Toyota started out this year’s Tokyo Olympics on the improper foot, when anger from Japanese citizens that the game titles were heading forward amid the pandemic led the carmaker and Olympic associate to suspend its planned Olympics-connected advertising and marketing in Japan. And now there’s a bookend stumble for the conclude of Toyota’s video games: an autonomous shuttle running in the Olympic Village in the course of the Paralympic online games collided with and hurt a visually impaired athlete past week. Toyota briefly paused the shuttle rides, but then restarted them with more safety workers on hand to protect against repeat incidents.
This 7 days in Sheetmetal
Audi showed an elongated, just about teardrop-shaped electric powered sedan idea, also developed to showcase the prospects of future autonomous driving technologies. The car, referred to as the Grandsphere, would have 711 horsepower from two electric powered motors, a retractable steering wheel, and a potted plant sprouting out of the back again of the center console.
Winnebago
Winnebago has made a wheelchair-accessible RV based mostly on a Ram ProMaster van. The RV, referred to as Roam, is smaller sized than preceding available RVs the organization has designed and can have a power-operated couch bed, wheelchair tie-downs, seize handles in the shower, and an underneath-automobile wheelchair lift.
Mercedes has furnished much more details on the following AMG GT63, scheduled to be the 1st plug-in hybrid from Mercedes’ functionality sub-brand name. The 2023 GT63 will have a merged 831 hp from a 4.-liter V-8 and an electric powered motor on the rear axle. 2023 will mark the return of the Mercedes V-8 to the U.S. marketplace. The enterprise dropped 8-cylinder engines from pretty much all of its U.S. lineup for 2022 because of to source chain constraints.
Subaru shared some new (miniature, upside-down) teaser photos of its forthcoming inaugural EV, the Solterra. The vehicle will arrive with typical all-wheel push, as is correct for a Subaru, and will share its platform with the Toyota bZ4X. We be expecting it to go on sale upcoming calendar year.
Nail FattakhovGetty Photographs
Microchip Scarcity, Even now
Numerous automakers modified their 3rd-quarter profits projections downward this 7 days, as the ongoing microchip scarcity limitations generation beneath demand from customers. Ford explained its August gross sales were being down 33 % owing to the chip lack. Mercedes said its third-quarter effects would be “noticeably underneath” 2nd-quarter sales. Volvo claimed its revenue were being down 10.6 p.c compared to previous August, and reported it expecte sluggish gross sales by means of the next half of the calendar year. Standard Motors declared a lot more plant shutdowns, and a Bloomberg report reported Tesla had to idle its plants in China for numerous times previous month mainly because of the chip lack.
Meanwhile, Hyundai is wanting for its personal way through the storm. The corporation claims it has developed its individual microchip for use in a vehicle that will launch in the next quarter of future yr, probably the Ioniq 6 EV. Hyundai will use community (to Korea) suppliers to manufacture the chip and hopes this system will lessen competition and uncertainty linked to microchip sourcing.
Use Your Seatbelt
The National Freeway Transportation Protection Administration (NHTSA) reviews a 10.5 % enhance in site visitors fatalities in the initial 3 months of 2021 in contrast to the to start with 3 months of 2020, irrespective of a 2.1 per cent lower in the selection of motor vehicle miles travelled compared to last year. NHTSA attributes the improve in fatalities to a increase in dangerous behaviors this kind of as dashing, impaired driving, and not carrying seatbelts. Traffic-connected deaths have been up 7.2 % to 38,680 in the U.S. all round in 2020, even nevertheless Us citizens drove 13 per cent much less miles than in 2019. NHTSA blamed that increase on risky habits by drivers having fun with empty streets through lockdowns, or motorists who assumed police would not prevent and ticket them during the top of the pandemic.
A representative for the self-driving coalition stated the NHTSA report was proof of the urgent have to have for self-driving vehicles, which “do not velocity, turn out to be impaired, or get distracted,” but due to the fact truly autonomous driving know-how isn’t going to exist nonetheless, we’ll adhere with additional aged-fashioned guidance: put on your seatbelt, and often don’t forget that autos can kill you.
Additional Studying
Keep in mind when North Carolinians lifted a stink about an more and more preferred auto modification dubbed the Carolina Squat? Nicely, now the Squat is illegal (far more or considerably less).
Study in the New York Occasions about the a variety of, often damaging, techniques organizations are using to extract lithium, a critical element in electric-vehicle production, from the earth.
Or study about the unlikely next daily life of a 1970 AMC AMX in the Wall Avenue Journal.
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