Toyota Prius: Roadtest

The Toyota Prius has landed on Indian shores waving the eco-friendly flag. It may be the first word in hybrid cars internationally, but does it really have a place in the Indian automotive scenario? Sopan Sharma hugs trees for a day
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I love our planet and like most of us, hate the climbing heat from our carbon emitting lifestyles. Unfortunately, I love being at the wheel much more, and an afternoon at the garage is preferred over an evening in the park. New propaganda flaming petrol-heads has seen the light in the last few years however, and while IC engines have grown progressively cleaner there is just one real way of showing that you are true-blue-green - the sort that uses only paper bags and has a compost heap in his backyard. It is called a hybrid vehicle, and the best seller of the lot has just made its debut in India.

Some may say that Toyota has lost its sporty edge of late, but whatever it has lost in terms of making erstwhile scorchers like the Supra and the Celica, it has made up for by making increasingly user-friendly, refined and reliable cars. If it had not, it wouldn't be the world's biggest car maker with such fierce consistency. Logical then, that when the world had just begun to see eco-friendly back in 1997, Toyota had already cooked up the solution, sold it and taken home the profits. It was called the Prius, and was the world's first mass-produced hybrid car, since it made use of both petrol and electricity to push itself around. And now it is coming to India with the third avatar of its green crusader - the Prius.

Toyota-Prius_2


Design Dissection

Like most Toyota products, the design approach is on the conservative side, which is welcome for a change on a 'car of the future' like the Prius where it is just too easy to go ultra-radical and create a design inspired from a spaceship. The approach has worked well for Toyota consistently in the past - the non-threatening and civil countenance only widening the appeal of its products. The Prius is no different.

Despite its no-nonsense design, the Prius comes across as a remarkably elegant and more importantly, one of the most identifiable designs on the street. The tall bumper and the absence of a large grille thanks to lower cooling requirements make for a very tidy front. The short and sweetly creased hood stays far from being ungainly, and flows smoothly into the swooping silhouette of the roofline. At the rear, the sweet beak spoiler sets the car apart from almost any other hatchback in the market, and the large tail lamp cluster spreads very well to complete the view.

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Apart from being aesthetically non-controversial, the design of the Prius has a lot of technology riding behind itself. The exterior is a fantastic study in the art of aerodynamics - reduced drag principles applied here not for performance but for green gains. Directing airflow away from frontal surfaces is a big pro, and smart touches like the hidden diffuser at the rear guide the wind around the car in a most unobtrusive manner. Thanks to all the smartly contoured nooks and crannies, the car returns with a class busting drag co-efficient as low as 0.25. To do that without making the car look like a scalpel is certainly no mean feat, and the fact that it still remains easy and pleasant on the eye means high marks for the design.

Housefull tribute to filmmakers of 70s, 80s: Sajid Khan

Filmmaker Sajid Khan says that his upcoming movie
Housefull is a tribute to the iconic directors of 70s and 80s who redefined Hindi cinema with entertaining movies.

Sajid Khan said directors like Manmohan Desai, Prakash Mehra, Feroz Khan, Hrishikesh Mukherji and many others made some of the most entertaining films and Housefull is a "humble homage" to them.

The film starring Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Lara Dutta, Ritiesh Deshmukh, Arjun Rampal, Jiah Khan, Randhir Kapoor and Boman Irani is set to hit the big screen on April 30.

Speaking about his experiences while shooting for the film, Sajid said that filming in Italy was torturous for Akshay Kumar since he couldn't enjoy the gourmet food.

A scene required the cast to emerge from the water with toned bodies and hence they were all on rigorous workout
and diet schedules.

"While myself, Farah Khan and Sajid Nadiadwala would
gorge on the local delicacies the cast couldn't help but watch with envy. Akshay came to my hotel room on the pretense of rehearsing dialogues and ordered food through room service and also told me to keep mum and not tell on him to his trainer Jennifer," said Sajid.

On asking him why he was cheating on his diet Akshay
replied ,"I'm only human".

Similarly, during the film's London schedule, Sajid recalled that his elevator got stuck for almost 30 minutes.

"I used that time to make calls to co-ordinate the shoot," he said adding that when he came out of the elevator, he was still on his phone unperturbed by the incident.

Sajid said singer Shabbir Kumar makes a comeback in Bollywood after nearly a decade in his movie. He has worked for the first time with Shankar-Ehsaan Roy.

He said the Housefull album composed by Shankar
Ehsaan Loy has a feel of the music from the 1980's and Shabbir Kumar made for an ideal singer for one particular number.

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Google Apps get Microsoft touch

Google has upgraded its online package of word processing and spreadsheet programs so that they work even more like the Microsoft applications with
which they're competing.

The changes introduced recently include several editing tools for word processing and quicker ways to fill cells in spreadsheets. The new features have long been staples in Microsoft’s widely used Office suite of software.

Google has been trying to lure users away from Microsoft's products for several years in an effort to siphon revenue from one of its biggest rivals. At the same time, Google hopes to diversify its own business , lessening its financial dependence on Internet advertising powered primarily by its search engine.
Winning converts has taken time because Google requires people to reach its programs over the Internet — a concept that has become known as “cloud computing.” Microsoft's competing applications typically are installed on individual computers.

Kingfisher, Air India flights disrupted

NEW DELHI: Kingfisher Airlines cancelled its flights to London for the second consecutive day on Friday while Air India rescheduled its flights to London, Toronto and New York as airspace was closed over several North European airports due to drifting ash from a volcano in Iceland.

Kingfisher flights from New Delhi to London and from London to New Delhi were cancelled. Also, a flight from Mumbai to London and London to Mumbai were cancelled.

"In view of continuous restriction over UK airspace and closure of London's Heathrow airport, Kingfisher airlines cancelled its flights from Mumbai and New Delhi to London today," Kingfisher spokesperson Prakash Mir Puri said here.

Air India has rescheduled its long haul flights to Toronto, New York and London till 2pm today.

"Due to airspace restrictions, Air India's flight from Delhi to New York, Mumbai to New York, Mumbai-London, Delhi-London-Toronto, Delhi-Frankfurt, Mumbai-Frankfurt- Chicago and Ahmedabad-Frankfurt-Newark will leave after 2 PM today," an AI spokesperson said.

On Thursday, Kingfisher cancelled all its flights to London from Mumbai and Delhi while Jet cancelled two flights from the two Indian metropolises and one from London to Delhi.

Passengers have been advised to call the airline office to know their flight schedule before proceeding for airports, officials said.

The British Air Traffic Control has prohibited aircraft entering certain parts of airspace over the UK as flying ash compromised visibility and debris can be sucked into the engines of aircraft.

The drifting ash clouds also paralysed all the airports in Norway, Finland and Sweden as the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier erupted on Wednesday again for a second time in less than a month.

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Obama asks world to lock down nuclear material

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama warned that terror groups like al-Qaida were trying to acquire nuclear material for weapons posing one of the "greatest threats" to global security and pitched for concrete collective steps to deal with this challenge.

Addressing the Nuclear Security Summit here, Obama said the world would need "a new manner of thinking and action" to deal with the real problem facing the world peace and stability.

"Terrorist networks such as al-Qaida have tried to acquire the material for a nuclear weapon. And if they ever succeeded, they would surely use it.

"Were they to do so, it would be a catastrophe for the world, causing extraordinary loss of life and striking a major blow to global peace and stability," he told a gathering of leaders from 47 countries, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, assembled to discuss ways to prevent terrorists gaining access to nuclear material and know-how.

He said it was increasingly clear that the danger of nuclear terrorism is "one of the greatest threats to global security, to our collective security."