At the end of this year (yes, 2010) the Chevrolet Volt will be available for sale. This hybrid is different than all the others made by the major car companies – it can run on it’s battery only, and charge while parked with an electrical outlet. Toyota is rumored to be developing a plug-in Prius and Mercedes just announced a plug-in S400 concept. However, can a car like this succeed in Toronto?
Toronto is a very urban city. It has many, many high rises and multiple-unit dwellings where the garages are shared among all the residents. Most apartments and condos have few, if any, available electrical outlets for use by residents. How will these people charge their cars? This affects people at work too – have you considered how you can plug in your car at your office parking lot?
Toronto’s older neighborhoods lack garages. In fact in my neighborhood there is only street parking available for residents and most of the downtown core is like that. Will you run a 100-200ft power cable to your car overnight?
I’m curious how this will all play out. Plug-in hybrids or electric-only vehicles will be pretty efficient, and don’t produce much carbon. It might do good in the lawn-and-garage suburbs but it will be hard to tell how well they can sell in the urban areas.
Possible solutions are incentives for multi-dwelling buildings to implement charging technology in their garages. Having charging stations in public lots. Inexpensive home-based charging centers. It will be interesting how the private and public sectors deal with the charging issue.
I was car shopping yesterday when I stumbled upon a brand new 2009 Carrera 4 S at a Pfaff Oakville. The car was on loan from one of the members of the family of dealerships they belonged to. It was given a flat grey paint, coupled with blacked out wheels – it looked hot!
A show in Japan pitted all four versions of the new Carrera against one another in 1/4 drag tests. These included the base Carrera, Carrera S, Carrera 4 and Carrera 4S. While the 4S was marginally faster than the S, probably because of increased traction, both the S and 4S got times in the 11s! Video below:
In this video (which is in German) two aftermarket tuned R8’s go head-to-head. One is tuned by MTM, the other by Abt – both major players in the aftermarket tuning business for Audi’s (and other German makes).
Edmund’s Inside Line just broke the news about the new Nismo version of the new Nissan 370z. With power bumped up to 350hp using a new intake, exhaust and ECU reprogramming, this version of the Z should be one of the fastest to hit our shores. Pics are below.
Last week JD Power released the latest vehicle dependency ratings. On top are Buick, Jaguar, Lexus and Toyota. Suprising this year is that both VW and Suzuki rated lower than Land Roger, who was dead last last year.
In the US, new roof strength laws are being passed that will make sure that all cars meet a certain minimum level of strength, which will protect occupants in rollovers. However, these laws are still in the process of being created and passed, but the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has gone ahead and started grading cars based on their own standard.
A good rating is strength-to-weight ratio of 4+. Acceptable is 3.25-4, and marginal is 2.5-3.25.
The following scores were measured on small SUV’s:
Volkswagen Tiguan Good
Subaru Forester Good
Honda Element Good
Jeep Patriot Good
Suzuki Grand Vitara Acceptable
Chevrolet Equinox Acceptable
Pontiac Torrent Acceptable
Toyota RAV4 Acceptable
Nissan Rogue Acceptable
Mitsubishi Outlander Acceptable
Honda CR-V Marginal
Ford Escape Marginal
Mazda Tribute Marginal
Mercury Mariner Marginal
Kia Sportage Poor
Hyundai Tucson Poor
Surprisingly, not many people realize what cars are made in Canada. More importantly, that many GOOD* cars are made in Canada – ones that I would recommend. Here’s a full list of all the cars I know of that have final assembly here in the great-white-north:
I’m not sure how it happened, but collectively the auto industry has started offering the same type of car all at once: the cube. It started with the Scion Xb in the USA and the Honda Element here, now Kia and Nissan have jumped into the mix offering a tiny cube-like car to the market. I can’t imagine there is enough demand for all this supply, but we’ll see. the Kia and Nissan are being offered for sale here this year.
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