It looks like Congress’ new self-driving bill might have to wait until a new batch of unmentionables plant their collective rear ends in the seats populating Capitol Hill. Already passed in the House, the SELF DRIVE Act has managed to garner bipartisan support — a true miracle in these troubled times.

However, it’ll have to spread wings if it wants to be signed into law before year’s end. The midterm elections could stymie everything and force Congress to start all over again. A likely prospect, considering the Senate is still going over the bill.

“This entire process has been an incredible feat of bipartisanship,” Greg Rogers, director of government affairs at Securing America’s Future Energy, told Bloomberg. “Attempting to recreate a bill that’s this ambitious and this significant would be like trying to catch lightning in a bottle all over again.”  (Read More…)

In the wake of a Dallas County judge’s decision to lower the amount of money awarded to a couple whose children were injured in a 2016 rear-end crash, Toyota Motor Corp. plans to continue fighting to clear its name.

A jury found the automaker at fault back in August, deciding that the seatbacks on the family’s 2002 Lexus ES300 were faulty and that the owners were not warned about the dangers. The family stood to receive $242 million in compensation. Due to monetary caps placed on punitive damages in the state of Texas, the final amount was pared back to $208 million.

Toyota isn’t letting the matter slide into the rear-view. The automaker continues to claim that the car’s seatbacks worked fine — the severity of the impact was to blame. (Read More…)

It’s fitting that we’re bringing you this story today. For years, scientists have longed to resurrect a dead corpse, but there’s now a plan afoot to do the same with a long-defunct car brand: Hispano-Suiza.

Known for its production of aircraft engines as much as its series of glitzy, early 20th century automobiles, the original Hispano-Suiza brand ceased to exist in 1968, some 30 years after building its last car. Come next March’s Geneva Motor Show, we’ll see what the founder’ great-grandson has in mind for the brand’s future.  (Read More…)

Faraday Future co-founder Nick Sampson has quit his executive post as the aspiring automaker continues struggling with finance issues relating to its latest financial backer and China’s second-largest real estate developer, Evergrande Group.

That leaves CEO Jia Yueting as the company’s only founding executive left on staff. But it would appear he might also leave, albeit under duress, if Faraday’s largest shareholder gets its way. While it’s not obvious exactly who shot first, the electric vehicle firm and Evergrande are at each other’s throats — ruining a $2 billion deal that was supposed to save the company and get its ambitious debut model, the FF 91, into production. Apparently, it was all too much for Sampson. (Read More…)

Imagine a parked vehicle that slowly sucks dino juice from vast, underground deposits through its tires. That’s essentially what Hyundai Motor Group wants to do with its vehicles, the only difference being the energy source and the direction it’s coming from.

Despite being talked about for years, solar roofs on automobiles haven’t seen widespread adoption. Cost, practicality, and rollover safety concerns mean the largest user of the technology is the Japanese and European-market Toyota Prius Prime. Now, Hyundai wants to go solar in a big way, starting next year.

The automaker wants buyers to know that solar roofs aren’t useless for regular, gas-swilling vehicles, either. (Read More…)

Wednesday morning, General Motors announced third-quarter 2018 earnings “reflecting profitability in all core operating segments.” Operating profits were at $2.5 billion, with North American profit margins hovering around 10.2 percent thanks to healthy truck sales. All in all, things were looking pretty good.

Then GM announced a plan to extend buyouts to salaried employees in the region with 12 or more years experience in order to cut costs. Roughly 18,000 salaried employees are said to be eligible for voluntary severance packages. The reason? General Motors says it wants to do this while the company is still healthy, which sounds like a pretty strong hint that bad times are ahead.  (Read More…)

Pretty much everything is on the table at this point. At least, that’s the way it looks to industry observers. The partnership announced between Ford and Volkswagen back in June has the potential to birth any number of outcomes — from jointly developed commercial vehicles (the initial aim), to badge-swapped overseas small cars, autonomous vehicle hardware, and perhaps even borrowed electric vehicle architecture.

