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Toyota GT86 engineer Tada recounts how sports car came to be

Because the Toyota GT86, Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ coupes are now a reality, it's almost hard to imagine the struggle that had to happen within the large, conservative corporate structures at both automakers for the joint project to even get off of the ground.
Speaking to those struggles on Toyota UK's Toyota Blog, GT86 Chief Engineer Tetsuya Tada enlightens us with a recap of the sports car's earliest origins. For Tada, the first stages of the project must have seemed almost as dreamlike as the final product is to drive.
Said the Chief, "I had been working in the minivan department engineering new product, but a month after the meeting I was summoned. 'Forget about minivans,' they said, 'you are now working on the sports-car project.'"

Toyota recalling 342k Tacomas due to faulty seatbelt pretensioners

Toyota is voluntarily recalling 342,000 Tacoma Access Cab pickups, produced between 2004 and 2011. The wide-ranging recall is due to faults in the screws that attach the belt pre-tensioner to the belt retractor. There are concerns that the screws can loosen themselves over time, especially if the access door is opened and closed with too much force. It's important to note that the recall only covers the driver and front passenger seat, and is limited to just the Access Cab trucks. Other body styles aren't affected.
If the screws come loose, the pre-tensioner and retractor spring could separate from the belt entirely, which would be bad news in a crash. There's no mention of injuries or accidents due to the faulty pre-tensioners. Owners affected by the recall will be notified soon, and asked to come in for recall service.

New Toyota Mirai videos continue questionable hydrogen claims

"Toyota engineers were simultaneously working on a brand new technology that met all the driver's needs with an even smaller carbon footprint." Toyota has released a number of new promotional videos for the hydrogen-powered 2016 Mirai. Most are exactly what you'd expect: pretty, full of promise and vaguely informational. But there was one line in the Product Introduction video that caught out ear. In the Product Information video about the Mirai, the narrator goes into a short history of Toyota's green car advances. After talking about the Prius and the Prius Plug In, making EVs for urban commuting and the rest of Toyota's advanced fuel programs, we hear this: "Never satisfied though, Toyota engineers were simultaneously working on a brand new technology that met all the driver's needs with an even smaller carbon footprint, one that took its lead from nature itself." You can watch the video (and four others) below. Plug In America co-founder Paul Scott told AutoblogGreen, "Show us the math! Toyota claims the FCV has a smaller carbon footprint than their EV, but every paper I've read indicates the FCV uses 3-4 times as much energy to travel a given distance as an EV. If they are making this claim, let's call them out to prove it. Show us the math!" There's some math that comes out in favor of EVs here and here. "BEVs and FCs have a very similar carbon footprint, dependent on fuel source." – Toyota's Jana Hartline Plug-in vehicle advocate Chelsea Sexton went further. "Assuming appropriate comparisons in energy feedstock, basic science doesn't support the notion that the footprint of an FCV is smaller than that of an EV," she told AutoblogGreen, explaining that "appropriate comparison" would mean using similar energy generation methods for both hydrogen and plug-in vehicles. Not the tendency, she noted, "of H2 fans to compare FCVs based on solar-based electrolysis to EVs running on coal-bases electricity and similar shenanigans." Besides, Sexton said, "focusing purely on efficiencies entirely misses the biggest struggles that FCVs face in the market, namely fuel price, inconvenience, and market fear, even if the vehicles themselves are initially subsidized.