Audi Aluminum Hybrid Body

The European TV commercial spot below, title "Manipulation" is for the Audi Aluminum Hybrid Body, first seen in the new Audi A6.


Lightweight aluminum construction, along with quattro four-wheel-drive are the two key technologies that forms Audi's core technical competencies, as well as the brand's unique selling points.

Audi is currently the largest manufacturer of aluminum bodied vehicles, and also the first to manufacture volume-built aluminum bodied car (Audi A2). Audi's Neckarsulm plant is the most sophisticated and largest aluminum vehicle manufacturing plant in the world. Aluminum material offers the obvious advantage of reduced weight without compromising rigidity and safety. These benefits can later be translated into lower fuel consumption, lower exhaust emission, better handling. The downside to it is cost, because conventional spot welding cannot be used to join aluminum. Instead, MIG, rivet punching and resistance spot welding methods must be employed. Which would mean additional investment in costly machines at the plant. It would also mean that only very few specialists are able to do body collision repairs involving aluminum body panels. The Audi A2 may have been a record breaker but it's hardly a commercial success. However Audi persevered to develop the technology, reserving them only for its flagship A8 limousine and R8 super car to offset the cost, believing that with increasing economies of scale, cost would eventually come down. Recent regulatory developments mandating very strict fuel consumption and exhaust emissions gave further impetus to develop the technology. This is the reason for the increased activities in research on light weight materials like thermoformed plastics and CFRPs (carbon fibre reinforced plastics), most famously used by BMW.


Audi A2 - the first volume-built aluminum bodied car in the world.


The first generation A8, first previewed as the ASF Concept at the 1994 Geneva Motor Show.

Up until recently, the trademarked Audi Space Frame name has been Audi's aluminum technology brand. Although Audi didn't officially put it this way, be we can infer that hybrid aluminum body construction is the next evolution to the famed Audi Space Frame (ASF) technology, first seen in the Audi A8 and subsequently in the Audi A2 (now discontinued), which was the first volume-built all aluminum car in the world. Oddly, aluminum hybrid construction was not given a distinct trademarked brand like ASF.

The aluminum hybrid construction in the A6 differ from the Audi Space Frame technology in terms of materials used. ASF is purely aluminum while aluminum hybrid is a mixture of aluminum and high strength steel, according to Audi's philosophy of "the right material in the right place". Presumably Audi found a cost effective solution to welding aluminum and steel, as the company mentioned little about the production process. In many ways, welding steel-aluminum is even more complicated than welding aluminum only. Audi says the new A6, depending on variant and trim, is between 30kg to 80kg lighter than the outgoing model.


Audi's Neckarslum plant is the largest aluminum car manufacturing plant in the world. I didn't take extra time to verify this but I believe it is not only Audi's only aluminum car manufacturing plant, but also the world's only aluminum car manufacturing plant. It also serves as Audi's aluminum and lightweight materials development lead center, housing Audi's Aluminium and Lightweight Design Centre which developed bodies for the TT Roadster, TT Coupe and R8. Also within the huge sprawling facility is the Audi Forum Neckarslum. It's a showroom but not a showroom in a conventional sense, more like a showcase of the Audi brand.

American aluminum specialist Novellis supplies the aluminum sheets for Audi's flagship A8 limousine and R8 supercar. But it is unclear if Novellis also supplies the same panels for the A6 as no official announcement can be found. Audi's previous aluminum technology partners include Alcan (previously known as Alusuisse) for the A2 and first generation A8.

Prior to the Audi A2's entry into aluminum bodied vehicle construction, other famous aluminum bodied cars include the 1980s Honda NSX and the very early and very rare Gmünd built 1949 Porsche 356 (later models were steel bodied), only 50 of them were built with only about 30 thought to exist today.

Gmünd Porsche 356s are the rarest of all the 356 series. Later Porsche had to shift production of the 356 from its Gmünd facility to Reutter, Stuttgart. But Reutter did not the facilities to shape aluminum panels and thus all later 356 were steel bodied.


