2003 Toyota Tacoma Pre Runner Standard Cab Pickup 2-door 2.4l on 2040-cars

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Toyota Camry re-earns CR 'Recommended' rating following crash tests

All is right again in the Toyota kingdom. The Japanese manufacturer's bread-and-butter sedan, the Camry, has been put back on Consumer Reports' "Recommended" vehicle list, following improved performance in the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's crash testing.
You'll recall that the 2012 and 2013 Camry were infamously booted from the list due to "Poor" ratings in IIHS' notoriously tough small-overlap crash testing. Toyota vowed - just last week actually - to fix the ratings. As the Toyota brand's head, Bill Fay, said last week, "It's still a five-star car. It still does very well in all the IIHS tests. It did not in [the small overlap frontal crash test], and we're busy making the necessary adjustments so that we can address that."
Now, though, those redesigned cars have been tested, earning an "Acceptable" rating in the overlap testing. According to Consumer Reports, Camrys built from November 2013 on feature new internal structures that improve the car's crash test scores enough to make it a "Recommended" buy. IIHS has also elevated the car back to a position in its Top Safety Pick category, although it falls short of the new gold standard, the Top Safety Pick + rating.

Recharge Wrap-up: Toyota FCV wears silver, Foxconn's $15K EV, solar power at GM

The Toyota FCV made its North American debut at the 2014 Aspen Ideas Festival, and this time it's not sporting its usual blue sheet metal. This silver paint job shows a bit more contrast. Certain features stand out a bit more, especially the black strip that wraps around the grille and down the sides of the hood to the mirrors. This is the production version of the car's exterior, which will go on sale in California next summer. Toyota also had its Driver Awareness Research Vehicle, DARV 1.5, on display in Aspen. DARV 1.5 uses technology to decrease driver distraction and measure driver behavior to provide a safe driving score. See more of both cars in our image gallery. Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry (also know as FoxConn Technology Group) says it is planning to build electric cars that will cost just $15,000, according to The China Post. The world's largest electronics maker, which assembles mobile devices for Apple, promises that the cars will be highly connected. "When integrated with cloud computing, the Internet, smart traffic and smart cities in the future, people will be able to drive more easily and reduce car accidents more efficiently," says Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou. At a shareholder's meeting, Gou didn't comment on production timing or other details about the cars, nor would he answer questions about possible cooperation with Tesla Motors. Hon Hai made headlines in recent years after a series of employee suicides, which led the company to raise worker wages and install anti-suicide netting on its buildings. EV advocates in Illinois took a 500-mile road trip to help temper range anxiety in potential buyers, says the Chicago Tribune. The demonstration, organized by the Illinois Green Economy Network, meant to show people that they can use electric vehicles to drive long distances without getting stranded with a dead battery. The drive began near Carbondale and traveled to 11 different community colleges with charging stations before terminating in Grayslake. Illinois has about 5,000 registered electric vehicles, and 450 public and private charging stations. General Motors is building three acres of new solar arrays to produce an expected 400,000 kilowatt-hours of renewable energy per year. The new arrays at GM's Swartz Creek processing center and Flint engine plant will be completed this fall, contributing to the company's 38 megawatts of solar power from facilities around the world.

Toyota expects hybrids will soon reach 20-percent sales volume globally

Hybrids have come quite a long way from their roots as dull, slow, boring ecomobiles. Today, Porsche sells three hybrid models, one of which is the amazing 918 Spyder. BMW will soon sell four, including a low-slung, two-seat sports car. Even Ferrari and McLaren, full-fledged hypercar manufacturers, are embracing the tech. And all of these cars are sold alongside the same sort of boring cars that popularized hybrids in the first place. According to Toyota Chairman Takeshi Uchiyamada, though, we should see an even bigger increase in the number of hybrid vehicles in the coming years.
"I foresee hybrid models pretty soon reaching 20 percent of global sales from about 13 percent to 14 percent now," Uchiyamada-san told Automotive News. Uchiyamada is the man behind the original Prius, which gives him some degree of authority on making predictions about hybrid adoption.
What's remarkable, though, is that the 20-percent figure doesn't include plug-in hybrids, just gas- and diesel-electric models. "Suppliers need higher volumes to slash costs of components specific to plug-in models, including batteries that should be bigger and more capable than the ones used in traditional hybrids," Uchiyamada told AN.