2001 Toyota Camry on 2040-cars

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Manga stylized Toyota Aygo takes on Godzilla

Japan has given the world so much to enthuse over. We're not sure the Toyota Aygo is necessarily one of them as much as, say, the Scion FR-S or Lexus LFA (especially since it's actually made in Europe), but for many Nipponophiles, the centuries-old artistic discipline of Manga certainly is. And now the two have come together in this two-and-a-half-minute animated short.
In Toyota's own take on the classic narrative, an Aygo animated by celebrated artist Sonia Leong takes on Godzilla. As in, a giant lizard rampaging through a Japanese city, not the Nissan GT-R, against which the little Toyota would certainly stand even less of a chance by any metric other than affordability, fuel economy or ability to park in tight spots.
In any case, watch this Manga-fied video above, and feel free to read through the related press release below.

Toyota nudges US sales projections up to 2.25M

Toyota has raised its expectations for 2013's US sales for the third time since the end of 2012. The new target rests at 2.25 million units, when sales of Toyota, Lexus and Scion are taken as one. Subtracting Lexus, Toyota is still expecting to move over two million vehicles in the US by the end of 2013.
According to a report from Automotive News, the sales expectations came from Bob Carter, senior VP of automotive operations for Toyota USA, during a dealers during a meeting in Atlanta. The heightened expectations go along with Toyota's predictions for the US market as a whole, which it expects to grow to 15.5 million units by the end of 2013.
Besides an overall, national uptick in new vehicle sales, Toyota is also expecting a big push as it puts the next-generation Corolla to market during the second half of this year, along with the Tundra pickup truck. Meanwhile, dealers were shown images of a refreshed Camry, set to arrive in 2015, and reported that it's "more than a nip and a tuck," according to the AN report.

EPA says automakers ahead of schedule for 54.5 MPG by 2025

Remember, the target is 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Today, the CAFE level is a little over 30. How we get from here to there is something the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is monitoring closely. Thus, the EPA just released an annual flash report on how the auto industry is progressing towards meeting the nation's fuel economy goals. Overall, the industry is doing almost 10 grams per mile (equivalent) better than the rules require. The good news is that the industry is a bit ahead of schedule. In the report (see page iii), the EPA breaks things down by automaker based only on MY12 numbers. Tesla is at the top of the list (which is ranked by over-compliance with 2012MY CO2 standards), but for our money, the real leader is Toyota. The Japanese automaker built the second-highest number of vehicles (2,020,248, after General Motors' 2,364,374) but racked up the most net 2012 over-compliance credits (13,163,009 metric tons). That's an average of over 6.5 metric tons per vehicle. The next closest is Honda, with just over five metric tons of credits per vehicle. Given the MPG fiasco with Hyundai and Kia, the EPA says, "we are excluding Hyundai and Kia data because of the ongoing investigation into their testing methods," but overall, the rest of the industry has credits worth 25,053,168 metric tons of CO2, which means it's doing almost 10 grams per mile (equivalent) better than the rules require. Go team. For now, the numbers in this report (and there are a lot more of them – get the 59-page PDF for yourself here), can't really be used to understand everything from the first year of the new CAFE program. The EPA writes, "Because the program allows credits and deficits to be carried into future years, at the close of the 2012 model year no manufacturer is considered to be out of compliance with the program. ... Compliance with the 2012 model year standards can't be fully assessed until the end of the 2015 model year." There are a more interesting tidbits in the report, such as the fact that Fisker produced 1,415 model year 2012 vehicles, Tesla made 2,952. Remember, too, that CAFE numbers don't equal the fuel economy you see in your daily drives. In the real world, the 54.5 CAFE level will be about 40 mpg, and the average fuel economy today is around 25 mpg, so we have a ways to go, no matter how you measure it. EPA Report: Data Show Automakers on Track in meeting Greenhouse Gas Standards WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S.