Jaguar F-PACE breaks cover at the Tour de France as official Team Sky support vehicle. The Jaguar F-Pace based on the CX-17 concept and is expected to make its public debut at the 2015 Frankfurt Motor Show. Less than a week after teasing its upcoming SUV F-Pace online, Jaguar has announced that they will run the car as the official support vehicle for Team Sky in their campaign to win the top most prize in cycling. What’s really interesting is that, for the Tour de France the SUV will shed most of its camouflage and will run in the Team Sky livery giving us a sneak peak of what it could look like. The Jaguar F-Pace based on the CX-17 concept and is expected to make its public debut at the 2015 Frankfurt Motor Show. Up front, the F-Pace has a typically Jaguar grille and teardrop headlights. The rear of the SUV looks like it draws inspiration from the F-Type. The support car will carry a crew of four including the Team Sky Sports Director, doctor, mechanic and another senior member of the team. While these four will follow Team Sky Sports ace cyclist Chris Froome, they will also be able to load the trunk with supplies, tools and equipment. Jaguar has wrapped the F-Pace in a special camouflage with carbon textures, rubber and chains which gains inspiration from Tour de France and road racing bikes. This is not the first time Jaguar has taken one of their products to the Tour de France. Last year the British car maker had taken its popular sportscar F-Type to the event. Kevin Stride, Vehicle Line Director, Jaguar F-PACE, said "The Jaguar F-PACE is a striking balance of performance, style and practicality. And what better way to showcase the vehicle''s attributes than on this crucial first leg of the Tour de France." Jaguar is expected to debut the F-Pace and mark its entry into the SUV segment at the 2015 Frankfurt Motor Show later this year. Courtesy: Zigwheels

Through the Nissan GT Academy programme, the carmaker has been looking to find racing drivers from among gamers. Anyone with a valid driver''s license was allowed to compete and the qualifiers were held in India at Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai in June. At the qualifiers, participants were given 10 minutes to set their best lap times on a virtual circuit in the PlayStation 3 game, Gran Turismo 4. From over 10,000 participants, only 20 were chosen for the finals. In the final round, the racing aspirants were tested on not just lap times at the virtual Silverstone circuit, but also on their ability to handle a real car, on a real track. In this case, a Nissan Micra on the MMRT, through a short course designed by professional racer Karun Chandok, who was the mentor for the programme this year. Apart from that, the participants were also put through gruelling physical tests and a round where they were evaluated on their ability to interact with the media. Six winners — Abhishek Dwarkhnath, Anush Chakravarti, Dhruv Dayal, Shantanu Kallianpukar, Jaideep Chahal and Akshay Gupta — are now headed to the Silverstone racing camp where they will compete with finalists from other countries. Only one will get a chance to race in the Dubai 24 Hours for Nissan. Courtesy:Autocar

The replacement for the Renault Laguna is set to be revealed and will be known as the Talisman. A teaser video for the Talisman is out and is expected to be revealed on July 6. The Talisman has been spotted testing several times in Europe and is expected to go on sale in 2016. Design cues at the front end are similar to that of the next-generation Renault Megane, which is also due 2016. Overall, the Talisman’s shape is similar to that of traditional saloons like the Mazda 6 and Volkswagen Passat. The teaser video released indicates an interior wood trim, a head-up display, an aggressive front-end with a chrome bar on the grille, along with two-tone alloys, sleek taillights and a sculpted hood. Renault explains the saloon’s nameplate saying it “conjures up notions of both protection and power. At the same time, Talisman is an easy word to pronounce and understand the world over”. The powertrain details of the car are under wraps. On the inside, the Talisman is expected to be equipped with technology suited for an executive saloon such as a digital instrument cluster, leather trim and a large multimedia screen. The Talisman may be offered with optional full-LED headlights, four-wheel steering, adaptive cruise control, traffic sign recognition system, semi-auto self-parking tech and Best Replica Watches Brands UK Sale,Swiss Rolex Breitling ... a list safety and assistance systems. The Talisman is expected to share the CMF architecture, which is co-developed with Nissan and is expected to be bigger than the outgoing Laguna. Renault had plans to replace the Laguna with a premium executive saloon from 2012. In a conversation with our sister publication, Autocar UK, Renault bosses had mentioned that the next Laguna would need to be a more adventurous model, and would need to incorporate the fluid styling seen on Renault’s smaller models. Courtesy: Autocar

