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Nissan completes buy of Mitsubishi Motors; Ghosn new Chairman


Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. (Nissan) has officially completed acquisition of their 34% stake in Mitsubishi Motors (MMC), making it the largest shareholder of the company. This comes only five months after making the formal announcement in May this year.

The acquisition allows MMC to become part of Nissan’s global alliance with Renault. Thus, the new trio will find themselves in the world’s top three automotive groups in terms of global volumes (with sales of 10 million units over fiscal year 2016), joining Toyota and General Motors.

Nissan Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn announced that Nissan and MMC will collaborate on joint purchasing, deeper localization, common vehicle platforms, joint plant utilization, as well as technology sharing. That said, both brands will expand their combined presence in both developed and emerging markets.

Ghosn revealed one of these models to be a rebadged Nissan minivan sourced from Mitsubishi to be sold in Southeast Asia and making Mitsubishi's plug-in hybrid (PHEV) system Alliance standard.

"The combination of Nissan, Mitsubishi Motors and Renault will create a new force in global car-making," said Ghosn. "It will be one of the world's three largest automotive groups, with the economies of scale, breakthrough technologies and manufacturing capabilities to produce vehicles to serve customer demand in every market segment and in every geographic market around the world."

In order to pull their strategy off, Nissan have elected four representatives to the board of MMC – with Ghosn taking the helm as chairman-elect.

The other nominees are Hitoshi Kawaguchi, chief sustainability officer and head of global external affairs; Hiroshi Karube, global controller and global asset manager; and Mitsuhiko Yamashita, Nissan's current representative on the Mitsubishi Motors board.

Samsung Doesn't Love GTA 5 Mod That Replaces Bombs With Galaxy Note 7s [UPDATE]

Samsung has forced a video of the GTA 5 mod offline.
[UPDATE] The video taken down by Samsung has now been reinstated on YouTube. You can watch it here.

Original story: Grand Theft Auto V saw the addition of a new user-created mod earlier this month, when one player replaced the game's sticky explosives with Samsung's Galaxy Note 7. Now, the electronics company has issued a DMCA takedown against a YouTube video that featured the mod (via The Verge).

The mod is a pretty simple one. You throw the Note 7, and it explodes. This is a joke on the phone, which has been the focus of some attention for its tendency to catch fire and blow up. Samsung issued recalls when this first popped up but has since discontinued the product entirely after continued defects.

Despite the removal of one video, there are still several that haven't been taken down yet. You can take a look at one in the embed below. Additionally, the mod can be found here. As always, you should be careful when downloading anything from the internet.

In related news, Grand Theft Auto V publisher Rockstar Games has revealed a sequel to 2010's Red Dead Redemption. It releases next year and will feature "a brand-new online multiplayer experience." A trailer is scheduled to launch on Thursday, October 20, at 8 AM PT.

Who would have thought the Merc is a fun canyon carver...

Holden confirms plan to ditch V8

Holden will ditch its famous V8 engine by the time the new Supercars-spec Commodore is revealed in 2018.

The carmaker confirmed the decision to drop the V8, with a turbocharged V6 or four-cylinder engine the likeliest replacement.

Under new rules for the rebranded Supercars series, the exclusive 5-litre V8 engine formula has been abandoned, allowing scope for different configurations including turbocharged units.

Holden will be the first manufacturer to move away from the V8 which has been used as a mainstay of the series since the early '90s.

"No, it won't be a V8 engine," Holden Motorsport manager Simon McNamara confirmed to Fairfax Media.

"Our new race car will have market relevance because you'll be able to buy an iteration of what we race," he added.

"We've always had the approach that we won't race what we don't sell, so we're going to have a very different car."

Holden confirmed earlier this year that Triple Eight Race Engineering will have exclusive rights to build the new Commodore.

Place sold within 10% of the auction reserve, not bad in this market.

Still puts it in the top 10 most expensive property sales this year in Brisbane!

What? Mercs can be I guess. Actually, I still don't know what the hell diesel SUV Slav got anyway...

Queensland Police issue more speeding tickets than ever; road toll unaffected

Queensland Police have issued an additional 2695 speeding tickets in the first quarter of this financial year compared with the same period last year, bringing in at least $423,000 of additional revenue.

The main change in policing speed has been the removal of warning signs indicating the presence of a speed camera on Queensland roads from July 2015 (the same time that speeding fines also increased in price). Instead, police vans are now adorned with additional police ‘branding’ and in even bigger fonts to compensate.

Queensland road policing command inspector Allan Hales has previously said the warning signs were “too problematic” and a “hazard”, which did nothing to deter speeding motorists.

