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But with nearly 900,000 more Sonata owners on the road since the outgoing model's debut, and a chance to build a broader, more sustainable following, "We have to be more careful," Zuchowski said.

But Hyundai says the car's suspension and steering have been redesigned for better ride and handling. The interior also is new, with greater use of soft-touch materials and more countermeasures against road noise. Also, high-tech features and advanced safety equipment -- plus a starting price that Zuchowski says won't stray far from the outgoing model's sticker of just over $22,000, with shipping -- will help the Sonata retain the value image that has been a key purchase reason for the sedan, Hyundai says.

With 6.6 million Camrys on the road, Toyota understands well the delicate balance Hyundai is seeking. The Camry's large, loyal following has allowed it -- compelled it -- to stick with safe, modest designs and driving characteristics, generation after generation.

But when the current generation was launched in late 2011, mostly to yawns from auto critics, the sportier SE model became the best- selling trim package. Toyota took the hint.

Every piece of sheet metal except the roof has been changed, as have more than 2,000 part numbers. For some automakers, that constitutes a redesign.

Both products will land in a mid-sized market that has been roiled by intense competition, not only within the segment but also from fast-growing crossovers. At 2.6 million units in 2013, sales in the segment grew just 1 percent from the previous year,

No one feels this more than Toyota, which is fighting to continue the Camry's 12-year streak as America's best-selling car against a strong challenge from the Nissan Altima. Toyota has spent more on Camry incentives, yet had a lower mean transaction price, than its top four competitors -- the Altima, Honda Accord, Ford Fusion and the Sonata -- every month since November 2012, according to TrueCar.

Carter hopes the investment in the new-look Camry will allow Toyota to dial back on incentive spending. "One way to lower incentives is to increase demand, and that's what this car is about," Carter said. But if competitors should raise their incentives, Toyota won't sit still. Said Carter: "This is a competitive market. And we're going to compete."

Battery models carry electricity in their lithium-ion battery packs while fuel cell vehicles make electricity on board in a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, with only water vapor as a byproduct. While hydrogen vehicles have a range comparable to gasoline vehicles and need only a few minutes to refuel -- compared with hours for most battery autos -- there are few hydrogen pumps currently open to the public.

California has said it will provide as much as $200 million over the next decade to help open stations across the most populous U.S. state.

Fuel cell autos will need three to five years to build a market presence in California, and at least a decade to get to U.S. sales of half a million or more annually, Lentz said. Still, advances in the technology and an industrywide push, with Daimler AG, General Motors Co. and Nissan also planning to sell fuel cell models, may help the vehicles get a market foothold faster than hybrids, according to Lentz.

Vezel is the car’s Japan-market name. The U.S. name will be announced later, Honda said today.

In the United States, Juke sales have climbed 4 percent this year and Mazda CX-5 demand has surged 95 percent. Sales of the new Subaru XV Crosstrek have totaled 48,216, while Buick Encore sales are 29,195.

Honda plans to source all U.S. Vezels from its new plant in Mexico

A spokesman said Honda wants to establish the gasoline version in the market before deciding on whether to add a hybrid option to the lineup

Honda is also banking on the vehicle to fuel a big surge in U.S. sales. Honda built the new plant in Mexico with capacity of 200,000 units just to make the crossover and the Fit hatchback. More than half of the plant’s capacity will be devoted to the crossover, says Ito.

The market for automotive chips is projected to grow 6.1 percent to $27.9 billion this year, according to IHS Corp. Within that business, sales of chips for automated driver-assistance systems, or ADAS, will increase an average of 13 percent a year through 2020, making it the fastest-growing area.

Intel, Qualcomm and NVIDIA, which make some of the fastest processors available. All three say they’ve got products in the market or coming that meet the most stringent automotive requirements.

NVIDIA said its processors are now powerful enough that they can be partitioned -- devoting part to functions that must work no matter what, and others to information and entertainment, where hiccups are less dangerous.

Qualcomm

has won the majority of orders to add the latest wireless modems into cars, and expects that by 2017 as many as 60 percent of cars will have cellular connections.

It all comes from the cloud,” Singh said. “Otherwise you have to put terabytes of data into the car’s trunk.”

Top-of-the line Audi models use more than 6,000 semiconductors.

