Body Control Module 04 05 Titian on 2040-parts.com

Top Global Car Brands 2012: Toyota, Mercedes, BMW, VW, Honda, Ford & Hyundai

Interbrand has released its 2012 Top Global Brands rankings for 2012 with Toyota, Mercedes, BMW, VW and Honda the top four car brands. Last year, when we had the 2011 Top Global Brands revealed, Toyota managed to come at the top despite a year beset with the woes of the Tsunami. And for 2012, Toyota has hung on to its top automotive brand gong with a brand value of $30.28 billion.

2014 Ford Mondeo testing autonomous driving technologies (video)

The Ford Fusion with its LIDAR ears allowing autonomous driving Car makers are starting to take self-driving, autonomous cars very seriously, and we’ve recently seen Mercedes testing their autonomous driving S-Class in Berlin, Volvo planning a big trial of 100 self-driving cars in Gothenberg and Tesla planning systems that will do 90 per cent of your driving within 3 years. Now it’s Ford’s turn. Ford has equipped a Fusion Hybrid (that’s the North American version of the new Ford Mondeo we still haven’t got in the UK) with its autonomous vehicle technology to conduct research in partnership with the University of Michigan and State Farm (a big group of insurance companies in the US). The test Fusion gets a system called LIDAR (light detection and range – the funny looking ears on the top of the Fusion in the picture above) which can scan the road ahead up to 2.5 million times a second and create a 3D map of the surroundings.

Audi Q3: Production starts in Spain

Audi Q3 - production has started in Spain The Audi Q3 is the latest niche-filler from Audi, another soft-roader to mop up the seemingly endless queue of buyers wanting something high-riding and rufty-tufty. And if that high-riding something that’s a little rufty-tufty just happens to have a decent badge attached and comes complete with plenty of grown-up toys, so much the better. Which is why Audi has high expectations of its new Q3, with the SEAT plant in Martorell, Spain gearing up to churn out as many as 100,000 Q3s a year.