Hey, Your Top Automobile News for December 22, 2020

Your Daily Automobile updates From Around The World [img]  [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [img]( [The Automobile News]( [The 2021 Lada Niva Is Really a 20-Year-Old SUV With the Face of a New RAV4]( The Lada Niva is a Russian off-road vehicle that began production in 1977, quickly gaining a reputation for being a tough-as-nails solution to conquering the Russian countryside. One of the few Soviet-era cars that could be considered actually good, the Niva was exported all over the world, being especially popular in mainland Europe. Fast forward to 2020, and there’s a new one Lada Niva–and it looks a lot like a Toyota RAV4. Is it really a new Niva, though? Well, it depends on how you look at it. The original, hardcore Niva is actually still in production, however, back in 1998 GM created a joint venture with the Niva’s manufacturer, VAZ, to produce a more modern version of the car. It had a lot in common with the Original Niva. It received new body panels and an updated interior, making it much safer than the original. It was sold as the Chevy Niva or Lada Niva II until 2020 when Lada bought out GM’s stake in the VAZ deal. Now, they’ve re-designed that ca®lr, which is the RAV4-looking machine we’re seeing today. This new machine has only been seen in a few photographs, so there’s not much information about stuff like the interior. However, the front-end bears a striking resemblance to the new Toyota RAV4, a car that costs nearly three times as much in Russia. Seeing as the RAV4 is a big seller worldwide, it makes sense that Lada would want to imitate the design. What’s–unfortunately–a bit more difficult to imitate is the RAV4’s performance. [Read More]( The post [The 2021 Lada Niva Is Really a 20-Year-Old SUV With the Face of a New RAV4]( first appeared on [TheAutomobileNews.com](. [Read Full Story]( [Toyota Doubles Down on Hydrogen With a New Mirai and Commercial Trucks]( While most of the rest of the automotive industry is adopting electricity as the fuel of an emissions-free tomorrow, Toyota continues to claim that hydrogen is going to be the way forward. Or at least a large part of the way. “Toyota is committed to fuel cell vehicles as a part of our future,” said Cynthia Tenhouse, Toyota’s vice president of vehicle marketing. “We believe there is a market as the infrastructure continues to develop… We strongly believe in this technology.” Indeed, Toyota just revealed the second generation of its Mirai hydrogen fuel cell-powered car. The all-new 2021 Mirai will ride on a shortened version of the luxury Lexus LS platform. It will have a range of as much as 402 miles, 30-percent better than the first-gen Mirai, will seat five instead of four, and will cost about $9,000 less with a starting sticker of $50,455 before incentives, the latter of which are prodigious. True, Toyota is not yet at the point of profitability with the Mirai, perhaps far from it, but that’s not the point in this early stage of the technology. “We don’t want the price to be a hinderance (to purchase),” said Tenhouse. “We want customers in this vehicle. Someday we’ll get there (profitability), but (at this point) we consider it an investment.” What is ZANZEFF? Development of those fuel cell-powered Kenworth trucks is part of a $41 million Zero and Near-Zero Emissions Freight Facilities (ZANZEFF) grant awarded by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), with the Port of Los Angeles as the prime applicant. The port has a huge number of big rigs hauling containers around. Often the big rigs are idling, spewing diesel particulate matter into the air. With hydrogen fuel cell propulsion, tailpipe emissions would be only water. “This is an important step in the transition to emissions-free heavy-duty trucks,” said Lund. “Our first prototype trucks proved that a fuel cell electric powertrain was capable of hauling heavy cargo on a daily basis. These new prototypes not only use production-intent hardware, they will also allow us to start looking beyond drayage into broader applications of this proven technology.” If this works out, and if the cost of hydrogen ever works out to be lower than the cost of diesel fuel, Toyota would be in prime position to get a chunk of the 15.5-million-truck market in the U.S., two million of which are tractor trailers, according to truckinfo.net. Of course, to be truly emissions-free would mean getting the hydrogen without creating any pollution along the way. Ultimately, Toyota says, hydrogen will be created using clean-sourced electricity from wind and solar, instead of through the reformation of natural gas, which releases some CO2 and which is how most hydrogen is made now. The hydrogen would function as an energy storage medium for clean energy sources, on hand for use when the wind dies or the sun don’t shine. But while the hydrogen infrastructure continues to grow slowly, it is still almost all in California, and even in that alternative-fuel-friendly state there are only about 42 hydrogen fueling stations up and running right now. You can refuel an EV, meanwhile, at just about any electrical outlet anywhere in the world. If you wanted to be cynical, you could say the reason Toyota is touting its fuel cell plans is because it’s way behind in its electric car development. That’s battery electric, not hybrid electric. Toyota may lead in hybrids, but it lags behind when it comes to making pure battery electric vehicles. Apart from a couple thousand RAV4 EVs produced between 1997 and 2014, just over 3,000 total, Toyota has trailed the rest of the world’s carmakers in electric car development. Only Hyundai and Honda still even offer fuel cell vehicles, and those only in very limited numbers. But Toyota wants to sell (or lease) you a fuel cell-powered Mirai right now. In fact, Akio Toyoda recently criticized the notion of an EV revolution, saying the infrastructure wasn’t ready for it yet. Or did he mean that his own company’s product lineup wasn’t ready yet? There is certainly incentive for carmakers to do something. In Toyota’s home market, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is “considering” banning sales of non-hybrid gasoline cars by “the mid-2030’s.” In the UK, an earlier no-gas-goal of 2040 was moved up to 2035 and now sits at 2030. And in the state of California, which often leads other U.S. states in eco-conscious legislation, the governor signed an executive order last month making a ban on sales of new gasoline-powered cars the state’s goal by 2035. Other countries are aiming for similar clean futures. [Read More.]