Latest car news


Tata Motors sales fall 3 p.c. in August; Nano sales dip 85 p.c.



Tata Motors today reported a 2.84 per cent decline in total sales during August 2011, to 64,078 units with sales of its small car Nano falling by 85 per cent during the month.
The company had sold 65,954 units in the same month of 2010, the company said in a statement.
The homegrown firm's total passenger vehicles sales in the domestic market stood at 16,829 units in July, a fall of 33.25 per cent from 25,212 units in the same month last year.
The company's latest offering Nano's sales stood at 1,202 units during the month, down 85 per cent, the company said.
The 'Indica' range reported sales of 7,206 units, down 4 per cent vis-a-vis August, 2010, Tata Motors said.
In addition, the 'Indigo' family recorded sales of 5,100 units, a decrease of 24 per cent in comparison to the same month last year. Sales of 'Sumo', 'Safari' and 'Aria' grew by 15 per cent to 3,321 units.
In the commercial vehicles segment, the company sold 43,045 units in the domestic market during the month under review compared to 35,585 units in the same month last year, translating into an increase of 20.96 per cent.
Light commercial vehicle sales during the month amounted to 26,344 units, a growth of 27 per cent over last year, while medium and heavy commercial vehicle sales stood at 16,701 units, a growth of 12 per cent compared to August, 2010.
The company's exports fell by 18.48 per cent to 4,204 units last month from 5,157 units in the same month last year, it added.

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German auto major Volkswagen on Wednesday launched its upgraded version all-New Jetta 2 litre in diesel variant starting at Rs 14.12 lakh (ex-showroom New Delhi).


 The New Jetta will be available in four variants -- trend line, comfort line and highline manual and DSG gearbox.
 It is equipped with four cylinder CRDi engine with a six speed gear box in both manual and automatic transmission.
 “With the introduction of the New Jetta our entire carline from the Polo to the Passat now offers the latest and the best to our customers,” Member of Board and Director, Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Volkswagen Group Sales India, Neeraj Garg told reporters in Mumbai.
 The company had sold 32,000 units across all models in India last year and 45,000 units since last seven months.
 “We have sold good number of Passat and Jetta in the last seven months. Despite economic slowdown we hope this New Jetta will help to increase our market share in coming days,” he said.



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Mazda is Planning to enter India with car models.

The fifth largest car manufacturing company in Japan, the Mazda is coming to India.  The present Japanese companies selling cars in India are Honda, Nissan, Toyota, and Mitsubishi.  Now Mazda is also planning to enter into India directly.  The company’s plan to introduce Hatchbacks, sedan and sports models in India in the coming year.

The company is famous for  excellent and high quality car models  which are very popular for their engine performance, features, Interior, and car design. If you buy any Mazda car  you will be surprised with the car performance.

When a buyer wants to buy a new car, they always want to test Mazda car first, and once they try it, Mazda makes their mind very clear to Go for it..

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July  Domestic car sales  down 15.76 pc .
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Domestic passenger car sales have fallen for the first time after 30 months of continuous growth, registering a 15.76 per cent decline in July this year mainly due to hikes in lending rates and lower production by market leader Maruti Suzuki during the month.
Car sales in the country stood at 1,33,747 units in July, 2011, as against 1,58,767 units in the same month last year, according to figures released by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) on Wednesday.

“This is the first time since January, 2009, that car sales have fallen. Interest rates and fuel prices were going up in recent months and that led to an overall negative sentiment in the market,” SIAM Director General Vishnu Mathur told reporters at New Delhi.

The car market last witnessed a fall in January, 2009, when sales shrunk by 3.16 per cent year-on-year. Last month’s decline is the steepest since November, 2008, when car segment sales fell by 19.34 per cent, he added.

The production loss at Maruti’s Manesar facility due to preparations for the launch of its new Swift model and realignment of its DZiRE model’s output also severely impacted sales, he said. Earlier this month, Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) said that due to these two planned activities, sales in July were negatively impacted by nearly 17,000 units. “There is no lack of demand, but just lack of conversion of demand into purchases by customers,” Mathur said.

