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Toyota sells off Tesla shares, too

The incredible rise of Tesla's stock price has done little to now stop two major shareholders from ditching their stake in the American EV manufacturer. First, Daimler, parent company of Mercedes-Benz, ditched its four-percent stake, and less than a week later, Toyota is doing the same thing, selling off an undisclosed bit of its Tesla investment.
The move comes as Toyota winds down sales of the RAV4 EV, which gets its batteries and electric motor from Tesla at the company's Fremont, CA factory.
"We have a good relationship with Tesla, and will evaluate the feasibility of working together on future projects," Toyota spokesperson Kayo Doi told Bloomberg via email.

Toyota passes BMW as most valuable car brand

An annual market study of the strongest brands across various industries has seen Toyota leapfrog BMW as the world's most valuable automotive brand. Toyota's 2013 brand value rose to $24.5 billion, up 12 percent versus 2012 numbers according to market research company Millward Brown's BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list. BMW's value fell slightly; down by 2 percent to a total of $24 billion.
Mercedes-Benz finished in third place in the automotive category, up 11 percent from 2012 for a valuation of $18 billion. Honda ($12.4 billion, down 2 percent) and Nissan ($10.2 billion, up 3 percent) rounded out the top five for the category. Volkswagen was the only other auto brand that finished in the top 100 overall, in 100th place. Audi made the greatest percentage gain over 2012, up 18 percent to $5.5 billion, but finished outside of the top 100.
Technology companies dominated the overall list, with Apple, Google and IBM ranking one through three. Couture brand Prada was 2013's biggest gainer, rising by 63 percent over 2012.

BMW 1 Series sedan interior revealed

The next BMW 1 Series Sedan has made another appearance following our last peek at it in September, and this time, the gallery of images even reveals part of the new car's interior.
Of course, if these images prove anything, it's that manufacturers take camouflage of the interior just as seriously as they do the exterior. We can see in these images a fairly simple cabin, with what looks like a fixed central display. It's quite small, although the housing itself is rather large, so we could be looking at a more basic form of iDrive rather than the full-featured set. Overall, though, this cabin more or less confirms that the 1 Series Sedan will fit in with the rest of the BMW family quite nicely.
Outside of the interior images, though, there isn't a lot of new stuff revealed by these images. As for when we'll see both the interior and exterior fully undisguised, our spies continue pointing to a 2016 debut with a 2017 on-sale date.