( The post [Toyota Doubles Down on Hydrogen With a New Mirai and Commercial Trucks]( first appeared on [TheAutomobileNews.com](. [Read Full Story]( [Apple targets auto production by 2024 with ‘next level’ battery tech, report says]( Apple Inc. is moving forward with self-driving car technology and is targeting 2024 to produce a passenger vehicle that could include its own breakthrough battery technology, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The iPhone maker’s automotive efforts, known as Project Titan, have proceeded unevenly since 2014 when it first started to design its own vehicle from scratch. At one point, Apple drew back the effort to focus on software and reassessed its goals. Doug Field, an Apple veteran who had worked at Tesla Inc., returned to oversee the project in 2018 and laid off 190 people from the team in 2019. Since then, Apple has progressed enough that it now aims to build a vehicle for consumers, two people familiar with the effort said, asking not to be named because Apple’s plans are not public. Apple’s goal of building a personal vehicle for the mass market contrasts with rivals such as Google affiliate Waymo, which has built autonomous taxis to carry passengers for a driverless ride-hailing service. Central to Apple’s strategy is a new battery design that could “radically” reduce the cost of batteries and increase the vehicle’s range, according to a third person who has seen Apple’s battery design. Apple declined to comment on its plans or future products. Making a vehicle represents a supply chain challenge even for Apple, a company with deep pockets that makes hundreds of millions of electronics products each year with parts from around the world, but has never made a car. It took Elon Musk’s Tesla 17 years before it finally turned a sustained profit making cars. “If there is one company on the planet that has the resources to do that, it’s probably Apple. But at the same time, it’s not a cellphone,” said a person who worked on Project Titan. It remains unclear who would assemble an Apple-branded car, but sources have said they expect the company to rely on a manufacturing partner to build vehicles. And there is still a chance Apple will decide to reduce the scope of its efforts to an autonomous driving system that would be integrated with a car made by a traditional automaker, rather than the iPhone maker selling an Apple-branded car, one of the people added. Two people with knowledge of Apple’s plans warned pandemic-related delays could push the start of production into 2025 or beyond. Apple has decided to tap outside partners for elements of the system, including lidar sensors, which help self-driving cars get a three-dimensional view of the road, two people familiar with the company’s plans said. Apple’s car might feature multiple lidar sensors for scanning different distances, another person said. Some sensors could be derived from Apple’s internally developed lidar units, that person said. Apple’s iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Pro models released this year both feature lidar sensors. Reuters had previously reported that Apple had held talks with potential lidar suppliers, but it was also examining building its own sensor. As for the car’s battery, Apple plans to use a unique “monocell” design that bulks up the individual cells in the battery and frees up space inside the battery pack by eliminating pouches and modules that hold battery materials, one of the people said. Apple’s design means that more active material can be packed inside the battery, giving the car a potentially longer range. Apple is also examining a chemistry for the battery called LFP, or lithium iron phosphate, the person said, which is inherently less likely to overheat and is thus safer than other types of lithium-ion batteries. ”It’s next level,” the person said of Apple’s battery technology. “Like the first time you saw the iPhone.” Apple had previously engaged Magna International Inc in talks about manufacturing a car, but the talks petered out as Apple’s plans became unclear, a person familiar with those previous efforts said. Magna did not immediately respond to a request for comment. [Read More]( The post [Apple targets auto production by 2024 with 'next level' battery tech, report says]( first appeared on [TheAutomobileNews.com](. [Read Full Story]( ------------------ You Might Like [Learn more about RevenueStripe...](        ------------------ Connect with TheAutomobileNews on Facebook and Twitter [fb](  [tw]( ------------------ You received this email because you operate or create content for a website/service and based on your website it seemed like this could be important information to you and your users. TheAutomobileNews daily newsletter is managed by [Postbox Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd.]( C-4/5, IBD Emporia, Kolar Road, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, INDIA, 462042 Want to change how you receive these emails? [Update your preferences]( or [Unsubscribe]( Â