Gadgetory

hello this is car tech live from March feet 2012 I'm Wayne Cunningham in the studio here with antuan goodwin we're not in the studio we're not really in this video we're actually on the show floor at the geneva auto show this is the F 2012 geneva auto show the a second international auto show we in Geneva got the bag right here to prove it and so there's been 80 one of these before now this is indeed Eva this makes it sort of the neutral ground show of Europe there's an equal representation of the German automakers and the French automakers which both have a huge presence in Europe of course there's a lot of other ones around 2i think we have co-op which is a Spanish brand i believe and make their german own the you know volkswagen yeah but yeah they're different a lot of different companies the japanese manufacturers here of course north american manufacturers as well Chrysler's have it has a pretty big presence here with with the jeep booth directly across from Ferrari but and I saw over there's actually a Chevy booth over here right next to the Cadillac move of course GM's representation and I saw in that booth they actually had guys walking around wearing that police uniforms with a patch on the side that's at San Francisco police there bit out of their jurisdiction I think I think so they're also women like roller skating around them too so I think that's part of the show and maybe not so much GM security I don't know why they would have imported San Francisco policeman here this is some weird theme just don't understand the connection between the two of those yeah I don't really get that theme necessarily but one thing I did see near there which was pretty cool was the infinity emergy this is a new concept car from infinity and it was actually it's really enough it was actually built and designed in that Europe out of the Nissan infinities at european design centers as opposed to being built in japan these are the same guys who built the juke-r mind you yeah they've got a little interesting lingo Don these guys obviously there's an independent spirit going on in Nissan infinities European design headquarters so I'm expecting something crazy from this mr g so what are we dealing with here well it's actually not as crazy the Duke car it's actually really cool looking this is a mid-engine sports car and it's got a really nice design it actually is kind of reminiscent of the old NSX and the newer NSX to the concept we've been seen around this is also a concept is called the emerge Ashley so that tells you right there that it's actually got an electric element to it it takes advantage of the electric powertrain that Nissan is used in the leap as well except way differently because it has two electric motors powering the two rear wheels lithium-ion battery pack and a range extender gasoline engine now it needs that gasoline engine because it only goes 30 miles range on those electric motors right but I'm hoping hoping because I've seen this car it's really sleek like formed by wind sleek supercar sleep so I'm hoping that for those 30 miles released get to have some fun well i'm not sure if you do it for the full 30 miles but it will get you to 60 in four seconds ok i'm impressed which is yeah that's good I mean it's not like as good as you can be I mean those are my faster cars but they also said 220 miles per hour in 30 seconds okay that's got to be pretty good too got to be pretty good and I'm assuming what you get past that 30 mile mark that's when that gasoline engine that sits in the middle of the vehicle kicks on and starts generating electricity for the right now well if you have you blown out your battery from you stuff a starts like that yeah you know if you've got no more juice then yeah then then you get that engine and get your extra range now they didn't have they haven't released when he specs about this we don't know what happens when you're under engine power probably doesn't go nearly as fast right and the concept it probably doesn't even run they're probably just me they could just roll out a clay model would call it a day yeah a lot of these concepts we never actually see them driving on the roads and there's some exceptions like a Nissan also has their nismo RC they're sort of racing version of the leaf and that when they've actually been driving around other people driven it so they can't do things like this yeah anta and I would love to see this this emergy make it into production somehow because it is really a beautiful looking car and he's never had a real sports car like that I mean certainly the G coops are really nice and fast and sporty but it's not like hardcore sports car no no I mean well I guess the IPL geez art do you know it's kind of like the the vehicle that I'm thinking is sort of the opposite side of the coin of this because it's also green it's also pretty close to production ready but it's not performance oriented or attractive at all is the Toyota ft bh concept and that's basically they're small i guess their idea for like what a future Yaris hybrid would be or the prius of the next generation essentially they kind of built this really small hatchback style vehicle using I guess what they would consider to be economically viable and eco-friendly uh materials in kind practices so it's not formed out of a single piece of carbon fiber or anything like that it's got a really sleek profile that gives an extremely low coefficient of drag oh yeah that's that really ugly car I saw over there in the Toyota B&AMP it's got a front that looks a little like the bow of a boat I keep seeing it out of the corner of