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Why Toyota's fuel cell play is one big green gamble

Imagine going to the ballet on Saturday evening for an 8 pm performance. The orchestra begins warming up shortly before the show, but it turns out the star performer isn't ready at the appointed time. The orchestra keeps playing, doing its best to keep the audience engaged and, most importantly, in the building. It keeps this up until the star finally shows and is ready to dance ... which turns out to be ten years later. That's a Samuel Beckett play. It's also how many observers, analysts, alt-fuel fans and alt-fuel intenders feel about the arrival of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) – the few of them who are still in the building, that is. Toyota's hydrogen development timeline rivals that of the US space program. In fact, within the halls of Toyota alone, research on FCVs has been going on for nearly 22 years, meaning that one company's development timeline for FCVs rivals that of the US space program – it was 1945 when Werner von Braun's team began re-assembling Germany's World War II V2 rockets and figuring out how to launch them into space and it wasn't until 1969 when a man set landing gear down on that sunlit lunar quarry. The development of the atom bomb only took half as long, and that's if we go all the way back to when Leo Szilard patented the mere idea of it, in 1934. Carmakers didn't give up on hydrogen in spite of the public having given up on carmakers ever making something of it, so there was a good chance that hydrogen criers announcing the mass-market adoption of periodic chart element number two one would eventually be right. Now is that time. And Toyota, not alone in researching FCVs but arguably having done the most to keep FCVs in the news, isn't even going to be first to market. That honor will go to Hyundai, surprising just about everyone at the LA Auto Show with news of a hydrogen fuel cell Tucson going on sale in the spring. The other bit of thunder stolen: while Toyota's talking about trying to get the price of its offering down to something between $50,000 and $100,000, Hyundai is pitching its date with the future at a lease price of $499 per month ($250 more than the lease price of a conventional Tucson), free hydrogen and maintenance, and availability at Enterprise Rent-A-Car if you just want to try it out. We've seen and driven Toyota's offering and we all know its success doesn't depend on cross-shopping, showroom dealing and lease sweeteners.

Hyundai Santa Cruz pickup with four doors, five seats, due around 2020

You could boil three years of coverage on the Hyundai Santa Cruz pickup to a question mark. The "crossover truck" debuted at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show, then got swallowed in the executive turmoil at Hyundai Motor America. Reuters reported last year that the Santa Cruz would finally arrive by 2020 as part of the South Korean carmaker's push into SUVs. Motor Trend recently spoke to Brian Smith, the COO at HMA, and got a crucial detail on the eventual truck. Forget about the sleek, two-door concept from Detroit — the actual item will be a "four-door ... that seats five." The redesigned Hyundai Tucson is also due in 2020, the compact crossover providing the platform for the Santa Cruz. If connecting the dots is really this simple, it mean's we'll be getting Hyundai's version of the Honda Ridgeline, the only unibody compact pickup on sale in the U.S. at the moment. And that makes us wonder how the Santa Cruz will fare whenever it gets here. Anyone who wanted to put money down on something similar to the highly popular concept has been booted from the game. They've been replaced by those who can be lured by an alternative to the Ridgeline, but the questions are how many buyers is that, and will the production Santa Cruz be the right truck to close the deal? In 2016, then-CEO Dave Zuchowski said Hyundai research showed the possibility of moving at least 50,000 pickups a year, and other studies suggested 70,000 sales could be possible. Even at the low end, that suggests a remarkable pent-up demand for the kind of truck that's never succeeded in the U.S. The Ridgeline sold 34,749 units in 2017, and numbers are down nearly 30 percent down so far this year. Meanwhile, the body-on-frame (BOF) GMC Canyon sold 32,106 units last year, and it was merely piggybacking on the Chevrolet Colorado, which did 112,996 sales. Even the BOF Nissan Frontier, last refreshed during the Bronze Age, sold 74,360 models. What's more, by the time the Santa Cruz gets here, the new BOF Ford Ranger will revel in actual pent-up demand, and the really cool kids will still be cooing over their new BOF Jeep Wrangler pickup. Looking back at the Ridgeline space, we await word from Volkswagen on the fate of the Tanoak concept. Hyundai could choose to take a stand in the unibody pickup segment on price; the Ridgeline whips up its own headwinds by charging $8,000 more than a Canyon, $11,000 more than a Frontier. Still, a Tucson with a bed, that is two years away ...

Google's new Android Autos OS unveiled, will be in cars this year [w/video]

Connected cars are coming en-masse. We know this much. How, though, remains something of an open question, especially as two of the world's largest tech companies are preparing to battle for control of your car's dashboard. On the one hand, we have Apple and its CarPlay system. And now, we know what Google has been working on with Auto Link.
Its new name is Android Auto, and yes, it's based off the Android architecture that is the primary challenger to Apple's iOS mobile operating system. Announced at Google's I/O conference today, Android Auto functions similarly to CarPlay - owners will need to plug their smartphones into their cars to access the full breadth of capability.
In Android Auto's case, that means a wealth of voice controls to limit distracted driving. Google's marquee apps will be available when the interface arrives in production models later this year, including Google Play Music, Google Maps and voice-activated texting and text playback. Meanwhile, developers will be able to begin designing custom apps for the new system via an upcoming software development kit.