New Opel Meriva opens the door to ergonomic flexibility and 5 year warranty

The second-generation Meriva choose to make a bold statement. Designed and developed in Rüsselsheim, Germany, it translates Opel’s new design language into a dynamic and elegant, yet small monocab. Moreover it takes affordable, on-board flexibility to a new level of functionality, ergonomics and appeal. On the exterior, it introduces FlexDoors, an innovative rear-hinged rear door system that highly facilitates cabin access, an especially important feature for a car such as the Meriva in which rear seats are often used.

It is also an industry first for a volume manufacturer. And, optional FlexFix integrated rear bicycle carrier is not only easy to use; it is also gentle on the back. Inside, the biggest changes are ground-breaking, with upscale styling, innovative versatility and class-leading emphasis on wellness. The cabin features an improved FlexSpace rear seating system, greater interior storage space enhanced by FlexRail, a revolutionary concept for adaptable center console storage, front seats that offer the widest range of adjustments in the segment, and optional expert-certified back-friendly ergonomic front seats.

 Taken together the ergonomically designed features have convinced an association of independent back doctors and therapists in Germany that the Meriva’s ErgoFlex System focus on long-term back health. The Aktion Gesunder Rücken (AGR, Action for Healthy Backs) have given its seal of approval to the Meriva’s standard FlexDoors and FlexSpace rear seating systems, optional fully adjustable front seats and FlexFix bicycle carrier. It is the first vehicle to have so many features recommended by health experts. Increased flexibility is extended to all areas of the new Meriva.

The innovative FlexSpace rear seating system inherited from the first Meriva generation has been further developed and refined. Fewer, more intuitive motions are now necessary to move the rear seats and change configurations. One can either glide the rear seats backwards and towards the centre of the cabin to create lounge seating that provides more width and legroom for two. Or, slide the outboard seats forward to extend the luggage compartment and still accommodate three.

 The seats from the FlexSpace system allow the rear passengers to sit higher than the occupants of the front seats in a so-called “theatre-seating” that provides greater visibility onto the road. The new Meriva’s powertrain line-up is focused on efficient performance that underscores Opel’s strategy of down-sizing and turbo-charging to deliver real world fuel economy on a car with a comfortable and balanced ride.

BMW Shows Off Its 2012 London Olympic Fleet

The 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London won't officially get underway until this July, but BMW is amped up about the 4,000 vehicles it will supply to support the show. To that end, it has unveiled the cars, SUVs, and electric vehicles that will be part of it. The first of the Olympic fleet cars have already arrived in London, but more are coming. A total of 200 electric cars will be used: 160 1-Series ActiveE coupes and 40 MINI E hatchbacks.

They'll be used primarily for support around the venue sites, though the ActiveE will also be used for some athlete transport and as support during the Olympic Torch Relay. Diesels will play a much larger role, with 2,477 cars and SUVs using the fuel. The most numerous will be the 320d, a model not sold in the U.S., which will see 1,550 cars used as the main command car for the torch relay, as well as during the cycling events and other support duties.

Seven hundred 520d sedans (also not sold in the U.S.) will be available for transfer and shuttle purposes, along with 17 X3 xDrive 20d crossovers (again, not sold in the U.S.), which will tow boats during sailing and rowing events. Finally 10 X5 xDrive 30d vehicles (not sold in the U.S., either, though we do get the xDrive 35d version), used for towing horse ambulances at equestrian events.

Finally, 20 5-Series Active Hybrid cars will be used for shuttling purposes; 25 R1200 RT motorcycles will see duty in road-based events; and 400 BMW Streetcruiser bicycles will be used for operational support for water-based sports. BMW says 80 percent of this fleet (presumably not counting the bicycles) meets the EU's EU6 emissions standards, two years before they become mandatory.

Electric cars sales slow; battle comes down to Volt or Leaf

Count the number of electric cars you see on the way to work today, and that will give you a clue as how sales are going. You're not allowed to include the ones stranded by the side of the road with dead batteries. Unless you're in central Paris or London, you are probably in shut-out territory. According to British newsletter Automotive Industry Data, sales of electric cars in Western Europe totaled only 4,856 in the first three months of 2012 for a market share of 0.15 percent.

