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Recharge Wrap-up: Custom Nissan Leaf video, Shell's Arctic oil plans

A video shows a customized Nissan Leaf. An owner in Japan slapped a pretty spiffy body kit on his EV, along with some Forgiato custom wheels and brakes. There's no telling what effects these modifications have on the car's aerodynamics or driving range, but it definitely gives the leaf a unique and sporty look. Check it out in the video above, and read more at Ecomento. Shell has big plans to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean. With 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil resting beneath those frigid waters, the company sees this new frontier as promising, despite the challenges involved in exploiting it. So far, Shell has spent $7 billion on Arctic operations without having extracted any oil yet. Of course, the idea of Arctic drilling has loads of opposition from concerned individual and organizations concerned with the environmental hazards of extracting oil in the icy north. Read in-depth about Shell's plans at Bloomberg. Ford has won the Altair Enlighten Award for its lightweight technology in the F-150. The award program honors automotive innovations in weight reduction. Ford was recognized for shaving 700 pounds off of the F-150 while improving performance and safety. "It's encouraging to see Ford implementing a holistic lightweighting strategy, which resulted in impressive weight savings that were incredibly significant to the judging panel," says Altair's Vice President of Global Automotive, Dave Mason. General Motors was the runner-up, with its weight savings in the Cadillac ATS and CTS. Read more at PitchEngine. The Diesel Technology Forum has outlined environmental improvements in heavy-duty vehicles at a rulemaking hearing in front of the EPA and NHTSA. Between 2010 and 2014, clean diesel technology reduced carbon emissions equal to that of 2.4 coal-fired power plants, and NOx emissions equal to 158 coal plants. New rules would help further improve the environmental performance of diesel engines. "Advances in diesel engine technology will continue to contribute to the overall efficiency gains of vehicles under this proposed rule," says Diesel Technology Forum Executive Director Allen Schaeffer. "As a result we expect diesel technology to remain the primary power-plant for commercial trucks into the foreseeable future." Read more in the press release below. Clean Diesel Power Key Part of Achieving Future Truck Efficiency Gains, EPA Officials Told -- Diesel Technology Forum CHICAGO, Aug.

Ford EcoBoost V6 hits the dyno before hitting the track

Ford Racing just unveiled the Riley Daytona Prototype that will make its racing in the United SportsCar Racing Championship Rolex 24 at Daytona in January, and now it has released a video showing development of twin-turbo 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6 that powers the car. Using the same block and heads that can be found on a production Ford Taurus SHO, this new racecar benefits from the collaboration between Ford Racing and Ford powertrain engineers.
While we still don't know what kind of power this engine is putting out, it has definitely gotten a workout at Ford's 17G dyno. This area deep within Ford allows the automaker's racing program to work hand-in-hand with production engine programs, which can be a benefit to racing operations and production cars alike. Scroll down to hear a few people from Ford talk about the crosspollination between its racing and engine teams and watch the EcoBoost get red hot on the dyno.

Yearly auto recall record demolished in 6 months

With nearly 40 million vehicles under repair campaigns and counting, 2014 will almost certainly go down as the year of the automotive recall. At just past the halfway mark, we are already at record levels, and there aren't any signs that the epidemic is slowing. General Motors' latest 8.4 million vehicle recall in the US puts the industry over the top for the title of the most cars with fixes pending from automakers ever. That's a prize no one ever wants to receive. According to TheDetroitBureau.com, the US recall total has hit 39.85-million vehicles to surpass the previous record of 33.01 million in 2004. Perhaps more surprising, with over 26 million repairs pending, it's still quite possibly that GM could recall more vehicles by the end of the year than the 27.96-million unit total of the entire US auto industry last year. With over 40 campaigns under its belt in 2014, the roughly one million cars it would take would hardly come as a surprise at this point, especially with increased government scrutiny into the Detroit automaker's processes. The pace of recalls started off relatively normal this year, with just a smattering of campaigns. The most surprising early on was Aston Martin calling in about 75 percent of its output since 2007 due to counterfeit plastic, but with just a few thousand cars, it was relatively tiny in pure numbers. GM really kicked things off soon after, but we didn't know it at the time. It issued its first bulletin for 778,000 Cobalt compacts in early February. Things only ballooned from there as more models were added to its growing ignition switch problem. The onslaught of announcements from every major automaker hasn't abated since then. Some industry executives are trying to put a positive spin on the situation. "With what's transpired (in recent months), there's a higher level of scrutiny," said Joe Hinrichs, Ford president of the Americas, to TheDetroitBureau.com. He believes that automakers are looking at data much more thoroughly than before, and it means better customer safety. Still, many consumers probably wish these problems had been found before their car went on sale.