The Nanjing Automobile Corporation, which bought the remaining MG assets two years ago, is about to restart production in China.

LONGBRIDGE, England - MG, the legendary British brand that expired after a lengthy illness, will be revived this month as a Chinese sports car when the Nanjing Automobile Corporation begins to produce convertible sports cars under that name in China.

The rebirth of MG is the latest and most splashy example of how China’s growing economic might is reaching carefully into foreign markets, buying up troubled companies with established brands and using them to build bridgeheads for some of the hundreds of billions of dollars that the country has to invest overseas.

“Within a very small period of time you will see a lot of industries following the same strategy,” said the chairman of Nanjing Automobile in the United Kingdom, Wang Hongbiao, whose stature and demeanor bring to mind Humphrey Bogart.

It is a cautious, even stealthlike approach, and a stark contrast to Japan and Korea, which spent billions of dollars over decades to build recognized brands through exports before establishing a high-profile corporate presence overseas. That era reached its peak with the purchase of Rockefeller Center by Mitsubishi Estate in 1989. These days, China also wants to avoid a political backlash, like the kind that has already scuttled at least one deal.

Still, China is in a hurry, and as it increases outward investment, many of its companies hope to leapfrog the expansion process by acquiring technology and distribution networks together with well-known names on which to build larger businesses.

The investment agency that China is setting up to diversify its $1.1 trillion foreign exchange holdings could provide another boost, particularly as the government sees the entire world - including developing countries in Africa and Latin America - as its stage for acquisitions.

It began when the Chinese television and mobile telephone maker TCL bought the bankrupt Schneider Electronics of Germany in 2002. The computer maker Lenovo acquired I.B.M.’s troubled personal computer business in 2004.

Now, China Qianjiang Group, the largest motorcycle manufacturer in China, owns Benelli, the oldest motorcycle manufacturer in Italy. Shenyang Machine Tool Group has bought the 140-year-old German machine tool maker Schiess. Xinjiang Chalkis, a tomato producer, even owns a French tomato cannery and sells Chinese tomato sauce in Provence. All of those target companies were facing financial crises.

Many of China’s foreign purchases have been focused on energy resources, dominated by big state-owned enterprises like the national oil giants PetroChina and Cnooc, which have spent billions in recent years acquiring oil and natural gas fields. Those deals have helped swell the value of China’s foreign acquisitions to nearly $14 billion on more than 100 deals last year, from just $18.6 million in 1990, according to Thomson Financial, which tracks global investment trends.

But with the largest foreign exchange reserves in the world putting upward pressure on the yuan, China is now happy to have smaller companies invest some of that money overseas.

“Even five years ago, it would have been difficult to get approval for this kind of stuff,” said Jonathan Anderson, chief economist for Asia at UBS in Hong Kong. “But now the government is clearly giving companies a mandate to go out and make acquisitions.”

To encourage outbound investment, the commerce ministry now accepts applications online, and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange has abolished quotas on the purchase of foreign exchange for such deals.

That has led to a sharp increase in deals all over the world.

Wanxiang Group, the biggest maker of drive shafts, shock absorbers and other car components in China, bought the American auto parts companies Schiller, Universal Automotive Industries and Rockford Powertrain, to get into the United States market with established brands.

Samson Holdings, a Taiwanese-owned China-based furniture maker, has done the same by buying the North Carolina furniture makers Universal Furniture, Legacy Classic and Craftmaster Furniture.

In 2004, the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation took a controlling stake in Ssangyong Motor Company, the fourth-largest automaker in South Korea, in order to gain access to that market.

Still, the foreign investments are a trickle at this stage. Nanjing Auto, for instance, paid just over $100 million for the MG assets two years ago. “This is not Japan in the ’80s; this is Japan in the ’60s,” Mr. Anderson said.

Following the pattern of similar acquisitions, Nanjing has retained key managers while shifting much of the labor-intensive production back home where it is cheaper.

Even so, China’s overseas investments have already caused some alarm. In the United States, national security concerns over a takeover bid by Cnooc for Unocal in 2005 killed that deal. And a bid by Haier, a Chinese refrigerator maker, for Maytag was cut short the same year by a quick counteroffer from Whirlpool.

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The goal for A123Systems? battery for plug-in hybrid cars is to achieve 155 miles to the gallon and reduce demand for gasoline by 70 percent.

VROOOOM! Or, rather, much more softly: brmmm.

A123Systems, a start-up in Watertown, Mass., says it has created a powerful, safe, long-lived battery. If the cell fulfills the ambitions of its maker, that softer sound will be the future of automobiles.

To date, all-electric vehicles have failed because their batteries were inadequate. General Motors’ futuristic EV1 car of the late 1990s was doted upon by environmentally conscious drivers who admired its innovative engineering, but because the car used large, primitive nickel metal hydride batteries, its range was limited, its acceleration degraded as the batteries weakened with age, and its two-seat layout was not very comfortable for big, corn-fed North Americans.

