Toyota to unlock secrets of black-box recorders

Reacting to criticism that data from black-box crash recorders in its vehicles can be accessed only by the company, Toyota Motor Corp. is moving to ship hundreds of data-decoding machines to the United States and make them commercially available to help diagnose vehicle problems. The devices, known as event data recorders, are similar to the black boxes on airliners and record information such as vehicle and engine speed in the seconds before a crash.

2015 Audi A7, S7 RS7 Sportback facelift price and specs – costs from £45,875

Audi A7 facelift arrives priced from £45,875 The facelift for the Audi A7, S7 and RS7 Sportback arrived back in May, and although the styling changes weren’t enormous there were some very decent updates all round, and now the A7 Sportback range is on sale in the UK from £45,875. The big news for the A7 range was the arrival of Audi’s frugal 3.0 litre TDI ultra, a FWD 215bhp turbo diesel offering headline economy of 60.1mpg, and the arrival of a new S Tronic auto ‘box to replace the woeful Multitronic CVT. But with the A7 range now going on sale we learn there are quite a few spec changes too to make the range simpler and more appealing.

BMW releases official X5 M video

BMW releases official X5 M video By Ben Pulman Motor Industry 23 December 2008 10:00 BMW clearly thinks the time is right to release an official video of the X5 M testing at the Nurburgring. It’s the car, along with the X6 M, that’s caused BMW to can the M3 CSL – and risk alienating a generation of M division fans. Afraid so.