This included the Nissan Leaf, and Peugeot and Citroen city cars based on a Mitsubishi model. There were some sales of the Opel Ampera, the European equivalent of GM's Chevrolet Volt now being launched across Europe. In France the biggest seller is the Bollore Bluecar, used in a Paris-based car sharing scheme. Renault of France is launching the Fluence electric sedan, the Kangoo electric van, a smaller battery only Zoe sedan and its Twizy commuter vehicle.

Ford has an electric Focus on the launch pad. Toyota's plug-in hybrid version of the Prius will muddy the waters of definition because it can run just on batteries, but then uses a mixture of gasoline and electricity to power the car when the battery runs dry. But these are early days for electric cars, and it doesn't mean that someday they won't be ubiquitous, and arguments are raging about what is the best way of providing transport that progressively cuts the use of dwindling fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel. Currently, the two main automotive contenders are the battery-only powered Nissan Leaf, and the Chevrolet Volt, which uses a back-up internal combustion engine to generate electricity when the battery runs out of puff.

On the face of it that seems like an unfair contest. After all, given the choice, would you use your precious dollars to buy a car that died after 100 miles and needed an eight hour recharge, or one which gave you about 200 miles of range after the battery runs out after 30 miles, and could be refueled in five minutes? Generation Y There is a fading case for fuel cells, while some experts reckon that not only will car engineering change, but the whole concept of car buying may switch away from ownership, as the so-called Generation Y brings more economical and less egotistical ways to move around the city and highway.

Some experts reckon that electrified bikes and scooters will be the transportation of choice, pointing to huge use of these cheap machines now in China. Governments have decided that some form of electric power will have to take a bigger slice of personal transport. The G8 Group of Industrial Nations has tasked the Paris-based International Energy Agency to plot a course for more use of electricity to power cars which include the target of at least 50 percent of sales by 2050 for electric only and plug-in electric vehicles. By 2020 global sales should be at least five million electric and plug-in vehicles. Another target is to cut battery costs from the current $500 to $800 per kilowatt-hour down to $300 to $400 per kWh by 2020, if not sooner.

 Key assumptions by the IEA in which it seeks to justify electric vehicles includes data on actual car use. It reckons that in the Britain, 97 percent of trips are less than 50 miles, and 50 percent less than 6.2 miles. In Europe, 50 percent of trips are less than 6.2 miles and 80 percent less than 15.5 miles. In the U.S. , about 60 percent of vehicles are driven less than 31 miles daily, and 85 percent are driven less than 62 miles. Governments want to drastically cut carbon dioxide emissions too. Added flexibility Even if these figures about car use are right, potential car buyers are still going to want the added flexibility offered by a Chevy Volt, especially in Europe where many families own only one car.

 "I'm a big fan of EREVs (extended range electric vehicles) like the Volt," said Nicolas Meilhan, analyst with consultancy Frost & Sullivan in Paris. "The Volt makes more sense because you don't need any new infrastructure, and you don't have to worry about the range as you would in a Leaf. Every time the range left in a Leaf goes below 50 kilometers (31 miles) you start to sweat. If you have to sweat 50 percent of your time, it's not nice," Meilhan said. He sees a great future for the EREV concept. "The Volt is to EREVs what the Toyota Prius was to hybrids 15 years ago.

There is still a lot of room for improvement and optimization. I imagine GM will want to expand this EREV powertrain across its range as Toyota did with various cars and Lexus (its luxury subsidiary)," Meilhan said. John Voelcker, New York City-based editor of Green Car Reports, begs to differ, saying that the Leaf has big attributes especially in the U.S. where families own more cars than Europeans. "That (the case against the Leaf) is arguably the case for predominantly single-car households in European countries that want to buy a plug-in car, but it's not the case in the States.

 Unlike Europe, the average U.S household has in excess of two cars, and affluent U.S. households, which are the bulk of early Leaf and Volt buyers, have more than three. Sure, a Volt is a much safer solution if you're limited to a single car, since the U.S. has zero or marginal transit except in a few cities. But single-car households are not the buyers of Leafs and Volts. Instead, for them, the plug-in car replaces a second or third vehicle,".

