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Four Wheeler crowns Ultimate Factory 4x4... who wins?

Nearly every automaker doing business in the SUV or pickup truck segments offers a package designed to improve the off-road capabilities of its wares. But, of course, not all such factory kits are created equal. How, then, to separate the wheat from the chaff? Gather each of them up and put them through their paces, naturally.
The folks from Four Wheeler and PickupTrucks.com joined forces to run just such a comparison test, with the winner named the Ultimate Factory 4x4. A total of seven vehicles showed up to the fight: the 2012 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor, 2013 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, 2012 Nissan Frontier PRO-4X and Xterra PRO-4X, 2012 Ram Power Wagon, and 2012 Toyota 4Runner Trail and Tacoma TRD T|X Baja Series.
With the contestants in place, the whole crew put each vehicle through a battery of tests that included skidpad and acceleration measurements, a hillclimb, a rocky stairstep course and a rock garden. Considering the nature of the beasts, on-road ride and comfort were not part of the routine.

Recharge Wrap-up: Q50 Hybrid video, Iran's biodiesel weed

A new video from Infiniti showcases the Q50 Hybrid's kinetic energy recovery technology, borrowed from Formula One. The video details what is going on inside both the Q50 Hybrid and the racecar when it gathers energy to store for later use, offering better performance than an internal combustion engine alone. In the Q50 Hybrid, that electric energy helps the car accelerate from 0-60 in 4.9 seconds. The video also serves to highlight the relationship between racing innovation and performance and efficiency improvements in production vehicles. See the video above. The 2015 Toyota Prius C has been named a Top Safety Pick by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). The compact hybrid, updated for the 2015 model year, has been upgraded from a "poor" to "acceptable" rating in the small overlap crash test, placing it on the Top Safety Pick list. Beginning in the 2016 model year, cars will have to score a "good" rating on the test to make the list, which means further improvements will be necessary if Toyota wants the Prius C to maintain its safety status with the IIHS. Read more at Green Car Reports. A couple in Tennessee have been found guilty of scamming the state in a fake biodiesel scheme. John and Lisa Brichetto's Northington Energy LLC received a state loan to produce biodiesel in 2011, but the facility never started production and was later foreclosed upon. In addition to the $142,215 the Brichettos defrauded from Tennessee, the state also invested in utilities and roads, while the US Department of Agriculture also paid for site improvements. Read more from the Times Free Press. Researchers in Iran have developed a way to make biodiesel from a weed. Scientists at the Islamic Azad University have created two liters of biomass for biofuel from flixweed. Flixweed, also called herb-Sophia and tansy mustard, is a non-edible weed that grows in various climates with little to no effort. It was found to contain 22 percent oil and fatty acids, and the biomass contains oxygenated chemical components. "This issue is important because the atomic oxygen in the fuel of a car directly cuts exhaust and the dangerous carbon monoxide and cancerous particles suspended in air," says Mehdi Alami, a chemistry graduate working on the project. Read more at Press TV.

Toyota wants you to meet an 'obsessed' hydrogen fuel cell engineer

Like a television-broadcasting company covering the Olympics, Toyota is looking to market its future in hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle production by taking the personal approach. In this case, the Japanese automaker is telling the backstory of Jackie Birdsall, an engineer at Toyota Technical Center who Toyota says is "obsessed" with fuel-cell technology. A Sacramento native, Birdsall is responsible for testing fuel-cell vehicles and making sure hydrogen stations fill the tanks of the cars in a "reasonable" timeframe. Long a gearhead, she attended Flint, MI's Kettering University (formerly General Motors Institute) and, among other places, worked for the California Fuel Cell Partnership before joining Toyota in 2012. Her first car was an '87 Camry. That's one personal side of Toyota's hydrogen push, and shows another way Toyota is introducing the world to this new powertrain (see also: winter performance). The nitty-gritty is made up of things like working with FirstElement Fuel Inc. on a hydrogen-refueling network in California. As for its fuel-cell sedan, which was displayed in FCV prototype form at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January and is due next year, Toyota said it expects the car to have a full-tank range of about 300 miles and a five-minute refueling time. That's if Ms. Birdsall has anything to say about it. Check out Toyota's press release about Birdsall below. Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution A healthy obsession leads Jackie Birdsall and TTC to the forefront of history The word she keeps using is "obsessed." Jackie Birdsall became "obsessed" with cars when she was a teenager. That made her "obsessed" with the history of auto icons like Henry Ford and Lee Iacocca. In 2003, she did an internship with Daimler-Chrysler, leading to an "obsession" with hydrogen fuel cell technology. And now, as an engineer at Toyota Technical Center, Birdsall is "obsessed" with bringing fuel cell technology to the masses. But perhaps you need to be obsessed when you're trying to change the world. After all, revolutions don't blossom from complacency. Leading an alternative fuel revolution is just what Birdsall and her partners on the Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicle team are doing. Collectively, they're finding tangible ways to reduce fossil fuels in the automobile world and figuring out how hydrogen fuel cells can be useful and affordable. In 2015, that obsession will bear fruit when Toyota's FCV hits the markets in California, Japan and Europe.