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Kaz and Shiro talk Gran Turismo 7 details, Titan Nismo and more in AMA

One of the greatest innovations to come about thanks to the gigantic popularity of Reddit is the Ask Me Anything (AMA) question and answer format. The AMA becomes especially worthwhile, of course, when the person(s) answering the questions have detailed information or insight on products we love.
So, in the case of the recent AMA session with Gran Turismo creator and mastermind Kazunori Yamauchi (above), and his buddy and Nissan chief designer Shiro Nakamura (right), it was basically must-read stuff.
The pair really lived up to our expectations, too, with Kaz offering a lot of useful information about the future of the Gran Turismo franchise (especially the upcoming GT7 for Playstation 4), and Shiro promising to bring some interesting new ideas back to his colleagues at Nissan.

Nissan applies for 'R-Hybrid' trademark, but what is it for?

Patent and trademark filings are sort of like tasseography for those of us in the auto industry. If you know where and how to look at something, there's a lot to be figured out. Take this trademark filing from Nissan - it's similar to the Pure Drive badge found on a Versa or Sentra, but the bottom half sports the phrase "R-Hybrid." This wouldn't be remarkable if the "R" in R-Hybrid weren't the same style as the "R" in the Nissan GT-R's badge, right down to the serifs.
While it's easy to see this as grasping at straws, it makes a fair degree of sense. The R35 GT-R may be a dominant performance machine, but it's been around since 2008, which is donkey years in the automotive industry. And based on the recent crop of hybridized hypercars and racecars, a hybrid GT-R doesn't seem like such a stretch.
As Car And Driver points out, figuring out that the GT-R will go hybrid isn't hard - figuring out when it will arrive, is. The buff book rightly points out that a new GT-R isn't expected until 2017, but that designing and trademarking a badge four years ahead of time is a bit odd. Car and Driver speculates that we could see a mildly hybridized R35, although the chances do seem remarkably low. Head over to C/D for a more thorough rundown on why this just might be a GT-R badge, including comparisons with other R-badged Nissans.

2013 Nissan e-NV200 taxi will carry Catalunians quietly beginning next year

The Nissan e-NV200, currently in the final phases of testing with FedEx fleets in various countries, will be getting more demanding cargo next year in Barcelona when it goes into service as a taxi. Unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show by Carlos Ghosn and with the mayor of Barcelona, Xavier Trias, in attendance, the e-NV200 is the van slightly reworked into a unique design and resting on a Leaf electric powertrain.
The NV200 van is built in Barcelona, and when the electric version goes into production there next year it will begin its public beta will as part of a set of initiatives the Spanish city has for zero-emissions transportation. Nissan will be helping with the build-out of infrastructure such as charging stations, while the city elders get to work on allocating privileges and special spaces for the e-NV200 taxi drivers.
After the Catalonian debut Nissan says the electric hauler will make its way to other parts of the world. Nothing's been said yet about whether it will join our combustion-engined NV200 taxis in New York. You can take a look at the fare-driven future in the high-res gallery above, and read more about it in the press release below.