The new Honda Insight will be making its world debut in production form at the Detroit Auto Show next month without a press conference. The first official photo of the production model came out this morning and it should come as a surprise to no one that it looks almost identical to the concept that appeared at Paris and LA this fall. In fact, aside from the bar under the grille being body colored instead of chrome and the conventional halogens replacing the LED headlights, it's pretty much spot on. Other details such as the door handles and exterior mirrors are also different from the concept for obvious practical reasons. The Insight goes on sale in the spring for a base price expected to be under $19,000.


[Source: Honda]

Nissan will still be MIA from the Detroit Auto Show in January, but the company's plan to skip the Chicago show the following month has been reversed. Automotive News (subs req'd) is saying that, while Nissan felt it "had reached its intended audience" at the recent LA Auto Show - where it unveiled the Cube - and so wanted to lay low for a while. Apparently, Nissan dealers opposed the absence and now Nissan will participate in the Chicago show while "still demonstrating the fiscal responsibility required by these challenging times."

It's way too early to know what Nissan might highlight in the Windy City, but it's a good bet that the NV2500 concept will be there. There's one obvious option the company could (should, probably) show off to make the point that a Nissan is on the right track: information on the electric cars that Nissan and Renault are working on with Better Place (see projects in Sonoma County, Oregon and the San Francisco/San Jose area). Sure, there might not be any shiny metal to display, but who needs it when you can talk about your zero-emission, soon-to-come cars?


[Source: Automotive News (subs req'd)]

Things are looking up for Chinese automakers at the Detroit Auto Show this January, literally. Once relegated to the dark trenches of Cobo Hall's basement, the recent departure of so many Auto Show stalwarts has opened up enough room in the main auditorium that automakers like BYD now get to share floor space with the big guns of the auto industry. Now, we just hope the newcomers don't screw it up by showing off less than competitive vehicles. Of course, if you are Honda CEO Takeo Fukui, nothing BYD brings to display will be good enough.

BYD in particular has a few interesting models from which to choose from, including a couple of brand-new hybrids, but the model we'd most like to see in Detroit would be the BYD e6, which is fully electric and was just recently shown at the Beijing Motor Show. We would also love to see what it's got under the hood, which remained shut the entire time it was first shown. BYD and Brilliance: Now's your chance to shine, better take advantage.

[Source: Automotive News, sub. req'd]

In a little over 61 days, Toyota will unleash the third-generation of its world-beating hybrid, the Prius. We've already grown a bit tired of being teased with shots of Prius bits that are seemingly only interesting to the few super-duper die-hard fans of Toyota's hybrid hatch, but the appearance of a new mini-site with the always-fun countdown clock for the car is kinda cool. We also dig the imagery of the now-iconic slippery shape of the car as it shows off its wind tunnel supremacy. For the record, we're pretty sure that Toyota isn't planning on releasing a new wheel-less hovering version of its hybrid, regardless of what the micro-site seems to indicate.

Until the new Prius gets its official debut in January at the Detroit Auto Show, we're pretty confident that Toyota will continue releasing its teasers. Sorry. Keep your eyes on the automaker's site in the meantime, watching as the countdown clock slowly ticks away towards Sunday, January 11th.


[Source: Toyota]

There's not a lot to say about the Nissan NV2500 concept quite yet. Nissan has release all of two paragraphs about the new multi-purpose utility vehicle, one that says that we'll get our first glimpse of the NV2500 at the Detroit Auto Show in January and the other that says that Nissan is "dedicated to improving the environment" with its Nissan Green Program 2010. Great, but how do those two aspects fit together? Do they? I guess we have to wait until those chilly days in Cobo Hall to find out exactly, but if you feel like speculating on if the NV2500 might get a hybrid drive or just an efficient engine, feel free.

[Source: Nissan]

Toyota's got a lot of Prius fans salivating at the thought of its third-gen fuel-saver being introduced in January at the Detroit Auto Show, and it's doing its part to keep those juices flowing by releasing the first official shot of the '10 Prius. It's um, nice... but doesn't show off too much skin. In fact, it's nothing more than a new logo, and it's obviously a bit of a let-down to the hard-core fans among the internet. We think that this may be the splash screen displayed on the e-dash upon startup. Our Autoblog siblings see some Knight Rider influence in the font, and we have to agree after checking it out ourselves. We do know that the new Prius will be a bit sportier overall, and the chosen font seems to back that up. We need to find a way to get the theme from Star Trek: The Next Generation to play at the same time. Any comments? Thanks for the tip, Danny!