SIAM Senior Director Sugato Sen said non-availability of certain components like castings also impacted the output of many car-makers. During the month, MSI India posted a 31.04 per cent dip in domestic car sales to 52,483 units.

Rival  Hyundai Motor India’s sales were down by 11.49 per cent to 25,501 units. Tata Motors saw a decline of 43.13 per cent in sales to 13,997 units during the month. When asked about the outlook, Mathur said: “Interest rates and fuel prices are challenges for the market. Hopefully, interest rates have reached their peak... If crude continues to soften, then there may be some positive impact as it will lead to inflation coming down.”

The forthcoming festive season is also likely to help car-makers push sales, but to what extent it can boost growth has to be looked at, he added. The auto industry has started slowing down this fiscal, with the passenger car segment growing by only 7 per cent in May. In June, it saw its slowest growth rate in 27 months of 1.62 per cent.

SIAM had last month revised the growth projection downward to 10-12 per cent for 2011-12, as 
against its earlier forecast of 16-18 per cent.


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 THESE days there seems to be an "i" in everything.(News from Germany)




Starting with the iPod, the little lower-case prefix has become a byword (or by-letter?) for high technology and there's seems to be no end to the trend. It's become an i-fad. BMW started down this road a decade ago with iDrive, the name for the control system in its cars. Now it has signed up the vowel for something altogether bigger: a sub-brand that focuses on electric power that will parallel its M badged high-performance division, only with a low-emissions focus. Where M stands for extreme dynamics, i stands for extreme efficiency.
BMW set out its i stall in Germany last week. The first car will be the i3, a four-seat city runabout that will roll out of its Leipzig factory towards the end of 2013. The second, the i8, is a 2+2 supercar that will follow a year later. Eventually, i will embrace an entire range of eco-friendly cars.
They will have in common a variety of alternative driveline technologies, from battery power to plug-in hybrid and possibly beyond. They will be built from carbon fibre and have a futuristic design language of their own.
"The sustainable mobility solutions from BMW i mark the dawn of a new era in personal mobility for the automotive industry," board member Ian Robertson says.
Work began four years ago when BMW assembled a special team of engineers and designers to develop a zero-emission vehicle and the freedom to question anything. That work set the template for the i3 and the broad outlines for all subsequent i cars.
BMW's vision has a lot in common with other carmakers' solutions for clean-sheet, zero-emission cars. It stows the batteries in a flat panel under the floor so the weight is carried low, to minimise dynamic problems, and mounts an electric motor at the rear.
However, few of BMW's rivals have progressed beyond the concept stage. Most of the electric vehicles due for sale during the next few years fit the electric components into cars that follow conventional formats because they were designed for internal combustion engines first.
A rethink of the car layout was combined with a commitment to use carbon fibre to tackle the problem of battery weight: typically, batteries add hundreds of kilograms to an electric car. Carbon fibre is half the weight of steel and at least as strong. It's composed of woven layers of carbon strands bonded together and has been the preferred material of top-echelon racing categories, such as Formula 1, for decades.
Until recently, its high cost and cumbersome production process have restricted its use in road cars to small components or cosmetic trim, with a couple of high-profile and very expensive exceptions. With the i3, BMW is bringing carbon fibre construction into the luxury mainstream for the first time. It slices about 300kg out of the car weight that would otherwise reduce its range. It also reduces the number of body parts dramatically, from 150-200 in a standard car to less than 40.
The company has been working with carbon fibre since 2003 and has gradually developed a production process that cuts the cost and time involved in forming the material. It has amassed experience by, among other things, fitting its M3 and M6 performance coupes with carbon fibre roofs.
Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz are in hot pursuit, but BMW is declaring its hand first.
In both the i3 and i8, the carbon fibre body is glued to an aluminium chassis that houses the batteries, locates the suspension and forms the safety crumple zones front and rear. Coloured plastic body panels are then mounted on top.
As well as lower weight and superb rigidity, carbon fibre allows designers to be more adventurous. A feature of the i design language is an unusual layering effect that could not be achieved in sheet metal.
BMW design chief Adrian van Hooydonk says the i project designers set out to make the cars futuristic while retaining some of the brand's distinctive features, such as the grille.
"We wanted to create a product that would be radically new; it would be zero emissions but appeal in an emotional sense too," van Hooydonk says.



