Opel Ampera Car of The Year 2012

He has clearly prevailed on Volkswagen up! and Ford Focus.

It is the Opel Ampera, the winner of "Car of the Year 2012", the most important and prestigious international recognition accorded to production cars. The car with so-called extended-range electric power of Opel - has already received more than 7 thousand orders in Europe - has prevailed with an advantage over Volkswagen up! and Ford Focus.

The seven finalists were Edition 2012 Volkswagen up!, Toyota Yaris, the Citroen DS5, the Ford Focus, the Range Rover Evoque, Fiat Panda and Opel Ampera / Chevy Volt. 59 judges participated in the vote, that international journalists specialized in the automotive world, coming from 23 European countries.

The verdict of the jury of international journalists have thus chosen as early as last year, an ecological model that is powered by electricity. To win the title of "Car of the Year" in 2011 was in fact the electric Nissan Leaf.

2012 Car of the Year Standings

1. Opel Ampera / Chevy Volt : 330 votes
2. Volkswagen up! :  281 votes
3. Ford Focus : 256 votes
4. Range Rover Evoque : 186 votes
5. Fiat Panda 156 : votes
6. Citroen DS5 : 144 votes
7. Toyota Yaris : 122 votes

November 2014 Sales Volvo USA Is Tanking Before Dawn Of New XC90

We’re still a few months away from seeing the first new XC90s at Volvo dealers in North America and many more months away from discovering whether it can rescue the brand’s fortunes on this side of the Atlantic.

Like an overdue baby who doesn’t want to leave his mother’s womb for this cruel, cold, callous world, the XC90 must be planning to dig in its heels (or wheels?) as stevedores attempt to drive it off Swedish docks onto North America-bound ships. Surely Volvo’s newest three-row crossover can’t be looking forward to joining a family of progressively more disappointing vehicles.

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• U.S. Vehicle Sales Rankings By Model - November 2014 YTD
• U.S. Vehicle Sales Rankings By Model - November 2014 YTD
• U.S. SUV Sales Rankings By Model - November 2014 YTD

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Setting aside the fact that Volvo Canada didn’t sell a single S80 in November 2014 – that’s just plain embarrassing – the U.S. situation last month was especially poor. See, it’s not just the age of the outgoing XC90 that’s been bringing down Volvo sales. The brand’s other models, almost without exception, are selling at a far slower rate this year than last year even as the U.S. auto industry expands at a healthy 5.5% clip.

The C30 and C70 left us before the second XC90 could even get here, and their disappearance resulted in 3539 fewer January-November sales this year than in 2013.

The new V60 attracts an average of 420 buyers per month, but only 314 V60 sales were reported by Volvo in November, the model’s lowest-volume month yet.

S60 sales are down 13% this year but fell 29% to just 1017 units in November. That total marks the lowest-volume S60 month in nearly four years. (398 were sold in December 2010 when the second-generation car was ramping up.)

The always-unloved S80? Volume is down 4% to 1674 units this year and fell 10% in November to just 155 sales. No, the S80 was never popular, but Volvo USA sold an average of 11,350 S80s on an annual basis between 2002 and 2008. 2014 will be the sixth consecutive year of U.S. sales decline for the outdated sedan.

The XC70 posted a 4% gain in November and sales are up 4% to 4623 units this year. Likewise, XC60 volume was up 10% in November, but sales are down 5% in 2014 to 17,197 units. The Acura RDX and Audi Q5 sell more than twice as often; the Mercedes-Benz GLK nearly twice as often.

Brand-wide sales tumbled 14% last month as U.S. new vehicle volume rose 5% to 1.3 million units. Volvo earned 0.3% of those sales. In 2004, the XC90’s best year, Volvo’s market share was a completely respectable 0.8%. They sold more than 39,000 XC90s that year and more than 100,000 other vehicles. In other words, the XC90 didn’t carry the brand on its own. 72% of Volvo sales in 2004 were generated by something other than the XC90. Hypothetically, if the S60, S80, V60, XC70, and XC60 could do nothing more than halt their decline in 2015, Volvo would still need to sell approximately 45,000 XC90s in order for the brand to top the 100K mark.

That’s not going to happen, particularly not in 2015, as the XC90 will be late getting started. But even if the XC90 is nothing more than a sign that Volvo has returned to form, even if its  nothing more than sufficiently successful to halt Volvo’s decline – Volvo brand sales are down 9% in the U.S. this year – we can hope that its successors will be prepared to restore Volvo to North American health.

This article appeared in full earlier today on The Truth About Cars.

Coming up A library of human brains in US

The Digital Brain Library at the University of California is being done with the help of some 300 brain donors.A unique library, a library of human brains, is being assembled in San Diego, US. It is being done with the help of some 300 brain donors, which include people from all walks of life, some of whom are healthy and some of whom have life-threatening brain disorders.
The Digital Brain Library at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, is a unique attempt to understand human brain.
The actual effort began a few years ago when The Brain Observatory at UC San Diego was charged with the examination of the brain of Henry G. Molaison, an amnesic who famously could not hold any memory longer than twenty seconds. Molaison died in 2008, endowing his brain to The Brain Observatory, headed by neuroanatomist Jacopo Annese. "Its the most important brain in the modern history of medicine," Annese said.
The patients undertake a series of tests during the course of their lives - and then donate their brains when they die. Slices of their brain are scanned and the images are digitally preserved, allowing doctors to search for clues to both neurological diseases and the secrets behind human longevity.
Annese says the librarys wealth of information could also help doctors discover the telltale signs of serious brain illnesses long before they actually appear