Lexus shows GM’s Saab folly February 28, 2010
Posted by richard in : Green cars, News clues , add a commentLEXUS will open the 5 doors of its all-new CT 200h next week at Geneva.
This car is a masterstroke. It will take Lexus into the premium mainstream and give the brand instant sustainability. It will do what the A3 did for Audi, and ought to have Lexus car dealers in raptures.
Thing is, it’s so obvious, you have to wonder why they… no, forget that. It’s here, that’s the key. You have, instead, to wonder why blimmin’ GM didn’t let Saab so something similar!
I’ve yet to find out, but I reckon the CT 200h will use something related to the Prius platform, or the Auris platform (which, in upper-spec guise, has the prerequisite multi-link rear suspension). It thus needn’t cost a fortune to develop, nor take a million years or more to make reality.
GM’s Vauxhall/Opel, of course, has the Astra platform. Which is simple, cheap to produce and flexible enough to be made in a variety of guises. While no class-leader, the old-shape model was decent enough, and the Astra Sport Hatch proved there was loads of flexibility in the hard points.
How stunningly delicious would a premium compact Saab hatch been, then? Sporty styling, lots of aircraft cues (think Astra Panorama windscreen…), punchy turbo engines and a mad, torque-steering VXR-engined Aero Turbo range-topper to please the enthusiasts.
Computer-controlled damper availability – something you still can’t get on a Ford Focus, note – would have injected some extra Saab fan cool factor. And I’m sure they could have reconfigured the instrument pack to slot in a turbo boost gauge.
Vauxhall Astra TwinTop? What a great Saab 9-2 Convertible it would have made. Even the petrol engines are, Saab-style, called ‘Ecotec’.
It would potentially have been great. Fantastic. Brought to life all those great concepts that the firm continually showed. But, while it was mooted for years, GM ummed and aahed and never committed the money.
Had it have done, I’m almost sure Saab wouldn’t have floundered and fell from its grasp. The new Lexus could also have had a mighty all-new challenger to compete for the limelight at Geneva, too. Yup, a gen-2 Saab premium compact, based on the much-improved platform of the latest Astra.
Alas, it’s yet another car industry if-only…
Land Rover App out snow February 5, 2010
Posted by richard in : Green cars , 2commentsLAND Rover has launched a great example of why marketing is brilliant.
First, the background. 4×4s have been vilified in recent years. Land Rover makes, well, 4×4s. Its engineers have been making them ever-more green.
And then, the winter came. And the snow came. And came, and came. 6 million people were stuck at home, and BMWs were abandoned. Cue Breaking News panic, and children stuck at school, and brides unable to get married.
To the rescue? None other than the 4×4. The hero of the hour. And what more famous 4×4 in the UK is there, than the Land Rover? Suddenly, the idea of an all-year machine that has a premium badge, gets you out of a fix and still does 42mpg became the thing of the moment.
Lo, 4×4s, we love you again. Snow joke.
But the brilliance? A new App developed by Land Rover. Which… gives live ski snow reports from the slopes of Britain. Complete with image of Range Rover spanking said slope like a bitch.
You’ve gotta hand it to them. Marketing, when done well, is utter genius…
What the iPhone can teach us about electric cars
What the iPhone can teach us about electric cars January 23, 2010
Posted by richard in : Green cars, Technology , 3commentsELECTRIC car owners suffer from range anxiety – that of worrying that the batteries will run out before your journey does.
As I run diesel long-termers which, with a full tank, will take me 800 miles or more, this isn’t something I’m familiar with. Well, it wasn’t, until I got an iPhone.
Apple’s iconic mobile is famed for many things, including its, err, famously minimalistic battery capacity. So it proved, right away, with mine.
It was either risking running flat. Forcing emergency recharges from me. Or, when it wasn’t doing that, had me fretting about it going flat instead. I became obsessed with finding USB sockets, topping it up, keeping it swimming.
I even delayed journeys, just to squeeze some extra minutes in the battery. Because you never know.
Crazy. But a few weeks hence, I began to think differently.
I’ve now learned that it won’t just run out. That I’ve yet to go on a journey long enough to deplete it. And that, where I do, I ensure it’s both fully charged and there are known means of filling it further should it prove necessary. A bit more planning at first, but second nature now.
It’s really not the crippling hardship I initially feared. Yet the few weeks of range anxiety still strike me – not least because I spent those weeks telling folk how damn utter rubbish the battery was. Folks whose first iPhone-related feedback could well have been about battery life.
There are lessons here, if you’re still with me, for electric car marketers. My experience was painful enough, and that’s on a £200 phone, which doesn’t carry the ‘risk of leaving me stranded’.
How do you get round it with cars? How do you make that initial word-of-mouth spread one of positivity, not gripes? Hmm. They’ve got 5 years to work it out…
UPDATE: If all else fails, there are also portable chargers: this Mashable guide shows 5 options.
How motoring writers used to do it
The 58mpg MINI and my turbo engine theory June 28, 2009
Posted by richard in : Green cars , 1 comment so farMINI John Cooper S Works returns 58mpg shock.
