In 1997, Toyota unveiled the Prius, the world’s first hybrid car and the first swallow in the automaker’s battle against pollution.

Almost 25 years later, Toyota has not a single all-electric car in its portfolio, is fixated on hydrogen powertrains and says a lot about future projects, including 15 new battery-powered models by 2025.

While some European players will switch their entire lineup to batteries by 2025, Toyota will only enter the electric car market by that point. And to buy some time, the company has hatched a cunning plan.

According to the NYT, Chris Reynolds, Toyota’s top U.S. executive, went to a private meeting with Congressional representatives in June to outline the brand’s opposition to the country’s current policy of an early transition to electric cars.

Reynolds believes that gasoline-electric hybrids like the Prius, and hydrogen-powered cars would play a more prominent role in improving the environment. Four sources who were also present at the closed-door meeting told this to the publication.

In particular, the representative of Toyota criticized the resolution of the U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration on investments of $174 billion to support the market of electric cars.

Of that amount, $100 billion would be spent on subsidies for electric car buyers, $45 million on electrifying the nation’s bus fleets, $15 billion on charging infrastructure, and $10 billion on incentives for the electric truck market.
While the whole world was poring over electric circuits, development of efficient batteries and electric motors, Toyota was betting on hydrogen technology – more expensive to develop, assemble and maintain, that is for the end consumer as well. Therefore, the rapid growth in popularity of electric cars in one of the largest markets for the brand can seriously hit the business interests of the Japanese.

The U.S. is not the first land, where Toyota is trying to conduct backroom games. Previously, brand representatives have made similar statements in the United Kingdom, Australia and the European Union, which generally seems to be trying to be the first to switch to battery-powered cars.

In India, top brand executives publicly criticized the local government’s initiative to switch completely to selling electric cars by 2030, saying it was “impractical.”

Of course, this has not gone unnoticed. Analysts at InfluenceMap responded to such behavior by giving the Japanese brand a D rating, the worst for automakers, believing that Toyota is trying to influence politicians to devalue the climate goals of modern society.

Toyota’s position is that the world should rely on hybrid and hydrogen cars in the near future. But these technologies are not becoming more affordable every year. It is much more expensive to maintain and operate a hydrogen-powered car than an electric car. In addition, there is almost no infrastructure for refueling them anywhere. And hybrids are not much use in the medium term.

Toyota has sold only 11,000 hydrogen-powered Mirai cars since 2014, when they went on sale.
Even Honda, another pioneer in the field of hydrogen cars, has already announced that it is abandoning the development of this technology and is switching to electric cars. And experts are sure that if hydrogen has a future in cars, it is only in long-haul trucks, while for the consumer market this technology will remain a dead end.

The fashionable segment of coupe crossovers is gradually full of more and more new models. We have a rich Chinese car on the test, made on the Swedish aggregate base, and known in China under the name FY11.

Dealers now have the nerve to rewrite the price tags right in front of your eyes in the showrooms, so it becomes an extremely tedious task to choose a car. It is easier to entrust this business to the professionals, who work with closed databases of automobiles.

The Geely Tugella is based on the Swedish-Chinese CMA platform, which we have already met in the Volvo XC40. It is designed for compact cars, but in the case of the Tugella we are talking about dimensions almost comparable to the Volvo XC60.

But we couldn’t jump over the top: the wheelbase is 2 mm shorter than in XC40. The trunk, of course, is also smaller – 446 liters. So it is a universal platform, which has its limits and has a big beautiful body.

A long hood gives a massive silhouette. The grille of Geely has a secret: behind it there are louvers, which open if the engine needs to cool down. And this is clearly a European technology, which we have previously seen on the BMW models. By the way, the way to open the hood is from Bavarian brand – you should pull the lever in legs twice, and then the hood just rises on gas pads.

By the way, let’s look into the engine compartment: there is a variant of the Volvo engine, but with an index peculiar to Geely – JLH-4G20TDB. It is two-liter gasoline engine with 238 horsepower and torque of 350 Nm. It is paired with an eight-speed “automatic” Aisin, which is also used by the Swedish brand on many models.
A drive of the crossover is exclusively full and, certainly, it is also “Swedish”. Fifth generation Haldex electrohydraulics is applied here – the same as at Volvo. Clearance of “Tugella” is 204 mm, which is very decent. The four-wheel drive system allows you to fool around a little on a dirt road with the lack of grip – ESC does not meet and does not interfere with your drive. But on asphalt be kind to keep your hands, electronics reluctantly releases the car.

