In a press conference that is about to begin in a few minutes in Curitiba, Brazil, (see picture above), Nissan’s CEO Carlos Ghosn is expected to announce the expansion of an existing Renault plant, and the building of a new Nissan factory. And possibly even bigger news. (Read More…)

A day after Mazda had announced that the company “has become the first automaker to successfully develop vehicle components using 1,800 MPa ultra-high tensile steel,” Nissan announced “the world’s first Ultra High Tensile Strength Steel rated at 1.2 gigapascals (GPa).” So who’s on first?

5 minutes of in-depth research revealed that  1,800 MPa equal 1.8 GPa. In the heavy metal business, those Gs are similar to gigahertz or gigabytes in computers: The more, the merrier. Whether Mazda has outdone Nissan or v.v. is also a bit like Pentium and Athlon: It depends. What matters is that cars get both stronger and lighter

Three topics give a car engineer sleepless nights: (Read More…)

Remember when cars, especially Toyotas, suddenly had a mind of their own, started accelerating, leaving their drivers helpless and hapless? It was in the beginning of 2010. The media cited scores of allegedly killed people. Source: The NHTSA complaint database. When complaints skyrocketed, the media wrote about a dramatic increase of complaints. Now, have a look at the graph above. (Read More…)

In Europe, black cars are all the rage. According to Dupont’s 2010 Automotive Color Popularity report, the most popular car color in Europe is black, followed by grey. Usually a very dark grey. In Japan, the most popular car color is white. Followed by silver. Usually a bright silver. However, black is coming on strong in Japan. It already is in third place. Always on the lookout for the latest craze, the Japanese car industry is eager to get into black.

Mazda releases its roadster (known stateside as the Mazda MX-5 as a BLACK TUNED special edition for the Japanese market. (Read More…)

Yesterday brought you news of the tepid Japanese car market that has been down 26 percent for the year. Commenter Alex Nigro DEMANDED the answer to “Are Japanese people still not interested in driving?”

The Nikkei [sub] immediately went on the case and reports today that there is one segment in the industry that is booming: Bicycles. Writes the Nikkei:

“The March 11 earthquake triggered an increase in the number of people who commute to work by bike, and new business are cropping up to accommodate this trend, including high-end park-and-shower services in central Tokyo.” (Read More…)

One of the biggest complaints about biofuel is that food is turned into fuel while people go hungry. Price hikes for staples have been blamed on ethanol production, especially subsidized ethanol production. Ethanol is usually made from sugarcane, corn, and beets. Grapes find their way into fuel tanks instead of wine glasses, rice is often driven instead of eaten.  Woodscraps and agricultural residue would be less of a moral and financial hazard if converted into fuel. However, it proved resistant against yeasts. Today, Toyota took reporters to a lab in Aichi and showed off a yeast that wood-scraps, dead leaves, straw etc find highly irresistible. (Read More…)

For the first time in 13, yes 13 months, Japanese new car sales registered a small uptick. Small (sukoshi) it is, 1.7 percent, compared to September 2010. And that only, because September 2010 was bloodbath.

When we sang our Sayonara to growth a year ago, we didn’t expect it would be THAT bad: For the 9 months of this year, Japanese car sales are down by a whopping 25.9 percent.  Following data provided by the Japan Automotive Dealer Association. The numbers do not include minivehicles. (Careful when applying the data to minivehicle-heavy makers such as Daihatsu or Suzuki…) (Read More…)

What looks like a Chinese-Japanese matter should cause considerable heartburn in Sweden and the Netherlands: The Chinese government has informed Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. that it will not approve the automaker’s application to set up a joint venture in China, says Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun. Let’s take a closer look. (Read More…)

Brazil is touted to soon eclipse Japan as the world’s third largest auto market, and there is at least one Japanese company that wants to make hay of this: Nissan. The Nikkei [sub] heard that Nissan plans a Brazilian factory which “will have an annual production capacity of roughly 200,000 units and will begin churning out strategic small cars in 2014.” (Read More…)

It’s strange: When you talk to the big manufacturers in Japan, then they are worried by benchmarking Volkswagen and Hyundai. GM never comes up. When you talk to Bob Lutz, who has been re-hired as a part-time consultant to GM executives, then he is worried by benchmarking Volkswagen and Hyundai. Toyota never comes up. Bob Lutz thinks the Japanese have lost it. Germany’s Manager Magazin disturbed Lutz’s Swiss vacation with an interview, and Lutz, always good for explosive quotes, did not disappoint: (Read More…)

The Japanese car industry is slowly but surely producing and exporting itself out of the huge hole caused by the March 11 tsunami. The Japanese domestic market remains where it was before the catastrophe: In the dumps. This is the bottom line of August production, export and domestic sales data released today by the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association. (Read More…)

Last year, tensions ran high – about dirt. Emotions were whipped up about a Chinese embargo on stuff most people never had heard of: Rare earth.The stuff is used to make magnets that go into anything from hard drives to generators and electric motors. Cooler heads tried to point out that rare earth is not rare at all, and that China has as much a monopoly on rare earth as it has on sand. Nobody listened to the cooler heads, and rare earth prices went stratospheric. Step aside, those rare earth prices are crashing down.

Says Bloomberg: (Read More…)

 Toyota has a new global styling chief that makes heads turn in Aichi and Bunkyo, even before he has shown a rough design: “Eeeh? Look at that shirt! And did you see the gold chain???” Or as Frau Schmitto-san, TTAC’s advisor in multicultural matters exclaimed: “Global styling? He needs to style his hair!” It takes a lot to shake up Toyota’s culture, and Akihiro “Dezi” Nagaya has what it takes.

Charged with putting an end to the long tradition of conservative design, Dezi Nagaya definitely looks the part. According to Automotive News [sub], he “dresses like he’s on his way to a trendy Shibuya nightclub rather than off to work at Toyota.”

Cornered at the Frankfurt Auto Show (even there he stood out), Toyota’s new head of styling promised: (Read More…)

Thanks to the notoriously leaky Chinese Patent and Trademark Office, and the intrepid research of Carnewschina, we now know that Honda will enter the Chinese market with a second “Chinese” brand. (Read More…)

Toyota will allegedly launch a new compact hybrid in January that will deliver a record low gasoline consumption of 40 km per liter.  On a straight (non EPA) conversion, that would be a jaw-dropping 94 miles per gallon.

What’s less, the car “will not only beat the Prius’ 32km fuel economy, but also likely sell for around 1.7 million yen, around 300,000 yen cheaper than the Prius,” says The Nikkei [sub]. (Read More…)