Considering the lowest speeding fine in Queensland is now $157.00 (for less than 13km/h over), the total amount of $423,000 is likely to be substantially larger as the next level fine is $235.00 (between 13km/h and 20km/h over), with the additional revenue more likely to be above $500,000.

The increase in the number of issued speeding tickets and removal of ‘Speed camera in use’ warning signs comes just two years after tolerance of Queensland’s speed cameras dropped from 10 per cent over the limit before June 2013 to 3km/h in late 2013 (no official tolerance figure has ever been publicly revealed, but sources inside Queensland Police have told CarAdvice that it’s set at 3km/h).

The net effect saw tickets for ‘low-level speeding’ increase by 47 per cent in 2014, majority of which were previously under the tolerance. The difference netted the Queensland Government $5.7 million in additional revenue in that year alone.

Meanwhile, Queensland’s 2015 road toll was 242 – 19 more than in 2014. Queensland Police state that at least 103,000 hours of police time was spent on speed limit enforcement in the 2015 financial year, a more than 50 per cent increase from the same period in 2010, when the road toll came in at 249.

Despite the 50 per cent-plus additional police time spent enforcing speed limits, Queensland’s road toll was only reduced by less than three per cent in those five years, somewhat contrary to Queensland Police’s concrete line that speed cameras save lives.

More interestingly, however, are the actual road deaths that resulted from speeding, which came in at 75 (2009), 55 (2010), 48 (2011), 59 (2012), 47 (2013) and 65 (2014) with 2015 figures shown as 55 up until October of that year – the last date the figures were updated by Queensland transport.

The figures suggest that the rule changes to tolerances for low-level speeding offences had the opposite effect of saving lives in 2014 and 2015 compared with 2012 and 2011, when the 10 per cent tolerance was in affect.

Furthermore, the number of speeding tickets issued by Queensland mobile speed cameras came in at 359,764 in 2012 (59 speed related deaths), 436,080 in 2013 (47 speed related deaths) and 597,959 in 2014 (65 speed related deaths). The figures show a healthy increase in the number of fines issued, but no actual correlation to the reduction of road deaths caused by additional speed camera operation time or ticket issued.

Queensland Police did not respond to a request for comment on this story at time of publication.

Strict speed enforcement detrimental to road safety, study finds

Strict speed enforcement could have a detrimental impact on road safety because drivers are dedicating more attention to monitoring their speed than detecting hazards, a study has found.

Researchers from the University of Western Australia used a driving simulator to test whether reducing the speed enforcement thresholds would impact on a driver's mental and visual abilities.

The study recruited 84 participants who were told they could be fined for driving one, six or 11 kilometres per hour over a 50 kilometre per hour speed limit, and measured their response to small red dots which appeared in their peripheral vision.

Lead researcher Dr Vanessa Bowden said the study found those who were given a one kilometre per hour threshold were less likely to detect objects outside of their immediate line of sight.

"We concluded that drivers' mental and visual resources were being used up by paying extra attention to the speed monitoring task, and this was taking some of their attention away from the visual world around them when they were driving," she said.

The participants were also asked to fill out a questionnaire which asked how difficult or demanding they found the experience.

Drivers who were given a stricter speed limit threshold rated the experience as more demanding.

Dr Bowden said road safety authorities should take note.

"There can be a perception that by making it stricter you're only going to get benefits, like you'll get everyone driving more slowly and more safely," she said.

"But ... you can't necessarily make drivers pay more attention to the speed and go more slowly without taking their attention away from some other critical aspect of driving."

Police said there was a small leeway above the speed limit in WA, but do not publicly reveal what it is.

The researchers will also investigate whether drivers respond poorly to hazards when strict speed limits are enforced.

Dreamworld victim's husband 'had his phone and wallet STOLEN from their baby's pram as he tried to save her'

The husband of one of the women who died in the Dreamworld tragedy had his phone and wallet stolen while trying to save his wife's life, it has been claimed.

Canberra mother-of-two Kate Goodchild, 32, has been named as one of the four victims of the theme park catastrophe.

Citing Ms Goodchild's uncle, the Seven Network reported her heartbroken husband's phone and wallet were stolen from their eight month old daughter's pram.

'Family of #Dreamworld victim Kate Goodchild tells @Y7News husband's wallet & phone stolen from their pram as he tried to save her life,' Robert Ovadia said.
A Queensland police spokesman could not confirm or deny the incident, but said they would look into it.

In a triple blow for the family, Kate's brother Luke Dorsett, 35, and his partner Roozi Araghi, 38, were also killed in the tragic accident on the Thunder River Rapids ride.

Family matriarch Kim Dorsett said in a Facebook post: 'My whole family has been wiped out.

http://www.caradvice.com.au/416913/qld-pol...oll-unaffected/