“The problem came down to usability,” said Nick Zelenski, G.M.’s chief vehicle engineer. “You had to plan your life around when you were going to charge the EV1.” G.M. built only 1,117 of the experimental cars because it believed that American drivers would not buy such an affront to the national ideal of the open road.

Now, G.M. is planning two plug-in hybrid vehicles. Like the Toyota Prius and other available hybrids, the G.M. models will supplement their electric motors with power from internal combustion engines. What’s different is that most of the power for daily commuting will come from battery packs that can be recharged from ordinary household sockets. The new models are expected to have a range of at least 40 miles without using their gas engines. While that is less than the range of the all-electric EV1, the hybrid nature of the new models will give them far greater total range.

G.M. says that the extra cost for the battery packs mean that plug-in hybrids will sell for thousands of dollars more than comparable, non-electric vehicles. But the average driver, going 40 miles a day, would also save $450 a year if gasoline were $2 a gallon. Because the median daily travel of the average American car is 33 miles (well within the new model’s electric range), the cars would achieve 155 miles to the gallon, and many drivers would fill up with gasoline only every few months.

G.M. hopes to begin selling the first car, a plug-in hybrid version of the Saturn Vue sport utility, as soon as 2009. The second, the Chevrolet Volt, which exists only as a concept-model prototype, is a startling departure from traditional automotive design. The Volt’s internal combustion engine is not attached to the drive train as current hybrids are. In the case of the Volt, it is used only to recharge the vehicle’s batteries. In short, the Volt would function as a true electric car, with the insurance of an internal combustion engine - and not coincidentally it is also designed as a recognizably conventional American compact, seating five, which could drive hundreds of miles to Mother’s at Thanksgiving.

“The real breakthrough is with the new batteries, which offered us energy density - which in turn provided us with a reliable, high-powered package in a relatively small space,” Mr. Zelenski said.

G.M. selected A123Systems (along with its partner Cobasys) to develop batteries that might be used for the Saturn Vue, he said, and it is considering awarding A123Systems a similar contract for the Volt concept car, to take advantage of the company’s remarkable new rechargeable lithium batteries.

Rechargeable lithium batteries have been used in laptop computers and mobile phones since the early 1990s. (Their common name, “lithium ion batteries,” is a tautology, since all batteries conduct electric current by allowing the passage of ions between two electrodes.) But despite their lightness, rechargeable lithium batteries - which often use a compound of highly reactive cobalt oxide - have hitherto been thought impractical for transportation because they are insufficiently powerful and might, if pierced, jarred or overheated, explode or burst into flames.

A123Systems batteries are different. Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor of materials science and engineering at M.I.T. and a co-founder of A123Systems, described their advantages: “Used in a hybrid vehicle, our batteries deliver faster acceleration than any other batteries of the same size,” Professor Chiang said. “And the chemical stability of the cathode material greatly improves safety as well as extending battery life.”

The history of A123Systems offers a lesson in entrepreneurial adaptability. When Professor Chiang and two others founded the company in 2002, it was devoted to a radical business proposition: it hoped to develop a technique where component materials would “self assemble” into a practical lithium battery. “Imagine sprayable batteries, conforming to the shape of a device or an appliance,” Professor Chiang said. “They could also be deposited in very small volumes to power micro and nano devices.”

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Jason Pontin is the editor in chief and publisher of Technology Review, a magazine and Web site owned by M.I.T. E-mail: pontin@nytimes.com.

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Investors are now searching for a holy grail that symbolizes wealth in both profits and what?s good for the environment.

NILAND, Calif. - The idea of replacing crude oil with algae may seem like a harebrained way to clean up the planet and bolster national security.

But Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones and her husband, David Jones, are betting their careers and personal fortunes that they can grow masses of the slimy organism and use its natural photosynthesis process to produce a plentiful supply of biofuel.

A few companies are in a race to be first to convert algae to fuel on a commercial scale, and it will require not a small amount of money, luck and biotech tweaking.

“You have a vintage here that you are not sure is going to mature into anything good, and you are putting money into it on the off chance that it might,” Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones, acknowledged during a drive the other day to an algae-filled catfish farm in this secluded desert town.

Like thousands of other pioneer venture capitalists over the last two years or so, these two San Francisco Bay area investors have trolled through the dizzying, complicated world of renewable fuels - from wave power, to hydrogen fuel cells, to lithium batteries, to cow manure for making methane. And just like their predecessors of the dot-com boom a decade ago, they have come up with their very own gamble, started their own company, called LiveFuels Inc., and are now negotiating with other potential venture capital partners.

