マイブログ リスト

2010年12月15日

New Toyota Vitz's front-door glass cuts UV by approximately 99%

Toyota announced today that it will begin using - as a world's first - car front-door glass that reduces ultraviolet (UV) penetration by approximately 99%. The new glass will be used in the new "Vitz" scheduled for launch at the end of this year.

Windshields, which use laminated glass, can be given approximately 99% UV-reduction performance by inserting a UV-blocking film between two sheets of glass in the laminating process. Car-door windows, on the other hand, generally use single-piece tempered glass that is often imbued with a UV-absorbing material to achieve approximately 89% UV protection. Getting the UV-reduction performance of door-window glass closer to 100% requires the use of UV absorption technologies. Thus, the interior side of the door-window glass to be used in the new Vitz has been surfaced with a high-performance UV-absorbing film to achieve approximately 99% UV-reduction performance.

2010年12月14日

Rendering of next-gen USDM Honda Civic Coupe

Honda has already released an official teaser sketch of the concept (earlier post) to be displayed at Detroit in January, and now, TOV (Temple of VTEC) member blackstripe77 has come up with this great rendering. Well, not far off from the teaser actually, but as I have stated in the past, I am not very optimistic about the styling of the production version. I wish I am wrong...

Brazil may get upcoming Honda Brio

According to a report by SankeiBiz, Honda's president, Takanobu Ito, has stated that Honda is studying the introduction of the upcoming Brio (earlier post) in Brazil.

The new small car is going to be launched in India and Thailand next year, but since the market in Brazil is rapidly expanding and Honda's share has remained to around 4%, Honda wants to penetrate better to the market. New vehicle sales in 2009 increased by 11.9% reaching 3.2 million cars.