#Research

About a week and a half ago, we asked you how the automotive media influences your car-buying process. Now we're going to ask you about J.D. Power, specifically.

Toyota Motor Corp has announced it will be partnering with Exxon to develop a low-carbon fuel that can be used in gasoline engines. Considering that governments around the world are introducing stringent carbon emission standards, this seems like a worthwhile endeavor. However, Toyota also likes to throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, and previous attempts to deliver on similar concepts have fallen flat.

Of all the American adages, “there ain't no such thing as a free lunch” has to be the most applicable and it often comes to mind whenever the automotive sector spins itself up over alternative energy vehicles. While it is comforting to assume that novel powertrains are going to create a world where nothing is wasted and no environmental harm is done, the laws of nature don’t really support the theory.

A team of engineers from Sweden has allegedly developed the first female crash test dummy. But what actually goes into making a human analog for crash testing and why haven’t there been more feminine versions of dummies that have technically existed for over 70 years?

Maybe we should start with a brief history lesson.

In 2021, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) asked manufacturers to begin reporting vehicle accidents where Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and/or semi-autonomous driving aids were engaged. The agency was specifically interested in incidents where such systems were active at least 30 seconds prior to the crash, hoping it might shed some light as to the technologies at play while the industry continues to make it standard equipment.

Toyota will be launching nine new studies over the next five years to improve automotive safety, specifically in relation to how drivers engage with advanced driving aids equipped to modern vehicles. While the press release to a back seat to the automaker receiving an award for hiring female engineers and a $400,000 donation to the National Environmental Education Foundation, it’s likely to have broader ramifications on the industry.

Despite launching a bevy of new assistance features over the past few years, manufacturers haven’t actually spent all that much time studying how they might impact the act of driving. Testing usually focuses on ensuring the system functions, with independent research being left to examine how electronic helpers might influence behavior from behind the wheel. Unfortunately, preliminary studies have suggested that they lull motorists into a false sense of security, potentially offsetting any legitimate safety advantages the relevant technologies provide.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) is claiming that individuals shopping for a secondhand automobile end up learning less about the modern features lurking within their automobiles. Considering salespeople have meetings about how best to hype the advanced driving aids in new models, this one really shouldn’t have required a survey for the IIHS to piece it together. But the outlet appears to be attempting to link this alleged lack of knowledge to make claims that it’ll somehow contribute to the probably of used vehicles being involved in a crash.

“Used car buyers were substantially less likely than new car buyers to know about the advanced driver assistance features present on their vehicles,” stated IIHS Senior Research Scientist Ian Reagan, the author of the study. “They were also less likely to be able to describe how those features work, and they had less trust in them. That could translate into less frequent use, causing crash reductions from these systems to wane.”

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has said it is developing a new rating system to evaluate the existing safeguards found inside vehicles equipped with partial automation. Considering how commonplace advanced driving aids have become, you might be thinking this was long overdue. However, insurers were blindly praising advanced driving suites a few years ago — until they actually started testing them in earnest.

As luck would have it, there’s been mounting research supporting claims modern automotive tech encourages drivers to tune out and become distracted. While this wouldn’t be a big deal if the relevant features all functioned perfectly, the reality is that most are far less effective than advertised and practically all of them run the risk of being completely undone by inclement weather or poor lighting. Confusingly, the IIHS believes the best solution here is to make sure systems constantly monitor the driver to ensure the driver is constantly monitoring the system.

While electrification has felt like the only thing automakers are willing to talk about anymore, CES 2022 provided yet another opportunity to see which companies are willing to make the biggest promises when pitted against each other. This encouraged plenty of manufacturers to issue reminders of their existing EV timetables, though we’d be lying if we expected any company to adhere to them all that closely.

Then there’s Toyota. Despite being the largest automaker on the planet by volume, the Japanese company is famous for hedging its bets and not being all that secretive about it. When other manufacturers were vowing swift electrification at all costs, Toyota said they would need to continue producing hybrids if they were to realistically serve the public. But the business is still developing battery tech, with a vested interest in selling it off to rival manufacturers who are more willing to run with BEVs exclusively. It’s also been developing solid-state batteries, which it has confirmed are on track for delivery by 2025.

A new study from the American Automobile Association (AAA) has found that rain can severely impair advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). Similar to how highway traffic slows to a crawl when there’s a sudden deluge, modern safety equipment can have real trouble performing when a drizzle becomes a downpour.

On Thursday, the motor club organization released findings from closed-course testing that appeared to indicate some assistance suites had real trouble seeing through bad weather. AAA reported that 33 percent of test vehicles equipped with automatic emergency braking traveling collided with a stopped car when exposed to simulated rainfall at 35 mph. The numbers for automatic lane-keeping was worse, with 69 percent drifting outside the lines. Considering the number of times the people writing for this website have anecdotally criticized ADAS for misbehaving in snow, sleet, rain, fog, or just from an automobile being a little too dirty, it’s hard not to feel a little vindicated.

Annual automotive-content indexes have grown in popularity since trade restrictions and tariffs have become increasingly relevant issues. But they’re usually pretty generic, often providing the broad strokes of product origin while placing a few cars housing the most regional content on a pedestal. Not so with the Kogod School of Business’ 2021 Made in America Auto Index. While the metrics used are a little different from what’s found elsewhere, it offers a more comprehensive data set than other catalogs.

Though most people still like to know which vehicles were dubbed the “most American” and Kogod’s percentage-based scoring system makes it pretty easy to figure out. We won’t leave you hanging. For the 2021 model year, the Ford Mustang GT was evaluated as the car boasting the highest level of North American hardware and labor. But you have to get a manual transmission for the necessary 88.5 percent total domestic content rating (TDC). Select the automatic and that number drops to 51 percent, which is still better than the Mustang Mach-E’s paltry 15-percent score.

As luck would have it, hiring thousands of drivers to cruise around a city in search of their next fare has some negative environmental impacts. That’s the word coming from expert researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, who we can only hope are prepared to tackle similarly impossible quandaries — like establishing what happens to an object when it’s dropped or reaching a final determination on the wetness of water.

The study is inextricably linked to one we covered in 2018 asserting that ride-hailing services actually created more traffic congestion because it treads extremely familiar ground and seems like something that we should have already figured out on our own. But it’s also at odds with the years of messaging we’ve gotten from technology firms that have promised on-demand services (like Uber or Lyft) would usher in a new era of urban transportation striving for clearer roads and cleaner air. Based on little more than the conjecture of executives, we’ve generally accepted ride-hailing as “greener” than the alternatives and it’s well past time that we started actually thinking about it.

Having covered the White House’s incredibly expansive and costly infrastructure plan, specifically as it pertains to transitioning the entire nation toward alternative energy vehicles, we’ve often found ourselves asking questions. Puzzlers include wondering whether or not consumers actually want this change and how can we possibly expect to pay for this when we’ve already starting conjuring money out of thin air for other government programs. We don’t even know where we’re supposed to get the rare-earth minerals necessary for production when mining them is heavily regulated in the United States and hardly an endeavor that would be considered kind to the natural landscape.

Last week proved that we weren’t entirely alone in pondering how all of this greenification is supposed to work.

Color counts when selling or buying a car. But which colors help or hurt? iSeeCars.com, a car search engine, performed exhaustive research on this topic, recently publishing the results.

The pandemic has changed car buying plans for nearly three out of four shoppers who intended to buy in the next six months. New research from Comscore Automotive Data Mart, cited in a story today by Auto Remarketing, indicated the pandemic tops the concerns of four out of ten who had intended to buy.