Each month, we follow the ups and downs of the car business.

Cars.com has a different hit-parade: Which models sell best? Here are the American Top 10 of June. Uncommented. The numbers speak for themselves. (Read More…)

To celebrate the nuptials of the Princess and the Prince of Monaco, here one of the Top Gear classics: Aston Martin DB9 against public transport.  London to Monte Carlo.  Who gets there first? Car or train? (Read More…)

If you are stuck in traffic and no legal way to turn around, what do you do? Ignore the “no U-turn” sign? Say “hey, I have an SUV” and take the median? A driver in China’s Kumming, a city famous for  ake Lamborghinis and illicit substances, took another route: A pedestrian bridge. (Read More…)

This is the Maxximum G-Force. It holds all kinds of world records. And it runs on all-American natural gas! Something had to be natural in this video …

Aren’t we all for freedom and democracy? Sure we are. But everything in moderation. And this is really getting too far: Cuba plans to lift a ban on the buying and selling of cars registered after the 1959 Revolution, Reuters reports. (Read More…)

For a long time, taxis, trucks, delivery vans have been on the bottle. On a bottle of CNG, or Compressed Natural Gas.  Now, “major automakers like General Motors and Chrysler are gearing up to invest in companies that make engines and parts for vehicles that run on the fuel,” says Reuters. (Read More…)

The Nikkei [sub] says that Nissan is bringing back the Datsun brand as the badge for its low-cost offerings in emerging markets. The Nikkei is talking about cars “with a price tag of around 5,000 dollars.”  The Nikkei makes this announcement without quoting sources. (Read More…)

Carmakers the world over are looking towards Korea where Hyundai reported sales results for June today. Hyundai’s global sales rose 12.3 percent to post a monthly record in June. Kia has not released official results yet, but Reuters says that  “Kia’s June sales surged 22 percent.”

To bridge the time until Kia reports hard numbers for June, we did some spreadsheet acrobatics and arrived at the attached. The black numbers are hard reported numbers, the grey numbers are calculated. If Reuters’ 22 percent are correct, then the June table for Hyundai-Kia should look something like this: (Read More…)

New car sales in Japan dropped in June, but the drop was not as steep as it was in May.

Domestic sales of new cars and trucks, excluding minivehicles, fell 23.3percent on the year to 225,024 vehicles the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said today. (Read More…)

„When will it discharge?“ asked a reporter on Monday at Nissan. I ducked under my desk. “In one or two years,” answered Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn. I broke cover when I realized that they were talking about the Leaf powering the house. (Read More…)

Careful when transiting Nevada by car: Soon, there can be driverless cars on the roads of the desert state, legally. Nevada passed Bill 511 (full text here) that lays the framework for autonomous vehicles.

For instance, the bill authorizes the Nevada DMV to come up with rules for driverless cars. Just think of it: Will you need a driver’s license to operate a car that needs no driver? (Read More…)

Capacity, weight and price of the battery are the big challenges facing the electric car.  Researchers at Sumitomo have developed a porous, sponge-like metal called “Aluminum-Celmet.” It promises to triple the capacity of lithium-ion batteries. (Read More…)

The TEDx conferences are always good for surprises, and the TEDxBoston conference yesterday was no exception. Two presentations caught the most attention: Brigham and Women’s Hospital surgeon Bohdan Pomahac talked about the first full face transplant in the United States. Carl Dietrich, CEO of Terrafugia showed a (soon) commercially available flying car. (Read More…)

Whereas speed cameras are plenty in Japan, the use of red light cameras has yet to catch on in the land of the rising sun. Instead of viewing red lights as revenue sources, Japan (which certainly could use the funds) is spending money in a big way to make red lights and stop signs safer. The Japanese National Police Agency is starting to roll out its Driving Safety Support System (DSSS) in Japan in July. Instead of waiting for someone to run a read light, and then dispatching a costly ticket, this system attempts to reduce the instances of red lights run. Toyota and other Japanese manufacturers are starting to integrate their cars into this system. (Read More…)

Here is a table of the May production numbers of Japan’s bigger carmakers. What do we see? (Read More…)