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Toyota, Honda, Nissan and more collaborating to increase fuel efficiency

Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Suzuki and Daihatsu have announced an alliance that will see a push to improve fuel economy from both gas-powered and diesel-powered engines by as much as 30 percent before the end of the decade.
The newly assembled Research Association of Automotive Internal Combustion Engines put the roughly $20-million project together, with the Japanese government committing to half the cost while the eight manufacturers will chip in the rest.
According to Automotive News, the automakers will team up and share basic research on internal-combustion engines in a bid to cut costs. Eventually, the results of the research will find its way into a production vehicle, although it's unclear just when we'll see the fruits of this partnership on the road.

Nissan announces 5-year/100,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty for commercial vehicles

Nissan is a relative new-kid when it comes to the commercial van market in the US, with its commercial vehicles division only introducing the first NV vans in February 2011. But Nissan isn't letting its newcomer status keep it from challenging the established players in the segment. The company's latest shot over competitors' bows is announcing that, starting for the 2014 model year, its NV Cargo, NV Passenger and NV200 Compact Cargo vans carry a best-in-class, five-year/100,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty. Their powertrain coverage also gets a 40,000-mile increase to five years/100,000 miles.
The new warranty is a huge leap over adversaries in the segment and should lure in some buyers looking for a longer term of coverage. The Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, Ram ProMaster, Ford Transit and Transit Connect all carry a three-year/36,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty. The Fords offer five years and 60,000 miles of powertrain coverage, while all of the others increase that to 100,000 miles. Until this announcement, Nissan had the standard thee years of coverage, as well.
The Japanese automaker is clearly hungry to grab a bigger piece of the commercial van pie. Its heavy-duty NV vans have a relatively small 5.3 percent market share in their segment as of May 2014, according to the company's figures, but the NV200 is doing better with a 19.4 percent share. The division as a whole is on the upswing, though, with sales up 88 percent so far in 2014. With just a few years under its belt, Nissan Commercial Vehicles seems unafraid to challenge the status quo in the segment. Let's see how buyers respond. Scroll down to read the full announcement about the new warranty.

Nissan Kicks concept debuts in Sao Paulo [w/videos]

The Sao Paulo Motor Show only comes around once every other year, and Nissan - an automaker deeply vested in the Latin American market - isn't missing out on the opportunity to showcase a new crossover concept.
Called the Kicks concept, the crossover seems to slot in size-wise in between the Juke and the Rogue. Nissan isn't saying much about it, though, aside from its having drawn its inspiration from Brazil with a "satin titanium" finish and bright orange trim - the former taking its cues from Sao Paulo and the latter from Rio.
While emphasizing its Brazilian character, Nissan also stresses that the concept's creation was "a product of global collaboration." So while it isn't saying anything about production feasibility, it is seemingly suggesting that if it were put into production - and as we stated previously, we think it just might - it could stand to be a global model and not confined strictly to South America.