2006 Volkswagen Jetta 2.5 Sedan 4-door 2.5l on 2040-cars

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World Car Of The Year down to its final four

Judges for the World Car of the Year Award have narrowed down the finalists to just four vehicles. Out of a total of 42 entries, only the Mercedes-Benz A-Class, Porsche Boxster/Cayman, Scion FR-S/Subaru BRZ/Toyota GT-86 and Volkswagen Golf remain standing. For Volkswagen, this marks the second consecutive year the company has had an entry among the finalists, and the fourth time since 2009. In order to qualify, a vehicle must be on sale on two continents during the span of time between January 1, 2013 and May 30, 2013. A panel of 66 journalists from 23 countries then vote on the finalists.
Three vehicles have made the cut for the last round of voting on the 2013 World Performance Car as well, with the Cayman/Boxster and FR-S/BRZ/GT-86 running against the Ferrari F12 Berlinetta. Meanwhile, the Renault Zoe, Tesla Model S and Volvo V60 Plug-In Hybrid are duking it out for the World Green Car Award. Finally, the World Car Design of the Year Award is up for grabs between the Aston Martin Vanquish, Jaguar F-Type, and the Mazda6. Check out the full press release below. Overall winners will be presented at the 2013 New York Auto Show.

VW decides against active-cooling system for e-Golf lithium battery

When the 2015 VW e-Golf was introduced at the LA Auto Show last year, VW said it would come with a water-cooled battery. During the Detroit Auto Show, when the car was trotted out again, VW released a new press release that stripped out the "water-cooled" language, but this change went unnoticed. During a recent VW event in Germany, a friend from Green Car Reports realized that the battery on display did not seem to have any water-cooling mechanisms. That set us off on a bit of a sleuthing and we have now learned that VW is not going to include any active cooling in the upcoming e-Golf. In fact, the company is entirely confident that this car - because of what it's designed to do - doesn't need it. "The need for a cooling system wasn't there" - VW's Darryll Harrison VW has been working on an electrified Golf for ages now, and so changes to the plan are to be expected. But battery cooling is vitally important not just to keep the car operating properly but because when things get too hot, there can be serious public relations problems. Nissan began testing a new battery chemistry for the Leaf in 2013 after an uproar from warm-weather EV drivers in Arizona who were experiencing worse-than-expected battery performance. The Leaf has always used an air-cooled battery, which is another way to say that there is no active cooling system (more details here). Tesla CEO Elon Musk once said this approach is "primitive." So, why is VW following the same path? We asked Darryll Harrison, VW US's manager of brand public relations west, for more information, and he told AutoblogGreen that VW engineers discovered through a lot of testing of the Golf Mk6 EV prototypes, that battery performance was not impacted by temperatures when using the right battery chemistry. That chemistry, it turns out, is lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) in cells from Panasonic. These cells had "the lowest self-warming tendency and the lowest memory effect of all cells tested," Harrison said. He added that VW engineers tested the NMC cells in places like Death Valley and Arizona and found they didn't warm very quickly either through operation, charging (including during fast charging) or through high ambient temps. "The need for a cooling system wasn't there," Harrison said.

YouTube's Super Bowl commercial buzz list dominated by automakers [w/videos]

After Sunday's big game, YouTube will be the place to watch every commercial that you missed when you left your seat for an emergency guac refill or, as we say in Cleveland, took the Browns to the Super Bowl. That makes YouTube the nation's water cooler on Monday, and it's got some preliminary stats to share in the lead up to kickoff.
As you know, Super Bowl advertisers, particularly automakers, like to endlessly tease their big budget commercials in the weeks before the game, many times revealing them outright days in advance. Because of this, YouTube can tell us which commercials have been viewed the most so far, and their top five list is all automakers.
Kaley Cuoco appears to have been a good investment for Toyota, as her ad for the RAV4 has garnered the most YouTube views - six million and counting - among Super Bowl commercials so far. Second place goes to Mercedes-Benz, though not its actual Super Bowl commercial, but rather the teaser for it. You know, the one with Kate Upton and the car washing, which is up to 5.6 million views. Third place is Audi's Prom commercial (3.3M views), fourth goes to Volkswagen's slightly controversial Get In, Get Happy ad (3.3M views), and the fifth and final spot is bookended by the teaser video for Kaley Cuoco's commercial (3.2M views). You can watch all five in order below.