What is different, though, about Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones and this latest entrepreneurial wave is that the search is for something that both produces profits and offers something good for the environment. One goal, for instance, is to find an energy-efficient way to convert algae into fuel, which is why she was visiting a catfish farm here that was for sale. Farmed catfish could provide a useful source of carbon dioxide for the algae, as well as a critical revenue flow to keep research going. The timing may be just right. With oil prices at high levels and fears of global warming growing, the old world of conventional hydrocarbon energy has been joined by an alluring new array of alternative-energy gadgetry, technical wizardry and potential riches. But there are still many more blind alleys than successes, and sleepless nights go with the territory.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of start-ups in the alternative-energy business, some so tiny they are run out of home basements. But the bigger ones are beginning to take off. A handful are now building at least three demonstration plants to convert wood chips and grasses into ethanol in the United States and Canada.

Meanwhile, venture capital firms and hedge funds are financing the construction of new plants to produce biodiesel fuel out of vegetable oil, larger and more durable wind turbines and new materials to make cheaper solar cells.

While still on the fringes of the energy mix, United States venture capital flowing into clean energy leapfrogged to more than $2.4 billion in 2006, well more than double that invested in 2005, and more than triple from 2004, according to Clean Edge, a research and consulting firm. The numbers are still small compared with the research budgets of the big oil companies, but the ascent of venture capital in renewable energy has reminded some Silicon Valley venture capitalists of the early flow of money into the Internet in the mid-1990s.

“Venture capital in energy has reached a critical mass,” said Daniel Yergin, the energy historian and consultant. “Enough is happening so that significant things will come out of this. With the same intent to do in energy what they did in biotech, they bring not only money and discipline, but they are results-oriented.”

One Seattle-based start-up, Prometheus Energy, attracted enough equity capital in the last three years to open a plant in Orange County, Calif., in January that for the first time produces liquid natural gas commercially out of landfill methane gas that would otherwise waft greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Another venture capital favorite, Jadoo Power of Folsom, Calif., has already pioneered portable hydrogen fuel-cell technology for remote satellite phones, critical emergency radio communications and police surveillance, and it is now working on cells for home use to free customers entirely of their utility bills.

“I can honestly say that for the first time in my life we are seeing the venture capital community put sizable amounts of money into energy,” Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman said in a speech in Houston last month. “This is real money. They are betting, if you will, that clean, safe, affordable energy represents the new innovation frontier.”

To this group add LiveFuels, with its improbable company jingle that goes “from pond to pump.”

“If the U.S. put 15 million acres of desert into algae production, we could produce enough volume of liquid fuels to get us off the Middle East oil addiction and give Iowa back to the songbirds,” said B. Gregory Mitchell, an algae research biologist at the University of California, San Diego, who is a friend of Ms. Morgenthaler-Jones and Mr. Jones.

The company projects that in three years it can produce some biofuel, which theoretically could eventually be produced in quantities of as much as 20,000 gallons of fuel a year per acre of algae.

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Before long, cameras in cars may monitor your face and heartbeat, and if you start to nod off the steering wheel will vibrate and a fan will blow air on your neck.

AFTER a tough week at the office, the highway stretches ahead of you. The car is warm and the engine hums. Your eyelids slowly close.

And then, there’s a sudden puff of air on the back of your neck. The steering wheel vibrates in your hands and a buzzer sounds. Your car is waking you.

The car has been watching your face and, through the steering wheel, feeling your pulse. It knew you were about to fall asleep.

Indeed, falling asleep at the wheel is not uncommon. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a 2002 report that an estimated 1,500 people a year were killed and 71,000 injured in more than 100,000 crashes caused by fatigue. The study covered the 1989-92 period, the latest for which numbers were available.

Think of it this way: Drivers often close their eyes for up to three seconds at a time as drowsiness approaches. At 70 miles an hour, that’s like driving the length of a football field with your eyes closed.

“This whole issue is sort of a symptom; people are busier than they ever have been, they spend more time on the roads, they’re struggling to keep up, they spend more time behind the wheel and they’re exhausted,” said Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association, based in Washington.

Ksenia Kozak, a Ford biomechanics engineer with expertise in the way people connect to technology, said we all might nod off to some extent when we’re driving long distances. The cause is something most of us do: shifting our internal clocks by working extended schedules that violate the day-night cycle, shorting ourselves on sleep and undertaking critical tasks like driving at a time when the body just wants to snooze.

At Ford, Dr. Kozak led a study last year of sleep-stressed drivers in a simulated Volvo in the Virttex (Virtual Test Track Experiment) simulator. The drivers, deprived of sleep for 23 hours, drove for 3 hours.

Dr. Kozak’s team found it possible to cut incidences of lane wandering in half by giving drivers an alert when the car was about to stray. She said the best warning was one that vibrated the steering wheel while also turning it slightly in the correct direction.

Interviewing the drivers, Dr. Kozak said she found that most of them were honest about how drowsy they felt at various times, but not very accurate about how they were performing. Sleepy drivers characteristically overestimated their alertness and abilities, she said.

