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Toyota's incoming chairman wants new Supra

Toyota Motor Corp.'s incoming chairman said he wants the sports car the company is developing with BMW to be a midsized vehicle comparable to the discontinued Supra. Toyota's next sports car should be like the Supra so that it doesn't overlap with the 86 coupe, Takeshi Uchiyamada said in an interview today in Osaka at a gathering of members of the Keidanren, Japan's biggest business lobbying group. Still, such decisions are up to engineers, Uchiyamada said.

Seat Mii

The Seat Mii is still another variation of Volkswagen Up city car. Following on from Skoda's unveiling of the Citigo last week, the Mii follows the same basic principles: Take one Up and add appropriate corporate face. As a result, the Mii retains the same diminutive overall length of just 3550mm, as well as a range of economically mindful drivetrains and power units. To differentiate itself from its siblings, the Mii adopts a ‘characteristic and unmistakable' Seat DRG, with ‘arrow' graphics in the lamps and trapezoidal grille.

Battery breakthrough set to accelerate electric-car development

A team of scientists working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are claiming a significant breakthrough in recharging times for lithium-ion batteries. According to findings published in the scientific journal Nature, MIT researchers Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder have unlocked the potential of lithium-ion batteries by patenting a unique process which is claimed to allow a typical laptop power pack to be fully recharged in less than a minute--an improvement in recharging performance of roughly 90 percent over existing lithium-ion batteries. Lithium-ion batteries generate electric current via the flow of lithium ions across an electrolyte, from an electrode to a cathode.