my eye and I just don't want to but it gets get this sort of like it looks like a boat flipped upside down but it's did these weird channels in the front headlights that kind of float out on bars the horrible thing is I mean that is extremely aerodynamic they said point 235 coefficient of drag which is better than the prius right and the previous is really good as far as they aren't clean point 25 on the phrase they claim that yeah if you get the big rims you lose that and so the you know this car because it is so I dynamically efficient this may be what future cars look like just so they can get that low coefficient of graph and that's that'd be a shame yeah they're also trying to keep the weight down and they're also going working with a smaller engine here it's a one liter atkinson cycle gasoline engine so it's basically a you know the pre if you're dealing with two and some change leaders this is a much smaller engine because it's a much lighter car also a smaller cars it's about the same size of the yard but it's actually got i think more interior space yeah it's got sort of a hatchback to a weird sort of bubble looking hatchback kind of ugly too it's also got what look like Racing lawn chairs for seats there are these two frame recaro seats with a sort of mesh that used to sue mming they're really light they don't look very comfortable way to save weight in that thing too and I know they said doing the conversion from leaders 200 kilometers they said well I guess that's 2.1 liters 200 kilometers which translates to about 112 miles per gallon you know it's an extremely high fuel efficiency in the vehicle a claim fuel efficiency from this concept but I don't know if I would want to be driving that a car around like I think at that point I just get a motorcycle kind of has a cool matte white finish to it which makes it easy to photograph all these glossy cars on these lights they usually end up looking like starfield but i do like this sort of matte paint but it's like anything else about it and then it's flanked by two equally ugly cars you know they're in s4 concept and their fuel cell fvr spdr concept also ugly so it's just like a lot of hug happening at the front of toyota's boot right you've seen a little more ugly here too in the form of a Bentley and let's be out if Billy doesn't make good looking cars but some kind of a way they manage to take the design cues from the molson and the Continental and put them on a vehicle that's even uglier than either of those vehicles and that's the Bentley exp 9f concept so I'm thinking what happened if someone in families marketing department said hey you know fortress make it a ton of money on those Cayenne I think we should get in on this SUV thing and then they just did it I wouldn't be surprised to find if that same Cayenne platform is underneath that since Bentley's a member of the VW group so that same platform that's underneath the q7 and the touareg and the Cayenne I'm sure really just grabbed that and then they tossed their w12 engine under the hood it 8-speed transmission basically the power train from the current Continental GT with the w12 and that's their SUV so as far as an SUV is like high up is it something that looks like a go off road or anything like that it's pretty high up it's a large SUV again I think it's about the same size like the audi q7 so it looks like it could go off road but it's got 23 inch chrome rims with extremely thin tires and you know a lot of chrome work on the front they've cut kind of got this turbine theme happening at the front of the vehicle where the lights have these sort of radial turbine blades inside of them but then out back there doing something completely different with the sort of squared and very linear thing happening so it looked like it was designed by two different committees even two different countries who were communicating via teletraan or whatever tell if I tell you tonight but inside it's it's what you expect from Bentley really nice materials just extremely comfortable really quiet cabin where the look would look like a new cabin tech interface for Bentley they've got like completely virtual gauges that are on LCDs they've got a tablet-based rear seat entertainment system all glass roof and best of all you can't see the outside of the vehicle when you're sitting in it so you don't worry about that right i was looking fab you know if you're inside you don't really care what it looks like outside and it's the bentley so it's super comfortable but of course it's still a concept so whether they'll produce it or not is it shouldn't be hard for them to produce it they've got a 10 year old engine a two-year-old transmission and then basically designed is there sort of coach building for the interior that they're already doing on the mall sign so if they've if that platform is truly borrowed from the rest of the VW Group it wouldn't be hard for them to make it the problem is I don't think anyone would buy it well the car I would prefer as opposed to that Bentley is the rolls-royce phantom series to avoid back we've got rolls-royce I mean this is sort of a rare event when rolls-royce actually has you know an update to their cars and the Phantom is sort of perennial and the series too doesn't it has some different design fuse than the current phantom like it looks like the rear trunk drops down a little more a little more curved that still got that massive kind of coach like look to it and the carriage doors they call them opening up but interesting enough that phantom series to book not only affects the the standard phantom the big sedan it also