Chevy S10 Truck Door on 2040-parts.com

17,000 solar panels to power Toyota’s Derbyshire plant

Toyota’s manufacturing plant at Burnaston in Derbyshire, where the Auris and Avensis are built, will install the biggest solar panel system yet seen in a UK car plant.  British Gas, which will stump up the £10 million cost of installing the solar panels, and Toyota are working together to save 2000 tonnes of CO2 emissions a year. Once the solar panels are installed, they claim it will save enough energy to build approximately 7000 cars a year.

Toyota Aygo gets new engine technology to make it more economical

The new Toyota Aygo (pictured) gets new engine tech The new Toyota Aygo has only just arrived as Toyota’s part of the city car triumvirate which includes the new Citroen C1 and new Peugeot 108, but its already set to get improvements. Toyota have been playing with the little 1.0 litre three-cylinder that lurks under the bonnet of the majority of Aygos, and have managed to do some serious tweaking. The tweaks include a higher compression ratio of 11.5:1, a cooled exhaust gas recirculation system, changes to the timing, better combustion, less friction and lower weight.

Hyundai ix35 FCEV: The go-to hydrogen fuel cell car

The Hyundai ix35 FCEV has been chosen for the second year running as the FCEV of choice for the European Commission-backed Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU). As we’ve reported previously, the Hyundai ix35 FCEV (Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle) is the first proper production FCEV in the world, although the roll-out of Hyundai’s hydrogen-powered car isn’t exactly on a huge scale, at least not for the next couple of years. But as governments (perhaps) start to wake up to the fact that the BEV car is a road to nowhere  - or nowhere far, at least, with its limited range and the current state of battery technology – they are starting to see hydrogen-powered vehicles as a realistic future for a world that doesn’t have to rely on fossil fuels for transport.