Nissan not shuttering Leaf EV battery plants, at least not yet By

The big news on the electric vehicle front today is that Nissan is considering slowing down EV battery production in the US and UK and source all of Nissan's big packs come from Japan.

This incredible Mercedes V12 sculpture is built from bone, wood and fossils

We've seen some impressive automotive replicas, but this one definitely takes the prize as the most unique yet.

1967 Toyota 2000GT Solar Electric Vehicle

You may have packed James Bond's cars with plenty of killer tech (get it?), but the 1967 Toyota 2000GT you see above has got it's own bad boy secrets.

Ford Mondeo Titanium X Sport

The Ford Mondeo range of cars offers the best in style, appearance and performance on the roads without compromising on quality or safety.

Corvette Z06 tops Motor Trend list of shortest-stopping vehicles

Any modern performance car worth buying puts just as much emphasis on stopping as it does on going

Monday, December 28, 2009

Hummer HB compact off-roader



by Jeremy Korzeniewski

With Hummer's future seemingly in the hands of China's Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. Ltd, questions naturally turn to the automaker's barren product cupboard. How will Tengzhong replace Hummer's current crop of SUVs? With the news that the Chinese automaker would like to focus on more environmentally friendly models, a Romanian designer by the name of Andrus Ciprian envisions something along the lines of the compact HB concept you see above.

A Hummer wouldn't be a Hummer without significant off-road capability, and Ciprian suggests that the HB would retain a body-on-frame design in lieu of a lighter unibody, though hewn from aluminum and carbon fiber instead of steel. Under the comely concept's hood sits a biofuel-capable V6 engine. But those aren't the most interesting bits of the concept, the stance and general proportions of which would look perfect on the front of a Traxxas RTR box.

Ciprian included two separate windshield designs, one of which sees the screen sectioned into thirds with a slew of cameras relaying additional information to the pilot. We'd go with the more production-likely single-piece glass. In any case, see the stunning high-res renderings in our gallery below and let us know what you think.

Could you pass a driving test?

Created by Auto Insurance

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Et tu, Clarkson? Top Gear names Toyota Prius its "City Car of the Year





Jeremy Clarkson seems to hate anything that "greens up" or in any other way adds an "eco" label to his cars – and some environmentalists don't exactly appreciate the television host either – so it's with some amusement that we learn that the Top Gear team has named the Toyota Prius the "City Car of the Year." Turns out, the Prius really can appeal to almost everyone.

Clarkson was not specifically quoted in the Prius praise piece – remember, this is the guy who called Honda's Insight "Biblically terrible" and pretended to run out of energy in a Tesla Roadster – but his mates said the 2010 Prius gets "awesome numbers" of 60 mpg (U.S. gallons, as measured on the UK scale) and emits just 89 grams of C02 per km. And all this from "a proper family five-door hatch." BBC Top Gear Editor Conor McNicholas even called the third-gen model "something quite ground-breaking." Press release pasted after the jump.