“Make no mistake -- my objective is to drive this into volume, not just luxury German vehicles,” said Elliot Garbus, Intel’s vice president of automotive. “We need to drive it into entry-level vehicles.”

Intel is aiming to win more orders by offering carmakers whole systems -- software and computers built on its chips -- that it says can cut the time and cost it takes to build features into cars. New functions such as tracking eye movement to monitor a driver’s attention will require faster processing, he said.

Qualcomm

is working on chipsets that provide multiple functions for cars, including cellular connections, and expects that to be the basis for an expansion of its revenue in the industry

The upcoming rollout, which will deploy the technologies by March 31, 2016, is part of Denso's drive to boost sales of sensors, the crucial eyes and ears of tomorrow's safety systems.

Cars without these features will be hard-pressed to achieve the top five-star rating. And European adoption of more stringent rules is expected to force other markets, such as the United States and Japan, to raise the bar as well.

But it trails European rivals such as Robert Bosch GmBH and Continental AG in advanced safety sensors. Denso's bread-and-butter products are drivetrain components and air conditioners.

But deployment is rapidly moving downmarket because of stricter European Union safety rules taking effect in 2015. The Euro New Car Assessment Program, or Euro NCAP, rates vehicle safety and increasingly will test for crash avoidance technologies.

The components include systems using camera-based optical sensors, millimeter wave radar and laser radar.

That is because the regulations set a baseline for sensor performance that must be met by all carmakers. And the clear specifications make it easier to develop standardized sensors. Standardization, in turn, allows for higher volume and lower costs, meaning a wider array of customers can use the same part.

Sales of driver assistance systems could exceed 1 billion euros as early as 2016, as cars become more sophisticated and offer new business opportunities, Bosch said.

This year the company will add 9,000 university graduates from around the world to its workforce of 281,000 staff.

By 2020 Bosch plans to double its sales in Asia, North and South America

Bosch said last year its automotive business continued to grow, particularly gasoline and diesel direct-injection systems, as well as display instruments and infotainment systems.

VW has started launching TDI “value editions” of select models to better position diesel as a money-saving option on par with hybrids

The value Jetta starts at $22,115, including shipping, with a TDI engine and a manual transmission -- a $2,300 price cut that has bolstered its position as the least expensive diesel car on the U.S. market. That puts it squarely between the base Toyota Prius C ($19,890, including shipping) and the base Toyota Prius ($25,010, including shipping).

For its seventh generation, Hyundai says the Sonata has “evolved into a more refined premium vehicle” that “provides a luxury feel of a car from the segment above.”

The Sonata became Hyundai’s top-selling car, with sales topping 200,000 units in 2011, 2012 and 2013. But sales have slowed since fresher competing models such as the Honda Accord, Ford Fusion, Nissan Altima and Toyota Camry hit the market, with sales dipping by 12 percent last year and off another 28 percent through the first two months of 2014.

Subaru will stop building the Camry in Indiana by 2017

Subaru said earlier this year that it would boost the plant's annual capacity to build Subaru vehicles to 300,000 by the end of 2016, up from 170,000 currently. On top of that, the company has capacity to build 100,000 Camrys a year

Subaru also said earlier this year it would add production of the Impreza to the factory, its only plant in North America

The additional capacity Subaru plans to add by 2016 would come from the Toyota line, meaning that Subaru vehicles would be made in mixed production with the Camry on the same line.

Subaru needs more capacity, as it aims for annual U.S. sales of 500,000 by 2016. That's up from an estimated 420,000 units expected this year.

To price cars competitively, it tried offsetting the cost of its sophisticated mechanics by stripping out features and using entry-level trims in the Passat and Jetta.

ranks 23rd out of 33 brands, with 120 problems reported for every 100 new cars within the first 90 days.

"The Passat is up against a redesigned Nissan Altima, a redesigned Honda Accord and a redesigned (Ford) Fusion - all undercutting VW on pricing," said Alec Gutierrez, an analyst with Kelley Blue Book, which tracks U.S. car values.

At the Detroit auto show in January, VW announced plans to make a mid-sized SUV for North America as part of a $7 billion investment in the region. Osterloh lamented that a year after the CrossBlue SUV concept was unveiled, it's still unclear where the model will be built

But one problem continues to hold the franchise back -- a U.S. inventory chain with a few holes in it,

"Rather than trying to assess market needs from here at our headquarters or relying on our retailers to guess, we're designing a new approach to make sure we can deliver the right car at the right place at the right time." The process will give Nissan's sales regions more voice in production planning and make it easier for dealers to find cars in the factory order banks.

