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Ram introduces CNG-powered pickup

Aside from the Honda Civic Natural Gas, compressed-natural-gas-powered vehicles have usually been converted after the fact, generally for fleet use. Chrysler is hoping to carve out a niche in the corporate-pickup segment by selling a factory-built CNG Ram 2500 that can seamlessly switch over to gasoline operation when the natural-gas tanks run dry. The twin 4.6-cubic-foot CNG tanks (which store the equivalent of 18.2 gallons of gas) take up a section of the bed, while an eight-gallon gasoline tank provides fuel during start-up and then reserve capacity when the compressed tanks are tapped out, allowing the bruiser a measure of operational flexibility.

Kia wins in Automotive Brand Contest

Kia has scooped four awards in the first-ever Automotive Brand Contest. Organized and promoted by the German Design Council, the new international brand and design competition announced the winners on 22 July. The Automotive Brand Contest honors achievements in the fields of brand management, brand communication and design in the automotive area.

News watch Feb 2010: today's auto industry news

Tuesday 2 February 2010• Spyker has outlined its plans for Saab, which include a new 'all Saab' 9-3 to be launched in 2012. Read the full story here (Saab)• EuroNCAP has named the VW Golf as 'Safest Car of 2009' after ranking all the 33 models it crashed last year (Volkswagen) • Toyota's massive recall to fix fault accelerator pedals could cost the company £1.25bn in lost output and sales (BBC)• Ford will unveil an Edge SUV at next week's Chicago auto show with a turbocharged four-cylinder Ecoboost engine, but the extensive visual mid-life facelift has been made economically possible thanks to Ford's worldwide consolidation of its model ranges (Detroit News) • Toyota has denied that it ignored warnings and acted slowly over reports of unintended acceleration in its vehicles (Detroit News) Monday 1 February 2010• Lotus's vehicle engineering director Roger Becker announced his retirement today. Becker, 64, joined Lotus in 1966, worked alongside Colin Chapman and helped develop every single model since (Group Lotus)• Tata Motors' total sales last month hit 65,478 vehicles – a rise of 77% over January 2009.