The fuel consumption of Geely Tugella is not the smallest, but in Volvo cars with similar motors T5 it is approximately the same – 10,5 l/100 km. For a two-liter unit of such power is very decent, especially since it clearly feels the difference between the three standard driving modes: sporty, comfortable and economical.

It often happens that even in spite of the strong exterior design, Chinese cars limp in the interiors, which seem to have been designed by neural networks. It seems that Geely has certified designers of interiors, because as in case with Coolray, the interior in our Tugella is made perfectly.

Yes, it looks a little bit dull in completely black execution, but the selection of materials and their quality dilutes this feigned severity. The design successfully combines eco leather, alcantara, brushed aluminum and even glossy plastic. But let’s speak about disadvantages.

Non-fixable gearbox lever has not obvious mechanics of control, because it is necessary to press the button to change gear – everything is clear here – but this button is not intuitively located. One wants to press the park button with the thumb and, certainly, the car will not go anywhere. The necessary button is hidden in the other side of the lever.
The cup holder block has its own chip – heating and cooling. Next to them is a button that lights either blue on cooling or orange on heating. True, this only works with the “rear” cup holder, not the one with the button next to it.
Noise isolation Geely Tugella is much better than in Coolray – how else could it be, it is after all the flagship of the brand.

The digital dashboard here is large and bright, but the onboard menu is controlled with difficulties – you need to switch to a special mode from the steering wheel. There are no problems with design, if not to count two ugly blue and red modes on economy and sports modes – their design, to put it mildly, is disputable.

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Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind.

Infiniti’s flagship SUV has been called “streetcar,” “hippo,” and some other not-so-clever and graceful animals. At the end of 2020, it underwent another restyling, the main purpose of which was to update the interior.

The SUV’s exterior was redesigned back in 2018, surprisingly enough. The heavyweight SUV with bus-like dimensions has never looked so elegant and even with a certain sporty flavor.

A vehicle soaring into the azure sky, which just minutes earlier was wheeling along the roads… To some, it seems like a crazy dream of science-fiction writers and screenwriters’ daydreams. Nevertheless, flying cars are real and they exist literally for centuries. Recently, the AirCar made a half-hour flight between the Slovak cities of Nitra and Bratislava. By the end of this decade, Hyundai plans to flood the world with similar technology. Surprised? But of course not… In our article you will find a lot of revelations and wonderful discoveries!

The first attempt to cross a land vehicle with a heavenly one dates back to the mid-19th century. In the minds of British engineers William Samuel and John Stringfellow was born the image of a steam engine Ariel with a capacity of up to 12 people, strapped to a 46-meter wing. It was supposed to be able to reach up to 80 km/h in the air and have a range of 1600 km. Alas, it did not go beyond pictures – the then level of technology did not allow to realize the idea.

The next attempt – it should be noted, quite progressive and in a certain sense prophetic – was the Autoplane of the famous American aviator Glenn Hammond Curtiss. The car was a combination of an aluminum body with a 100-horsepower engine and three wings from the Curtiss Model L training plane. According to Curtiss’s idea, the aviation attributes were removed for road travel and put just before the flight. The Autoplane was introduced in 1917 at the Pan-American Air Show in New York, but it was not destined to show itself in action.

A combat-ready airplane appeared before World War II. The Waterman Arrowbile by American inventor Waldo Waterman was a tiny aluminum-steel cab with a 100-120 hp Studebaker engine and a removable 11.58-meter wing. On public roads, the Arrowbile could reach up to 113 km/h, and in the sky, up to 190 km/h (cruising speed was 164 km/h) and cover 560 km on a single tank. Finally, most importantly – it really flew! Unfortunately, the interesting car did not become a serial production.

After the war, all the same Americans corrected the concept of an aerial vehicle. This time the interpretation was very unambiguous. The Consolidated Vultee company, later renamed Convair, introduced the ConvAirCar Model 116. Attached to the body of the car with a 26-horsepower engine was a monoplane with its 90-horsepower opposition engine. The later prototype Model 118 had 190 horsepower. The machine could take off, demonstrated its capabilities, and was even planned for mass production. But on November 18, 1947, during the demonstration flight, an accident occurred. Due to a malfunction in the fuel gauge, the machine “dried up” in the sky and the pilot had to make a hard landing. Apparently, this incident frightened the developers and they closed the program.