The Honda NSX, probably one of the most important modern super car. We have written about it in an earlier entry here.

Toyota Hybrid Ad : Better Together

This TV commercial was first aired in November 2009 for the Australian market, but I just came across it and thought it was very brilliant!


There was no CGI involved in this ad. It was a very difficult finely choreographed act. The entire ad was taken in one shot and two dancers were trained over 10 days to perfect the act. The message of the ad is simple - two person sharing out a task is better. Likewise, a hybrid petrol-electric engine works in harmony to share out the world load.

Credits :
Client: Toyota Australia
Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi Australia
Production Company: Stink London
Director: Ne-o
Executive Creative Director: Steve Back
Creative Director: David Bowman
Art Director: Peter Galmes
Copywriter: John McKelvey
Agency Producer: Barbara Devlin
Country: Australia

Why So Many Recalls?

Car industry are often targetted for a lot of bad flak, partially because car companies represent the pride of their originating nations and the media's reporting is often influenced by the reactions of diplomatic relations between different nations. For past year of so, the media have been driving a lot of fear into potential car buyers, with high profile and very frequent reporting of motor vehicle recalls. However in the grand scheme of all consumer product recalls, motor vehicles are hardly even in the top-3 most recalled product. But the average Joe-public is not going to realize that he is being manipulated by the media.

Let's look at some facts. RAPEX, the European Union's rapid alert system for notification of dangerous consumer products, including motor vehicles. It compiles statistics of product recalls on behalf of the European Commission. Reports of products deemed dangerous to consumers are then quickly disseminated to all EU countries to have these products pulled off the market.

Look at the charts below, excerpted from RAPEX 2009 report. We don't have the statistics for 2010 yet as the RAPEX 2010 Annual Report will only be released by May 2011.

Of course this data presented below is only applicable for EU market products. The reason I cite RAPEX is because of its transparency and compilation of statistics across different industries. In the US, product recalls are coordinated by CPSC (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission) but motor vehicle recalls are coordinated by NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) and there is no easy way to compare statistics across different industries.



According to the statistics, total recalls for motor vehicles actually dropped between 2009 and 2008. Toys have the highest rate of recalls. But Fisher-Price and Mattel attracted less flack from the media compared to Toyota. Does this imply that our society thinks that our cars are more important than our children? The negative reports surrounding Toyota almost predominantly originate from USA, where Toyota is seen as the beneficiarry (or cause, depending on who you ask) of GM and Chrysler's woes. As for the sudden acceleration issue surrounding Toyota and Lexus models, investigations into the case is now closed and no "smoking gun" was found, other than the earlier announced recalls for unsecured floor mats and stick pedals. Yes, Toyota was found guilty of covering up known issues and was slow to respond to safety related complaints. But nothing else other than these. The full report of the investigation can be found here. Yes there were also many other issues surrounding the design of Toyota vehicles, but I won't call it as a design flaw, it's just the mentality / culture in these companies to only give consumers what they want, not necessarily what they need. Anyway that's another topic of discussion.

Recalls have been increasing across all sector, not just cars.

Look at the chart above, product recalls have been increasing every year. But do not look at these on the surface and conclude that quality of manufactured goods are reducing every year and things are getting more dangerous to use. Even RAPEX is quick to caution against such conclusion and said in their report "The constant growth in the number of notifications over the past six years is due to an increased awareness and attention given to product safety by national authorities and the business sector, more frequent and more effective controls
of consumer products on the market and joint market surveillance actions carried out by national authorities." Yes recalls for cars got more frequent in past few years, but so are almost all other manufacured goods. So it is only natural that a proportional rate of increase of recalls is seen for the car industry, vis-a-vis other industries.

Even medical and pharmaceutical products, which due to their critical nature, are govern by a different body (FDA in the case of US), have seen an increase in recalls. So again, rise in recalls are happening across the board.