Hampton pays homage to BMW saloon racing

The third incarnation of the annual New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing at Hampton Downs this weekend is paying homage to a different sort of racing legend - a manufacturer.

BMW's rich history in saloon car racing is being acknowledged and fans will be pleased to know racing hero Chris Amon has more than just a tenuous link to one of the cars.

He and fellow tin-top legend Hans-Joachim Stuck raced the BMW 3.0CSL on display over the weekend to victory in the 1973 German Touring Car Grand Prix at the Nurburgring.

Amon had spent his racing career until then in single-seater Formula or CanAm cars, so driving a saloon car with a roof on a racetrack was a bit of an adventure for him.

"It was the only real touring car racing I ever did," Amon said. "It took me a race or two to get used to it [but] I really enjoyed it."

Although the car was built as a road-going model, the CSL Amon and Stuck won the six-hour endurance race in - affectionately known as the Batmobile - wasn't stock. "They would have had to weigh about 1000kg and looked a bit chunky but were a seriously quick piece of gear really."

Unplug electric car subsidies

For the first time in a few years, electric cars are mostly an afterthought at the auto show in Detroit.

To be sure, electric cars and hybrid electric models are on the show floor and still being promoted at various intensity levels by Detroit's automakers as well as Japanese companies and upstarts building — but not selling many — high-priced, electric sports cars. But the niche vehicles are not as prominent this year as in past years.

That's a good thing.

Electric vehicles aren't the answer to curbing America's dependence on foreign oil or putting a dent in climate change.

That is evidenced by lackluster sales of the vehicles that came propped up by generous taxpayer subsidies and corporate purchases that distort the actual demand by everyday consumers.

General Motors Co., for example, sold 7,671 Volts, far fewer than its goal of 10,000 and the company didn't break down how many of those sales were to showroom shoppers or to government or corporate fleets. Nissan Motor Co., another big promoter of electric vehicles, sold 9,674 all-electric Leafs, according to Autodata Corp.

By now, you'd think that the government would have stopped forcing American taxpayers to subsidize the electric car. It really never should have picked one automotive technology over another in the first place.

Subsidizing the electric car has been a devil's bargain, making the development of other alternative technologies such as conventional hybrids and advanced gasoline engines all the more difficult.

Though it's certainly the case that electric cars and trucks are part of our automotive future, taxpayer subsidies for EVs should be phased out as an unneeded cost at a time of enormous federal budget deficits. The national debt has surpassed $15 trillion.

There seems little doubt that the Obama administration's prime justification for subsidizing electric cars and plug-in hybrids — the fear that U.S. oil imports would keep rising — was way off base.

Oil imports were down to a 16-year low of 45.4 percent of domestic consumption in 2011, from a high of 60.3 percent in 2005.

And American refineries are so flush with gasoline, diesel oil and other petroleum products that the U.S. became a net exporter of fuel last year for the first time since 1949.

Subsidies for electric cars were also supposed to lower their operating costs so that popularity of the vehicles could reduce global warming. President Barack Obama predicted that 1 million electric cars would be on the road by 2015.

Brussels Launch for Spanish Folding Electric Car

An American-designed electric city car and made in Spain’s Basque country is to be unveiled next week. It should be on Europe’s roads in 2013.

The electric fold-up two-seater “Hiriko”, which means “urban” in Basque, is to be formally launched in Brussels on Tuesday. The first models should be on the streets of Europe’s cities next year.

The idea comes from M.I.T.’s Media Lab. But the concept has been developed by a consortium of small companies based in Spain’s Basque Country.

New car registrations up 1.6% last year to 89,900

NEW CAR registrations for last year totalled 89,900, an increase of 1.6 per cent on 2010.

With the Government due to overhaul the current emissions-based motor tax regime in the next budget, concerns over the significant drop in tax income from the motor sector are highlighted by the fact that more than 90 per cent of new cars registered last year qualified for the two lowest tax brackets.

