Toyota Fun Cargo 2001 Driver Seat [6770500] on 2040-parts.com

Volvo S60 L plug-in petrol hybrid heading for Beijing Motor Show

The Volvo S60L Plug-in (pictured) heading for Beijing The Volvo V60 Plug-in is already doing good business for Volvo – despite a price tag of £50k – but the V60 plug-in is a diesel hybrid which doesn’t suit all markets. So Volvo are ploughing ahead with a petrol engine based plug-in hybrid with the debut at the Beijing Motor Show next week of the Volvo S60 L Plug-in, a petrol hybrid version of the long wheelbase S60. At first glance the S60 Plug-in looks just like its regular ICE sibling, but under the skin sits a 2.0 litre Drive-E petrol engine with 238bhp and 258lb/ft of torque – which drives the front wheels – and a 68bhp electric motor with 147lb/ft of torque that can drive the rear wheels, which can be recharged in 4.5 hours.

Local Motors XC2V Competition

Local Motors, producer of the Rally Fighter, has teamed up with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to host a design contest. The partnership, which was made possible within the Adaptive Vehicle Makes initiative, aims to create an Experimental Crowd-derived Combat-support Vehicle (XC2V), exploring the potential of a crowd-sourced design for military use. The initiative to develop a crowd-derived vehicle body design for the US military was created in an effort to decrease the time and developmental costs associated with creating niche military vehicles.

Consumer Reports gets top vehicle picks mostly right

Despite the publication's uncomfortably broad definition of reliability -- it spans everything from "the engine fell out" to "the touchscreen display shows fingerprints too easily" -- automakers still clamor to get on the Consumer Reports recommended vehicle list. This year's winners cover a broad spectrum of vehicles, and for the most part, we're in agreement with the magazine's editors, with one significant exception at the top of the list. Best overall vehicle went to the Tesla Model S.