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Fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) powered by hydrogen were taken more seriously at the LA Auto Show and Tokyo Motor Show last month than ever before, but their presence in the market is still shrouded in fog. Soichiro Okudaira, chief officer of research and development at Toyota, is confident fuel cell costs will come down enough to make FCEVs "just one alternative of the eco cars," but that probably won't happen for another 10-15 years.

Toyota thinks FCEVs will be price competitive against other zero-emission vehicles some time after 2020 and before 2030, Okudaira told Automotive News Europe. Interestingly, the Japanese automaker is confident that cost reductions will come through soon enough to help it sell between 5,000 and 10,000 units a year once the production version of the FCV Concept goes on sale in the first part of 2015.

Toyota is now saying the hydrogen powertrain for 2015 could cost about $50,000 to build.

Retail pricing on the fuel cell car has yet to be announced, but production costs have been coming down. The fuel cell powertrain that Toyota built for a demonstration vehicle in 2007 cost nearly 750,000 euros (over $1 million). A production vehicle is nothing like a concept, and Toyota is now saying a hydrogen powertrain for the 2015 vehicle could cost about 35,900 euros ($50,000) to build, about half the car's expected 72,000-euro ($100,000) price tag. Costs have been coming down in the fuel cell stack by reducing the amount of platinum in the catalyst and making the stack smaller so that it can fit under the front seats. Sharing a motor and other electronic components with the Toyota hybrid lineup is helping lower costs, too.

You can see in the FCV Concept photo gallery how much it looks like the Prius but Toyota has now clarified that the new Prius platform will not be used for the fuel cell car, in part because the FCEV is heavier and has a different underbody structure and layout. What's not yet clear is if the upcoming production fuel-cell vehicle will wear a Prius badge. Readers are split on that.

Selling 5,000 to 10,000 hydrogen-powered units a year after 2015 is more than other automakers are willing to say publicly. Hyundai is previewing a fuel-cell crossover concept and expects to sell about 1,000 fuel cell Tucson SUVs next year. Honda will sell a five-seat fuel cell vehicle in 2015, and Daimler will roll out a fuel cell variant of its B-Class compact car starting in 2017.

​Chevrolet has already confirmed that it will debut the 2015 Corvette Z06 at the Detroit Auto Show next month, and now its motorsports division has announced that the Corvette C7.R racecar will also be on display in Detroit. The new C7.R will then make its racing debut in the Tudor United SportsCar Championship (USCC) racing series at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, on January 25.

Few details are known about the new Corvette racecar, but we did see it testing in prototype form at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca during the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion in August. Chevy Racing is giving the Corvette race team's "Jake" mascot (shown inset) a slight makeover, but it will continue to be a skull with the Corvette's crossed flag logo as eyes.

In addition to the news about the C7.R, Chevy Racing is also celebrating a strong year in motorsports with a total of 12 championships across various racing series like NASCAR, Grand-Am, IndyCar and American Le Mans Series. Scroll down for the full press release.

Several years ago, we posted a video on a dumpy, all-wheel-drive, turbocharged Honda Civic Wagon that starred in a film called Wagon Attack II. The video showed the rusty, red five-door tackling terrain that no Civic has any business driving on, and doing it with flair and style.

Now, the team that produced the original video are back, with Wagon Attack III. The latest video is packed full of goodness for wagon lovers of any stripe. Where the last video saw the turbocharged wagon in Michigan, though, this time it's been shipped to Iceland, where it's flung about on the beaches and dirt roads of the volcanic island.

The video has a bit of a sad ending, though. You'll need to watch it and see what we mean. We've got the entire video down below. Take a look.

A rather clever mass-transit concept with a silly sounding name, the "Willie" bus by designer Tad Orlowski is intended to "transform city landscapes."

With nothing displayed on the side-elevation transparent LCD screens, there's not much differentiating the Willie from a traditional bus - except for its "organic" frame. Said frame is contorted into all sorts of shapes, and is meant to create "an impression of restless energy attempting to cut through the unblemished surface of the glass [screen]." But if the Willie bus makes it into production, chances are the screens will be switched on most of the time, displaying advertisements on the road and useful information for passengers at bus stops.