A quick check at Facebook pages of car companies reveal the PR challenge faced by car companies in issuing a recall. Honda Malaysia was the most recent car company to issue a recall, for its lost motion springs. And some Malaysian Honda City owners weren't too happy with the recall. Some even went on as far posting things like demanding Honda to provide them with lifetime warranty! I guess while everyone maybe born with a brain, but using it is optional. Some people are rather hard to please - if you are a car manufacturer, you uncovered a defect from your field technical reports, what do you do? Ignore it and hope that nobody finds out. But when the brown stuff hits the fan and the act of covering up goes public, people will throw a truck load of moral high ground accusations. If you do the right thing, make it public, absorb the replacement cost, the very same group of people who would otherwise give you that truck load of moral high ground rubbish will now say that you are selling them a lemon car and they want a replacement vehicle and threaten you with all sorts of things.

I blame it all on the policy makers of our country. Our regulations and consumer safety law enforcement, especially motor vehicle regulations, is such a joke that local consumers here are almost clueless about recalls. Consumers in developed countries would've been used to such things as it's a common announcement on newspapers and even on companies' official websites. People don't go on Internet forums and Facebook and criticize companies for issuing recalls.



Recall ads that you are not likely to see here.

Prior to Honda's announcement, only Proton has been honest enough to issue public recalls voluntarily, with large scale announcements on both print and online media.


This only means that Proton and Honda makes the worst cars in the country. All the rest of the cars, including Perodua and Toyota, are free from safety related defects throughout their entire production life. And if you believe that, come and speak to me because I have an unexplored oil field to sell you.

There may be some initial disappointment, but by and large educated consumers in a highly educated society are smart enough to know that they should be glad that they were notified of any known defects rather than being ignorant but blissful. Just because competitor model A doesn't have a recall doesn't necessary mean that model A is safer / better built than your recalled car. It just that you were not told. That's all.

To understand product defects, you need to first understand how goods are manufactured and why there can be no such thing as a perfect product. Every manufactured good is made according to a preset level of tolerance (i.e. panel gaps, temperature performance, vibration, paint thickness etc etc). Goods operating outside this present tolerance range are considered defective and will be pulled out of the line. No two single cars are exactly the same. Although mass-produced cars made by robots are of course closer to each other than hand-made cars. Which is why some people like the appeal of hand made classic cars. Of the total of 39 units of 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO (one of the most expensive Ferrari in the market) ever made, no two of them are the same. The aluminum bodies were hand formed and they are slightly different on every car. Funny how an out-of-specs design is an appeal when a Ferrari badge is on the hood but becomes a defect if a Rover badge is on the hood.

Exhaustive quality checks cannot be done on every single component, especially on a line that is churning out thousands and thousands of units each day. I am not saying that there are no quality inspection in factories, but what happens is that there will be quality gates at various points on the production line, to inspect on certain predetermined areas, sufficient torquing of critical nuts and bolts for example. Exhaustive checks, which take a lot longer can only be done randomly, where random samples are pulled out from specific production lots for inspections.

Defects can come from various sources, wear and tear of molding equipments and press dies for example, resulting in less than precise outputs. Raw materials from suppliers vary from time to time. Car assembly plants rely on suppliers to conduct their own necessary inspections although the assembly plant itself does randomly do exhaustive inspections on their own. It is not realistic to expect every single one of the tens of thousands of components that goes into every car to be inspected. There is always a statistical probability that defective goods can slip pass the net. Doesn't matter if you are making a car or a computer or whatever.