[Source: PriusChat.com]

Toyota has issued a clarification to reports earlier this week that it would introduce a third dedicated hybrid model in January at the Detroit Auto Show. At this year's show company president Katsuoko Watanabe announced that the company would bring two all new hybrid-only models to the 2009 show one each for Lexus and Toyota. That is all Toyota will unveil in Detroit. There will not be a third new hybrid. One of the new cars will be the new Prius. An additional model remains a possibility for introduction at some other show. This could either be a larger car or it might be the plug-in Prius that will debut in 2010 for fleet testing use.

[Source: Toyota]

Episode 18 of the Autoblog Green Podcast sees us reminiscing about the North American International Auto Show, recently passed in Detroit. We start with the reconfigured Saturn Vue Hybrid from AFS - the "extreme hybrid" claiming a narrowly defined150 mpg. AFS's claims point up the need for a new way to accurately rate mpg for hybrid and plugin powertrains. We touch on the Chrysler green trio, and Saturn's own Vue Two-Mode - one of three versions of the Vue that will have a flavor of hybrid powertrains (two mode, li-ion/phev, mild).

Everyone in Detroit had a Diesel, too, many displacing 2.2 liters and having four cylinders. We also talk abit about Ford going mainstream with their EcoBoost engine technology rather than trotting out ever larger V8s - big power doesn't always mean big cubes, and EcoBoost is more than small motors with big compressors strapped onto the exhaust manifolds. We wrap up by touching on the news that the ALMS series will see a fleet of Corvettes running cellulosic E85. The rules of the series allow lots of different technologies to run wheel to wheel, so alternative powertrains could be the next area where we see racing improving the breed. 43 minutes, and we're done, thanks for listening!

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As our colleagues from Autoblog have just published, Land Rover has a smaller and more compact concept vehicle, the LRX. While the vehicle should have remained a secret until a big unveil in Detroit next month, you can see it now thanks to German enthusiast mag Auto Motor und Sport.

If the car went into production, it would likely be produced on the Ford Focus platform, and the article states that it would include a hybrid powertrain with an electric motor powering the rear axle, which would help lower Land Rover's average CO₂ emissions.

The concept was made from a slightly shortened Freelander body: 4.35 meters long, 12 centimeters less than the Freelander and 1.55 meters wide and 20-inch rims. It's basically a 2+2 coupé with AWD. All-road capabilities will be reduced beause of 13 fewer centimeters of ground clearance. The concept focuses on creating an interior luxury atmosphere and includes a fridge between the seats and touchscreens.

Depending on the driving mode, the color of the interior lights changes to reflect the driver's mood: blue for normal driving, red for sport and green for eco-mode.

[Source: Auto Motor und Sport via Autoblog]

Some details about this engine still remain sketchy, I imagine we will be hearing more about it soon enough, but here is some more information to go with what we have already written about the BMW diesel engine. So far, we know that it indeed uses urea (20 liters?), but is not called BlueTec. The urea will need to be refilled every 15K miles or so.

Additionally, the engine uses twin turbochargers of different sizes. The smaller turbo spools quickly for low RPM use and the larger one takes over at higher engine speeds. The total boost could be 40 psi. The exhaust is filtered multiple times, injected with urea and catalyzed twice. So, if you were the exhausted fuel, you would be burned, spun at super high speeds through one of two turbochargers or possibly both, heated super hot again in a catalyst, filtered once, injected with urea, and super heated again in another "catalyzer" before finally being clean enough to be exhausted out the tailpipe - to be inspected by the EPA.

That is a lot of steps to make the engine clean, but is obviously worth it if the engine is powerful enough and fuel efficient enough. After all that technology and clean-up, don't electric cars seem that much more exciting as green technology?