affects the phantom coupe and the Drophead coupe too so they all are using the same body and I imagine with that that body design that redesign they've mentioned to you that the engine is a little bit cleaner less co2 production which of course they're very concerned about here but in that case it's like 350 grams per kilometer which is way it above the targets you know other companies we're reaching for fortunately they're probably only sell five of these for years so you're not really hurting the environment that much as it's not a huge impact as again there's not a lot of them on the road I guess at that point you're sure fer would be the one hurting you know and I imagine that they've got the new electronics in there too because rules race is part of the BMW group and they've been Bennett Eve benefiting from my BMW is really good cabin electronics and BMWs had some updates since the last phantom came out so it's time to rolls-royce benefited from those updates as well maybe they'll get the mini connect system in your roles where I so talk to you that'd be awesome except for it would be goofy it'd be really kind of snooty that's right like a butler your your app connection there you're connected drive in the rolls-royce I think they probably do have something like that I mean it's kind of the the next thing you know think they would definitely fit in call it Jarvis or something that's ever on pretending like you're Tony Stark they're gonna be pretty awesome but you were telling me about someone else he was like a new Kevin take package like what's what's going on and out ya outta ya so this is actually a car that's more affordable for most people audi a3 the new audi a3 and it's interesting that the Consumer Electronics Show this year we saw the dashboard for this car we saw the new interface for this car but we didn't see the car the car is here and they unveiled its actually shorter the one thing I've here is actually a three-door not a five door and we're used to we only get the 5-door in the US but they probably they will soon have a 5-door version which they'll probably show maybe at the New York Auto Show next month but it looks like a shorter car looked shorter than the current a free to my eyes I haven't actually compared the specs yet but it is a nice little car in the cabin tech package is really impressive because they manage to put a lot of the same stuff that you get in the a6 a7 a8 the really big premium cars in the a3 and they three in the US is like their cheapest got great so you can basically if you want a small car but you still want a really nice car you don't have to make the compromise ago do I kind of want the Bing and all of them found system but I don't want to get the a64 it exactly and that's yeah that's a key point is you can actually get a bang and olufsen sound system in the audi a3 it's a cheaper system than they're really high-end ones and it only cost nine hundred dollars only 900 bucks a deal or nine hundred euro is what I heard so well I don't know what that's going to translate a few dollars in North American market but it sounded really good I got a demo of the audio system in there and really crisp and clean as you can i'd expect from beggin all ups and they don't have the little acoustic lenses that rise up out of the dash like in some of the other systems so to compensate they've actually got light up rings around the door speakers oh so like a kia soul yeah a little bit you wouldn't think that you'd see them doing that but i guess there's sort of the theatricality to bang an elephant but I do kind of think that acoustic lens is kind of their trademark I'm surprised to see that it's not there even if it's just not motorized so kind of you know rather see like a fixed pair of those lenses or at least a fixed Center one that maybe doesn't move yeah why they chose not to do that it might have been purely cost might have been that they saw doesn't sound is just you know in the lower slightly lower quality sound they're going for in the three they might have said you know other speakers we have are good enough they have just standard a pillar tweeters right and maybe Audi just said we don't we don't have room for you to put these these acoustic lenses in our dashboard that's possibly might have been a packaging problem there too yeah one thing to load the screen in the a3 it actually rises up straight out of the in the middle of the dashboard it's not a touchscreen but it is very thin because it's LED backlight and so that allows them have it's pretty much iphone so kind of looks like a pop tart yeah that's just you know tena get the rounded edges and it just kind of comes straight up it's like a pop tart but instead of frosting screen that's pretty awesome which is pretty tasty right there yeah definitely and the control for it they have their multi media controller they call two mm I but on top of the little dial for the MMI is a touch surface so you can actually trace letters and stuff on there and make choices from what's on the screen it's good take taking advantage of the small spacer or making doing the small space of the in the a 6 and the 8 you got more space you got space actually put a touchpad but you've got a smaller centres tunnel in the 83 so you got to put it somewhere yeah why not take a take advantage of the speakers on top of that dial there were two more cards that i saw this year that i think i have to mention before we leave the first one is a little bit stupid in my opinion but it's stupid in the sense that the company that makes it is awesome because of their stupid dinner and that's the