Washington  - Car sales in the United States remained very weak in March, plummeting more than 38 per cent on average from 2008, but carmakers pointed to signs that the market may be bottoming out as they struggle to survive the global recession.

General Motors Corp reported a 45-per-cent decline in sales in March compared to the same month a year earlier. Ford Motor Co said sales fell 41 per cent and Chrysler LLC reported sales dropped 39 per cent.

Berlin  - Ruediger Grube, 57, currently a top executive at car company Daimler, was tipped Wednesday as the German government's choice to head the state-owned railways company Deutsche Bahn.

Sources said Chancellor Angela Merkel and key ministers had agreed late Tuesday to appoint Grube to the hot-seat job, replacing Hartmut Mehdorn, 66, who quit this week after Bahn had admitted to illicit surveillance of its employees.

Tokyo  - Japan's domestic sales of new vehicles fell to the lowest in 38 years as the global economic downturn shaved off consumer appetite for cars, buses and trucks, an industry organization said Wednesday.

Sales of new motor vehicles declined 15.6 per cent in the 2008-09 business year that ended March 31 to 2,891,901 units, which was the first time the sales dropped below 3 million since 1971, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said.

Geneva  - Car parts supplier Mila showcased in Geneva the Mila EV with a modular concept including a fully-integrated electric platform that can serve as a base for several different vehicles and allow for conversion to natural gas, fuel cell and hybrid drive.

The car on show at the Geneva Motor Show is a five-door hatchback with flowing lines and plenty of glass with a continuous line linking the headlights with the side windows. A design element is the sensor stripe on the flanks which acts both as a door opener and battery load indicator.

Born, Netherlands  - Mitsubishi is reducing the Colt model range's fuel consumption with several measures including start-stop technology and roll-resistance tyres, the Japanese car maker has announced.

Start-stop technology would be fitted to the 1.1 and 1.3 litre petrol models on the European market as part of "Clear Tec" measures that reduces consumption of the 1.1-litre model to 4.9 litres per 100 kilometres. This translates to an emission figure of 115 grammes per kilometre. The 1.3-litre model consumption is down to 5.1 litres (119 g/km).

Tokyo  - Nissan has started extensive testing of a fuel-cell prototype SUV based on the Nissan X-Trail that it hopes to have ready for serial production in 2015, reports said.

Compared to a previous model, the latest X-Trail FCV generation power output has been boosted from 90 to 130 kW. At the same time, the fuel cell stack has been reduced in size from 90 to 68 litres, giving the engineers more flexibility in the packaging, the German auto-motor-sport magazine reported.