Honda, Nissan and Toyota Donate $3.75 Million Each for Japan

The massive earthquake followed by the even more devastating tsunami that struck the north-east coasts of Japan last week has brought together the country’s biggest automakers including Honda, Nissan and Toyota, which announced today that they will donate $3.75 million each for relief and recovery efforts in communities affected by the disaster.
In addition to the contribution in money, Nissan said it is also studying further relief efforts including complimentary provision of vehicles, such as trucks and forklifts, donation of medical supplies and daily commodities including blankets, antiseptics and masks, gift matching donation from Nissan employees, promotion, and support of blood donation activities.
Honda announced that it will donate a total of 1,000 power generators along with 5,000 gas canisters to the people left without electricity, while Toyota is considering the provision of goods and services as needed.
The three automakers have also announced the closure of some of their factories in Japan. From March 14 through March 20, Honda will suspend all production activities at its plants in Sayama, Saitama, Ogawa, Tochigi, Hamamatsu and Suzuka, plus all facilities in the Tochigi area, where damage was more serious. From March 15 through 20, Honda will also suspend production at the Kumamoto factory.
Nissan announced that operations at the Tochigi and Iwaki plants are suspended until March 18, while the Oppama, Kyushu, Shatai and Yokohama plants will be closed until March 16. As for Toyota, officials announced that the Hokkaido, Tohoku, Miyagi and Iwate plants are closed, with all employees having been evacuated to safe areas. The factories will remain closed at least until March 16.
Other automakers affected by the earthquake include Mazda, Mitsubishi, Subaru and Suzuki, which have either suspended or slowed down production because of supply shortages.

Video

1970 Nissan Skyline GT-R Microcar Replica

We know what you’re thinking but stop right there. What you are looking at here isn’t the result of some crafty photoshop business - it’s the real deal; an actual factual microcar replica of a 1970 Nissan Skyline GT-R coupe that was created by Japanese tuning firm Liberty Walk Performance. The scaled down, single-seater clone of Nissan’s first-generation Skyline GT-R is based on a quad-bike and it’s perfectly drivable.
This is not the first time we’ve shown you a microcar replica from Liberty Walk Performance as some of you may remember the…Lambormini Murcielago snapped by our own Phil Alex at last year’s Tokyo Auto Salon.
The Japanese company has not yet added pricing info on the Skyline GT-R buggy on its website, but just to get an idea, the Lambormini starts from 1.88 million Yen, which comes to about US$23,250 or €16,750 at today’s exchange rates. Feast your eyes on the photo gallery and a couple of videos after the jump. 

Gallery

Umbrella Auto Design gives the Nissan GTR an interior you’ll have to take to the cleaners

How is it that some people can turn something that already looks sickeningly awesome into something even better? It takes some talent, I’ll tell you that. And on top of talent, it also takes some brilliant piece of innovation.

Umbrella Auto Design seems to have both of those things – talent and innovation – in abundance considering they managed to turn the Tokyo Drift interior of an already stunning Nissan GT-R into a dressed up piece of black suede awesomeness.

These guys went to completely all-out on the project, overhauling the whole interior using Black Ultrasuede with silver stitching. They replaced the dashboard, the console, the side panels, the seats, the subwoofer cover, the tray, and the steering wheel. The only things they left out are the floor mats, although we won’t be surprised if they actually used some suede on them.

The result is something undeniably sick you’d probably wonder why Nissannever considered doing something like this with the GT-R. Then again, that’s what aftermarket shops are for, right?

One thing we do know is that nobody’s eating French fries or drinking Mountain Dew while inside this car. You can take that to the bank.

Electric car

An electric car is a plug-in battery powered automobile propelled by electric motor(s).

Although the electric motor often give the acceleration speed is good and acceptable in general higher, and low energy specific batteries available for production in 2010 compared with carbon-based fuels means that electric vehicles require batteries that are part of a relatively large mass of vehicle, but still often What gives relatively low, ranging from the charges against him. Recharge can also take significant lengths of time. For shorter trips within some passengers, rather than long-haul flights, electric cars are practical forms of transport and can be recharged expensive overnight. Currently the longest flight range of options followed by the installation of battery swap infrastructure in all cities throughout the pilot plant several, such as Tokyo.

Electric cars have the ability to reduce pollution significantly by the presence of zero-emissions city tube tail. Savings vehicles greenhouse gas emissions depends on how to generate electricity. With the energy mix in the present United States, using an electric car that would lead to a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Given the current energy mix in other countries, has predicted that the emissions would reduce by 40% in the UK, 19% in China, and less than 1% in Germany.

It is expected that electric cars have a significant impact in the automotive industry because the benefits of pollution in the city, and reduce dependence on oil, and the expected increase in gasoline prices. And world governments pledged billions of dollars to fund the development of electric vehicles and their components. The United States pledged $ 2.4 billion in federal grants for electric cars and batteries. China announced it would provide U.S. $ 15 billion to start in the manufacture of electric vehicles. And the chief executive of Nissan's Carlos Ghosn, one of the 10 cars in the world will run on battery power alone by 2020. In addition, a recent report claimed that by the year 2020, electric cars, "green" cars will take the other one third of total global car sales.