Windsor Conventional Auto Party!

This was happened in the summer 2014 in Windsor. A Conventional cars party on Ojib Parkway.

Photos were taken by Yuchen.

Even though I do not know all the cars' names since some of them are more than 100 years old, most of then are running well.

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Nissan expands recalls over possibly deadly Airbag failures

WASHINGTON (Bloomberg) -- Nissan Motor Corp. is expanding a recall in high-humidity regions of cars and SUVs suspected of having defective airbag inflators that can shoot metal shrapnel at passengers.

The recall now affects almost 53,000 models in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, as well as Puerto Rico, Hawaii, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Saipan and American Samoa, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Saturday on its website.

About 30,000 of those vehicles were covered by previous actions.

The latest recall follows NHTSA's call last month for motorists to quickly fix Honda Motor Co. cars in high-humidity states because of a similar issue. Airbags made by Takata Corp. have been linked to four deaths involving defective inflators.

The Nissan recall affects 2003-04 Pathfinder, 2004-06 Sentra, 2003-05 Infiniti FX35 and FX45, 2003-04 Infiniti I35, and 2006 Infiniti M35 and M45 vehicles, according to the statement.

Nissan will notify owners, and dealers will replace the passenger air-bag inflator without charge.

NHTSA also disclosed Saturday that it's begun a preliminary evaluation of Nissan's 2008 Infiniti EX35 SUVs because of two complaints that the steering shaft may separate while operating the vehicle, resulting in a loss of steering control.

About 17,000 SUVs potentially could be affected, the agency reported on its website.

(From:http://www.autonews.com/article/20141108/RETAIL05/311089994/nissan-expands-recalls-over-possibly-deadly-airbag-failures)

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M-B bolsters service with concierge program

Mercedes-Benz has launched a product specialist program for dealerships and aims to train 1,600 employees through the program by the end of next year.

Mercedes calls the specialists product concierges. They help customers, lead product clinics, walk the service drive to answer owner questions and train other dealership personnel.

Steve Cannon, CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA, said the program aims "to take better care of our customers" because of the "increasing complexity of our product line and the increasing level of our technology."

The concierge program was introduced to dealers in May at the brand's annual dealer meeting at the Mercedes-Benz factory in Vance, Ala., near Tuscaloosa.

The program is optional and includes three days of "intensive training," Cannon said. Dealers pay for the training, but Mercedes declined to give a cost. Mercedes wants dealers to hire concierges based on stores' annual new-vehicle sales -- one concierge for every 500 sales -- and have as many as four, Cannon said.

But opting out of the program comes at a price: Dealers who don't participate must have half of their sales staffs complete the training. Mercedes has 373 U.S. dealerships.

Cannon said 368 product concierges have been trained and it will take another 14 months to put the rest through the classroom and online courses. The concierges will be recertified periodically to keep them abreast of new technologies and products but Mercedes-Benz hasn't yet worked out that detail.

The concierges handle product deliveries and will travel to a customer's business to make a redelivery "if a customer calls back and says, 'I did not really understand it during my first delivery. Can I come back in or better yet, can you come to me?'" Cannon said.

They walk the service drive in the morning and approach customers to ask if they need clarification about a technology or a feature and provide instruction on new features. Much of the delivery and product information is conveyed via iPad apps.

Some stores are holding Concierge Nights, evening product clinics for customers. "We have quickly seen there is a lot for these people to do," Cannon said.

Many dealers are hiring college students or former product specialists from retailers such as Best Buy, Cannon said.

"I am impressed how some of our dealers have gone out of traditional car business hiring," he said. "They are not going down the street to the next dealership to hire these people but going outside of our industry."

Most dealers pay the concierge a fixed salary, which means the specialist can spend adequate time with a customer, unlike the commissioned salesperson who wants to move on to the next buyer to boost commission, Cannon said.

The concierge system "is augmenting salespeople," he said. "And what it also does is provide a great feeder system -- eventually these product concierges can evolve into salespeople or service advisers."

The product concierge is similar to the Genius Bar program in Apple retail stores -- product experts and troubleshooters who answer questions and give free technical support. BMW, Cadillac and Lexus have similar programs in their U.S. dealerships.

"Our focus has been more like a concierge vs. a Genius Bar," Cannon said. "For us in our customer car journey, a concierge is someone who is there at your service to answer your questions and to solve a problem."

(From:http://www.autonews.com/article/20141108/RETAIL05/311109977/m-b-bolsters-service-with-concierge-program)

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How to conduct a crash test

During recent years the development of new vehicles has to deal with continuously emerging requirements to ensure pedestrian protection as well as improve vehicle damageability and repairability.

In low-speed vehicle crashes, vehicles must withstand the crash with minimum damage so that the repair cost incurred remain as low as possible. Vehicle bumper need to fulfill a number of functions such as pedestrian protection and better aerodynamic design. In addition to these two major functions, another important function of vehicle bumper system is to absorb most of the impact energy and protect the remaining structure of the vehicle from undergoing plastic deformation.

The energy absorption capability of the bumper system during a crash is evaluated by the load-displacement response. The area under the corresponding load-displacement curve is a measure of the energy absorbed (Fig. 1). In order to prevent the vehicle body structure being damaged by the impact, the maximum energy transmitted to the BIW must be limited, which means the area under the force-displacement curve should be maximized. Therefore, the ideal bumper system has a force-displacement curve similar to a step function. The force jumps to the maximum allowable value and remains there throughout the crash. 

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Alex Vetter named new CEO of Cars.com

Alex Vetter has been appointed CEO and president of Cars.com by owner Gannett Co., Cars.com announced today.