For a very long time, terms like clean energy, battery-powered vehicles and zero exhaust emissions seemed as alien to India as pothole-free roads, speedy court trials and low inflation levels. Now it seems like things could change. The Toyota Camry Hybrid, which was first launched in 2013 and re-launched with a facelift in the first week of May 2015, has so far accounted for 80 percent of Camry sales since its launch. According to the carmaker, the Camry hybrid has sold more than 280 units in 50 days, as against 720 units sold in the whole of last year. However, this sales volume is still insignificant compared to other ‘conventional’ competitors and highlights an important question: Is India ready for hybrid cars? Honda and Toyota have had a tough time selling their hybrid offerings in the past. The Honda Civic Hybrid was launched in 2008 at Rs 21.5 lakh. By the end of March 2009, only 297 hybrids were sold against the 5,656 conventionally-powered Civics. The Civic Hybrid was discontinued after that. The Prius, launched in 2010 at Rs 27-29 lakh, didn’t do well either. Only 167 were ever sold. There are a number of reasons why hybrid cars did not sell well in India. The biggest problem was that they were all CBUs and hence high import duties made them expensive to buy. Incidentally, the running costs are also typically higher than an equivalent diesel-powered car. For instance, the running cost of the Camry Hybrid which does 19.16kpl (as per ARAI), comes to Rs 3.9 per kilometre (see box). On the other hand, the diesel Skoda Superb that returns 17.2kpl (again, ARAI), costs Rs 3.4 per kilometre. The Superb turns out to be a cheaper car to run as it has lower diesel prices working in its favour. As always, ARAI figures are merely indicative, and both cars will return much lower figures in the real world. Carmakers are doing all they can to make hybrid cars seem like an attractive investment. Toyota has, for example, decided to assemble the Camry Hybrid locally, making it the first carmaker to assemble a hybrid in India. This has helped in pricing it closer to its conventional sibling, with a difference of under Rs 6 lakh between the two. The positive response is evident in the sales ratio, proving that Indians have shown a changed perspective towards hybrid cars. That said, a top-spec Superb diesel costs Rs 27.06 lakh, while a Camry Hybrid has a higher sticker price of Rs 33.68 lakh (both prices are ex-showroom, Mumbai). For perspective, Skoda sold over 1,200 Superbs (petrol and diesel) in the last financial year alone. Hybrids do have benefits over diesel cars such as a smoother drive, much better refinement and good acceleration in stop-start conditions, making them perfect for city driving. Additionally, the government rolled out FAME India – Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric vehicles – in April, to provide impetus to the nascent hybrid and electric vehicle industry here, and also boost the government’s ‘Make in India’ programme. Under the scheme, incentives have been introduced for all categories of hybrid and electric vehicles of upto Rs 29,000 for two-wheelers and Rs 1.38 lakh for four-wheelers. Increasingly, automakers have realised that acceptability among Indians for hybrid cars is rising and despite the sales numbers being insignificant, the potential is much higher now than ever before. In February, BMW launched its Rs 2.29 crore i8, a petrol-electric plug-in hybrid with an all-wheel drive system; the first plug-in hybrid vehicle from the automaker. Although sales of the i8 won’t be anything to write home about, it is still an important addition to the slowly evolving hybrid car space in India. Maruti seems to have caught on and is rumoured to be launching a hybrid version of its best-selling Swift hatchback called the Range Extender that was earlier under development for a pilot project for the Government of India. Let’s see if it does well in the hybrid space. So with the increasing interest of car buyers coupled with incentives by government, the time does seem right for car makers to enter the largely-ignored electric and hybrid car market in India. Courtesy: Autocar

samsung has designed a new webcam-LCD screen system that will help drivers overtake in the safest manner possible. This system, called the safety Truck, will be particularly effective while driving behind a large vehicle. As part of the technology, a webcam will be mounted on the vehicle in front. An LCD display unit will be installed on the rear of the same vehicle. A set of four screens will provide a see-through view of the traffic in front, helping other drivers behind massive vehicles. The view is transmitted wirelessly and will not be affected by weather or poor lighting conditions. A truck with the webcam system from Samsung is undergoing testing in Argentina. A similar video system was tested by the University of Porto in Portugal in 2013. The system was implemented in a driving simulator, and then on an actual car. The biggest issue with the 2013 version of the system was a 200-millisecond delay in the video relay. The issue was solved by fixing both the camera and display on the same car. This ''safety Truck''system also has a separate Night mode which will display an infrared image of the road on the rear-mounted LCD screens. See-through systems have been designed by other carmakers too. Toyota, for example, used retro-reflective materials and video cameras to make the rear seat and boot of the Toyota Prius “invisible”, helping improve parking and reversing. Jaguar has also built a smart Windscreen that employs a 360-degree camera arrangement to eliminate blind spots, and allowing for an X-ray-like vision from the driver’s seat. The Samsung Electronics ''safety Truck is still being worked on and the company has not revealed any information on when this technology will be commercialised. Courtesy: Autocar