We like the bus-as-television idea, but we can't help but wonder if it will create yet another distraction for drivers, and why there don't seem to be windows that open for passengers? Head below to watch a demonstration of the Willie bus concept in action.

What you see above is the carbon fiber frame that underpins the BMW i3. This lightweight material will allow the plug-in vehicle to set itself apart from the competition in a lot of ways (weight, most importantly, but also space and rigidity), but what we didn't expect was that the newfangled bits will help keep repair and insurance costs down. It may sound counterintuitive, but that's what Manuel Sattig, the communications manager for BMW i, told AutoblogGreen recently. It does make sense but, like so much else in this new, plug-in vehicle universe, it requires a new way of thinking.

There is a plan to bring carbon fiber to the rest of the BMW fleet.

When BMW started Project i in 2007, the company began with a figurative plain sheet of paper. There were some rules, of course. "Every idea, every technology, every revolution or new material that we came up with for BMW i eventually had to enable the rest of the BMW Group," Sattig said. "Which means, yes, there is a plan to bring carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) to the rest of our fleet." The extent to which BMW will integrate carbon fiber into other model ranges is still being evaluated, and Sattig said BMW is first and foremost focused on launching the i3 and i8 and figuring out how, exactly, carbon fiber works in a series production vehicle. Still, dreams are big, and Sattig called CFRP, "the lightweight material of the future for the entire company."

The new 3.0-liter inline-six makes 425 turbocharged horsepower from 5500 rpm all the way up to 7300 rpm.

BMW has announced the 2015 M3 Sedan and M4 Coupe, high-performance versions of the new 3 Series and 4 Series that launched this year. The new Ms have stirred controversy in a variety of ways, but one must remember that the M cars traditionally don't follow a specific mold.

Back in 1988, BMW launched the M3 with a high-revving four-cylinder engine even though the top non-M 3 Series model was equipped with an inline-six. The reason: the little four-banger weighed less. The power-dense 2.3-liter four produced 197 horsepower, which was enough to make the original M3 one of the most sought after performance BMWs of all time. Two successive generations of M3 stepped up the cylinder count to six and provided a nice bump in power, and the M3 that came after them was equipped with a screaming V8. The M3's history dictates that M cars aren't about staying the same - they're meant to push limits - and M Motorsport engineers decided that the new M3 Sedan and M4 Coupe would push limits best with a twin-turbocharged inline-six.

For those of you worried that the new mill will underwhelm, on paper it outperforms the last M3's 4.0-liter V8 in a number of areas, including weighing 22 pounds less. The new 3.0-liter inline-six makes 425 turbocharged horsepower from 5,500 rpm all the way up to 7,300 rpm – just 300 rpm before the redline is reached. That's five more horsepower than the V8, but more importantly, the 1800-rpm powerband is very broad. Torque from the turbo six is even more impressive: peak torque of 406 pound-feet starts at 1850 rpm and doesn't start falling off until 5,500 rpm, right when the engine starts to make peak horsepower. That compares very favorably to the V8's oft-bemoaned max torque of just 295 lb-ft.

Score one for the turbo M.

With the Formula One season – and indeed his entire F1 career – now behind him, Mark Webber took advantage of his early release from Red Bull Racing to try out the new LMP1 which Porsche is developing, undertaking the final test session of 2013 before Porsche throws it head first into the FIA World Endurance Championship next April. The session – which followed previous tests at Magny-Cours, Monza, Paul Ricard and the Eurospeedway at Lausitz – was held at the Algarve circuit in Portimão, Portgual, in collaboration with Michelin, which is developing the tires for the car. But that's hardly the news here.

No, the news is the first confirmation we've seen on the type of powertrain Porsche has developed for its new Le Mans prototype: a gasoline-burning four-cylinder engine with direct injection and two energy recovery systems. This contrasts sharply with the V6 turbodiesel and single electric motor used by Audi in the R18 e-tron Quattro (or at least the outgoing version) or the naturally-aspirated V8 and single electric motor found in the Toyota TS030. Flexibility in the rules set down by the FIA and ACO give the manufacturers that kind of latitude, prompting F1 teams like Ferrari and Renault to consider developing their new engines for Le Mans prototypes as well.

