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Citroen at the Paris motor show 2008

By James Foxall Motor Shows 02 October 2008 11:59 Citroen is one of the show stealers this year with a stunning-looking concept car that you can actually drive, courtesy of a tie-up with PlayStation. But the firm’s stand had something for everyone, with 34 models including the new C3 Picasso, BMW X6-like Hypnos concept and even a hybrid World Rally Championship car.  This was the first car the firm unveiled in Paris and the one it spent most time talking about. It’s a Renault Modus-rivalling baby people carrier which goes on sale early in 2009.

Ram truck gets new V6, eight-speed transmission

The Ram pickup scheduled to be introduced in April will offer both the Pentastar 3.6-liter V6 and an eight-speed transmission, according to a Chrysler Group filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The voluntary annual filing--which appeared Tuesday on the automaker's corporate Web site, chryslergroupllc.com--laid out many new features of the upcoming version of the automaker's top-selling vehicle. The new eight-speed transmission "reduces fuel consumption by up to 12 percent over our current five-speed transmissions," such as the one now in the Ram, the filing said.

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.