He replaces longtime president Mitch Golub, who has announced his retirement but is staying on until March.

Vetter takes the CEO role from Dan Jauernig, who was CEO of Classified Ventures. That was the company that owned Cars.com until Gannett bought the third-party shopping site in October.

Vetter has been Golub’s right-hand executive since being named senior vice president in 2006. He recently was promoted to executive vice president and held that title for just a few weeks before today’s announcement.

Golub was Cars.com’s first president, serving in that position for 18 years.

Cars.com is one of the industry’s most-visited car-shopping sites. Dealers pay it to post their inventory to get in front of about 30 million visitors to the site monthly.

(From:http://www.autonews.com/article/20141107/OEM02/141109860/alex-vetter-named-new-ceo-of-cars-com)

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Emissions Control

In a real hydrogen engine intake stoke, air is used as the main oxidation rather than pure oxygen. Therefore, when the temperature in combustion chambers is over 2500°F (1371.1°C), the following reaction could take place [3].

H₂ + O₂ + N₂ = H₂O + N₂ + No_x

Figure 10 [16] illustrates the Nox emission curve related to equivalence ratio (Φ) and the amount of Nox per kilowatt-hour (g/Kwh).

It can be clearly seen that at lean mixture range (Φ<0.55), the emission of Nox is quite low. Hence, it is better to make hydrogen engines running at lean range which Φ<0.55 in order to decrease the Nox emission. Moreover, a good cooling system is vital for hydrogen engines which can keep the combustion in a relative low temperature.

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A New Method of Driving Clean---BMW Hydrogen 7

The decreasing of the fossil fuels and the deteriorating of environment has pushed forward study on the utilization of hydrogen as the alternative fuel. Although the first attempt was reported by Reverend W. Cecil as early as 1817, the development of the hydrogen engine began in the 1930s, and was built to a crescendo in 1970s. In the 1930s there were 1000 vehicles which run with the hydrogen in America and German, and the hydrogen engine was used by the former Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War. It has been proven that the regular vehicle body structure is suitable for hydrogen power system while the standard gasoline engines can be easily converted to hydrogen ICE.

It was not until the 1990s that the researches in the hydrogen engine were again rekindled. Mazda, who has made irreplaceable contributions in the hydrogen rotary engine field, introduced their first prototype, Mazda HR-X, which was using a hydrogen Wankel engine in the year 1991. The Mazda5, which is the second generation of the Mazda Premacy, was offered by Mazda in 2005. In the same year, BMW was focusing their attention on the research of the BMW Hydrogen 7 and BMW H2R, both of which were using a liquid hydrogen internal combustion engine while a Tri-Flex engine pickup, F-250 Super Chief was introduced by Ford.

The prosperity of hydrogen engine cannot go without the hydrogen production and storage. Gas, coal and biomass energy are the main source of hydrogen. Hydrogen can also be recycled during the process of chlor-alkali industry, metallurgical industry, etc. Currently, more economical methods to obtain hydrogen (e.g. Steam Reforming of Methane, exhaust-gas purification, SPEWE) have been developed and optimized the hydrogen production. However, the hydrogen storage is more urgent to be solved compared with the hydrogen production. For automotive applications, the methods will be discussed in this paper.

Advantages of H2 as a fuel

Hydrogen has superior properties which gives significant advantages compared with other types of fuel.

l  Wide range of flammability

l  High flame speed

l  Small quenching distance

l  High auto ignition temperature and low ignition energy

l  High diffusivity

Hydrogen engine has a better performance at high speed operation compared to gasoline engine. Besides, the emission of CO and HC, which is determined by the air-fuel ratio, is less than gasoline operation. Due to the combustion properties of hydrogen, shorter time for combustion produces lower end gas temperature, thus increases the operating range of the utilisation of hydrogen.

However the emission of NOx is, in some cases, even more than gasoline operation. NOx is the general term of NO, NO2, N2O3, N2O4 and N2O5. The main part of NOx, which is NO, can be oxidized to NO2, a toxic gas with an offensive smell, by the Ozone in the atmosphere.

BMW Hydrogen 7

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Hybrid Cars are Coming Closer to Our Daily life

Why hybrid?

The importance of HEV

With the development automobile industry, more and more gasoline vehicles are produced every year. Automobiles change the life of human being and make the life more convenient. However, energy deficiency and environmental contamination are two major challenges which were met in the development of automobile industry right now [2]. Traditional vehicles use internal combustion engine which is a complex, amazing machine that perfectly concert the motions of every moving parts [3]. But the structure of internal combustion engine is complicated that cause the energy waste. For the internal combustion engine, only about 30% of the energy is used to drive the vehicles [3]. This is very bad for the earth resource. On the other hand, the traditional vehicles, produce lots of greenhouse gas, cause the air pollution all over the world [1]. Generally speaking, traditional vehicles use over 25 percent of the world’s energy and cause a comparable share of global greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion [1].

In recent years, hybrid electric vehicles and electric vehicles are becoming more and more popular because they are more fuel efficiency and less greenhouse gas emissions. Nowadays, some automobile companies focus on HEVs and some types of vehicles enter the market, like Honda Civic and Toyota Camry Hybrid.

[1] R. Jong, M. Ahman, R. Jacobs, E. Dumitrescu. “Hybrid Electric Vehicles: An overview of current technology and its application in developing and transitional countries”. United Nations Environment Programme, pp.1-5, Sep. 2009.

[2] S.K. CHENG, C.P. Li, F. CHAI, H.L. GONG. “Research on Induction Motor for Mini Electric Vehicles”. International Conference on Future Electrical Power and Energy Systems, vol. 17, pp. 249-257, May. 2012.

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