As it prepares the launch of its MEB-platform electric vehicles, Volkswagen’s not saying “no” to letting Ford have a piece of the action. (Read More…)

It’ll have not escaped your notice that the performance arm of FCA is currently going all-in on horsepower. Numbers cresting the 700 mark currently reside in SUVs, while the march towards the stratosphere continues in the Challenger. I firmly believe that, even at 840 horsepower, they haven’t yet reached the upper limits of what a speed-crazed Mopar fan can buy right off the showroom floor.

If that same fan is willing to deal with the “some assembly required” mantra, they can now treat themselves to Mopar’s new Hellephant engine — a supercharged beast making 1,000 horsepower.

(Read More…)

Each one of you here in the peanut gallery learned to drive at one point or another. And whether that was via a proper driving school, or, perhaps for the older types, at the wheel of a friend or relative’s car, the memories are there just the same. Today we talk driver’s education and the car which withstood your naive mistreatment. It’s story time.

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The Korean car maker has long since shed its also-ran status, enjoying sales success and the ability to grab a steadily growing portion of the market share pie.

Unlike a few others who shall not be named, Hyundai believes there are still customers out there who want to buy a well-equipped compact sedan with a price tag under $18,000. It believes this so fervently, in fact, that it refurbished the Elantra for the 2019 model year.

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For nearly five decades, Rolls-Royce and Bentley shared the same bed, then lived amicably under the same roof for another 18 years, becoming ever closer to each other due to dwindling shared finances. Then two Germans showed up and they parted ways, forever.

While still representing the richly browned upper crust of British motoring, the two brands have maintained fairly similar development paths, launching sedans, coupes, and now SUVs in quick succession of each other. Now, because green types look down on ornate, porky, roadgoing behemoths powered by gas-swilling eight- and twelve-cylinder engines, both brands have decided to embrace the environmental movement.

Naturally, news of these tentative electric product plans hit the presses almost simultaneously. (Read More…)

Analysts are projecting U.S. light vehicle sales will decline in October as incentives do the same. Could they possibly be related?

While we don’t have have official figures on how much of the domestic population has a limitless supply of cash, our collective intuition suggests most do not. This leads us to believe the elevated cost of owning an automobile has likely impacted deliveries for this month. Fortunately, the experts seem to agree, predicting the lowest October volume since 2014.

New vehicle incentives have been on the decline for a while now. This looks to be the fourth consecutive month without a rebound — which would make it the longest time frame since the recession, according to J.D. Power. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for automakers, since they’re losing less money on every model sold. (Read More…)

Happen across a Hyundai Ioniq in your daily travels, and it’ll almost inevitably be a hybrid or plug-in hybrid model, not the fully electric variant. That’s because, unless you live in California, the Ioniq Electric is off limits. For now.

With a range that might have once impressed and an entry price starting below $30,000 before government incentives, the Ioniq Electric is an affordable five-door for those who aren’t concerned about brand snobbery or lengthy road trips. Still, Hyundai knows that models that don’t compete, don’t sell. That’s why the little hatch will soon be able to go further on a tank of charged particles. (Read More…)

Automotive enthusiast come in a wider variety of flavors than automakers are sometimes willing to admit. You have the well-heeled supercar community, hot rod fans, off-roaders, van people, and so on and so forth, and what have you. The point is: there’s a diverse array of customers out there, and one segment that has been neglected of late are people who love an unassuming car with a surprising amount of pep.

We need more cars like the Volvo V70 R, Mercury Marauder, and especially the Chevrolet Cobalt SS.

While Kia isn’t giving enthusiasts who prefer flying under the radar at breakneck speed everything they ever wished for, its surprise announcement of the 2020 Forte GT was a solid start. Think of it as the modern and Korean equivalent of the Dodge Dart GTS 440 — or, perhaps more accurately, the Dart Swinger 340.  (Read More…)

Oh boy — what to make of this one? A poster at Mustang6g.com forum claims two sources who attended this month’s Ford dealer meetup in Las Vegas say the Blue Oval has something interesting up its sleeve.

No, it’s not the Mustang-inspired electric crossover Ford expects to launch for 2020 (possibly, but no longer probably carrying the Mach 1 name). Rather, it’s either a four-door Mustang or a Mustang-inspired four-door GT car with premium intentions and an eye for upsized engines.

Okay, let’s pick this apart. (Read More…)