2000 Honda Insight Ima Electric Motor on 2040-parts.com

Kia Forte

Kia has released renderings of its 2014 Forte model, known as the K3 in Korea and the Cerato in the European market, ahead of its debut at this year's Los Angeles auto show in November. The renderings show the Kia family tiger nose grille, while a rising line sweeps from the front to the rear, giving the car a much more aggressive stance than its predecessor. A steeply-raked windscreen and blacked-out side window frames, emphasized by a chrome strip around the side graphics, creating a more dynamic profile.

VW BlueSport Concept moves nearer to reality

We reported last week on the VW BlueSport Concept, a relatively economical 2 seat roadster, which VW unveiled at the Detroit Motor Show. We said then that if we were VW we’d be pressing the start button as soon as possible, and reports seem to indicate that that is exactly what VW are hoping to do. The secret to the success of the BlueSport will be the ability of the VW Group as a whole to find three platforms within its setup that can produce viable models based on the BlueSport Concept.

Fitness-focused autonomous vehicle pedals to victory in Interior Motives Design Awards

Earlier tonight, on the eve of the first Paris Motor Show press day, the world's top designers and automotive journalists assembled at L'Espace Clacquesin in Paris to witness sponsors Ford and Volkswagen announce the 2014 Interior Motives Student Design of the Year: ‘Life Cycle' by Jason Chen and Dirk Wan of the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, USA. Launched in January of this year and themed ‘Beyond Styling: a Design for Life', the competition asked students to create projects around three diverse but specific briefs: ‘Beyond Autonomous', which posed the question of what would happen if we were to combine the latest developments in computing and robotics with automobile design; ‘An Interior for Life', in which students were asked to focus on one feature or element of a car's interior and adapt it for dual use in a user's ordinary life; and ‘Pickup Truck of 2030', which challenged the young designers to extrapolate what the future might hold for this popular and versatile mode of transport. This year's contest attracted more than 200 entries from students based at 57 schools in 24 different countries.