Automakers and traffic safety experts have long sought a cure for the drowsy driver, using both low- and high-tech systems. The problem has been that low-end technology, like a wearable device connected by wires that would sound a buzzer when a driver’s head flopped forward, was cumbersome and ineffective, while high-tech systems like one that used infrared beams to measure head-nodding were too complex and pricey. The solution has been physical, installing rumble strips and marking lanes and center lines using raised “Botts Dots” to give a thumping-tire warning, a potential last-chance reminder. These passive measures have reduced crashes caused by cars wandering off the road by 20 to 50 percent, according to the Federal Highway Administration, but technology companies are looking to actively warn drivers even earlier.

Today, with tiny computer-chip-based video cameras and in-car software, automotive suppliers may finally have the technology riddle solved to create systems that could be produced in the next decade.

Among them, the Denso Corporation of Japan showed its air-puffing, wheel-vibrating system as a concept display during the Detroit auto show. Siemens VDO of Germany has been developing a system meant initially for commercial truck fleets that would watch truckers’ eyes for the first signs of sleepiness, then issue a warning.

Eyelid flutter is not the only detection option, said a spokesman for Bosch, the automotive supplier. It has been developing a system that monitors the steering wheel and pedals for lapses typical of the onset of sleep. Other companies, including I.B.M., are working on variations of the systems.

Some smaller manufacturers, like AssistWare Technology and Attention Technologies, both of Pittsburgh and both building on research from Carnegie Mellon University, are selling aftermarket camera-based systems.

Douglas Patton, senior vice president for Denso in North America, said the key to any system was not so much the type of warning it gave as the way the system caught a driver drifting off.

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The bright lights and unfettered optimism of the auto show here cannot chase away all of the clouds hanging over the industry.

GENEVA - The bright lights and unfettered optimism of the auto show here cannot chase away all of the clouds hanging over the industry. During press previews this week, Ford put on a happy face as it introduced a new Mondeo sedan for the European market, even while it undergoes the latest attempt to cut thousands of jobs and turn around a business that has been losing billions of dollars.

DaimlerChrysler rolled out a sunny roadster design study, the Dodge Demon, in the midst of speculation about whether it will sell its troubled Chrysler operations, and if so, to whom.

Still, the overall message from Geneva seemed to be that the future looks brighter - and greener. Hybrids seem to be here to stay, even on a continent that has been slow to embrace them. The Geneva show featured hybrid concepts for sports cars, family cars and crossover utility vehicles.

The Geneva show is also known for being eclectic, and that description fit well this year. The halls of the Palexpo center were filled with electric cars, upright minivans, exotic supercars and bizarre vehicles that tried to be all of the above.

Back-to-back press conferences - often barely 10 minutes long - kept the air thick with PR spin and manufactured excitement. Here are some highlights from the introductions this year:

Audi A5 and S5: A battle among rich German two-doors is shaping up, and these coupes represent a salvo from Audi, aimed at the Mercedes-Benz CLK and the new BMW 3 Series. The Audis are based on an entirely new vehicle platform that will be the basis for future models. Both have strong, solid-looking lines but a fairly conservative appearance, provoking some heated debate in the press as to whether the cars are subtle and handsome or as dull as a Senate filibuster. The A5’s standard engine is a 3.2-liter V-6; the S5 has a 350-horsepower 4.2-liter V-8. Both versions are due to arrive in the U.S. this fall.

Dodge Demon: Pity the pretty Demon. Under any other circumstances, at any other auto show, this slick little roadster would have been guaranteed star status. The Demon adopts the look and attitude of its big brother, the 510-horsepower Dodge Viper, with an economical 2.4-liter 4-cylinder and proportions nearly identical to the nimble Mazda MX-5 Miata. But with DaimlerChrysler potentially on the verge of splitting up (and the short list of suitors to buy the Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep brands growing shorter), the Demon looked like a four-wheel attempt to put on a brave face, rather than a real contender for series production.

Toyota Hybrid X: Flush with success - and cash from continued sales successes - Toyota can afford to have some fun. The press conference for the Hybrid X was short on technical specifics, but this Toyota concept car still provided a welcome jolt of frivolity in an environmentally friendly package. Laurent Bouzige, a designer at Toyota’s Europe Design Development offices in Nice, France, was responsible for the Hybrid X’s interior. Mr. Bouzige explained that crystal-like rods serve as door handles and window switches; in addition, the headlights theoretically “communicate” with pedestrians and other drivers by alerting them to any quick maneuvers by the driver. While most of the technology is decades away - and nearly all the technology in the Hybrid X is nonfunctional - it doesn’t take much crystal-ball gazing to deduce that the overall shape of the Hybrid X will influence the next-generation Prius hybrid.

Mercedes-Benz C-Class: Depending on which model you were looking at on the Mercedes-Benz stand, the 2008 C-Class is everything from a rampaging racecar to a green machine with a fuel-sipping diesel engine. A wide range of 4, 6 and even 8-cylinder engines will be offered, though the American market will initially get only gasoline-powered V-6s. There is even an option of two different grill treatments: the traditional version has plenty of chrome and a proud Mercedes-tristar hood ornament, while the other is bolder but has less bling, featuring an oversize tristar at its center. C-Classes will arrive in the United States this summer with either 3-liter or 3.5-liter V-6s. A six-speed manual is available with the smaller engine, but the 3.5-liter V-6 comes only with a seven-speed automatic. High performance versions with powerful V-8s are also in the works.

