Juke or Joke?
Is this a Joke?
Nissan has a new model called the Juke, a
mini-SUV they claim is a “funky alternative to the
conventional urban hatchback.”
The Juke has emerged in production trim
from Nissan’s European design centre in London (after some
refinement at head office in Japan) ahead of its world
premiere at the Geneva motor show on March 2 and its
European release in the final quarter of 2010.
Just as the Nissan Murano was built as a
city slicker, and the Nissan Dualis followed as a crossover
competing with traditional small cars, the even smaller Juke
has the same high-riding sports flavor but with exaggerated,
blokey body styling which is in stark contrast to other
models in the “sober, safe” (Nissan’s words) B-segment. I am
glad they have been happy to call the styling “blokey”, for
me it is just “jokey”.
But to ram home the point, Nissan’s press
material is peppered with references to the Juke’s “tough
solid body”, “maverick design” and “masculinity and
dynamism”, while the designers admit to drawing inspiration
from rally cars and motorcycles - and the cabin’s high-gloss
centre dash stack is meant to look like a motorcycle fuel
tank.
Nissan says two thirds of its sales in
Europe are expected to come from “urbanite male customers”
who are “disillusioned at the lack of excitement in the
small-car sector in Europe.”
Juke will be built in England and Japan,
off the same Renault Nissan Alliance B-Platform as the Micra
and other models such as the Renault Clio - an architecture
that enters a new stage, beginning with the new Micra, known
as the V-Platform - but the crossover’s underpinnings have
been lengthened, widened and strengthened.
The suspension is a conventional
MacPherson strut front and torsion beam rear design, with a
new cradle-type front subframe introduced to enhance the
lateral stiffness of the assembly.
Four-wheel drive versions benefit further
from a new multi-link rear suspension, which Nissan claims
will place the Juke’s handling “at the top of the class” in
spite of its higher ground clearance.
The luggage compartment has a maximum
volume of 251 liters and, on two-wheel drive versions,
includes an underfloor storage area. The rear seats are
split 60/40 and are said to fold in one simple movement for
a “totally flat” loading floor. Where have you read those
outrageous claims before?
Old
drivers versus bold drivers
The world’s population is aging rapidly,
with implications in numerous areas, not the least of which
is that the number of male drivers over the age of 70 will
double in the next 20 years, and the number of female
drivers over 70 will treble. Does this pose a greater risk
on the roads?
A new in-depth report released by the
UK’s IAM (Institute of Advanced Motorists) contradicts the
common assumption that older drivers are a danger on the
roads, comprehensively proving that drivers over 70 are no
more likely to cause crashes than any other driver, and are
indeed, considerably safer than younger drivers.
The report shows that older drivers are
safer than young drivers. Just eight percent of drivers are
currently over 70 years of age, and they are involved in
around four percent of injury crashes; fifteen percent of
drivers are in their teens and twenties but are involved in
34 percent of injury crashes.
Age-related decline in mental and
physical abilities can make older drivers more prone to
certain types of crash though, and this is exacerbated by
age-related frailty which makes older drivers more
vulnerable to serious injuries. An elderly person’s risk of
being killed or suffering a serious injury as a result of a
road crash is between two and five times greater than that
of a younger person because of their increased physical
frailty. However, the IAM analysis pinpoints no particular
age at which an older driver’s functioning and skills
suddenly deteriorate to the point where driving becomes too
difficult or unsafe.
Older people rely heavily on their cars,
and the ability to drive gives many older people better
mobility and access to more activities. Men in their
seventies make more trips as car drivers than men in their
late teens and 20s.
“The IAM recommends that, rather than
seeking to prevent older people from driving, we need to
make them aware of the risks they face, and offer them
driving assessments to help them cope with these risks,”
said Neil Greig, IAM’s director of Policy and Research.
“The IAM strongly believes that there is
no case for compulsory retesting of older drivers at an
arbitrary age. More research is needed on the best age to
renew driving licenses and there needs to be a wider debate
on the introduction of restricted licensing,” said Mr Greig.
Other key findings of the report include:
Drivers over 70 are safer on bends and
overtaking than 50 year olds, but are more at risk at
roundabouts, junctions and slip roads on high speed roads.
In some traffic situations, older drivers are less likely to
be in a crash because they tend to adopt a more careful and
restrained driving style. No particular age was identified
where there is sudden increase in crash involvement. Older
drivers self regulate and take fewer trips on motorways, in
poor light or wet weather, or at peak times. Drivers over 85
are four times more likely to have caused a crash than to
have been an innocent victim of one. Crashes in which older
women are to blame peak about five years earlier than those
for older men.