Defects can also come from design, but most of the time this is not because of an oversight by engineers, but rather due to time and cost pressure. In my opinion, the automotive industry has to deal with the most varied types of pressure but not many appreciate the complexity of it. No other industry in this world has to deal with the wide variety of regulations as the car industry. You have environmental laws covering end of lifecycle (ease of recycling / dismantling) and exhaust emission (CO2 and NOx) requiring expensive chemical type exhaust treatment (AdBlue for diesels, catalytic converters), electronic controls (combustion). You have health and safety covering volatile organic compounds for vehicle interior plastics and trims, specific labels for child seat use and airbag use, crash safety. At the same time consumers want it to look good, drive well, use minimum fuel but big and safe enough, and the biggest pressure of all - cost pressure. Consumers want it all these but they also want it CHEAP. And you need to solve all these problems within 5 years, the average lifecycle of a model. Toyota admitted that unrealistic development schedules has caused insufficient testing done on its cars and have since added an average 4 more weeks into their vehicle development lead time.

Source : PwC

To put this into perspective, Boeing or Airbus may manufacture more complex products. But don't redesign their planes every 5 years. Also, there are only 2 main competitors in commercial plane manufacturing business. And neither Boeing / Airbus engineers have to worry about designing the engines - that is taken care by Rolls-Royce, Pratt & Whitney or GE. The Boeing 757 was in the market for 23 years, before being replaced by the 747 in 2005. While designers of commercial airlines need to consider ergonomics of the flight deck, but criteria like "flying pleasure" of the pilot is not a consideration, neither does it have to look good, neither does it have to comply with minimum fuel consumption mandates and exhaust emission laws. Pilots don't demand iPod connectivity on their planes or automatic climate controls or electric powered seat adjustments.


And of course, they don't crash planes into mountains and expect its passengers to come out alive. But cars have to be crashed against a wall and its occupants have to be able to walk out safely. An airplane is meant to be operated by a highly trained pilot. But a car must accomodate that grandmother, her executive son, her racer boy teenage grandson along with his little sisters. When Jaguar developed its fancy JaguarDrive electronic control knob that rises to you, they had to make sure the thing still works after Coke / coffee is spilled on it and survive a dog chew.


Now Toyota have learnt that they are actually a lot of Americans who can mix up the brake pedal with the gas pedal. Boeing / Airbus doesn't expect its pilots to be that stupid. Of course, I totally appreciate the other far more demanding nature of the airline business and aeronautical engineering. I appreciate the depth of their challenge. But this serves the illustrate the far more dynamic / tight environment car companies have to work within.

Last year, the cheapest car in the world, the USD 2,500 Tata Nano was recalled for fire hazard. In about the same period, Ferrari issued a recall for its USD 240,000 Ferrari 458 Italia, also for fire hazard. Also at the same time, Rolls-Royce recalled the USD 250,000 Phantom for a brake fault.



The fire hazards are very extreme examples of recall issues. By and large majority of recalls are preemptive, with no reported incidences prior. Don't see any reason why your oh-so-common car should be exempted from recalls. Somewhere between the cheapest car in the world and the Rolls-Royce and Ferrari is your car. A USD 240,000 Ferrari cannot be perfect so why should your car that is not even worth as much as the Ferrari's titanium exhaust and carbon fibre bits should be expected to be perfect? And why would anyone get so worked up in finding out that their car was recalled. What's important is that a defect was found and corrected at no cost to you.

In the European Union, motor vehicle recalls are mandated under the European Commission Motor Vehicle Directive (MVD) law. While in US, it falls under NHTSA and in China, AQSIQ, while in Australia, it is under the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). None of these laws however specify when and how recalls are to be made. Unfortunately the laws don't specificy exactly how and at which point / severity of the problem that a recall can be issued. But it would be extremely complicated to define that specific of action. The law merely states that the relevenant national authorities must be notified of any potential recall issues. The onus falls on car companies themselves to identify the risk and issue a recall if necessary. Low risk defects can be corrected via Technical Service Bulletins (TSBs), where cars are rectified whenever they return for maintenance / warranty claims. In Malaysia, we have none of these laws. I would rather buy a Honda specifically because I know the company doesn't give double standards (one for developed markets with rigid laws, another for developing markets with weak laws) in its product safety policy, like some other car makers. In our market, you don't have the legal system on your side to protect your interest, your next bet is to go with a company who has proven itself to admit its mistakes, even if it is not required by law.

