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Called Musou Black, this paint is said to be the darkest water based acrylic paint in the world. This custom Porsche 911 was painted by Pit One Customs garage in Japan.A 100 ml bottle of the paint will run you a little over $18, so painting a full car will cost a pretty penny.Ever looked at the factory black paint on a car and thought it was too reflective? The team over at Pit One Customs in Japan had that thought . . . and found a solution. For those who want the darkest black paint imaginable, KoPro’s Musou Black paint is said to absorb 99.6% of inbound light.

Pit One Customs

Starting with a regular black Porsche 911, Pit One transformed it into the sleek and shapeless shadow you see here. As cool as this is, it isn’t the first example of an ultra-black, light-absorbing menace of a car. BMW deployed Vantablack coating on an X6 for the 2020 Frankfurt auto show, with similar results.Vantablack is slightly different than this current Musou Black for a few reasons. First, it’s technically a coating designed for components to help absorb heat and protect the integrity of camera lenses attempting to capture images in space (Vanta stands for Vertically Aligned Nano Tube Array). Musou Black, on the other hand, is a water-based acrylic paint.

Pit One Customs

Since the paint is so dark and essentially absorbs all reflections, it’s tough to see the shape of the car it’s applied to. Looking at the 911, the car looks like a shadow of itself, with no distinct curves or edges. The only shapes that are easy to make out are the headlights, which look like Gollum’s bulbous eyes peering out in the dark.
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Nissan has issued a recall on 180,176 of its Frontier and Titan pickups because they could roll while in Park without warning.The issue affects 2020 through 2022 models, which have a standard nine-speed automatic transmission. Nissan says customers should engage the parking brake when their vehicle is stationary while waiting for a fix.More than 180,000 Nissan Frontier and Titan pickups from the 2020 through 2022 model years are being recalled over the potential they could roll away while in Park. In documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Nissan says the problem affects only these pickups and not other vehicles. Both have a Jatco nine-speed automatic transmission, which was new for the 2020 model year.

The vehicles included in the recall are all from the 2020 through 2022 model years and include 123,987 Frontier and 56,189 Nissan Titan pickups. The automaker blames “dimensional variation during the manufacturing process” for causing the parking pawl to fail to engage as intended. This in turn could cause the vehicle to move although the shifter is in Park. However, Nissan estimates only 0.03 percent of vehicles recalled are expected to have the problem. There have been four reports claiming minor injuries, according to documents Nissan filed with NHTSA. Nissan will notify owners beginning July 20, although its plan to fix the problem is still in progress. In the meantime, Frontier and Titan owners can check the NHTSA recalls website for updates and to see if their vehicle is included in the recall.

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Ziggy is a robotic EV charging station that’s designed to live in parking areas, where drivers can summon it through an app to come charge their vehicle.Charging startup EV Safe Charge has been developing the robots since 2019 and aims to have Ziggys shipped by 2024.Roughly the size of a refrigerator, Ziggy is a battery on wheels that will be able to autonomously navigate parking areas to reserve drivers’ spots and charge their cars. And of course, it’s got ads on it.If you’ve driven an electric vehicle, you know the struggle of arriving at a parking lot only to find the sparse EV charging spots all filled up. Worse yet, one of the cars hooked up to the charging port is fully charged with no owner in sight! Oh, the horror of underdeveloped EV infrastructure. A Los Angeles startup named EV Safe Charge thinks it has a solution: Ziggy, the EV-charging robot. Ziggy is intended to be a solution for parking areas looking to implement EV charging but struggling to overcome the limitations of stationary charging systems. The way it works is this: Drivers enter the parking area and reserve a numbered parking spot through an app. When they arrive at their spot, Ziggy is there, ready to charge their car.

