It's neat to watch the development of this girl's face as she grows, especially between about 8 and 10.
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Holy time lapse.
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Two years after showing off the original Electric Networked Vehicle (ENV) concepts at the Beijing Motor Show and Shanghai World Expo, GM is back with Version 2.0. This time around it retains design ideas from the European designed original but it's been refined to be actually usable in the real world rather than just on smooth, flat surfaces. The fully autonomous driving capability, vehicle-to-vehicle communications and electric drive remain but the Segway-based, two-wheel balancing chassis is swapped for a four wheel setup. ENV 2.0 now has amenities such as climate control and some minimal cargo space.
It will be interesting to see how the field trials of this vehicle work out when they begin in the next year or two. Vehicles like this are ideally suited to dense urban environments as part of car sharing systems. Think of it as personal, point-to-point mass-transit.
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It's been several years since +Ford Motor Company sold off Jaguar and Land Rover to India's Tata Motors, but the Dearborn automaker has continued supplying some parts to the British luxury automaker including engines. The diesel engines that are available in European Jags and Land Rovers are built at Ford's Dagenham diesel center in the UK and the base V6 in the XF, XK and XJ is a version of Ford's Duratec 3.0-liter.
At the Beijing Motor Show, Jaguar announced that it will be following the industry-wide trend to engine downsizing by replacing the current V6 engine with the 2.0-liter Ford EcoBoost four-cylinder. The turbocharged and direct injected engine will produce 237 hp and 251 lb-ft of torque. This engine is already available in the Ford Edge and Explorer and it's coming to the 2013 Fusion later this year.
Would you go for a small four cylinder engine in a car the size of the XJ? Depending on how you use the car it certainly seems plausible and it will no doubt offer better performance than even V12-powered XJs of the not so distant past.
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The hybrid architecture that +Ferrari recently described in a European patent application https://sam.abuelsamid.com/2012/04/13/ferrari-files-patent-for-new-hybrid-system/ has now been sort of shown in physical form.
At the Beijing Motor Show this week, Ferrari is displaying its latest HY-KERS system that is expected to go into production in the successor to the ENZO when it debuts later this year. Like the architecture described in the patent, this one features a main traction motor paired with the dual-clutch transmission along with a secondary motor at the front of the engine to drive the accessories.
While the patent described a car with a front mounted V8 and rear wheel drive, there is nothing about this hybrid architecture that limits it to any particular combination of engine location and drive wheels. The powertrain being shown in Beijing uses a V12 based on the one in the new F12 Berlinetta. The V12 is bolted directly to the transaxle as it will be in the rear-mid-engine F70/Enzo.
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