automotive

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What do you think of a Foursquare-like service for spotting cars around the world? CarZar, the world’s first location-based social automotive app, was unveiled at the 2010 Paris Motor Show. The CarZar’s purpose is to make it possible for consumers to share their passion for cars through a location-based car-spotting app that is social, useful and global.

“CarZar is another in a long line of location-based services, like Foursquare and Gowalla, that enables millions of users to spot and share millions of vehicle images, and their locations. You can download the CarZar app onto your iPhone, snap a vehicle image, and CarZar tags the location, enabling users to share the image and their status, as well as vehicle information and comments, with friends across the social community, while earning points to become the CarZar of their favorite brand or type of vehicle.”

You can also receive badges too for different car makes and models. The CarZar is a free app for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

origin: http://blog.laptopmag.com/

The world automotive markets are developing in different directions. On one side the Chinese car sales have slowed down a little since July after the government announced to reduce their incentives. In addition commodities around the globe are getting more expensive, which lowers the profits of the companies that need to look exactly on the development of the prices for metals like aluminum or copper.

On the other side countries like Brazil have brought companies like Ford a bigger profit due to a growing market where investments are made by several big international automotive brands.

Ford’s generated income of $765 million in the South American country might push Brazil to the second most important market, leaving the United Kingdom behind.

sources: autonews, just-auto, manager magazin

According to the German Automotive Association (VDA) the growth of the Asian, U.S. and Brazilian market has slowed down a little but, speaking especially for the Chinese sector is still at a positive rate of 17 percent in July.

In Europe things don’t look that good: du to expiry of state supported programs that made car buying in countries like Germany more affordable, sales go down.

However in India and Japan the market is happy about growing numbers. 1.3 million cars were sold in the second most populated country in the world and the Japanese could record a plus of over 13 percent last month.

The situation looks similar in Brazil, Russia and the United States where markets pick up pace and like in Russia rose by almost 50 percent.

source: automobilproduktion.de

Nissan has revealed plans for their new car „Leaf“ to contain a battery that can last up to eight years or over 100 000 miles. This is part of their attempt to release an affordable all-electric car on the market.

Consumer concerns about durability of the “rechargeable engine” are the reason for the company to announce that the car can keep the pace with normal gas automobiles and will have a similar lifetime. The “Leaf”, which will be on sale in the United States from December, will cost around $ 25, 000 (after tax credit) and can be charged in one of 15,000 charging stations that (will) spread all over the country.

source: autonews.com