At this point Porsche isn't saying how large its four-cylinder engine is or how much power it will produce. But it'll be interesting, to say the least, to see how it fares against the Audi and Toyota in next year's championship and at Le Mans when it'll be piloted by Webber, former Lola LMP1 driver Neel Jani and Audi's own 2011 Le Mans-winning pair of Romain Dumas and Timo Bernhard.

Small sedans are big business for luxury automakers. The C-Class is the top seller for Mercedes-Benz, much as the 3 Series is for BMW, but Jaguar has historically missed out on that market. Its last attempt, the X-Type, proved woefully inadequate, and Jaguar hasn't attempted to take on that market again since. But that's all about to change.

Coventry has been working on a new small Jaguar for some time now (using test mules like the one above wearing modified XF body panels), and according to the latest reports coming in from the UK, it will showcase the result of those efforts at the Paris Motor Show next October. The show car will take the form of a pre-production concept that is expected to preview the production version very closely before the final item is unveiled at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show.

Tipped to be called XS (somewhat appropriately for the brand's smallest model), the new sedan is expected to be the first to use the company's new aluminum platform previewed by the C-X17. Expect styling to follow along similar lines to said crossover concept and the F-Type sportscar, with eventual sedan, wagon and coupe versions to round out the family.

The timetable for next-generation Ford F-150 may be in trouble if a report from The Truth About Cars is true. The next F-150 is slated to make extensive use of weight-saving aluminum in its body, but the aluminum alloy provided by suppliers hasn't met Ford's requirements in the earliest phases of pre-production, according to the report.

The F-150 represents a huge portion of Ford's profits and is the best-selling truck in the US, even in the face of increased pressure from cross-town rivals General Motors and Ram. While the current truck is treading water against its competition, we'd be lying if we said the F-150 weren't growing quite long in the tooth.

If production of the next-generation of the Ford cash cow, said to be based on the Atlas Concept from the 2013 Detroit Auto Show (pictured above), is delayed, it could be bad for Ford. Production at Ford's Dearborn Truck Plant is already set to be delayed six to ten weeks, missing an internal on-sale deadline of Memorial Day.

As TTAC explains it (and without digging too deeply into chemistry and metallurgy), the issue with the aluminum alloy provided has to do with its elastic modulus - defined by the minds of Wikipedia as "an object or substance's tendency to be deformed elastically (non-permanently) when a force is applied to it." The elastic modulus in the aluminum provided to Ford is about a third of what's found in steel, making it difficult to form.

We reached out to Ford and were told by a spokesman, "We don't speculate on future products." We'll be sure to follow-up and let you know as more information becomes available.

Following the crash that claimed the lives of Fast and Furious star Paul Walker and Roger Rodas, we reported on the effect that Walker's death may have on the latest installment of the wildly successful (and profitable) movie series.

At that time - mere days after the crash - it was unclear how Universal Studios would handle the death of the star of its franchise. Numerous reports claimed that the film would go on hiatus (it did, indefinitely) and that only about half of Walker's scenes had been shot, leaving the cast and studio in a difficult position regarding the future of the film.

Now The Hollywood Reporter is saying that Chris Morgan, the man that crafted the film's original script, is at work on rewrites that the studio is hoping can give Walker a proper sendoff while still salvaging a film that Universal has poured $150 million into. According to the story, if the rewrites are signed off on, the cast and crew could be filming by January.

Scenes Walker filmed before his death would still be used, although it's unclear how Morgan will write in the exit of Walker's character, Brian O'Connor.

Satoshi Ogiso, dubbed "the grandfather of the Prius," said in a recent interview in Tokyo, "Earlier would have been better, but it's taken a long time to get to this point." The point Ogiso was talking about was the arrival of representative prototypes of Toyota's hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, the precursor to the production FCV that the Japanese brand will offer for sale "around 2015."

It is intriguing that the company that broke open the hybrid vehicle segment and is now the go-to brand when car shoppers want to be green is regularly lambasted for its push into hydrogen. If bullying were a concept one could apply to cars, the Prius would be Exhibit A in support of the victim. But Toyota stuck with it, losing money on every one of them for years until, in a role reversal worthy of George McFly and Biff from Back to the Future, now it's, well, the Prius. And that's Prius, sir, to you, thank you.

