Compensation for U.S. Honda, Acura dealers
Since February, North American Honda dealers have had to deal with a stop sale for certain 2007-2015 new and used vehicles affected by defective Takata airbags under recall.
In total, more than 2.2 million vehicles have been grounded at dealerships, but now American Honda Motor Co. plans to step in and financially help its dealers.
In a notice sent to dealers, compensation will be paid to American Honda and Acura dealers starting the week of March 28 until July 29 for depreciation costs to its vehicles facing the stop-sale measure. Also, the company will send financial aid for any interrupted floor-planning costs incurred during the temporary suspension of vehicles.
Canada typically follows the path of its American colleagues, but in this case, there’s no specific plan laid out as of yet.
“Honda Canada is taking steps to support its dealers in Canada, to assist them with certain implications of the most recent Takata airbag inflator recall,” a spokesperson at Honda Canada told the Toronto Star.
The Takata airbag recall affects approximately 41million vehicles worldwide, spanning 12 different automakers, making it the largest global automotive recall in history.
The issue stems from the actual inflation of the airbag, which could potentially deploy through too much force, causing it to explode and spray out metal fragments into the cockpit and could potentially harm its occupants.
Two deaths and 30 injuries have occurred in Honda vehicles leading to the stop sale. Hyundai delivers first fuel-cell vehicle to Ontario Hyundai Canada has delivered its first Tucson FCEV in Ontario. The keys to the fuel-cell crossover were handed to Joseph Cargnelli, the co-founder of Hydrogenics Corporation on March 10 by two Hyundai dealership representatives from Don Valley North Hyundai.
“I am extremely proud to be Hyundai’s first customer in Ontario to take delivery of a fuel-cell vehicle,” said Cargnelli. “I have been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to drive my new fuel-cell vehicle and showcase this technology every day.”
In 2015, Hyundai became the first automaker to mass-produce a zeroemissions fuel-cell vehicle in Canada.
However, the infrastructure has failed to catch up to the automotive technology with plenty of people wanting one, yet unable to get one based on their proximity to a hydrogen refuelling station.
Cargnelli’s purchase makes it a total of seven Tucson FCEVs on Canadian roads with the other six coming out of the Surrey, B.C., area, the only location that has a public refuelling station.
Cargnelli won’t have any problems accessing hydrogen, as he will do his five-minute fill-ups through his own company, which specializes in hydrogen.
According to Hyundai Canada, the Tuscon FCEV was purchased with the same three-year lease deal that the people of Surrey received with free-of-charge maintenance. GM acquires autonomous start-up program General Motors (GM) has taken another step toward its autonomous program by acquiring Cruise Automation, a small San Francisco-based software company.
Cruise Automation is more of a start-up, with only 40 employees. What makes them special is that they’re one of the few companies in California with permits to test autonomous vehicles on the road. Cruise Automation staff will come under the GM umbrella, but all of its members will operate independently as part of the GM’s Autonomous Vehicle Development Team.
With this purchase, GM plans to accelerate its autonomous-vehicle program ahead of its competition, which includes Google. The plan is to have those vehicles eventually debut on public roads via a rideshare program.
The acquisition will fully conclude in the second quarter of 2016, and the official cost has not been made public. Audi hosts self-driving car competition The Audi Autonomous Driving Cup will be coming back for its second year from Tuesday through Thursday.
Eight university teams from Germany, consisting of a maximum of five students, are invited to Ingolstadt, the home of Audi’s headquarters, to take part in a race between self-driving 1:8 scale Audi Q5 model cars.
According to Audi’s press release, these miniature Q5s will have to navigate a challenging circuit that includes obstacles, real-world traffic and parking simulation for the chance to win a first-place prize of ¤10,000, ¤5,000 for second and ¤1,000 for third.
Audi provided the eight teams with basic software for their models, and it’s the university students’ duty to develop special algorithms and software architecture to process sensor data and ever-changing road conditions in the fastest time possible. Points will be docked per accident or imprecise execution of a manoeuvre.
The last day of the competition shows off the creative side of each university team. Each is tasked with developing and presenting its own additional routine for their model car. All of the competitions are weighed into a final score with winners announced Thursday. Ford looks to mobility for next chapter Ford Motor Co. is betting on mobility to be a key player in the auto industry. The “Blue Oval” recently established a business subsidiary called Ford Smart Mobility LLC, which will focus on emerging mobility services.
The company will be chaired by former Steelcase CEO Jim Hackett, who has been on Ford’s board since 2013. Hackett has since resigned from his board seat on March 11, the day of the new business announcement.
According to Ford CEO Mark Fields, the mobility branch will be “separate but connected” to its parent company. That is evident by the announcement that the company will be based out of Palo Alto, Calif., but will also operate out of Ford’s headquarters in Dearborn, Mich.
The plan for Ford Smart Mobility is to become a leader in this arena with a plan to invest in services such as car sharing and ride hailing. They will be expected to collaborate with other tech companies in order to design, build, grow and invest in commercially ready mobility products and services.
In the past 14 months, Ford has been working on many projects, which include GoPark, a parking system that directs London, England, drivers to streets with open parking spaces; GoDrive, a carsharing program also based in London that not only notifies you of parking spaces in busy locations, but guarantees them; and Dynamic Shuttle, a program within Dearborn that can transport people to and from various points on-demand. Microrobots tow a Chevrolet Volt A group of scientists from Stanford University have worked to create a team of microrobots capable of towing a 1,800-kilogram Chevrolet Volt.
The inspiration of the experiment was to replicate the action of ants that work together to move objects more than 100 times their own weight by grabbing onto each other to form a small chain.
In this robotics case, the team of six microrobots, weighing a combined total of 100 grams, were even more impressive by tugging a compact plug-in hybrid Volt that weighs more than 2,000 times their own weight. To achieve this goal, the six robots work at a slow pace via sticky adhesives that group them together.
This isn’t the first time Stanford University has shown its creativity in the automotive field. On Oct. 21, 2015, the university released a selfdriving and drifting DeLorean, aptly named MARTY to commemorate the day Marty McFly and Doc Brown travelled to in the movie Back to the Future 2. Freelance writer David Miller is a regular contributor to Toronto Star Wheels. To reach him, email wheels@thestar.ca and put his name in the subject line.