According to figures released by the Society of the Irish Motor Industry, only 375 new cars were registered in December, down from 434 for the same month in 2010. While sales in the initial months of 2011 were quite strong, they fell off significantly in the second half of the year after the Government’s scrappage scheme ended in June.

Toyota remains the best-selling car brand, with 13 per cent market share and sales of 11,812, but Volkswagen has overtaken Ford to take second place. The German brand had a 12.5 per cent market share with sales of 11,247, compared to 11.7 per cent for the US firm on sales of 10,511.

Ford can take some solace in the fact its Focus remains the best-selling model on the Irish market with sales of 4,242, ahead of the VW Golf and Toyota Avensis.

Dublin remains the largest new car market, with 34,373 new registrations in 2011, representing 38 per cent of the new car market, well ahead of all other counties. Dublin registrations rose by 9.8 per cent compared with 2010.

Cork was second with 12.6 per cent of all registrations in 2011 and Galway third with 4.3 per cent.

In a cut-throat battle in the premium segment, Audi, with sales of 3,464, saw off stiff competition from arch-rival BMW, which was just 31 new car registrations behind it. Sales for both brands were up significantly, with BMW recording a 30.5 per cent increase on its 2010 sales, and Audi a 19 per cent rise. Both brands were also significantly ahead of Mercedes, which sold 1,951 new cars last year.

Despite the recession, both Audi and BMW also featured in the top 10 best-selling marques in Ireland last year, in ninth and 10th place respectively.

Diesel remains the favourite fuel for new car buyers, making up 71.2 per cent of sales, followed by 26.6 per cent which are petrol. Just 552 hybrid cars were registered here last year and only 46 electric cars, less than 10 per cent of what was predicted this time last year.

Nissan then had predicted it would sell 500 of its Leaf electric models in 2011. Meanwhile the ESB had set a target of 2,000 electric cars on the road by the end of 2011 and 6,000 electric cars by the end of 2012.

Hatchbacks remain the favoured format for Irish buyers, making up 45,126 of the new cars sold, followed by saloons with 26,463. However SUVs were a growth segment of the market, comprising 4.5 per cent of the market last year, compared with 2.6 per cent of sales in 2010.

This was partly due to the popularity of small crossover models such as the Nissan Qashqai, but also new premium variants such as the Range Rover Evoque, Audi Q3 and BMW X1. Silver remains the favourite colour, followed by black and grey.

While there are no official figures for the first two days of sales this year, reports from dealers and distributors suggest strong orders, ahead of last year. Part of this is due to customers pre-ordering their 2012-registered cars to avoid the January 1st VAT increases, along with a significant dip in sales in the early days of January last year due to the snowstorms.

Despite the expected strong sales in these first few weeks, many in the trade are predicting the new car market for 2012 will drop below 80,000 this year, with some suggesting it might fall to 70,000 new registrations.

Some Homeless Start 2012 With New Thermal Underwear

Austin’s House the Homeless is hoping to keep the homeless warm with its annual Thermal Underwear Drive. On Monday, the non-profit will hand out free thermal underwear to the homeless. Thermals are easier than blankets for homeless people to carry with them.

Richard Troxell, president of House the Homeless, estimates there are about 4,000 homeless people in the Austin metropolitan area.

"At the same time, we only have about 600 emergency shelter beds for every man, woman and child," he said. "Those numbers are not going to work so that means lots and lots of folks are going to get stuck out in the winter."

Last winter, Austin saw temperatures low enough for snow and ice. Schools closed, businesses didn't open and some driver found themselves sliding all over town. A few years ago, jennifer Gale, a prominent figure among Austin's homeless, died during a cold winter night while sleeping o the steps of a church. Troxell said he found there were 20 fewer people that died homeless on the streets of Austin in 201, but he's worried that number will shift with of the number of veterans that returning home this year.

At the end of January, volunteers will conduct a 24-hour survey to count how many homeless people are living in Austin.

If you're interested in donating a thermal or money to for the organization to buy thermals, click here. Troxell said House the Homeless will also be giving away raincoats.