What drives Toyota's hydrogen push is not an idealistic worldview, but a business case.

Toyota is not walking away from hybrids – in fact, it sees them playing a role for a long time into the future – but the company believes that unless there's a quantum leap in battery technology, hydrogen-powered vehicles will be the greater part of a diverse mix of vehicles used for medium- and long-range applications. What drives that idea is not an idealistic worldview, but a business case.

Said Toyota Technical Center Principle Engineer Matt McClory, "This is always a kind of mythical issue and I really don't know where it comes from. We could never have started – not only Toyota but all the major automakers – we would not have started doing fuel cells back in the '90s if we thought it would not make sense to come to market as an economical and sustainable solution."

We have now had a chance to drive Toyota's hydrogen fuel cell car twice, once earlier this year in California, and once a couple of months ago in Japan. We were repeatedly told in California, "The future is fuel cell." And in Japan, just a few months away from the car's introduction at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, we were told by John Hanson, Toyota's national manager of environmental, safety & quality communications, "The powertrain's been invented, making it a real car."

Episode #360 of the Autoblog podcast is here, and this week, Dan Roth and Jeff Ross discuss the 2015 Ford Mustang, reports of the latest plan to bring Alfa Romeo back to the US, Chevrolet leaving Europe and Holden closing down in Australia, and the price barrier that's holding down potential EV buyers. Dan also interviewed Jacques Brent, Ford's marketing manager for the 2015 Mustang and Sebastian Ruta and Joe Oh from Blipshift. We start with what's in the garage and finish up with some of your questions, and for those of you who hung with us live on our UStream channel, thanks for taking the time. You can follow along after the jump with our Q&A. Thanks for listening!

Autoblog Podcast #360:




Topics:

• 2015 Ford Mustang
• Alfa Romeo's latest US launch plan hinges on new RWD platform
• GM to shutter Holden and pull Chevrolet out of Europe
• $25K price barrier is problem for EVs

In the Autoblog Garage:

• 2014 Toyota Tundra Platinum
• 2014 Cadillac ATS

Hosts: Dan Roth, Jeffrey Ross
Guests: Jacques Brent, Sebastian Ruta, Joe Oh
Runtime: 01:58:49

---

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In case you haven't heard, there were some controversial changes to the Formula One rulebook made recently, adding things like double points for the season-ending race and the ability for each driver to choose their own number (previously, a driver's finishing position in the previous season was used).

The new rules have been met with some degree of disdain, though, and have led a number of sources to come up with their own satirical additions to the F1 rules. Lotus F1, which has one of the cheekier Twitter presences in the sport, has come up with 18 additional rules it thinks would add to the sport.

While some of them make a fair amount of sense, like rule nine ("The team who designs the ugliest car of the season will be deducted 15 percent of their final points tally"), the rest are certainly on the silly side of things. For example, Lotus proposes that drivers aren't fined for doing donuts after a victory, but it does suggest drivers will need to eat the same number of donuts during the course of the post-race press conferences.

Lotus also suggests that any driver named "Sebastian Vettel" complete their own pit stops, without help from mechanics, and that "loophole exploiting devices can only be used if they have a cool name." We've posted the entire list below, so scroll down and let us know what your favorites are, as well as what you think should be added.

We may still be several months off from next year's Geneva Motor Show, but with Frankfurt well behind us, European automakers are already counting down the days. And you know what that means, boys and girls: that's right, another outside-of-the-box concept from Rinspeed.

This year's concept is called the XchangE, and it focuses on autonomous driving and advanced infotainment to keep occupants busy while underway. Frank M. Rinderknecht and company aren't saying much in the way of details at this point, but the concept looks similar in form to a Tesla Model S, but with a drive-by-wire cockpit that allows the steering wheel to slide out of the way and the seats to be either reclined or swiveled around to create a mobile living room of sorts, with a Carl F. Bucherer clock in the dashboard.

We'll have to wait to find out more, but for now you can scope out the pair of renderings in the gallery and the initial press release below to see what Rinspeed has in store for us this coming March.