The ConvAirCar Model 116/118 project was not the only one of its kind in the forties. Interestingly, other conquerors of the earth and air elements were markedly different from it. Consider the Fulton FA-2 Airphibian. It would seem that it does not contain the smell of a car! In fact, it masterfully disguises itself in the outline of an airplane by engineer Robert Edison Fulton, Jr. The front end with small wheels is able to drive on the road, and when necessary, it straps on the rear section with a wing and – hello, sky. With a 165 hp six-cylinder engine, the Fulton FA-2 Airphibian could reach 190 km/h, have a practical ceiling of 3,700 meters and a range of 560 meters.

The 1949 Aerocar, like the aforementioned engineering marvels, also did not progress beyond the prototype stage. Engineer Moulton Taylor’s interesting-looking machine was a two-seat car with a 143-horsepower four-engine, to which the wings and tail section were attached. The Aerocar could reach up to 188 km/h in the sky, reach an altitude of 3.7 km, and travel 480 km on one tank. It is interesting that this particular Aerocar was the prototype of the Franz Flieggangausen character from the Disney cartoon “Planes”. Taylor built six prototypes. One of them externally resembled a cartoon Jaguar E-Type.

In the early seventies, the creators of flying cars saw with their own eyes how risky it could be a creative promising venture. The reason for that was a terrible accident with the Mizar project from AVE (Advanced Vehicle Engineers) company of California. The design looked not only doubtful, but rather frightening. A banal hatchback Ford Pinto tried to get along with the 210 hp six-cylinder engine and components of the Cessna Skymaster. It didn’t work out so well.

Mistress, then I often think with longing, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite but it is too much for my strength sink under the weight of the splendour of these visions! A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet.

The Korean brand Kia along with the transformation introduced the fifth generation of the Sportage crossover. The popular car has changed the platform, received a new appearance and motors.

Kia Sportage became not just bigger, but also longer, adding 175 mm and reaching 4,660 mm. The width is 1,865 mm (+10 mm), and height is 1,660 mm (+15 mm). The car will be available in two versions: standard and extended. The length of the extended wheelbase is 2,755 mm, which is 86 mm longer than the previous generation.

The figures (including cost and discounts) are correct at the date of publication.

This is the same configuration as the Hyundai Tucson, which comes to Russia only in a longer version with exactly the same wheelbase. Thus new Kia Sportage is 30 mm longer than Hyundai crossover.

From the start of sales the new Sportage will be equipped with 1,6-liter turbocharged TGDI engine with direct injection. Its power is 180 hp and 265 Nm of torque.
Together with it will be available two-liter diesel engine R2.0 with variable geometry. It has 186 horsepower and 417 Nm of torque. Kia points out that it has improved fuel efficiency and reduced emissions.

The 1.6 TGDI gasoline engine is paired with a seven-speed robot or a traditional six-speed manual. The diesel R2.0 is paired with an eight-speed automatic with a multi-plate torque converter with damper control.

Later, the Kia Sportage will also get hybrid and supercharged versions of the powertrain. But the innovations for the model don’t end there. With the move to a flexible modular N3 platform, the new Sportage also received a completely updated Terrain Mode selection system.
This system automatically adapts work of a full drive and a suspension for different road conditions: snow, dirt and sand. If the Terrain Mode system is disabled, it activates the driving settings selection mode, which allows switching between the traditional settings Eco, Comfort, Sport or Smart.

Front suspension of the new Sportage is made on the scheme with MacPherson struts, behind the four-lever scheme is used. The electronic control system of the suspension ECS constantly controls the work of shock absorbers and provides optimal distribution of torque between the axles.

The interior of the new Kia Sportage has changed beyond recognition and has become much more spacious. The distance between backrests of front and rear seats is 1050 mm, and the distance from cushions to the ceiling is 1000 mm. The trunk volume reaches 637 liters, and the rear seats fold down at the touch of a button.

Two 12-inch displays are used as the dashboard and multimedia system. Beneath the minimalist dashboard is wireless charging for a smartphone. The glossy panel has a separate place for the heated steering wheel and seat buttons, and a washer is used instead of the gear lever.
Later, Kia will release also the version Sportage X-Line with more severe exterior design like SUV, and also GT-Line sports-version in bright colors of the body.

• Nullam tincidunt adipiscing enim. Phasellus tempus
• Vestibulum eu odio. Vivamus laoreet
• Proin viverra, ligula sit amet ultrices semper, ligula arcu tristique sapien

Mistress, then I often think with longing, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite but it is too much for my strength sink under the weight of the splendour of these visions! A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet.