Entertainment
Adam Westlake on May 17 2013
As hard as it is to believe, the
Fast & Furious movie series will continue with a seventh installment in 2014. While the series is widely known its action, cars, and fast driving, the
movies have also been filmed on location in various spots around the world over the years, and Vin Diesel, who not only serves as the star but also producer, has revealed that the seventh will be shot in Japan and the Middle East.
Japanese carmaker
Honda is expected to make a big announcement soon that it will be returning to Formula One racing in 2015, as engine supplier to British team McLaren. The global automotive leaders will look to revive their championship-winning partnership with McLaren, as revealed by a company source on Wednesday.
A
Ferrari race event at Japan's Suzuka Circuit ended in horror last month as one driver lost control of his vehicle and crashed into an inside wall at nearly 200 MPH (322 km/h). Incredibly, two men, the driver and a track worker who was standing right at the spot of the crash, who by all odds should be dead, survived the April 21st incident, with the one in the car expected to make a full recovery.
Akio Toyoda, grandson of the founder of Japanese automobile manufacturing giant
Toyota Motor Corp., will be one of the four drivers of the Toyota team taking part of the grueling Nurburgring 24-hour race this year, a company spokesman revealed on Wednesday. Toyoda, who is currently president of the Japanese carmakers, has a well-known love for motor sports and has competed in the world-renowned endurance race in
Germany before.
Japanese auto giant
Toyota Motor Corp. is teaming up with global software leader
Microsoft to put up an Internet service that would enable cars to link with home computers, smartphones, and the Internet. The Japanese car maker is looking into ways for cars to take advantage of the digital age, and help drivers to find tourist spots, connect to social network platforms, and even learn about new car models.
This year’s
Shanghai auto show display spaces were filled with numerous models of hybrid and electric cars – which maybe is a sign that the global auto market is moving in that general direction. It may also be a loud signal to China to consider greener automobile solutions, what with the massive clouds of smog that covered the cities these past few months. But
Honda Motor Co. CEO Takanobu Ito believes that the Chinese market might not be quite into hybrid cars yet.
In a bid to get a big slice of the world's biggest auto-market,
Toyota launched re-designed versions of its two entry-level compact cars - the Yaris hatchback and the Vios sedan - at the Shanghai international auto show in China. The world's biggest auto-maker hopes that these models, specifically launched for the
Chinese market, will help them regain a solid footing, after failing to reach its sales target for 2012.
When
Toyota Motor Corp.’s vice chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada was first asked about the future of hybrid cars – vehicles that have a combination gasoline-based and electric engine, a phenomenon that he helped push in 1997 – he wasn’t quite sure of their potential, saying that hybrids might take 30% of the market by 2020. But as the Japanese automobile giant announced the
sale of its 5-millionth hybrid unit on Wednesday, Uchiyamada feels confident that hybrids will take majority of the car market in the near future.
In the wake of a major tax break given to
Toyota Motor Corp., the Japanese automaker is planning to manufacture its flagship luxury vehicle the Lexus ES in Kentucky. As the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority has offered $146.5 million of tax breaks, enough for Toyota to add capacity to its Georgetown plant – its biggest factory in the U.S. – and build the luxury model there.
Toyota has announced that the global sales for its gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles have surpassed the 5 million mark, despite initial skepticism about the technology. Since it started selling hybrid vehicles in 1997, they have sold 5.125 million units, 1,951,243 of those in the United States alone.