Yes, indeed. And a real-life shock, as I proved over the weekend.
I wasn’t doing anything particularly special on this 100-mile journey, either. Simply driving steadily up the motorway.
Listening to Radio 5Live. Hearing Eamonn Holmes interview Steve Bruce. Enjoying the sun. Considering the tactile qualities of Alcantara steering wheels. Normal, everyday stuff.
Yes, my right foot was light, but I wasn’t crawling. Yet, at journey’s end, there the remarkable result was. Boldly blinking on the trip computer. 58.6mpg.
This, from a 211hp turbocharged 1.6-litre… petrol engine! Naughty exhausts and all! Pretty jazz, I reckoned. And yet another tick against my turbo engine theory.
That they’re super-economical when you drive them economically. But thirstier than Richard Burton when on it. Disproportionally so. Jekyll and Hyde. And so on.
Car makers know this. And this is why modern turbo petrol engines always do really well on the official test cycle.That’s something conducted in a genteel manner not dissimilar to how I drove last Saturday.
But what’s real in my world, and the world of Euro-MPG test drivers, isn’t in the vast majority of turbo petrol drivers. Hence, the disparity in economy many report.
It’s a theory I’m going to run with, and put to the next engine, err, engineer I meet…
MINI John Cooper S Works photostream on Flickr
MINI prices and the daily heart-flutter
More on Mini’s classic brochure
Why Ford Econetics break the rules May 31, 2009
Posted by richard in : Green cars , 3commentsTO be eco, you need a small, tiny engine. Yeah, right.
That’s Politician’s logic at work. Look for blacks and whites in things they don’t understand. Big is bad, small is good, always and forever more. Smile, smooch baby, job done.
If only they spoke to engineers, such as the engine chief at Ford’s Dagenham plant. He’d tell them, like he told me, that Ford eschewed the smaller, ‘more eco’ 1.4-litre TDCi for its Econetic models.
Fitted the 1.6-litre TDCi instead. Which, as it’s bigger, is clearly ‘not as eco’.
Wrong.
Yes, he said, in ideal conditions, the 1.4-litre might use a smidgen less fuel. But, real world, the characteristics of the 1.6-litre make it far more suited to the Eco treatment. Traits such as:
• Very low rev torque ramp-up: the turbo wakes up at 1200rpm, meaning much lower revs (and, conversely, taller gearing) can be carried
• Torque curve shape: the step between non-turbo lethargy and meaningful torque delivery is much better profiled to eco driving – it’s not ‘switch-like’
• Part-throttle characteristics: allow ECU software to be massaged so fuel delivery can be turned right down
• On-throttle immediacy: small throttle inputs elicit immediate, meaningful response, making it feel ‘bigger capacity’.
The demands and characteristics on the 1.4-litre mean it would be swamped. It would have to be worked too hard in practice, negating any eco benefits a lab bench revealed.
Light loads work best for eco driving. Hence, the development of the ‘bigger’ engine here.
Luckily, there are no tax disincentives to stop him following what he knows, rather than what politicians tell him should be true. Imagine if, say, the engine size-based company car tax rules of a decade ago were still in place…
If Ford played chess, don’t take it on
Ford gloom hides people carrier revolution
Why car scrappage is now inevitable
Citroen top (3) engine revelation May 29, 2009
Posted by richard in : Green cars , add a commentCITROEN wants to become Europe’s third-largest brand.
No, I’m not sure how, either. Right now, it’s seventh-largest.
Sixth? Its partner, Peugeot. So, a right old odd statement for new chief Jean-Marc Gales to make, then. I’m still puzzling over it. But what also caught my eye in the Automotive News interview he gave was another revelation.
That Citroen doesn’t need to produce 6 or 7 million cars to survive and thrive. Because, instead, it enjoys economies of scale from compnents alliances with other car makers. Meaning it can make big-number money on smaller-number car production.
Take engines. Citroen co-operates with Ford and BMW on them. Which, Gales tells Automotive News, are the most expensive parts to develop in a car. Pair up, share the costs with a partner or two, and that’s a whole heap of cash you don’t have to claw back in higher-volume efficiencies of scale.
But yet something else grabbed my attention in what he said. Engines remain the most expensive bit of all, aye? Well, I’ll be.
Explains a lot, mind. Why the VW TDI is omnipresent. Why car makers are so willing to sign up to co-opt deals. Why the Ford 1.25-litre Zetec is a decade and a half old.
And why electric or fuel cell cars can’t be that far away, surely.
Yes, they’re expensive. But if developing tomorrow’s combustion engines is also heinously dear, won’t car makers soon consider designing a new generation of IC engines to be economically unviable?
Car brands always look to the future. And, Lord knows, it ain’t in fossil-fuel-hungry ICs. Developing a new range to meet, say, 2012/2015 emissions legislation won’t be easy. Or cheap.
Whether Citroen will indeed be in the EU Top 3 by then is, of course, another matter entirely.
bmwblog and UK car dealer agree
Image of the week: 4 April 2009
Fuel economy economical with the truth?