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The Mazdaspeed 3, a higher-performance version of Mazda?s compact hatchback, is a standout in the ranks of pocket rockets.

WHEN they introduced the Mazda 3 sedan and four-door hatchback-cum-wagon in 2003, the Mazda people had a spiel that went something like this: “The kids these days! They want everything! They’re paying 16 grand but they want a mini-Mercedes, so that’s what we have to give them. Even though, back in our day, entry-level cars had cardboard steering wheels, and if you wanted a sunroof you had to wait for a rust hole to form above your head — which usually took only a couple of weeks.”

The basic Mazda 3 really does offer everything you’d reasonably need in a daily driver: tasteful, high-quality interior design and materials; plenty of space; and high-end options like a Bose stereo and a navigation system.

The 3 is based on the same platform as the Volvo S40, and it drives like a more expensive car; quiet and refined on the highway, composed and willing on twisty roads. When people tell me they’ve bought a Mazda 3, I congratulate them heartily.

The stock 3, even with its wimpiest engine, is a car that encourages enthusiastic driving. In fact, a couple of years ago I was banned from the test-drive area at a Mazda Rev It Up autocross event when I got a bit too frisky with a 3 sedan and committed flagrant orange-cone-icide.

So it was with no little glee that I took the keys to a 2007 Mazdaspeed 3, which is not only the most powerful version of the 3, but, with a top speed of more than 150 m.p.h., the fastest car Mazda makes, period.

The Mazdaspeed 3 is built on the hatch/wagon version of the 3’s platform, and retains all the usefulness of that configuration. The visual signifiers of its abilities are subtle — most of the front sheet metal has been reworked to accommodate the breathing and cooling demands of the direct-injection turbocharged 4-cylinder engine, yet there’s no towering hood scoop or Airbus-sourced rear wing. (Yes, I’m talking to you, Mitsubishi Evo and Subaru WRX STi.)

The aesthetic value of the Mazdaspeed 3’s smooth underbody tray will be lost on everyone but the guys in the pit at Jiffy Lube.

The fun bits of this car are all secreted away beneath the conservative skin. The 2.3-liter turbocharged beast that lives between the front wheels puts down 263 horsepower and a fairly insane 280 pound-feet of torque. (For comparison, the uprated motor in regular Mazda 3s makes 156 horsepower and 150 pound-feet of torque.)

A limited-slip differential helps convert that energy to motion, and 18-inch wheels and low-profile tires, combined with a lower, stiffer suspension, ensure that the chassis can cope with higher cornering speeds.

Inside, you get heavily bolstered Mazda-speed-embroidered seats to hold you in place while you row through the six forward gears of the manual transmission. The finished product is a drastically more capable version of its former self, something like the transition from a BMW 5 Series to an M5.

But most other factory tuner cars — from BMW’s M Works, Mercedes-Benz’s AMG division, Chrysler’s SRT, Audi’s S- and RS, even Subaru’s STi — base their firebreathers on rear-drive or all-wheel-drive chassis.

That is not a coincidence. Putting a lot of horsepower into a front-drive car is like pouring Scotch bonnet pepper sauce on your corn flakes. The result may be exciting, but you’ll surely end up questioning whether it was a good idea.

Here’s what happens when you floor the gas pedal in a Mazdaspeed 3: If you’re steering anywhere except straight, the engine-control electronics withhold the full monty of thrust. Once you’re steering dead ahead, full boost comes on and whacks the front tires with furious vengeance.

New-school turbocharged engines, like BMW’s 3-liter 6, strive to disguise their forced induction with creamy linearity. The mandate is to mimic a larger, naturally aspirated engine so you can’t tell you’re driving a turbo.

The Mazdaspeed 3, on the other hand, is joyful in its turbo-ness, trading driveability for glorious, unadulterated power. When you floor the gas, the little 4-cylinder takes a beat or two to build up some revs, and then the turbo hits so suddenly that the tires start jackhammering the pavement with wheelspin — and that’s with the traction control on.

That’s how quick, and how hard, the power hits: it outruns its own electronics, which would, you’d think, know what to expect. If you nail the takeoff just right, however, 60 m.p.h. can be yours in less than six seconds.

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Consumers have begun to report problems with these tires, including their harsh ride, their expense and the elusiveness of replacements.

RUN-FLAT tires, which have been offered on some new cars for the last few years, are a soothing security blanket. They can be driven for miles after losing their air, allowing drivers to delay fixing a flat until there is a safe place to stop and avoiding a harrowing tire change along a busy highway.

