Toyota will open a new artificial and robotics R&D company to be called Toyota Research Institute, Inc. (TRI) with an initial investment of $1 billion to open two locations in the United States, the automaker announced Friday.

TRI, which will make its headquarters in Palo Alto, California and establish another office in Cambridge, Massachusetts near MIT, will be led by Dr. Gill Pratt, a former academic in the field of engineering and program manager at DARPA.

“The investment is in addition to the $50 million investment over the next five years with MIT and Stanford to establish joint fundamental artificial intelligence research centers at each university,” said the automaker in a release.

Read More >

According to the same source who revealed to TTAC that Volkswagen will announce next week its “TDI Goodwill Program”, the automaker will also begin to roll out fixes for affected diesel emissions cars in the U.S. in February.

The fix, which was mentioned to dealers and communicated to dealer staff, will comprise of an ECU flash. The details of the ECU flash itself and the specific vehicles to which it will apply were not provided.

It was reported previously that different generations of the affected EA189 diesel engine could receive varying levels of correction, from ECU flashes to the installation of full urea-fed SCR systems. This ECU flash could be just one of two or three fixes for Volkswagen’s dirty diesels.

Volkswagen has supposedly earmarked $4 billion to fix their diesel cars and public reputation in the U.S., which includes money the automaker will use to fund the “TDI Goodwill Program”, said the source.

Read More >

Update: Added background.

Volkswagen of America, in a bid to regain the trust of current diesel owners, will announce a prepaid card campaign on November 9, TTAC has learned.

The program, detailed to dealers Thursday in preparation of its public announcement, is aimed at current owners of affected TDI models regardless of whether they bought their car new or used.

Two prepaid cards will be offered to those TDI owners. The first one will be for $500 and has no restrictions on where it can be used. The second, which may be valued between $500 and $750, will be limited to use at Volkswagen dealerships.

Read More >

Volkswagen dealers are scrambling to keep their customers happy amid the emissions scandal and one has decided to send a TDI eulogy to customers along with a sales pitch. According to a post on TDIClub, Beyer Volkswagen started sending out the slightly hilarious notice sometime this week.

The cover shows a SportWagen with a 2015 date of death for TDI Clean Diesel technology. Directly opposite the picture is an apology that would seem fitting if it came from from an abusive spouse telling their significant other they are kind of sorry but it’ll be different next time. Promise. Read More >

The full text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was released Thursday by pact member New Zealand. The trade agreement will set out trade rules for multiple industries — including automotive manufacturing and the import/export of those vehicles — for its member states.

TPP, an expansion of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, includes members Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States of America and Vietnam.

New Zealand leaked the details on its Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website.

Read More >

Officials from Volkswagen will meet Thursday with the Environmental Protection Agency to explain to regulators how a “temperature conditioning” mode isn’t illegal, Reuters reported (via Automotive News).

“(Auxiliary Emission Control Device) software does not alter emissions levels, but it ensures after a cold start (of the engine) that the catalytic converters quickly reach their working temperature and emissions cleaning takes effect,” VW said, according to Reuters.

In its notification to the automaker Monday, officials from the EPA specifically outlined how a “temperature conditioning” mode, specifically timed to the length of the EPA’s initial tests, reduced emissions up to nine times in cars equipped with VW’s 3-liter diesel engine.

Read More >

Lexus won’t be building cars in China anytime soon due the automaker’s concerns regarding production quality, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

“There’s too much quality risk in China to produce there,” said Takashi Yamamoto, executive vice president of Lexus International.

Did you hear that mic drop? Hello? Anyone there?

Read More >

Ferdinand Piëch, the man who ruled Volkswagen like the king of a Teutonic fiefdom, was likely the cause of the diesel scandal that’s erased billions of dollars of value from Volkswagen as it looks down the barrel of a gun loaded with further billions of dollars worth of recall work, fines and law suits.

Or, at least, that’s the claim made by Bob Lutz.

Former auto industry executive Lutz called Piëch’s leadership style “a reign of terror” before saying “The guy was absolutely brutal,” in his latest piece for Road & Track.

Tell us what you really think, Bob.

Read More >

United Auto Workers at General Motors’ Fort Wayne, Indiana facility overwhelmingly agreed to a proposed contract with the automaker that would raise wages and eventually close the gap between veteran workers and employees hired after 2007, Reuters reported.