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2011 Nissan Tiida / Latio Replacement - TR-L2F

Below is an undisguised image of the next generation Nissan Tiida / Versa / Latio hatch, Codenamed TR (Tiida Replacement) or L2F. Image is courtesy of mainland China's motoring portal auto.sohu.com. The car's public debut is expected at the coming Shanghai Auto Show, set to take place between 20th April to 28th April 2011.



Highlights of the new Tiida / Latio / Versa is the new generation MR16DDT downsized turbo-charged direct injection petrol 1.6-liter engine (188bhp). The same engine is already carrying out its duty in the Nissan Juke. According to the Juke's chief vehicle engineer Hiromichi Matsui, the MR16DDT is benchmarked against VW's TSI engine. Nissan likens the 1.6-liter turbo to provide a similar output to a normally aspirated 2.5-liter petrol engine.


The present generation Tiida / Latio / Versa comes in both hatchback and sedan bodystyle, but we have no information if this will continue to be the case. But if a sedan variant exist, it should have been spotted in China by now. Like Malaysia, Chinese consumers prefer sedans over hatchbacks. The Peugeot 207 sedan, 308 sedan (marketed as the Peugeot 408), Ford Fiesta sedan and Mazda2 sedan were all created with the Chinese market in mind.

The current C11 generation Tiida / Latio / Versa wasn't quite the commercial success that Nissan hoped for it to be. It did however garner quite a bit of success in the USA, where the Versa is one of the cheapest cars in the American market. Elsewhere in most markets, the Latio / Tiida were sold as a C-segment car at B-segment prices. Consumers didn't respond well to such dual-segment stradling. For some reason, best left to be explained by academicians, the Latio does not rank very highly in consumer's consideration sets. Maybe consumers just don't know what to make of it. It's either a Vios / City or a Civic / Corolla Altis. It's a similar story in Australia and Europe.

So with the new TR, Nissan has hinted that it will be a proper C-segment car, with the VW Golf as its benchmark. The current B-C segment stradling strategy will be abandoned as the B-segment will now be covered by the March hatch and the upcoming March sedan, allowing Nissan a proper product to effectively challenge the incumbent leaders of Toyota Vios / Honda City. The TR Tiida / Latio will be longer (+90mm) and wider (+65mm) but lower (-12mm) to give a more sporty stance. Wheelbase will also be stretched by another 100mm. The Golf, with its premium positioning is not a contender in the local C-segment market. But the Corolla Altis and Honda Civic will see some challenge. Then again, haven't we see the same story repeated so many times before? Local Nissan distributor have a practise of launching their new models with big fanfare, and then flogging the same old model way beyond its shelf life, sometimes up two 2-generations old. Just look at the previous generation Cefiro, the Serena, X-Trail, even the Sentra. ETCM did not even bother to introduce the facelifted Latio locally, although they did the same for the Singaporean market.

Images above feature projector headlamps on the cars. The halogen headlamp below is probably for the lower range variant.




Right hand drive variants and CKD productions is expected to commence between 12 to 18 months after its China debut. So expect the new Latio to arrive at your local dealer no earlier than 2012. There is also another concern - it's direct injection petrol engine may not be compatible with our local fuel quality, at least in engine's current state of tune. This was the reason why Mercedes took so long to introduce it's CGI engines locally. Additional engineering manhours will have to be allocated to adapt the engine to our local fuel quality. The E300 continues to soldier with a non-CGI engine because its low sales volume potential does not justify the additional investment required to retune the engine. So there is a minor possibility that we may miss the MR16DDT altogether.

Update :
We can't confirm but apparently this is claimed by a Chinese web portal to be an interior shot of the Tiida / Latio replacement.


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Spyshots - 2011 Myvi Replacement Undisguised Pictures

The series of images below are supposedly for the 2011 Perodua Myvi Replacement, expected to be launched sometime in July 2011. Image credits goes to the boys at Funtasticko Design and Arena Kereta, via Prodas Auto Blog.





