitable and innovative firm, despite many people’s perception of the company as being less of a leader and more of an astute follower, often being attacked “for being better at imitation than at invention.” But Surowiecki argues that Toyota, while not the sexiest name in the business, may be the most consistently, and successfully, innovative:

If Toyota doesn’t look like an innovative company it’s only because our definition of innovation—cool new products and technological breakthroughs, by Steve Jobs-like visionaries—is far too narrow. Toyota’s innovations, by contrast, have focussed on process rather than on product, on the factory floor rather than on the showroom. That has made those innovations hard to see. But it hasn’t made them any less powerful… Most innovation focusses on what gets made. Toyota reinvented how things got made, which enabled it to build cars faster and with less labor than American companies.

But there’s an enigma to the Toyota Production System: although the system has been widely copied, Toyota has kept its edge over its competitors… Over the years, more than three thousand books and articles have analyzed how the company works… The diffusion of Toyota’s concepts has had a real effect; the auto industry as a whole is far more productive than it used to be. So how has Toyota stayed ahead of the pack?

The answer has a lot to do with another distinctive element of Toyota’s approach: defining innovation as an incremental process, in which the goal is not to make huge, sudden leaps but, rather, to make things better on a daily basis. (The principle is often known by its Japanese name, kaizen—continuous improvement.)… It rejects the idea that innovation is the province of an elect few; instead, it’s taken to be an everyday task for which everyone is responsible.

The New Yorker: The Open Secret to Success

Tesla Motors celebrated the opening of their first stand alone dealership location this past weekend by hosting a red carpet launch party. Quincy Jones, Jenny McCarthy and Jenna Elfman were among the celebrities that attended. The dealership is the last major piece of infrastructure the company needed. Now there’s just the matter of building some inventory. Tesla began production of it’s electric Roadster last month and as of now only four cars have been made. With little stock the new dealership obviously looks a bit spare which makes you wonder if they opened too soon. Tesla do hope to be rolling 100 cars a month off the assembly line by early next year.

The company already has another dealership location under-construction closer to Silicon Valley. Much like Apple, all the Tesla dealerships will be owned and controlled by the company. The company blogs have been quiet so far about details of the opening. Further coverage is available at AutoBlogGreen, Treehugger, and Engadget.

Those who use the subway system in São Paulo, Brazil, will have a new service from July onwards: bicycles will be available at the main stations of the city center.

The passengers will be able to use the bikes free of charge for 30 minutes and will pay a small fee should they keep it for longer. To have access to the bicycles, passengers will have to sign up to receive an integration card with the subway system. The goal is to encourage the use of bicycles, instead of trains, for short distances, therefore reducing the number of people on the trains.

More details regarding this initiative, such as the quantity of bicycles that will be available, the stations that will take part in the program, and the fee that will have to be paid if the bicycle is kept for more than half an hour, will be defined in May.

Schemes like this one are already taking place in cities such as Amsterdam and Paris. It will be interesting to see if it will work in a country such as Brazil, where petty theft is so rampant as a result of the unequal distribution of wealth. Infra-structure will also be an issue: although government statistics show that there are more than 60 million bicycles in the country (a ratio of one for every three inhabitants), the lack of cycling paths shows that bicycles are only used as a mode of transportation less than 3% of the time.

Contributed by PSFK’s Latin America representatives Mandalah.

Volvo has come out with an ambitious plan to eliminate any injuries or deaths in their cars by 2020. After that, they want to go further and design cars that don’t get into accidents at all. Though it may sound far fetched, automobile industry experts believe it is possible.

Reuters reports:

Automakers, parts suppliers, governments and global agencies from the United Nations to the OECD are all looking at ways to relegate to memory the roughly 1.2 million deaths and 50 million injuries caused by motor vehicle crashes each year.

But in what some analysts see as a bid to hold its lead in consumer perceptions of safety, the Swedish carmaker now owned by Ford is the first to set a target date to eliminate death and injury in its cars.

“I think if you look into the future, we as a community will not accept that we have injuries,” said Jan Ivarsson, leader of the Volvo safety team with specialists in everything from biomechanics to engineering to behavioral science.

[via The Brilliance]

The 2008 Auto show season is about wrapped up and we’ve recently taken note of a few lists that offer a look at the automotive trends that have emerged.

World Car Magazine announced the winner of it’s World Green Car of the Year Award last month in New York. BMW won for the 118d Advanced Diesel. BMW has won the Green Car Award two years in a row with the Hydrogen 7 getting top honors in 2007.

red dot recently issued an automotive trend report for 2008. Mobility for the future, The design of ecology, New types of vehicles, and Car personalities are highlighted as areas manufacturers devoted attention to this year.

Tech blog dvice lists picks for the top 10 world-changing electric cars, many of which were shown in 2008. Top pick went to the Tesla Roadster which officially went into production last month. The Chevy Volt came in second. GM is racing to finish development on the Volt in time to start production in 2010.

We can’t forget to make some mention of the 2008 Bejing Auto Show which ended yesterday. Jalopnik runs down the 10 strangest cars revealed at the show. Maybe you’ve seen some of these cars before.

BMW spent the last couple of years showing off a hydrogen concept car. It spent a lot of time and effort trying to create a greener image for the German automaker including the supposed donation of some of their cars to stars and showing off their car at TED 2007. Only 100 BMW Hydrogen 7 cars have ever been made and after all the hoopla, the plans to put it into production remain somewhat hazy.

If BMW were really that interested in being a greener car company why then did they not launch their new 1 Series with a hybrid car, then? If Toyota and Lexus can have hybrids in their current range, why can’t the supposed craftsmen in Germany build the ultimate driving machine for the world today? In 2008, the 1 Series doesn’t even get to 28mpg and these are BMW’s smallest cars.

Another example of a brand that simply isn’t doing enough.

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Saturn drivers, employees, fans and enthusiasts now have a dedicated social networking site called ImSaturn. Members can create their own blogs, join groups, post photos and  videos. GM created the site responding to the younger buyer demographic Saturn attracts. The site gives GM a place to offer news and exclusive content related to the brand to existing and potential customers. The site has already offered free t-shirts to the first 400 members who joined.

 LeftlaneNews