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Lexus NX will be produced in Canada

OTTAWA/MONTREAL — Toyota Motor Corp will build its Lexus NX luxury crossover vehicle at a Canadian plant starting in 2022, the company said on Monday, a decision that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said demonstrated the value of the country's international trade agreements. The plant will invest hundreds of millions of dollars to produce the Lexus NX and its hybrid version at the factory in Cambridge, Ontario, "supplying the entire North American market," Trudeau said in a presentation with Fred Volf, president of Toyota's Canadian unit. Citing Canada's trade agreements with Mexico, the United States, Europe and Asia, Trudeau said: "We have preferential trade access to two-thirds of the global economy. In fact, we're the only G7 country that has free trade deals with every other G7 country." Trudeau, who faces a tough re-election contest in October, said the plans by Toyota, one of the world's largest carmakers, will help guarantee 8,000 jobs and the factory. The announcement is a "counter narrative" for Canada's automaking industry following recent bad news from other automakers, said Flavio Volpe, president of the Toronto-based Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, especially in the province of Ontario. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV said in March it would cut a shift at its Windsor assembly plant, leading to 1,500 job losses, and General Motors said last year it would shut its Oshawa factory by the end of 2019. Plans to assemble the NX in Canada "means that Toyota's Canadian manufacturing operations are here to stay," Volf said, adding that the cars are "the most technologically advanced and the most in-demand cars in the Toyota-Lexus global lineup." On Sunday, Trudeau hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Ottawa. Both touted the benefits of a Pacific trade deal that U.S. President Donald Trump walked away from. Trudeau said he had discussed the project to build the Lexus NX in Canada with Chief Executive Akio Toyoda on April 1. "When we last chatted just a few weeks ago, we discussed the potential of this new Lexus mandate," Trudeau said.

Ford fights back against patent trolls

Some people are just awful. Some organizations are just as awful. And when those people join those organizations, we get stories like this one, where Ford has spent the past several years combatting so-called patent trolls. According to Automotive News, these malicious organizations have filed over a dozen lawsuits against the company since 2012. They work by purchasing patents, only to later accuse companies of misusing intellectual property, despite the fact that the so-called patent assertion companies never actually, you know, do anything with said intellectual property. AN reports that both Hyundai and Toyota have been victimized by these companies, with the former forced to pay $11.5 million to a company called Clear With Computers. Toyota, meanwhile, settled with Paice LLC, over its hybrid tech. The world's largest automaker agreed to pay $5 million, on top of $98 for every hybrid it sold (if the terms of the deal included each of the roughly 1.5 million hybrids Toyota sold since 2000, the company would have owed $147 million). Including the previous couple of examples, AN reports 107 suits were filed against automakers last year alone. But Ford is taking action to prevent further troubles... kind of. The company has signed on with a firm called RPX, in what sounds strangely like a protection racket. Automakers like Ford pay RPX around $1.5 million each year for access to its catalog of patents, which it spent nearly $1 billion building. "We take the protection and licensing of patented innovations very seriously," Ford told AN via email. "And as many smart businesses are doing, we are taking proactive steps to protect against those seeking patent infringement litigation." What are your thoughts on this? Should this patent business be better managed? Is it reasonable that companies purchase patents only to file suit against the companies that build actual products? Have your say in Comments.

Toyota, Kaley Cuoco grant wishes in Super Bowl XLVII ad

For viewers who plan on watching the Super Bowl only for the commercials, here's one for you to enjoy ahead of time. As we saw in the teaser video that Toyota released last week, will be making the transition from Big Bang to The Big Game as a wish-granting genie in a commercial for the 2013 Toyota RAV4.
Though not as entertaining as the actual teaser for this commercial, it still garnered a couple chuckles from the Autoblog crew. We won't spoil it for you, but a word of advice: if Cuoco ever shows up in your driveway granting you wishes, we'd suggest you be very clear what you want... and enunciate.
If you want to see the commercial before this Sunday's game, we have the video (and an accompanying press release) posted after the jump.