The yellow car above is supposedly the top of the line SE trim model, while the standard model is the white car shown below.




While the shot below is supposedly (but unverified) the interior of the 2011 Myvi. It features a bespoke interior different from its Japanese cousin donor car; the Daihatsu Boon / Toyota Passo. Features shown in the image below are supposedly for the top of the line SE trim.


The slow selling 1.0-liter variant will be dropped while a 1.5-liter variant will be added, powered by the Daihatsu developed 3SZ-VE engine that currently powers the Toyota Avanza / Daihatsu Xenia, Toyota Rush / Daihatsu Terios, Daihatsu Materia and Toyota bB. Note that the 1.5-liter 3SZ-VE is an iron block unit and has no relation to the Toyota developed aluminum block 1NZ-FE that currently powers the Toyota Vios and Yaris. The existing 1.3-liter K3-VE engine will continue to be carried over for the 2011 model.

As for the price, we have a slight hunch that the new model will see a rather significant bump in its price. The appreciating Yen is a major concern for Perodua. Key powertrain and electronic components are still imported from Japan. While steel and tire prices both saw significant increase since last year. Ignoring the 1.0-liter variant, a current model standard specs 1.3-liter Myvi SX manual starts at RM 43,400, stretching all the way to RM 52,900 for the Myvi SE automatic.

Below are images of the Myvi's original donor car; the Daihatsu Boon.






And below is the Daihatsu Boon's Toyota badged cousin - the Toyota Passo. The Passo is supplied to Toyota by Daihatsu's Ikeda plant under a joint development agreement between the Japanese minicar specialist and its parent company Toyota.


These are accessories package for the new Passo. Probably give some ideas to the fanboys who like to modify their Myvis to look like their Japanese cousins.

Styling package from Toyota Original Accesories



Exterior Dress-up package

I kinda like the Shinju x Orange design. Has a hint of the Fiat 500 Abarth to it.

Modellista Accessories package




And lastly the one that every Myvi racer boy wants - the TRD Sportivo version.








In Japan, both the Boon and Passo are available in 1.0-liter and 1.3-liter engine options, in 2WD and 4WD, all mated to a CVT transmission. Given the low preference to CVTs here and price premium of CVT, we doubt this transmission will be adopted locally. Other features available in Japanese market cars include electronic stability control (ESC) or as the folks in Osaka / Nagoya prefers to call it, VSC in Daihatsu-Toyota lingo, as well as anti-whiplash protection front seats, side airbags are also available.

We have always try to inform consumers that independent studies confirm that ESC / ESP / VSC (or call it whatever you want) is the single most important safety feature after seat belts. What you want is not more airbags, but something that prevents you from crashing in the first place. But as how things always goes on this side of the world, we are quite sure the next Myvi will not feature VSC.



Daihatsu has only two main export markets - Indonesia (via P.T. Astra Daihatsu Motor) and Malaysia (via Perodua Manufacturing Sdn. Bhd.). In January 2011, Daihatsu announced that it is pulling out of the European market by 2013, while the company pulled out of Australia in 2006, China in 2009, Vietnam in 2007 and from from USA in 1992. In its recent pullout from Europe, Daihatsu cited rising Yen as the reason, but truth is that Daihatsu's products have lost the interest of its overseas consumers long ago, except for Indonesia, where the cheap Xenia / Avanza struck the right cord amongst Indonesian consumers, and in Malaysia, where the company took advantage of a so-called National Car policy that started in the 1990s, allowing the company to rebadge its models as Perodua and selling them at substantially lower prices (or increasing price of other non-national brands, depending on how you see the argument). Perodua in Malaysia is represented by two separate entities, Perodua Sales Sdn. Bhd which headed by a local MD while Perodua Manufacturing Sdn. Bhd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Daihatsu Motor Co., and is controlled by Daihatsu's own management.

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