[Source: jalopnik.com]

As posted earlier, Saab has released a new concept car at the Detroit auto show, according to The Car Connection. The vehicle looks to be a 9-3 convertible, but underneath is a rather high tech vehicle using three electric motors and a CVT transmission in addition to its E100 2.0 liter 4 cylinder turbocharged (whew) engine. The juice for the electric motors comes courtesy of a 42-cell, 300-volt lithium-ion battery bank. The vehicle uses a "modular" design so changes to the donor vehicle (Saab 9-3 convertible) are kept reasonable. One of those three motors powers the rear wheels via a differential and drive shafts, making this vehicle all wheel drive. Pretty high tech stuff, here.

So, what is this follow-up post for? It seems, according to the Saab Weblog, that GM may have put an internal embargo on Saab so as not to upstage their other internal projects. Did they not want the rest of the world to know that Saab had engineered a plug-in hybrid? According to the Saab Weblog, they have uncovered the "smoking gun", proving that GM ordered Saab to glue shut the plug port at the rear and cover it with a plaque that says "HYBRID".

This is to take nothing away from the Chevy Volt concept, which has some amazing hybrid technology of its own, but why not allow Saab to get some good press for themselves? Possible, however unlikely it may seem, is that Saab chose to postpone this new information until Detroit. Who knows? Anyone out there with some other inside information relevant to this story want to give us the goods?

Related:

• Detroit Auto Show: It's here. GM's plug-in hybrid is the Chevy Volt Concept
• Detroit Auto Show: Saab BioPower concept

[Source: Saab Weblog - Trollhattan Saab]

We have reported on Saab's BioPower vehicles before, but not this one is particular. It is a new concept vehicle at the Detroit Auto Show. The vehicle uses no fossil fuels at all during operation. It runs on 100 percent ethanol, and because of that it gets more power than its gasoline powered equivalent. However, the trade off, of course, is that because it uses ethanol only, the engine alone provides less fuel efficiency.

In addition to the biofuel engine making 260 horsepower, the vehicle has three electric motors for an additional 148 kilowatts. The engine is a 2.0 liter turbocharged four cylinder - not the 2.3 used in their production BioPower vehicles. The hybrid technology comes from General Motors. The powertrain also makes use of a continuously variable transmission, or CVT, for additional fuel saving capabilities. Apparently, it also can run solely on electric power in city conditions, making it a full hybrid system.

The new-tech powertrain is wrapped in a Saab 9-3 convertible body, and is quicker to 60 mph by almost 3 seconds than the standard car. Saab introduced a BioPower concept at the British International Motor Show which ran on E85 and did not include the hybrid drivetrain.

EDIT: A reader of this site and a Saab message board posted a link in the comments that the only change to this vehicle since it was shown last April may be in the description Saab was allowed to use. The car may or may not be changed, but if it was not, GM may not have allowed Saab to reveal that this was a plug-in hybrid model until the Detroit show. Does anyone else have any information that may lead to cracking this case?

Related:

• Saab 2.3t BioFuel engine on sale Monday, Saab asks UK for biofuel boost

[Source: The Car Connection]

Motoatsu Shiraishi, president of Honda Research and Development, told Reuters at the Detroit auto show, "We are studying what kind of conditions would enable a plug-in." Accoring to Shiraishi, Honda sees two major challenges to plug-ins, battery capacity and the speed of charging.

This news, of course, comes on the same day that GM introduced their Chevy Volt concept, which at this point would have to be the most impressive alternative powered car around, albeit one not for sale.

Of course, the longer a vehicle can sustain operation without using any fossil fuels of its own (not including, of course, the fossil fuels required for its production), the better. The Chevy Volt sets the standard there, and is one reason that the Tesla Roadster generates so much positive press. A plug-in hybrid helps here, because it can be charged without using its internal combustion engine.

Related:

• Detroit Auto Show: It's here. GM's plug-in hybrid is the Chevy Volt Concept

[Source: Reuters]

Toyota has been making their hybrid powered vehicles for a while now, with the Prius taking top fuel efficiency honors and their Lexus hybrids taking the top luxury spot. Now, they turn their attention to the sportier side of things with their new concept car for Detroit, the FT-HS.

The vehicle will be powered by a 3.5 liter V6 engine mated to an electric motor and battery pack. The system in tandem is expected to make around 400 horsepower and propel the vehicle to 60 miler per hour in around 4 seconds.

Electric sports cars seem to be sprouting up all over by smaller manufacturers, will Toyota be the first of the major automotive giants to release a "green" sports car? Time will tell.

[Source: jalopnik.com]