EV Safe Charge

The robot is essentially a refrigerator-sized battery with four independently driven wheels and cameras on all sides, allowing it to autonomously navigate from its home base to parking spaces at speeds slower than a walking pace. Though it can’t plug in and unplug your car for you, the usage cost of Ziggy can be based on time to discourage people from monopolizing the robots. Alternatively, parking areas can provide Ziggy’s services for free. It also has two screens with optional touchscreen capacity on the long sides that can display advertisements or parking structure maps.
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Parking areas will be able to lease Ziggys, so maintenance is taken care of by EV Safe Charge, and fleets of the robots can be deployed temporarily for events. While a Ziggy charging station will need to be installed, the system is supposed to eliminate some of the hassle of stationary chargers for both drivers and property owners. Production to Start in 2024EV Safe Charge began developing Ziggy in 2019, working with San Francisco design firm Box Clever to make Ziggy welcoming and intuitive, factors that are important for the integration of autonomous robots into human spaces. The company hopes to start shipping the mobile charging systems by 2024 after starting production in 2023, and it has recently begun taking reservations for Ziggys. It seems like a great idea: EV Safe Charge advertises Ziggy as immediately deployable and easily scalable, things EV charging systems haven’t yet become, really. Anyway, robots are already serving your food at IHOP and fetching packages at warehouses. Deploying to charge your EV at your chosen spot in a parking garage is just another way robots can be helpful. However, there are still some questions surrounding the system. Will some poor Ziggy fall victim to distracted driving? In a tight, one-way parking garage, will drivers get stuck behind the slow rollers? How many Ziggys does a parking area need to meet demand, and how much will the service cost relative to stationary chargers? There’s plenty of time to figure out the answers to those questions, though, so for now, think of Ziggy as a window into some of the unexpected ways EVs will shape the future.
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The Chevrolet Express and its twin GMC Savana will take their final bows after the 2025 model year.The pair will be replaced with electric models similar to the new BrightDrop Zevo 600, though with much smaller capacity. The van pair’s basic designs can be traced back to the 1971 model year, with an all-new model for 1997 and its last major update for the 2003 model year.Last of the big-box American-style cargo and passenger vans, the Chevrolet Express and its badge-engineered GMC Savana clone finally will be discontinued after the 2025 model year, with battery-electric vans replacing them in the 2026 model year, according to a competitive analysis source. Unlike Ford’s new E-Transit battery-electric full-size van, the Express/Savana replacements will be based on GM’s EV-specific “skateboard” chassis and Ultium modular battery pack, and it could be similar in design to the all-electric BrightDrop Zevo 600 commercial fleet delivery van, though very likely quite smaller.The Zevo 600 has cargo capacity of “more than 600 cubic feet,” while the current Chevy Express/GMC Savana has capacity of 284.4 cubic feet for the long-wheelbase version.BrightDrop delivered its first 150 Zevo delivery vans to FedEx last week. Unsexy as this part of the EV business is, it’s huge, with perhaps the best potential to quickly get the automotive business out of carbon-spewing internal-combustion engines. FedEx plans to eventually have 2500 BrightDrop vans in its fleet, on the way to an all-electric vehicle fleet by 2040.The lame-duck GM van twins—their tooling long ago paid off—fall short of Ford and Ram competitors based on much fresher European styling, though the strategy to go directly from 35-year-old designs to EVs might prove smartest. The Chevy/GMC’s basic designs can be traced back to the 1971 model year, with an all-new model for 1997 and its last major update for 2003.
By comparison, the Ford Transit, with three roof height options, has cargo capacity of 246.7-542.2 cubic feet (excluding bare-chassis vans from any of these brands available with larger “cube” cargo boxes that cannot be accessed from the driver’s seat).The BrightDrop Zevo 600’s range of 250 miles practically doubles the Ford E-Transit’s top-range of 126 miles on low-roof versions. The Zevo 600 can be recharged at the rate of 170 miles an hour using a 120-kilowatt fast charger.Ford has delivered some 2022 E-Transits and says the average commercial customer drives 74 miles per day. The 2023 model is now available for order, with cargo and cutaway chassis cabs available.

Ford’s 2022 E-Transit electric van comes in eight configurations, including three roof heights and three body lengths, plus cutaway and chassis cab versions.
Ford

The 2026 BV1 Chevy Express/GMC Savana replacements will add significant volume to GM’s Ultium battery platform—key to easing the cost of the new technology—while the E-Transit is based on the conventional gas-powered Transit van. Ford might not have that disadvantage for long: A dedicated battery-electric Ford E-Transit is expected about the 2027 model year, according to another source in competitive analysis. Stellantis’s Ram is expected to offer a ProMaster EV, also based on the current ICE model, about the 2024 model year.What about window vans? The 2022 Chevy Express/GMC Savana can be configured for seating of up to 15, but there’s no intel, yet, that the BV1 will be available as a family bus. Another key segment for EV conversion—school buses—proves modern battery chemistry makes high-capacity EV passenger vehicles viable. The World Resources Institute this month announced it has tracked commitments for 12,000 battery-electric school buses out of the nation’s fleet of about 500,000, largely consisting of 10,000 diesel-to-EV conversions planned for Midwestern schools as part of the organization’s e School Bus 4Kids initiative. It gets a big push from government: Conversions will be funded by the $5-billion clean school bus program included in last year’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.

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The 2023 Acura TLX Type S PMC Edition will be built at the same Performance Manufacturing Center that is currently building the final version of the NSX, the 600-hp Type S.The TLX Type S PMC Edition will be offered in three paint colors from the NSX—Curva Red, 130R White, and Long Beach Blue.The PMC Edition also gains a carbon-fiber lip spoiler and rear diffuser, as well as blacked-out trim and unique interior treatments paired to each exterior hue. The Acura NSX bows out after the 2022 model year, ending a six-year run with the limited-production 600-horsepower Type S variant. But while Acura’s Performance Manufacturing Center in Ohio will soon be finished building the hybrid mid-engined sports car, the Center’s technicians will stay busy crafting the 2023 Acura TLX Type S PMC Edition, which takes inspiration from the NSX with design updates and a fresh color palette.

Acura

The PMC Edition gains minor visual changes—the roof, antenna, and door handles are painted in Berlina Black, while the quad exhaust tips are finished in black chrome. The 20-inch wheels feature a copper hue, while the special edition also adds a carbon-fiber lip spoiler and rear diffuser, as well as black side sill trim and exterior badging. The PMC Edition will be offered in three colors borrowed from the NSX—Curva Red, 130R White, and Long Beach Blue.

Acura

Carbon fiber also makes an appearance on the PMC Edition’s interior, along with exclusive floor mats and illuminated door sills. Each exterior paint option is paired with a different interior color—Curva Red is matched with a black interior with red stitching, Long Beach Blue comes with an white interior and blue stitching, and 130R White gets a red interior. There is also a small numbered plaque on the lower center console to serve as a reminder of the PMC Edition’s exclusivity.

The PMC Edition also receives the same special post-production treatment as the NSX, with a dyno check, paint inspection, and rough-road simulation test. The vehicles are protected by a car cover and shipped to dealers in closed, single-car carriers. Orders for the TLX Type S PMC Edition will open later this year ahead of a limited-production run, but Acura hasn’t said how much it will cost. Expect a sizable increase over the Type S’s $54,795 starting price.
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