But consumers have begun to report problems with the tires. Jennifer Stockburger, a senior tire-test engineer for Consumer Reports magazine, said the tires offered a safety advantage, but the tire forum on its Web site (consumer.org) had many complaints from run-flat owners about higher-than-expected replacement costs, difficulty getting repairs and what some considered excessive wear.

Some owners have been unhappy enough to make a federal case of it, resulting in two class-action suits. The latest was filed on Monday in United States District Court in Los Angeles against Honda and Michelin.

Tire company officials say that run-flats, which typically have stronger sidewalls to support the tire when it loses air, should wear just as well as conventional tires and that problems often result from poor maintenance, including improper inflation.

Run-flat tires are offered on fewer than 3 percent of the vehicles in North America, said Tom L. Chubb, the vice president for original equipment marketing for Michelin North America, which makes several types of run-flat tires. He sees that growing to 4 percent by 2011.

Run-flat tires are most often found on luxury vehicles. BMW has been the most enthusiastic proponent among the leading automakers, and seems likely to make the tires standard on most models eventually. Run-flats are also showing up on less expensive cars like the Mini Cooper S.

Run-flats have also reached upscale family vehicles including minivans like the all-wheel-drive Toyota Sienna and the Touring edition of the Honda Odyssey.

Tire makers said that in the case of a blowout, a vehicle with run-flats was easier to control. Automakers like the tires because no spare is necessary. That means the space gained can be used to carry more cargo or make mechanical changes. For example, eliminating the spare tire in the 2004 Toyota Sienna allowed the company to turn a front-wheel-drive minivan into all-wheel drive by making room for a driveshaft.

The suit filed on Monday is over the Michelin Energy LX4 PAX run-flat used on the 2005-7 Honda Odyssey Touring and as an option on the 2006-7 Acura RL. The suit doesn’t dispute that the tires offer a safety advantage, but says buyers were deceived about replacement costs and repairs.

The PAX, instead of having stronger sidewalls, has a supportive ring inside made of polyurethane. Michelin said the ring allowed a more comfortable ride and better fuel economy because the sidewalls did not need to be so stiff, yet the vehicle was still safe and easy to drive when a tire went flat. But it is that design that makes the PAX more difficult to repair.

Michelin stores or car dealers must have special tire-changing equipment that can cost $3,000 to $15,000 depending on what the dealer already has, Chris Naughton, a Honda spokesman, said in an interview before the suit was filed.

He said some dealers did not have the equipment yet, but that about 90 percent of Honda’s roughly 1,000 dealers would have it by the end of this month.

Mark F. Anderson of San Francisco, one of the lawyers who filed the suit, said it was “ridiculous” that repairing a PAX tire should be so complicated. Mr. Anderson also filed a class-action suit in 2005 against Toyota, Bridgestone and Dunlop over run-flats used on the 2004-6 Sienna with all-wheel drive.

Lynn Mann, a Michelin spokeswoman, said the suit had “many misstatements and errors.”

Mr. Naughton of Honda said the company had not seen the suit, but that the tire was a “great product that provides convenience, added safety and peace of mind for our customers.” Although not a plaintiff in the suit, Maria V. Ocampo, an Odyssey owner from La Mirada, Calif., has had what she describes as a love and “there is room for improvement” relationship with PAX tires.

She has had two flat tires and loved being able to still get her children to school and reach work on time.

“I didn’t have to panic,” Ms. Ocampo said. But she says she has had several disappointments.

She had to call Michelin to find a Honda dealer that could repair the tire. Also, she says her tires wore out after 20,000 miles; a Honda dealer recently told her that a new set would cost $1,600, including installation.

“That is a lot of money for us,” she said.

Acura is not requiring its 250 dealers to buy the special repair equipment because few RL’s are sold with the PAX, Mr. Naughton said. He said about 15 percent of Acura dealers had the equipment.

For travelers who can’t find a shop to fix the tire, Michelin said it could get a PAX tire and wheel delivered to customers in less than 12 hours.

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In the latest version of the Nissan Quest, designers said goodbye to its aggressive styling and its truly weird interior.

TESTED: 2007 Nissan Quest.

WHAT IS IT? A refreshed, toned-down version of a minivan that was thoroughly redesigned as a 2004 model.

HOW MUCH? $24,995, base model; $28,105, for the SL; $35,505 for the SE.

WHAT DRIVES IT? 3.5-liter V-6 (235 horsepower); five-speed automatic.

WHAT CAN IT HOLD? Up to seven people and 32.3 cubic feet of cargo behind the third row; 145.7 cubic feet with second and third rows folded.

HOW THIRSTY? E.P.A. rating (on premium fuel) is 18 m.p.g. in town, 25 on the highway.

MY family and I spent 10 days in the refreshed Nissan Quest in Michigan, where people really know their cars, without a single person asking about the van or commenting on its interior.

That is a good thing.