Research Association of Automotive Internal Combustion Engines. It pools the resources of Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co., Honda Motor Co., Mazda Motor Corp., Mitsubishi Motors Corp., Daihatsu Motor Co., Suzuki Motor Corp. and Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd., the maker of Subaru-brand vehicles.

The objective is to share costs in an increasingly competitive, investment-heavy field to meet more stringent fuel economy guidelines, organizers

The strategy is patterned after a similar approach taken by competitors in Europe, organizers said. There, rivals cooperate with academia and the government on basic technologies, giving European carmakers a head start in cutting costs.

While Japanese automakers have developed advanced electric and hybrid drivetrains, the creation of AICE acknowledges that internal combustion engines will remain the workhorse of global fleets for a long time, especially in cost-sensitive emerging markets.

Organizers outlined a 10-year time frame for achieving world-leading advancements in combustion engine efficiency.

Engineers target thermal efficiency rates for both approaching 50 percent. That compares with today’s best rates of around 39 percent for gasoline engines and 42 percent for diesel engines. Higher thermal efficiency means more energy from internal combustion is captured for higher engine output. Organizers said such a breakthrough could boost the fuel efficiency of gasoline and diesel engines 30 percent by 2020.

Diesel engine development will focus on eliminating particulate matter and nitrogen oxide emissions, partly through better particulate filters and exhaust gas recirculation systems. Gasoline engine research will focus on achieving more complete combustion cycles and better ignition while reducing knock.

Keiji Ohtsu, managing officer of Honda R&D Co., Honda’s product development arm, will be AICE president.

Bollore’s Bluecars, used in the Autolib car-share program in Paris, can travel about 150 miles per charge

Batteries made by Bollore’s Blue Solutions in France’s Brittany province are cheaper than lithium ion cells used in other electric cars, holding down the cost of his small vehicles

Along with expanding to other U.S. regions such as California, Bollore said he wants to offer his car-share service and electric vehicles to China and other markets.

The FCV will go on sale in Japan first, in April 2015, for the equivalent of about $70,000, with US and European launches planned for the summer.

the FCV would only go on sale in areas like California and Germany, where adequate hydrogen refueling stations and delivery infrastructure existed

cruising range of 700km (about 435 miles

compressed hydrogen’s higher energy density and its ease of storage and transport

The vehicle refuels in just three minutes and only emits water vapor.

Ford engineers saw room to improve the efficacy of knee-level airbags

American upstart may have some difficulty attracting notice among the clamour of a noisy, contentious market.

Lincoln itself is in crisis at the moment

It will demur from an arms race with would-be German rivals who benchmark their cars against one another with lap times. The modern Lincoln aims to deliver simple dynamic precision with a relaxed ambiance.

Lincoln’s current MKZ sedan was a half-step in this direction, but the MKC fulfills the mission more completely

And the company plans to replace its larger MKX crossover and MKS full-size sedan with new models that raise the luxury bar even further.

The U.S. version is expected to be sourced from Mazda’s new plant in Salamanca, Mexico, which opened earlier this year and makes the Mazda3.

Supplemental volume for the U.S. market may also come from Japan, but Mazda has not detailed sourcing plans yet. Currently all Mazda2s are imported from Japan.

U.S. sales of the outgoing Mazda2 surged 42 percent to 7,957 vehicles in the first six months of the year, from 5,594 the year before, as the carmaker cleared out inventories.

But last year, sales of the aging nameplate, which is getting its first full redesign in seven years, slumped 39 percent to 11,757.

That ranked it near the bottom of the subcompact segment, way below such rivals as the Chevrolet Sonic, the Ford Fiesta, the Honda Fit, the Kia Soul, the Nissan Versa, the Hyundai Accent and the Toyota Yaris.

The next Mazda2 will also provide the basis for a new subcompact sedan from Toyota Motor Corp. That car will be made in Salamanca, where Mazda has allocated about 50,000 vehicles for Toyota from its full annual capacity of 230,000 units. While that car will get Skyactiv underpinnings, including a Skyactiv engine, it will have a Toyota-designed body. Output for Toyota is expected to begin after April 1, 2015, but before March 31, 2016.