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BMW, Toyota outline new tech joint venture, new sports car

Back in June, Toyota and BMW announced a "memorandum of understanding" outlining plans for the two companies to join forces on future products and technology development. On Thursday, they signed a more formal and binding agreement that goes further into detail about the partnership, and it all sounds pretty exciting. The two announced they will work together in four main areas:
Joint development of a fuel cell system
"Set up a feasibility study to define a joint platform concept for a mid-size sports vehicle"

BMW offering glitch fix for i3 with range extender

The BMW i3 has received quite a bit of acclaim since its release, with the electric powertrain grabbing a spot on Ward's 10 Best Engines list and the high-tech machine earning the nod as 2015 Green Car of the Year. However, Consumer Reports uncovered a vexing problem with the range-extended version of the hatchback that has plagued it until a recent software update. While CR was driving the range-extended i3 last year, it discovered that when the internal combustion engine was running during low states of charge, hard acceleration could suddenly cut back with no warning to the driver. This was especially problematic when passing. BMW knew about the issue and promised a software update in the spring. That improvement is now available. BMW spokesperson David Buchko tells Autoblog that the software update adds a percent-of-charge indicator to all models of the i3 to let drivers know just how much juice is left. For the range-extended model, it also provides a warning of possible power reduction when the charge reaches two percent. According to Consumer Reports, the revision lets the car anticipate needing more reserve power based on the topography from the navigation system, as well. For any i3 drivers who want the upgrade, they need to visit a dealer for installation, according to Buchko, but it should be come at no cost to owners. Related Video:

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.