Three years ago, when testing the 2004 Quest, we were met everywhere by questions about its somewhat aggressive (for a minivan) styling and its truly weird interior. That van had center-mounted instruments; a horizontal, ovoid console with a joystick-style shifter; and reddish leather upholstery in an animal pattern from some frightening chimerical beast. Reactions ranged from amused to appalled.

In the latest version of the Quest, which went on sale last year, Nissan designers said goodbye to all that, and we thank them.

The exterior was little changed, with the same mildly pointy snout rearing up to vaguely equine haunches. While the look was a bit radical for minivan-land three years ago, it now seems fairly mainstream.

The chief changes in this midcycle redesign are inside. The totally redesigned dashboard puts the speedometer and main instruments in front of the driver where they belong, not in the middle of the dash. The center control console is vertical, not horizontal, and the shifter is configured normally. The audio, climate and navigation controls are in the expected places and do not require six hours of training.

The old SE’s bizarre upholstery has been replaced by understated leather — in my test car, a rich chocolate brown that Nissan calls Chili. Nissan kept the three rows of skylights, the long sliding doors and the adjustable middle-row seats. The third-row folding mechanism has been simplified, no longer requiring removal of the headrests. The overhead console has reading lights, ventilation outlets and eight-inch DVD screens for both the second and third rows.

Interior materials have been upgraded and toned down. The small-diameter leather-wrapped steering wheel was especially nice, and the front seats provided more lateral support than the drivers’ chairs found in most minivans.

All versions have head-curtain air bags from front to rear; the SE has supplemental front seat side-impact bags, too. Traction control is standard, but stability control comes only on the SL and SE. All models get antilock brakes and tire pressure monitors.

The only engine is Nissan’s excellent 3.5-liter, 24-valve V6, tuned to deliver 235 horsepower and 240 pound-feet of torque. In the Quest, this engine doesn’t growl like it does in some of Nissan’s sportier models. All-wheel drive is not available.

The ride was comfortable and side-to-side sway was better than with some competitors. But road and wind noise were higher than in the segment’s quality leaders, the Honda Odyssey and the Toyota Sienna.

Still, there is no question that the new Quest is a big improvement.

JOHN M. BRODER

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Recent concept cars from two of Ford?s foreign subsidiaries are pushing the envelope, envisioning more expressive and more extroverted cars.

STEVE MATTIN has a problem with old Volvos: there are so many.

“There are millions of boxy ones out there,” Volvo’s new vice president and director for design grumbled in a recent interview. “We want to move beyond the box.”

One might assume that Volvo would view an abundance of old cars on the road as a rolling testament to the virtues for which it is known: durability and a functional design that transcends fashion. But Mr. Mattin wants to recast Volvo’s visual cues. “We want to evolve our design DNA,” he said.

Design DNA is a label for the basic visual elements that a family of cars has in common - the look of a grille, the angle of a roof, the shape of the taillights. These are what make a Ford look like a Ford or a BMW like a BMW.

Once, the husbandry of design DNA was intuitive, but these days, many designers are trying to delineate design traits exactly, even scientifically, like mapping genomes. Brands in the Ford family have been especially focused on this effort.

At Lincoln, for instance, seven distinct identity traits - from a split grille to horizontal-strip taillights - have been identified, and four or five must appear on future models. All seven traits can be found on the Lincoln MKR concept sedan unveiled at the Detroit auto show in January.

While Mr. Mattin is aiming for younger buyers and a wider market for Volvo - “We want to pump up the visual volume,” he said - another Ford brand, Mazda, is looking into the future for visual themes. Mazda has developed three hypothetical cars that chart a design direction over the next 13 years. The fact that those cars will never be built is beside the point - they only light the way.

At Volvo, Mr. Mattin isn’t seeking dramatic change. After all, it was his boss, Peter Horbury, the director for North American design at Ford, who outlined Volvo’s existing design cues in his earlier job as design director for Volvo. Rather, Mr. Mattin, who like Mr. Horbury was born and educated in Britain, sees an evolution.

As laid out in the XC60 crossover concept shown in Detroit, Mr. Mattin’s vision of post-boxy Volvos is of more complex and sculptural shapes. He envisions more expressive and, as he puts it, more extroverted cars.

Mr. Horbury began his evolution of the Volvo look by the giving the cars a pronounced shoulder, or catwalk. The catwalk is both an echo of 1950s Volvos and a way of softening the high, solid sides of the boxy Volvos that followed, whose sheer bulk and slab sides implied safety. Mr. Horbury gave the sides a high shoulder, rounding off the box in a way that still looked solid, though less utilitarian.

Now Mr. Mattin has angled the catwalk and reshaped the box as two wedges - a greenhouse atop a body - with sculptured sides. Mr. Mattin and his designers - Steve Potter is credited for the exterior, Justin Scully for the interior - accentuated the catwalk and other elements. Solidity, once represented by upright slab sides, is now signaled by expressive scoops into the body, with a depth implying thickness. “I want the cars to be recognizable as Volvos from twice as far away,” Mr. Mattin said.