Autotrivia Quiz
Last week I mentioned that Pope Pius XI’s
Nurburg Popemobile was a present from Daimler-Benz AG. I
asked what was interesting about the wheels? The correct
answer was that they were wooden, and in fact Daimler-Benz
was the last auto manufacturer to provide wooden spokes all
the way till 1939!
So to this week. Between 1920 and 1928,
A.B.C. light cars had a peculiar fuel filler cap. What was
it?
For the Automania FREE beer this week, be
the first correct answer to email
[email protected]
Good luck!
Bring your
coloring-in books
Ever bought some fuel and a few
kilometers later the car begins running like the proverbial
hairy goat? You have just been scammed with dodgy fuel.
Not only is 91 octane sold as 95 and
Diesel B5 is sold as diesel B2 but also alcohol mix
cocktails are produced and sold to increase profits.
The Thai government thinks it has found
the way to fix the scammers by legislating colored fuels and
from February 1, 91 octane petrol will be yellow, 95 octane
will be blue, and diesel B5 will be red.
Of course, this presupposes that the
garages don’t know where to go to buy the colored dyes that
are used. Motorists who are colorblind will also continue to
have a problem…
Proton
hints at a hybrid
Proton and Giugiaro have jointly revealed
the concept version of a striking new city car that will
become the Malaysian national car-maker’s first hybrid
model.
Expected to go on sale around the world
next year, the as-yet-unnamed vehicle will be previewed by a
show car to debut at the Geneva motor show on March 2.
Hybrid Proton
The smartly-styled five-door hatchback,
which is just 3550mm long (160mm shorter than Proton’s tiny
Savvy - available in Thailand) and features four identical
and independently sliding seats, was designed by the
Italdesign Giugiaro design studio.
Expected to closely resemble the
forthcoming production version, it is built on a new
Giugiaro-designed platform featuring a higher than usual
roofline and floorpan to accommodate the hybrid system’s
rear-mounted lithium-ion battery pack while offering cabin
space that’s claimed to match many mid-size vehicles.
The hybrid system incorporates a
front-mounted internal combustion engine to charge the
batteries which, in a similar arrangement to GM’s Volt
plug-in hybrid, drive the front wheels exclusively at all
times.
Pikes Peak
and no driver
The team at the Center for Automotive
Research at Stanford (CARS) are aiming to send a
specially-equipped robotic Audi up Pikes Peak without a
driver - something that hasn’t been done before.
Pikes Peak, Colorado Springs, has 156
turns and a climb of 4,720 ft. An official contest for human
drivers will take place in June, but the Audi will attempt a
timed run in September, alone on the track.
Hope they tied all the equipment down.
“Our first goal is to go up Pikes Peak at
speeds resembling race speeds, keep the car stable around
the corners and have everything work the way we want it to,”
said Chris Gerdes, program director of CARS and leader of
the graduate research team.
Following on from past impressive results
- winning its first autonomous race in 2005 with a car
developed for the Grand Challenge held in the Mojave Desert
by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA);
and a second car runner-up in DARPA’S 2007 Urban Challenge -
the team is hoping to be the fastest up the mountain with
this remote controlled Audi. Other autonomous vehicles have
reached the summit but only at speeds of around 25 mph, say
the team.
This new car will follow a GPS trail from
start to finish. It has reached speeds of over 200 km/h
without a driver on testing grounds at the Bonneville Salt
Flats in Utah.
Its GPS system corrects for interference
in the atmosphere, showing the car’s position on the Earth
with an accuracy of less than 2 cm. The remote control Audi
measures speed and acceleration with wheel-speed sensors and
an accelerometer, and gets her bearings from gyroscopes,
which control equilibrium and direction.
“The computer puts all this information
together and then compares it to a digital map to figure out
how close the car is to the path that we want it to take up
Pikes Peak,” said Gerdes.
The team says that the computers in the
boot space will plug into the car’s existing electric
steering system and the car will move into action with stock
automatic gear shifting and brakes with an active vacuum
booster, a feature that normal cars use for emergency
braking.
Using complex algorithms, the researchers
have programmed the car to handle like a racecar. For
example, as the car approaches a turn, it calculates a ‘best
guess’ on steering and acceleration. Audi’s steering system
normally responds to the steering wheel, but since there is
no driver, it responds to algorithms that combine
information such as the GPS path and inertial movement
picked up from its sensors.
In addition to high-tech racing, the team
is hopeful that its research may lead to safer cars that
respond to human error. “We hope this project demonstrates
that the technologies of stabilizing the car and helping the
car stay in its lane will work with each other all the way
up to the very limits of the vehicle.”
The end of driving as we know it is
almost finished. Formula 1 cars will not only be in contact
with the pits, they will be driven from the pits!
