Hydrogen powered Black Cab hits London streets

The first LTI TX4 hydrogen-powered London Taxi A hybrid fuel cell electric London cab has been revealed, but unlike recent developments with the traditional Black cab – where Mercedes are busy taking over - this experimental hydrogen-powered Cab is based on the familiar LTI TX4. The joy of using a hydrogen tank to run the batteries is that unlike a plug-in hybrid a refuel will take all of five minutes – no more than filling up with petrol or diesel would, A full tank will give a range of around 250 miles and – just like a plug-in BEV – the hydrogen powered cab is emission free at the point of use. The plan is to raise funding to produce a fleet of hydrogen powered Black Cabs in time for the London Olympics in 212.

Lexus LF-NX Concept Compact SUV with 2.0 litre turbo petrol at Tokyo

Lexus LF-NX Concept Compact SUV (pictured) with 2.0 litre turbo petrol at Tokyo The Lexus LF-NX Concept debuted at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September, and certainly made a statement. Lexus’ efforts to create an SUV/Crossover to sit below the RX and mop up some of the ever-growing demand for more compact SUVs tried hard to do the whole ‘Ugly but appealing’ school of design the Nissan Juke pulled off, but pretty much failed. There were some good ideas running around, but there were just too many jarring angles on the bodywork and not enough cuteness to love and the interior was very ‘concepty’ with a sea of blue and yellow everything and touchscreen surfaces abounding.

Qoros 3 first Chinese five-star safety car

Qoros has become the first Chinese car brand to receive a five-star crash safety rating from Euro NCAP. The Qoros 3 small family saloon scored highly across all categories, and even performed well in the tricky side pole impact test. In fact, according to Qoros, the Qoros 3 has the “best overall performance” of any car tested by Euro NCAP so far in 2013.