the Lamborghini Aventador Jane I'm cilenia dorje I've seen an Aventador right what is the jane i don't know i know where that jay came from but essentially what they've done if they've taken an invention or LP 700-4 and then chop the top off of it but then instead of like a regular car company putting a convertible top up there that you can close when it rains they just said nope we're just going to not have a top and while reddit we're not going to have a wind screen anyway either so they cut that off too and then they said well this is good enough and then they sold it for 2.1 million euro to somebody and they're not going to make any more one just one one car yeah most automakers make one concept car and then it just ends up in a and if someone's garage somewhere to 20 years from now but they're actually selling this one or have sold it to someone for 2.1 million euro so the one aventador j is at the show here it's there okay and well so the the owner is nearby making sure no scratches the paint right we got photos of that car up on the site yeah we do we did excellent but then if you're into like you're looking for an awesome super car sometimes you can actually buy enough Ferrari actually I had a rare debut with their new f12 berlinetta and essentially I think it shows a lot in common with the FF that made you too recently there a shooting brake right well this is a new platform for them pretty much right so it's got the same v12 engine but way more power 740 horsepower instead of an all-wheel-drive system it's rear-wheel drive only because this is basically their 599 replacement that front-engine rear-drive grand tourer and in the photos that we saw before the show we talked about in the last episode of car tech lab it looked a little weird kind of had this Viper vibe going on with it in the photos it's got a big deep contour on the side to which might disturb me at a very snake-like face yeah when you see it in person it actually printed really well in the sheet metal and in my opinion it's the best-looking car in their lineup right now that deep imprint in the side is actually part of their aerobridge so what happens is the air comes over the hood of the vehicle generating downforce then it enters two inlets where it gets channeled underneath this sort of like floating wing that kind of sits where the the rocker panel meets the window and it goes down through those side channels where it interacts with air coming off of the front wheels reducing drag pretty much the entire car is an aerodynamic element any curve that you see on this vehicle has been wind tunnel tested and designed to reduce drag or generate down for us we can do 120 miles per hours car this car the vehicle is pushing down on the front end with almost 270 pounds of downforce Wow those cars are lifting at that point pretty awesome and with 740 horsepower you can get way above that 120 miles per oh yeah that's definitely I think in the top speed of 200 and some change at 220 something oh yeah and that's that's going to be one of the well they're competing in bugatti territory yeah i mean they don't exactly have a thousand in one horsepower but this is a much lighter vehicle than ave right it's actually lighter than the previous dinner the 599 that it replaces it's got a shorter wheelbase so it should be more nimble also but it's still a pretty big car you see at park next to the 458 Italia and it makes that 458 look like a lotus yeah but you see it parked next to the the FF next to it the FF just looks like a gigantic abomination last week I thought the FF was a good-looking car in the wake of the the f12 berlinetta it's just not going to do it for me anymore right it's spoiled it I mean this is that Ferrari GT cars like the 599 and now the f12 berlinetta is I mean those are the cars for you get in you cruise to the Opera the grocery store you know I mean it's not necessarily the race around cars even you can racer editor for your horse for I think they want to change that opinion yeah and I think this is kind of like in the wake of the vehicles like the the 599 X which was really hardcore race only this has got more power than their their tracks special version of the 599 and this what zoopla is the base model of the the f12 chatting so right but as opposed to like the app for the 458 Italia I mean that well that was more of a you know I get to take it to attract table you can afford to take a car like that to the track there but it's up that's more of a showy sort of sports race car where's the f12 berlinetta it's something like I have space for luggage are well and of course it comes with luggage yeah oh it's got its own like like soft like leather luggage set that kind of fills up the whole rear hatch so I mean you could take this car on vacation you can drive it to the track in another country I proposed to me the four or five eight which you probably want to get trailer there that's pretty much not the whole show because there's like way more cards than we actually have time to talk about but not all the time you have one thing yeah yeah we gotta get back to seeing more of the cars that are on the floor here we've got more to do more stuff to look at but the impressive show so far we'll have all of our coverage posted on our site at our special geneva show package area of the site well have links to that all over the well over this blog post and all over our cars cnet com or you can find us well I've been waiting Cunningham and I'm gonna answer on Goodwin we're on the show floor Geneva you don't see me after the show it's because I've been arrested for stealing a subaru brz