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Toyota, Mazda form electric car technology venture

TOKYO — Toyota has established a new venture to develop electric vehicle technology with partner Mazda, seeking to catch up with rivals in an increasingly frenetic race to produce more battery-powered cars. Policymakers in key markets like China are pushing a shift to electric cars over the next two to three decades, while relatively new rival Tesla is gaining momentum and diesel cars are going through the fallout of the Volkswagen diesel scandal, pressuring traditional automakers to crank up plans for fully electric vehicles (EVs). At the same time, declining battery costs are enabling more power to be packed into cars, making an electric car future easier to imagine. Toyota said in a statement the new company will develop technology for a range of electric cars, including mini vehicles, passenger cars, SUVs and light trucks. Toyota will take a 90 percent stake in the joint venture, called EV Common Architecture Spirit Co Ltd, while Mazda and Denso Corp, Toyota's biggest supplier, will each take 5 percent. The plans build on a partnership announced in August when Japan's biggest automaker agreed to take a 5 percent stake in Mazda and two said they would jointly develop affordable electric vehicle technologies. Although Toyota is providing most of the financial firepower and existing EV know-how, Mazda's engineers have gained the admiration of the industry with breakthrough technologies such as its compression ignition engine announced last month. Shares in Mazda surged to end the day 3 percent higher, while those in Denso rose 1.8 percent. Toyota shares were flat. Both automakers are somewhat behind rivals, with neither having a fully electric passenger car on the market yet. After years of focusing on bringing hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to the market, Toyota last year set up a division to develop electric cars which is led by President Akio Toyoda, and said it plans to introduce EVs in China in the coming years. Toyota has also announced it will bring a game-changing solid-state EV battery to market by 2022. That division would continue as a separate entity from the new joint venture, a Toyota spokeswoman said, while adding that the two teams would co-operate on technology development. Mazda has an R&D budget a fraction of Toyota's, which has made it difficult to develop electric cars on its own. Even so, it has said it plans to launch EVs in 2020.

Mazda details diesel prototype at Daytona test

Diesel has without a doubt become the dominant fuel in the modern era of endurance racing. The 24 Hours of Le Mans has been won under diesel power for the past eight years running, as has every race in the FIA World Endurance Championship since its inauguration in 2012. Yet there will only be one diesel prototype entered in the top tier of the new Tudor United SportsCar Championship this year, and it belongs to Mazda.
The last Japanese manufacturer to win at Le Mans outright, Mazda has been gradually working its way back up the endurance racing ladder once again, following the example set by Audi with diesel power. Last year it campaigned a competition-spec Mazda6 Skyactiv-D in the GX class of the Grand-Am series, but rather than simply port over the existing racer into the new series, it's fielding a new prototype instead, just as it promised a couple of months ago. And now that prototype has hit the track for the first time, prompting Mazda to release its basic specs for the first time.
Tentatively referred to simply as the 2014 Mazda Prototype, the purpose-built racecar is testing this weekend in the Roar Before the 24, the official test session at Daytona that kicks off the racing season. It packs a 2.2-liter SkyActiv-D engine that's based heavily on the production version but tuned to produce 450 horsepower and 580 pound-feet of torque in race trim. Power is channeled through a six-speed sequential transmission from Xtrac, carbon brakes from AP and 18-inch racing slicks from Continental. With the Daytona-spec aero setup, it'll top out at around 186 miles per hour.

Suzuki recalls 2 million cars globally

Suzuki is recalling two million vehicles across the globe, including a number of Chevrolet Cruze sedans that it builds for General Motors, because the ignition switches may begin to smoke. None of the Cruzes being recalled were sold in the US, though. This recall is limited to the Japanese, European and Australian markets. In Suzuki's home market, 1,873,000 vehicles are being recalled, including the Cruze and a number kei cars built for Mazda (the Carol and AZ-Wagon), as well as the automaker's own Alto, Wagon R and Swift. Affected vehicles were built between 1998 and 2009. The remaining 133,000 vehicles include Cruzes and other Suzuki products sold in Europe and Australia. There have been no reports of injuries or accidents due to the 67 reported incidents, all of which come from the Japanese market, a Suzuki spokesperson told Automotive News. Related Video: