Tesla can now be bought for bitcoin, Elon Musk says

Tesla Inc customers can now buy its electric vehicles with bitcoin, its boss, Elon Musk, said on Wednesday, marking a significant step forward for the cryptocurrency's use in commerce.

"You can now buy a Tesla with bitcoin," Musk said on Twitter, adding that the option would be available outside the United States later this year.

The electric-car maker said last month it bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and would soon accept it as a form of payment for cars, in a large stride toward mainstream acceptance that sent bitcoin soaring to a record high of nearly $62,000.

Bitcoin, the world's biggest digital currency, rose more than 4% after Musk's tweet and was last trading at $56,429.

Musk said bitcoin paid to Tesla would not be converted into traditional currency, but he gave few other details on how the bitcoin payments would be processed. The company was using "internal & open source software", he said.

Most mainstream companies such as AT&T Inc and Microsoft Corp that allow customers to pay with bitcoin typically use specialist payment processors that convert the cryptocurrency into, say, dollars and send the sum to the company.

Like other cryptocurrencies, bitcoin is still little used for commerce in major economies, hampered by its volatility and relatively costly and slow processing times.

Musk, who regularly posts comments on Twitter about cryptocurrencies, last month criticized conventional cash, saying when it "has negative real interest, only a fool wouldn't look elsewhere".

He had said that the difference with cash made it "adventurous enough" for the S&P 500 company to hold the cryptocurrency.

Following Tesla's investment in bitcoin, companies including Mastercard Inc and Bank of New York Mellon Corp have embraced the emerging asset, sparking predictions that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will become a regular part of investment portfolios.

Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said the ride-hailing company discussed and "quickly dismissed" the idea of investing in bitcoin. However, he said Uber could potentially accept the cryptocurrency as payment.

General Motors Co said it would evaluate whether bitcoin could be accepted as payment for its vehicles.

Tesla recently added "Technoking of Tesla" to Musk's list of official titles. 

(Reporting by Tom Wilson in London and Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur, Robert Birsel)

-reuters-

Peugeot Citroen reveals ‘real-world’ fuel consumption

GENEVA, Switzerland — Leading French automobile manufacturer PSA Peugeot Citroen published Tuesday “real-world” fuel consumption figures for three of its diesel cars, seeking to win over wary customers after the Volkswagen pollution cheating scandal.

Peugeot Citroen said the initiative was a world first, launched in the aftermath of German rival Volkswagen’s admission last year that it had fitted 11 million diesel engines worldwide with devices that fool official pollution tests.

“We were obviously shocked by what happened with Volkswagen-gate and in some way, like the profession, the whole automobile industry, we were affected by the situation and deeply upset,” Carlos Tavares, chairman of the group’s managing board, said on the sidelines of the Geneva International Motor Show.

“It was important to safeguard our customers’ trust in relation to knowing their automobiles’ consumption,” he told a conference.

The French car maker said the results were based on tests designed by two environmental groups, Transport & Environment and France Nature Environment.

The cars were driven on public roads in town, outside town and on motorways near Paris in “real-life” driving conditions with passengers, luggage, roads with hills and the air conditioning switched on, Peugeot Citroen said in a statement.

“Peugeot Citroen is the first car maker to adopt such an approach,” the company said.

Peugeot Citroen promised to reveal the real-world fuel consumption results for 30 models “before summer 2016″.

Learn from past mistakes
As expected, all the “real-world” fuel consumption figures exceeded the results of the existing official laboratory-style New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) tests, which were thrown into question by the Volkswagen scandal.

The “real world” tests showed:

- A medium-sized sedan Peugeot 308 consumed 5.0 litres for 100 kilometres, compared to just 3.2 litres in the NEDC tests;

- A Citroen C4 Picasso people carrier drank 5.6 litres for 100 km, compared to 4.0 litres in the NEDC tests;

- And the premium subcompact DS 3 used 4.9 litres over 100 km, compared to 3.6 litres in the NEDC tests.

All three cars were equipped with 1.6-litre, 120-horsepower engines with manual gearboxes.

New official tests called the Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Procedures, aimed at better measuring real-world fuel or energy consumption and pollution emissions are being defined for introduction in 2017.

For now, the official NEDC tests are the only recognised thermometer for car performance in Europe, said Gilles Le Borgne, head of research and development at Peugeot Citroen.

“If others want to join our initiative we would be delighted,” he said, adding however that no other manufacturer had shown interest in doing so.

Peugeot Citroen first announced the real-world testing initiative in November last year, two months after the Volkswagen cheating scandal broke.

Volkswagen admitted the existence of the illegal cheat software on diesel engines which limits the output of toxic nitrogen oxides during emissions tests by regulators.

But when the vehicles are in actual use, the software allows them to spew poisonous gases far above permitted levels.

Volkswagen chief Matthias Mueller called in Geneva on Monday for his company to “learn from past mistakes”.

In 2015, VW’s own-brand sales fell five percent to 5.82 million vehicles worldwide, the first decline in 11 years, the company has revealed. On top of lost earnings, VW is facing a barrage of legal complaints related to the scandal.

source: interaksyon.com

Renault opens first China factory

Wuhan, China - French car giant Renault opened its first car factory in China on Monday, the last major manufacturer to set up a plant in the country as it looks to tap into the world's biggest auto market.

The $1.2-billion facility in Wuhan, a car making hub in the central province of Hubei, is a joint venture with Chinese manufacturer Dongfeng and will have an initial production capacity of 150,000 vehicles a year.

China's total auto sales grew at their weakest pace in three years in 2015, as a slowing economy and a stock market rout slammed into demand.

But the country remains "a growth driver for the global auto industry", Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn said at the inauguration.

The factory was a "first big step" for the development of the Dongfeng-Renault joint venture and for the growth of Renault, he added.

China is crucial to foreign auto makers, both as the world's largest market and a key source of revenue outside Europe and the United States, but until now, the French firm has largely allowed its Japanese alliance partner Nissan to take the lead.

Renault sold a mere 15,850 vehicles in China last year, down 50 percent on 2014, mostly SUVs built in South Korea. That gave it a market share of less than 0.1 percent.

But Ghosn said the country was a "core part of Renault’s strategic plan", and that its long-term goal was a market share of an ambitious 3.5 percent.

'Right product'
Renault and Dongfeng have invested 7.6 billion yuan (now $1.2 billion) in the plant, which is spread over a 95-hectare (235-acre) site and currently employs 2,000 people.

At first the Wuhan factory will build Kadjars, Renault's latest crossover model, a key sector for Chinese consumers.

"We see this niche exploding in China, and it's not going to stop," said Jacques Daniel, CEO of the joint venture. "We're arriving late, but with the right product."

But he acknowledged that the current situation in China was challenging.

A total of 24.60 million cars were sold in 2015, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) up 4.7 percent on the previous year, but only about a third of the near-14-percent growth seen in 2013.

Also, the economy, the world's second largest, grew 6.9 percent in 2015, its slowest pace in 25 years.

Car makers responded by slashing prices while some even cut production.

Austerity campaign
The market for high-priced luxury cars has been hit by a government crackdown on corruption and an austerity campaign, launched after President Xi Jinping took office three years ago.

The Chinese industry group forecasts sales will still gain around six percent to top 26 million units this year.

US auto giant General Motors was the top foreign brand in China last year, delivering a record 3.61 million vehicles, to beat German rival Volkswagen, which is struggling with a global scandal over emissions cheating.

Renault's French rival PSA Peugeot Citroen, which is long established in China and also has a joint venture with Dongfeng, with three factories in Wuhan, sells 700,000 units a year in the country.

Renault will start producing electric vehicles in Wuhan next year, and Ghosn said the firm was considering developing an "affordable" electric car aimed at Chinese and developing world markets.

source: interaksyon.com

BMW, Apple in courtship with an eye on car collaboration

FRANKFURT/SAN FRANCISCO — BMW and Apple may rekindle a courtship put on hold after an exploratory visit by executives of the world’s top maker of electronic gadgets to the headquarters of the word’s biggest seller of premium cars.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook went to BMW’s headquarters last year and senior Apple executives toured the carmaker’s Leipzig factory to learn how it manufactures the i3 electric car, two sources familiar with the talks told Reuters.

The dialogue ended without conclusion because Apple appears to want to explore developing a passenger car on its own, one of the sources said.

Also, BMW is being cautious about sharing its manufacturing know-how because it wants to avoid becoming a mere supplier to a software or internet giant.

During the visit, Apple executives asked BMW board members detailed questions about tooling and production and BMW executives signaled readiness to license parts, one of the sources said. News of the Leipzig visit first emerged in Germany’s Manager-Magazin last week.

“Apple executives were impressed with the fact that we abandoned traditional approaches to car making and started afresh. It chimed with the way they do things too,” a senior BMW source said.

The carmaker says there are currently no talks with Apple about jointly developing a passenger car and Apple declined to comment. However, one of the sources said exploratory talks between senior managers may be revived at a later stage.

It is too early to say whether this will be a replay of Silicon Valley’s Prometheus moment: The day in 1979 when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs visited Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center where the first mouse-driven graphical user interface and bit-mapped graphics were created, and walked out with crucial ideas to launch the Macintosh computer five years later.

BMW has realized next-generation vehicles cannot be built without more input from telecoms and software experts, and Apple has been studying how to make a self-driving electric car as it seeks new market opportunities beyond phones.

Staff changes

Since the visit, there has been a reshuffle at the top of BMW, with Harald Krueger, appointed BMW Chief Executive in May, in favor of establishing his own team and his plans for BMW by year end, before engaging in new projects, a person familiar with his thinking told Reuters.

A further complication was the departure of BMW’s board member for development Herbert Diess, who played a leading role in initial discussions with Apple. He defected to Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) in December.

Diess, who declined to comment for this piece, oversaw the development of BMW’s “i” vehicles which are built using light weight carbon fiber, using a radical approach to design and manufacturing.

Car technology has become a prime area of interest for Silicon Valley companies ranging from Google Inc (GOOGL.O), which has built a prototype self-driving car, to electric car-maker Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA.O).

Diess has said the German auto industry needs to undergo radical change because consumers are demanding more intelligent cars and anti-pollution rules mean the next generation vehicles will increasingly be low emission electric and hybrid variants.

In 2030, only two generations of new cars away in auto manufacturing time scales, only a third of vehicles will be powered by a conventional combustion engine alone, experts predict.

“It means that in two cycles we will shut down two thirds of our engine manufacturing,” Diess told a panel discussion in July last year, adding that the value chain for new electric cars is already shifting, with vehicle batteries made mainly in Asia.

“The second part is that the car will become intelligent, part of the Internet,” Diess continued. “And the strong players in this area are in the United States, in the software development area. We will surely need to find alliances in this field.”

Germany has two years to prove that it can hold its own against new entrants when it comes to shaping the future of luxury vehicles, Diess said.

Them and us

Carmakers including BMW have already developed next generation self-driving cars, vehicles which need permanent software updates in the form of high-definition maps allowing a car to recalculate a route if it learns about an accident ahead. The technology is moving ahead faster than the legal and regulatory rules which would allow large-scale commercial availability.

Earlier this year, BMW’s new R&D chief Klaus Froehlich said his company and Apple had much in common, including a focus on premium branding, an emphasis on evolving products and a sense of aesthetically pleasing design.

Asked, in general terms, whether a deeper collaboration beyond integration of products like the iPhone would make sense, Froehlich initially said BMW would not consider any deal that forces it to open up its core know-how to outsiders.

“We do not collaborate to open our eco systems but we find ways, because we respect each other,” Froehlich told Reuters.

BMW will keep in mind the needs of the customer, and what the company’s core strengths are, when it considers the merits of entering any strategic collaboration, Froehlich added.

Peter Schwarzenbauer, BMW’s management board member in charge of the Mini brand as well as digital services declined to comment on possible talks with Apple in an interview earlier this year.

But he said: “Two worlds are colliding here. Our world, focused on hardware and our experience in making complex products, and the world of information technology which is intruding more and more into our life.”

The winners will be those companies that understand how to build intelligent hardware, he said, adding it made sense for carmakers and tech firms to cooperate more closely.

“We need to get away from the idea that it will be either us or them … We cannot offer clients the perfect experience without help from one of these technology companies,” Schwarzenbauer said. That dialogue is well underway, he stressed.

With $202.8 billion in cash, Apple has the resources to enter the automotive market on its own, said Eric Noble, president of the Car Lab, a consulting firm in Orange, Calif.

The tech giant would have an edge on the dashboard, its CarPlay infotainment system connecting iPhones to cars, but would be at square one with the rest of the car, Noble said.

If Apple decided to sell a car it could make sense to find a partner to help with industrial scale production, retail and repair, since demand for such a vehicle could be high.

There are no estimates for potential Apple car sales but the brand and its products command a loyal following. So if only 1 percent of Apple’s annual iPhone customers decided to order a car, it would need to make 1.69 million vehicles.

That’s more than the 434,311 vehicles Jaguar and Land Rover produced last year. Even BMW Group, which made just over 2 million cars last year, would struggle to free up capacity.

source: interaksyon.com

The Honda CR-Z: A sports car made for our times

Hybrid cars are not only fuel-efficient; some of them look a little strange.  So at first glance, the Honda CR-Z might not look like your typical hybrid car. Honda seemed to have something else in mind when it designed the CR-Z, which is dubbed as a “hybrid sports coupe.”  It is a fuel-efficient sports car that is fun to drive and really cool to look at.

When I took the CR-Z for a test drive a few weeks ago, it was really so much fun. But, because we were having a few really wet days, I had to make sure that I was well aware of the flooded areas to avoid because this baby is built so close to the ground that rainy days can really mean stay-at-home days for the CR-Z.


What did I like?

Well, for starters, the Honda CR-Z is dressed up with 16-inch alloy wheels. It is also equipped with a new Plus Sport system that gives the driver what’s essentially a push-to-pass button. Pressing the S+ button will give the car an acceleration boost for five seconds, provided the car is going 40 kph or more.

The CR-Z is known as a mild hybrid because it comes with Honda’s 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine and a 15-kilowatt electric motor.  The electric motor is used to make the car go faster, but the CR-Z will not operate on purely electric power at low speeds like full-hybrid vehicles should.  On the CR-Z, the electrification serves to boost acceleration like a turbocharger. This allows the use of a smaller, more efficient engine.

The CR-Z can be set in Sport, Normal or Econ modes, which adjust throttle sensitivity, steering assist, air-conditioning usage and transmission programming on cars, or additional electric motor assist on cars with the manual transmission.  In other words, the car makes all the adjustments while you’re driving so that fuel efficiency is achieved. When you switch modes, driving along at a steady 80 kph, the engine either slumps or surges. It’s strong and responsive at 90 kph, in Sport. It makes you want to stay in Sport all the time.




The dashboard looks futuristic to my eyes.  I also like the good support that the cloth mesh seats offer. But, most of all, I like the headlamps on the CR-Z, which give the car extra pogi points.

If you look at the car from the front it almost seems as if the car is smiling, with its big-mouthed mesh black grille, which swoops low and round along the bottom and a straight horizontal edge along the top. The headlamp sweeps back like the wings of an eagle.

The instrument cluster is dominated by the tachometer with digital speed readout in the center that sort of floats in 3D.  There’s a gauge that shows battery charge, and another showing the electric motor power flow: It shows power flowing in from regenerative braking or out to help the engine. Manual transmission models have arrows that suggest shift points for higher-mileage driving; we’ve never been fans of shift lights. There’s a multi-information display, including ECO guide and ECO scoring, with leaves.

The CR-Z has dual-stage, multiple-threshold front airbags, front and side airbags with Honda’s Occupant Position Detection System (OPDS) on the passenger’s side and side curtain airbags. Active head restraints and ABS complete the safety package.

“Zippy” is my best word to describe the CR-Z’s performance. It’s stable in the wind, even with its lightweight body — a benefit of its aerodynamic build.

Honda has touted the CR-Z as a sport hybrid — and because of these sport-inspired features it is quite agile. While driving on open roads I noticed that the CR-Z grips the corners confidently, and the engine sounds really sporty at a higher rpm.  This made driving out on open roads so much fun for the racecar driver in me.

The CR-Z provides a completely different motoring experience from any other car that I have driven in the past.  I guess it is safe to say that drivers like me will enjoy the CR-Z because it is easy to drive. Just like a go-cart, it can go fast when you put your pedal to the metal and it is a hybrid, so it runs with fuel efficiency built in.

And, with the price of gas these days, it really seems like a sports car made for our times.

source: philstar.com

Toyota launches new Auris compact hatchback in Japan

TOKYO — Toyota Motor Corp on Monday announced the Japan launch of the completely redesigned Auris compact hatchback, a strategic compact model for both Japan and Europe.

The completely redesigned Auris integrates the underlying appeal of automobiles - styling and performance - and takes them to a new dimension, based on the vehicle’s aim of establishing a new standard for sports hatchbacks. Specific improvements include a 55-mm height reduction for a lower center of gravity, improved driving performance tempered through extensive drive tests in Europe, and the addition of an enhanced “RS” sport grade. These changes advance the unique image established for the first-generation Auris under the “performance you can feel” concept.

source: japantoday.com