Fastest Car Power-Driven by Dry-Cell Batteries

Panasonic and the Tokyo Institute of Technology produced the first manned jumbo jet to be power-driven by 160 AA “Oxyride” batteries – a fantastic achievement, but the record category itself is not one that is monitored by Guinness World Records.

Undeterred, a year shortly Panasonic set their sights on a new world record-breaking challenge – that is, to build the greatest car powered by dry-cell batteries.

To do this, they teamed positive with students from Osaka Sangyo University to form The Oxyride Speed Challenge Team, and improvement began on the Oxyride Racer.

The Racer procedures 3.3 m long, 78 cm wide and 56 cm tall. Its body is prepared of plastic that has been unbreakable by carbon fiber – a muscular and light composite material, which means the car weighs in at only 38 kg.

It’s insignificant, but high-speed. Guinness World Records' June Otsuki was on hand over at a test course in Shirosato city in Ibaraki territory on 4 August 2007, to monitor the affair.

On the day, student Takashi Sudo piloted the Racer to achieve an average speed of 105.95 km/h and a maximum speed of 122 km/h and all this on just 192 Oxyride batteries.

Car makers turn to exports to make up for low domestic sales

To tide over the sluggish demand in the domestic market, triggered by periodic petrol price hikes and higher interest rates, car makers in India have sharpened their focus on exports.

While dampened sentiment crimped car sales by 1.8% to 1,378,513 units in April-October 2011, according to industry lobby Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam), exports for the same period moved up 19% to 293,426 units.

Last year, buoyant demand from the home market made car firms in India curtail exports. For April-October 2010, domestic car sales saw a 33% increase over the same period a year ago, while car exports registered a less than 2% growth during the same period. This year, however, the trend has reversed.

The overall expansion in the exports volume was led by the local arms of global car makers such as Nissan Motor Co. Ltd and Ford Motor Co​., both of which have identified India as an export hub for small cars and have recently started shipping models from their factories in India.

Nissan, which sells the compact car Micra, the Sunny sedan and the X-Trail sports utility vehicle (SUV) in India, started exports of the Micra in October 2010. The company despatched 59,770 units of the model in the April-October 2010 period, according to Siam.

Similarly, Ford India​ Pvt. Ltd began overseas shipments of its small car Figo in June last year, and ramped up export volumes to 15,402 units during the same period from 4,882 units a year ago.

The export volumes for the last four years, too, suggest a strong correlation with domestic demand. In years, when the domestic market has been sluggish, auto makers have been aggressive on exports and vice versa.

Michael Boneham, president and managing director at Ford India, said his firm plans to ship out 20% of the total production by the end of this fiscal. Nissan India declined comment. An email sent on Friday remained unanswered.

Kumar Kandaswami, a senior director at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt. Ltd, said overall volumes will only expand as existing and new global car makers start exports. “A lot will depend on how volumes stack up at the two biggest exporters,” said.

Car makers said exports will also help them in pushing volumes of their petrol models abroad, demand for which has slumped in India owing to the wide price gap between diesel and petrol.

The current trend is a part of the long-term strategy of companies and is only partially influenced by the ongoing domestic scenario, according to Rakesh Batra, a partner and national leader, Ernst and Young. However, “the additional focus on exports will help them make up for the shortfall in domestic volumes”, he added.

Ford to idle workers in Spain

Ford has proposed temporary layoffs for 4,000 of its 6,200 workers at its Spanish assembly plant in Valencia because of sluggish European demand for new cars. Ford's Spanish division says it wants the workers to stay home for 39 days between January and October of next year.

Company spokesman Jose Perez said Wednesday that the division has started talks with unions to negotiate terms of the temporary layoffs.

The company says demand for cars in Spain and Europe is expected to remain weak in 2012 and that the Valencia plant needs the investment to produce new models. Ford in June announced an investment of 812 million euros ($1.1 billion) for the plant that it said would create dozens of jobs.

Police in Tuscaloosa, Ala., said Wednesday they dropped a charge against a German Mercedes-Benz executive who was arrested under Alabama's new crackdown on illegal immigration after a police officer caught him driving without identification required by the law.

Though Tuscaloosa police arrested the man last week for not having proper citizenship documents while driving a rental car in the city, city attorney Tim Nunnally said in an e-mail that the charge was dismissed after the man later provided the documents in municipal court.

Police identified the man as Detlev Hager, 46. The company said he was in Alabama on business at the time but declined further comment.

The arrest drew widespread attention because the German automaker is one of the state's leading employers, and its decision to build its first U.S. assembly plant in Alabama in 1993 provided the spark that helped lead to the state's large automotive industry, which includes foreign manufacturers Honda, Hyundai and Toyota.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch cited the executive's arrest in urging Mercedes to move to Missouri from Alabama.