To pump up the visual volume even at night, Mr. Mattin placed small lights beside the grille so the shape is visible in the dark; he also accentuated the lighting of the arched rear end.

Mr. Mattin, who spent his previous career at Mercedes-Benz in Germany, where he designed models like the small A-Class and the R-Class wagon, is highly aware of the way light changes in Sweden, with its seasonal variation of long days and long nights. He wants Volvos to have big windows that bring in light, and bodies instantly recognizable as Volvos during the long nights.

On the grille, with its diagonal slash of chrome, the logo that Volvo calls the iron sign is larger. For those who dozed through chemistry class, the ancient sign for the element iron is a circle and arrow. In biology, the symbol stands for male (though in American suburbs, Volvos have an image of being driven by women).

The XC60’s upright rear window is a new cue for Volvo, expanding on the similar one on the new C30 (and the P1800 of Volvo’s sportier past). Beneath the broad glass, Volvo is spelled out in huge, widely spaced letters, a virtual banner for brand identification - turning the design language back into written language. The same big letters also show up on the new V70 wagon introduced last week in Geneva.

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In getting European automakers to adhere to new limits on carbon dioxide emissions, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany will have to take on the industry at home.

GENEVA, March 6 - Europe prides itself on its pioneering approach to climate change - a commitment that Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany aims to deepen in her term as president of the European Union.

There is just one problem: her country, home of the autobahn and the Porsche sports cars that tear along it, is among Europe’s worst offenders when it comes to cars that spew carbon dioxide into the air.

To persuade Europe to accept stringent new cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, as Mrs. Merkel plans to do at a European Union summit meeting in Brussels this week, she must also face down the German auto industry, which has, until now, done little to make its cars more climate-friendly.

German auto executives concede that they will have to do more, especially since passenger car emissions account for 12 percent of Europe’s total emissions, and are rising rather than falling, unlike overall greenhouse gases here. But the industry’s reluctance to fully embrace the fears about climate change was palpable at the International Motor Show in Geneva this week.

“We are at the moment in a hype phase, or you can say, a hysterical phase, and we have to wait until the smoke is gone,” Norbert Reithofer, the chief executive of BMW, said in an interview. “When we have all the facts on the table, we can have a realistic view about the future.”

Skepticism aside, Mr. Reithofer said BMW was already equipping its cars with new technology that made their engines burn less fuel and emit fewer gases. The public would be surprised, he said, by the reduction in emissions that BMW will achieve by the end of next year.

Still, BMW and its rivals Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Audi, will fall well short of the reductions they and other European manufacturers pledged to reach voluntarily, from 1998 to 2008.

Stung by this failure, the European Commission has proposed making those cuts mandatory by 2012. Under its plan, new cars could emit no more than 120 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer (192 grams per mile). In 2004, average emissions were 163 grams per kilometer.

“They had a long time to comply, and they didn’t do it,” said Stephan Singer, the head of the European climate and energy unit at the World Wildlife Fund in Brussels. “It tells us that voluntary agreements don’t work.”

Not all European carmakers are climate offenders. Fiat of Italy, which has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by almost a third since 1997, is not far above the 120-gram target. The French carmakers Renault and Citroën, which emphasize smaller cars, are also within striking distance.

And the Germans do make some climate-friendly cars: DaimlerChrysler showed off its Smart minicar here, which falls under the emissions cap, while BMW’s new diesel 1-series, a subcompact, comes close.

The trouble is, Germany’s auto industry derives most of its profit, not to mention its global renown, from its speedy high-performance cars. Unlike Toyota, which has turned hybrid vehicles like the Prius into a calling card, German carmakers emphasize engineering brawn.

In Geneva, for example, Audi thrilled enthusiasts with its new R8, a two-seater that has more in common with a racecar than with other Audis. Across the hall, visitors mobbed Porsche’s sports cars.

“The top speed of an average new car made by BMW, Mercedes and Audi is 235 kilometers per hour,” or 146 miles per hour, said Werner Reh, head of the transport department at Bund, a German environmental group. “If you build racing cars, you can’t really reduce consumption.”

Environmentalists argue that the simplest way to cut emissions would be to impose a speed limit equivalent to 75 miles an hour on the autobahn. Germany is the only European country that permits drivers to go as fast as their cars, or their nerves, will let them - though on limited stretches.

Yet few German politicians, even Mrs. Merkel, have come out in favor of a speed limit. To Germans, newspapers here say, a no-limit autobahn is like pasta to an Italian or a baguette to a Frenchman.

Some German auto executives predict dire consequences if the new limits become law. A strict emissions cap of 120 grams, some note, would rule out most of the models that BMW, Mercedes and Audi now produce - to say nothing of Porsche, the biggest emitter. That would have untold consequences for an industry that is one of Germany’s largest employers.

They also argue that it is unfair to penalize companies whose high-end cars may emit fewer gases, in the aggregate, than small cars.

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