KEY POINTS:
Times are indeed changing ...
Bob Dylan has signed to endorse the United States' luxury car brand Cadillac. The carmaker's campaign kicks off with a TV spotfeaturing Dylan driving across a desert landscape in a 2008 model Escalade, the company's big four-wheel-drive. The ad is part of Cadillac's latest promotion, highlighting satellite radio as a standard feature. Cadillac sales in the US are down on last year and industry bible Automotive News says that growing Japanese luxury brand Lexus will soon eclipse the best sales year Cadillac has ever had.
Project driveway begins
General Motors is about to put 100 hydrogen fuel-cell-powered Chevrolet vehicles into the hands of average consumers. Drivers in three US metropolitan areas will drive the cars, called Equinoxes, in "Project Driveway", the first large-scale test of fuel-cell electric vehicles. The test will last for three months and begin in January in Los Angeles, New York and Washington. Testers will relay regular data to GM on driveability, reliability, refuelling process and safety perceptions.
Sustainable zoom zoom
Researchers at Japanese carmaker Mazda think cars will in future run on a water component - hydrogen. "We have to prepare for sustainable zoom-zoom," says Mazda executive Nobuhiro Hayama. "We have to make a link with the hydrogen society of the future." Mazda uses the term zoom-zoom in its marketing for fun driving. Hayama told an automotive conference in Tokyo that an internal combustion engine running on hydrogen was more practical than powering a car with electricity generated from a hydrogen fuel cell. He said Mazda was developing the hydrogen engine with Ford.
Work from home, anyone?
Drivers in the US waste nearly an entire work week each year sitting in traffic on the way to and from work, says a study. The nation's drivers languished in traffic for 4.2 billion hours in 2005, up from 4 billion the year before, according to the Texas Traffic Institute's urban mobility report. That's about 38 hours a driver. The study also estimates that drivers wasted 11 billion litres (2.9 billion US gallons) of fuel while sitting in traffic. That's about 99 litres a year for each driver. Together with the lost time, traffic delays cost the country US$78.2 billion ($103.6 billion), the study estimates.
No to coal-powered hybrids
Toyota is working to improve its hybrid cars and develop electric cars for the future but an official says that these vehicles would not help reduce CO2 emissions in China. "In France, 80 per cent of electricity is produced by nuclear stations so if electric cars replace fossil fuel cars then you have a reduction in the emission of CO2," said Tatehito Ueda, a managing officer at Toyota. "But in China they make electricity by burning coal, so China is not the place for electric cars."