Workers at the facility, who build full-size trucks for GM, approved the contract by nearly 60 percent. Workers at other GM facilities, including Wentzville, Missouri and Spring Hill, Tennessee, approved the deal by similar margins, paving the way for ultimate approval for the labor contract.

Read More >

When the Nissan Micra Cup series was announced in late 2014, there was one main goal: be the most affordable, semi-professional racing series in Canada.

In order to achieve that goal, everything about the series needed to be cost-effective. All races were scheduled in Quebec, where the majority of competitors reside, and tires and brakes had to wear in a predictable manner so as not to “fall off” during race weekends. However, the difficult part was building a racing car to a price — $20,000 CAD, or $15,225 USD at today’s exchange rates, to be exact — so that racers could either pony up the personal funds to buy it themselves or more easily woo sponsors to make their racing dreams come true.

During the planning phase of the series, Nissan Canada and series promoter JD Motorsport tapped racing car builder Motorsports In Action of St-Eustache, Quebec to build the pint-sized racers. MIA, which is located in an indescript row of commercial units racing at Autodrome St-Eustache about 40 minutes northwest of Montreal, fabricates and preps vehicles for varying types of racing series and prides itself on build quality. However, as they say, “Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick Two,” it’s much easier to build a racing car with a high-dollar budget than it is to put together an economical package like the one requested for Micra Cup.

Thankfully, due to MIA’s combined knowledge and ingenuity, racers get a decent chunk of all three. And MIA’s Carl Hermez gave us a tour to show us exactly how they do it.

Read More >

German authorities said Wednesday that they would retest all Volkswagen cars — regardless of engine type or brand — for emissions compliance, Reuters reported.

German transportation minister Alexander Dobrindt expressed his “irritation” with the automaker that more cars were being added to the deepening scandal. On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency notified the automaker that some of its 3-liter diesel models may contain an illegal “defeat device” to fool emissions tests. Read More >

Improve. Increase. Rise. Grow.

These are all words that can be applied to the status of Volkswagen’s sales in the United States in October 2015.

Yes, that Volkswagen. The brand which, it was revealed in late September, was intentionally cheating on emissions tests with four-cylinder diesel engines, powerplants found under the hood of approximately one-fifth of the vehicles sold by the company in America. The brand which has seen its share price tumble as more negative information is uncovered each day. The brand which was forced to set aside billions of euros to cover some of the costs of a massive, yet-to-take-place recall.

Yes, that brand, Volkswagen, sold 74 more new vehicles in October 2015 than they did one year earlier, a 0.2-percent year-over-year increase during a period in which the auto industry produced a 13.6-percent gain. Read More >

Mazda announced Wednesday that it would unveil its next-generation CX-9 in Los Angeles later this month.

The three-row crossover made its debut in 2007 and hasn’t changed much since. Mazda’s seven-seater still sits atop the Ford CD3 platform used by previous generations of the Mazda6/Ford Fusion and Ford Edge. It also sports the same powertrain as the previous-generation Edge.

Mazda released a teaser image of the CX-9 on Monday that shows what the crossover would look like if the world had Photoshop filters turned on all the time.

Read More >

Porsche announced Wednesday that it would stop selling its Cayenne Diesel model after regulators announced those cars were allegedly installed with an illegal “cheat device” to fool emissions tests.

Audi removed all diesels vehicles from their online configurator, even though the Q7 diesel was not mentioned by the Environmental Protection Agency has having a “defeat device” installed. The luxury brand has not yet announced any stop-sale of its cars. Volkswagen’s Touareg TDI, which is equipped with the same engine as Porsche and Audi, is still currently listed as on sale. Read More >

Alfa Romeo will delay two models critical to that brand’s comeback and will likely miss its ambitious sales target of 400,000 cars by 2018, according to Automotive News.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne said a weakened market in China forced the brand to reassess its sales target, which he initially set in 2014.

“I still think that Alfa belongs in China,” Marchionne said last week during the company’s announced third quarter earnings call, according to the Detroit Free Press. “The expectations of volumes out of the total pool of 400,000 cars by (2018) are, I think, given current market conditions, not achievable.” Read More >