BMW describes the i3 as the first premium electric car. It's about 10cm longer than a Mini but has four doors and an impressive amount of space in its uncluttered cabin, with room for four and 200 litres of cargo. The strength of the body means there's no need for a B-pillar, so the doors open gate-style for easy access.
During the past three years, BMW has been gaining experience with electric motors with trial fleets of battery-powered Minis in Europe and the US. More recently, it added an electric 1 Series Coupe to the test. It has been encouraged by the results. The electric motor fitted to the i3 develops 125kW and offers respectable acceleration for a small hatchback, of 7.9 seconds to 100km/h, and a top speed of 150km/h.
However, one measure of the challenge in making electric cars is that despite keeping the i3's weight to 1250kg, the driving range of 130km to 160km remains well within the numbers being achieved by battery vehicles already on offer. Charging takes six hours, although a fast-charge is possible that gives 80 per cent after one hour.
One option on the i3 will be a small range extender engine, a petrol two-cylinder with a displacement of about 600cc that sits next to the electric motor, which can recharge the batteries on the move. This avoids the range anxiety issue that plagues battery cars and it's a strategy that will become commonplace. The Holden Volt, which arrives here next year and is already on sale in the US with a Chevrolet badge, uses this idea.
As a plug-in hybrid, the i8 relies less on batteries. It has a 1.5-litre three-cylinder petrol engine at the rear, driving the rear wheels, while an electric motor mounted at the front drives the front wheels. The i8 can be driven by the petrol engine or a combination of both units, which output 260kW in tandem.
It can also operate on electric power alone for up to 35km with recharging in under two hours. The batteries are housed between the seats in what would usually be a transmission tunnel so that the car sits low, like a sports car should. Weight has been kept down to a relatively modest 1480kg.
By the time the i8 arrives, supercars built of carbon fibre will be more common. Two due here soon and already on sale in Europe are the Lamborghini Aventador and McLaren MP4-12C.
The i8 isn't as quick as those cars - 4.6 seconds to 100km/h against mid-3s - but it has unrivalled fuel economy of 2.7 litres per 100km on the European test cycle. Even driven flat out it can achieve 5 to 7 litres per 100km, BMW says, and has a top speed limited to 250km/h.
The radical design is aerodynamically sophisticated, channelling air through its C-pillar, for example, and like the i3 has large diameter but relatively narrow wheels to cut drag. At 4.6m long, it's compact for a 2+2 seater with dramatic wing doors giving access to both rows.
In many ways, sports cars are the easybeats of vehicle electrification. Electric motors deliver quick and responsive power ideal for performance cars. Because supercars can command large premiums, they can afford to use exotic materials and expensive batteries are a smaller proportion of the final price. The i8 is expected to be pitched well into supercar territory at about $300,000.
The less spectacular i3, which must recoup the cost of lithium ion and carbon fibre much lower in the market, will be a better test of BMW's approach. It has yet to offer any clues on its price but aims for luxury buyers in the big cities, with some reports suggesting BMW expects to build about 30,000 a year.
The company declined to volunteer a production target at the event in Frankfurt but did claim that the i project formed part of its normal R&D expenditure and would support its target of an 8 per cent to 10 per cent return on sales. The fact it joined forces with Peugeot-Citroen to develop the electrical components will help the numbers add up.
But this is far from business as usual. It's one of the most dramatic signs so far of the tectonic shifts occuring in the car industry towards lightweight construction and alternative drivelines. These moves date back to Toyota's development of a hybrid driveline more that a decade ago and take in the more recent Renault-Nissan commitment to battery cars.
There's a lot going on and while BMW has declared its hand more openly than its luxury rivals, both Audi and Mercedes have electrification in their sights. But now there's one less letter of the alphabet for their marketing departments to commandeer.

Bmw electric.Bmw i3, bmwi8.

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