2011 Honda Accord Cpe on 2040-cars

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Honda, Acura recall 450,000 cars for seatbelt issue

Honda is recalling nearly half a million Honda and Acura vehicles to address an issue that can prevent passengers from latching their seatbelts. The campaign covers most of the mainstream brand's popular family cars, including the CR-V, Accord and Odyssey. Per the company's report, normal wear and tear can cause the driver and passenger seatbelt release buttons to bind, preventing the latches from properly engaging.  "The seat belt buckle channel [sic] for the driver and front passenger seat belts were manufactured out of specification, causing interference between the buckle channel and the release button,"  Honda's report to NHTSA said. "With continuous use, the buckle channel surface coating may deteriorate over time, and the release button may shrink against the channel at low temperatures, increasing friction. This can result in issues with the seat belt buckle latching." Here is the full list of cars and model years included in the campaign: 2019-2020 Acura RDX  2018-2019 Honda Accord/Accord Hybrid  2017-2020 Honda CR-V  2019 Honda Insight  2018-2020 Honda Odyssey Honda said that the problem first surfaced back in 2019 and that the company has received more than 300 warranty claims related to the problem. No injuries or fatalities have been reported. Owners will have replacement parts installed free of charge. Honda says notices should be distributed to owners starting in April.  Related video: Recalls Acura Honda Ownership Safety

Acura NSX bodywork to be sheathed in zirconium e-coat, fewer paint layers

Automakers make halo cars to drum up excitement and show off what they can do, but there's more to it than that. Advanced platforms allow a company's engineers to experiment with all sorts of technologies. And in the case of the upcoming new Acura NSX, that includes new paint processes.
Speaking with Autoline in this video interview, Honda's North American Senior VP Jon Minto talked about an innovative zirconium e-coat which it's applying to the new NSX. Unlike some experimental paints developed for Formula One, however, this coating is not designed to minimize drag or enhance cooling: it's designed to be more environmentally friendly.
It's one of a few measures which Honda is implementing on the NSX before expanding it to more accessible models, along with another process that uses fewer coats to reduce energy consumption by 40 percent. Watch the interview with Autoline host John McElroy right here.

Hyundai-Kia claims 'greenest' title from Honda, Big Three still big losers

Let's start with the good news. On average, any new car you buy in the US today will be 43 percent cleaner than any average new car in 1998. Here's some more good news, for Korea anyway, Hyundai-Kia has been named the cleanest automaker in the latest study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which looked at 2013 model year vehicles sold between October 2012 and September 2013 from the top eight automakers (by volume). The bad news? The big three Detroit automakers are, on average, still making the dirtiest cars in the showroom. The big three Detroit automakers are, on average, still making the dirtiest cars in the showroom. The problem for Ford, General Motors and Chrysler lies in their trucks, which sell well but tend to have pretty bad fuel economy (compared to sedans, at least). The UCS calculates its list by averaging "the per-mile emissions for each light-duty vehicle sold by each automaker" and then factors in "the fuel economy, fuel type, and sales volume of each type of vehicle sold by each automaker" and "the upstream global warming emissions from producing and distributing the fuel used by each vehicle, as well as emissions from the vehicles themselves." That all means that, the more trucks you sell, the worse you're gonna do. Then again, the more trucks you sell with 18 mpg, the more you're helping drivers put CO2 into the air, so the UCS is doing a fair comparison of the things that this study is trying to track. More details on the methodology are available on page six of the study PDF. In case you were wondering (we were), UCS did make sure to use the revised mpg numbers for Hyundai and Kia models that were originally overstated. Hyundai has apologized for and fixed those figures and even with the new, corrected numbers, Hyundai's total emissions are dropping at a rate of about three percent a year, enough for it to take the greenest company title for the first time. In fact, this is the first time that an automaker other than Honda has come out on top in the UCS ranking, which has been released six times now, including the first one in 2000 (which looked at 1998 model year data). In 2010, Honda was almost knocked off the winner's perch by both Hyundai and Toyota, but managed to hold on. Chrysler, on the other hand, came in dead last (again) in the ranking of the top eight automakers, snagging the "dirtiest tailpipe" award once (again). Read the UCS' press release below.