It certainly sounds like Ford is close to selling a self-driving Fusion real soon.
That, Matthias Müller finally comes to the U.S. to ask “You mad, bro?” Nissan has no love for Takata, and business is hot south of the border … after the break!
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General Motors announced Monday that it would invest $500 million in ride-sharing service Lyft to help boost the automaker’s business in car-sharing companies and perhaps rental cars.
The automaker announced that the investment — roughly half of Lyft’s latest round of fundraising — would buy the automaker seat on the ride-sharing company’s board of directors. Lyft, which is based in San Francisco, is valued around $4.5 billion, which is significantly less than the $62 billion valuation for rival Uber, according to the New York Times.
GM said the companies would partner on rentals for the car-sharing company, connectivity and autonomous technology.
“What do I gotta do to get you to drive out of here in a brand-new 2016 Chevrolet Malibu today?”
That, Ford and Google are moving to the country, Hyundai halts in China and Volvo’s wagon spied in some guy’s garage … after the break! Read More >
Speaking to Automotive News, BMW of North American CEO Ludwig Willisch said the company expects that nearly half of their 2016 sales will be of crossovers for 2016 — and it’ll only go up from there.
“In the first nine months (of 2015), across the board, we had too few X1, X3 and X5s,” he said.
For this year, BMW expects that 40 percent of its sales will be crossovers, up from 34 percent last year.
“In a couple of years when we have the X7, it will be even higher,” he added. BMW’s crossover lineup consists of the X1, X3, X4, X5, X6 and soon-to-arrive X2 and X7. Are there any numbers BMW can invent between 1 and 8?
A picture is worth a thousand words, or millions of dollars worth of cars not built by the United Auto Workers.
That, and Buick is planning a surprise for Detroit, oil prices are ever-so-slightly up, a super mullet El Camino, and Manny, Moe and Jack … after the break!
Audi on Monday delayed construction of a new wind tunnel because of the company’s massive diesel scandal, but announced that it would invest nearly $3.3 billion for 2016 — including bringing to market a new Q2, an updated Q5 and a SUV based on the concept shown above in two years.
The automaker’s chief, Rupert Stadler, affirmed the company would release a battery-powered vehicle by 2018, inspired by the e-tron quattro concept revealed at Frankfurt.
No word if the delayed wind tunnel would have allowed Audi to develop real mirrors.
The fine, fine reporters at Yahoo Autos have learned that Ford and Google will announce next month a joint project to build self-driving cars.
According to the report, Google and Ford would spin off a separate company for the project, and Google would still shop around its technology to other automakers.
Both Ford and Google wouldn’t comment on Yahoo’s report, which said three sources familiar with the plans divulged the relationship ahead of their announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month. Read More >
The fine, fine folks over at Car & Driver spotted a trademark filing made by General Motors for “Corvette E-Ray,” which probably means they’re going to ruin the Corvette soon.
The trademark filing was made on Dec. 16, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, about three weeks after General Motors applied for a patent for a “Hybrid Powertrain and Modular Rear Drive Unit.”
Wait, what … so you’re saying hybrid, mid-engine brown manual Corvette could be real? Kill my mind. Read More >
Tesla chief Elon Musk and more than 40 other executives called on the California Air Resources Board to release Volkswagen from its mandate to fix thousands of polluting cars in that state and instead invest that money in electric vehicles.
Musk, and other executives including Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said regulators would more effectively reduce emissions to “cure the air, not the cars,” according to the letter:
A satisfactory way to fix all the diesel cars does not likely exist, so this solution side steps the great injury and uncertainty that imposing an ineffective fix would place on individual diesel car owners. A drawn out and partial failure of the process will only exacerbate the public’s lack of trust in the industry and its regulators. By explicit design, this proposal would achieve, in contrast, a minimum of a 10 (times) reduction in pollutant emissions as compared to a complete fix.
The next-generation Nissan Z (which may or may not be: 1. A crossover; 2. Real; 3. Inspired by a bicycle; 4. FWD; 5. All of the above) may be less expensive than the current car, Nissan design chief Mamori Aoki told Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.
A lower price would appeal to a younger generation who can’t afford the Z’s current $30,000 price tag, Aoki said. Well, yeah.
Interestingly, the report notes that a less-expensive Z could make room for a more powerful Nissan sports car that isn’t called a GT-R. Aoki told the newspaper that the GT-R would remain a flagship performance car that wouldn’t compromise speed for something as silly as price. Wonderful.
Honda announced Friday that it had found a logjam in its news department, and summarily fixed the problem by releasing a month’s worth of news for the automaker in about an hour.
The logjam apparently precluded the release of information it had for the North American International Auto Show next month, namely an Acura sedan concept with hood lines like an NSX and hips like a Playmate.
The so-dubbed “Precision Concept” will make its bow next month and foretell the company’s future plans for performance sedans. According to Car and Driver, Acura general manager John Ikeda said there was much to be read into the car’s long hood — which may mean a longitudinally mounted mill and rear-wheel drive. Read More >
Ford will have a rear-wheel drive, hybrid F-150 truck by the end of the decade, Ford CEO Mark Fields told NPR on Tuesday.
“Well, we do have plans to have a rear-wheel drive hybrid truck but the end of the decade. So yes, we’re working on electrified F-series, and it’s really around a conventional hybrid,” Fields said during an interview.
The automaker announced earlier this month that it would invest $4.5 billion in electrification and will unveil a refreshed hybrid Fusion at the North American International Auto Show next month as part of that plan. The hybridized, full-size pickup will arrive by 2020, although the automaker doesn’t plan on total market domination for the truck — at least right now.
Here’s some of the news you may have missed if you were out fighting the holiday crowds and spreading some of that Yuletide cheer by burning the hell out of some cookies you were planning on giving the neighbors. Read More >
According to a report from Allpar, Chrysler’s model mix might be getting a major re-shuffle compared to Sergio Marchionne’s much touted five-year plan shown in 2014. While Allpar doesn’t list a source, a recent investor presentation marked Chrysler’s future lineup as “under re-evaluation”.
The five-year plan called for a new C-segment sedan, which was dubbed Chrysler 100, and a slew of other new product.
With fuel prices expected to stay at their current level until at least 2020 and the market eschewing smaller cars for crossovers, the time may not be right for the Chrysler 100 in North America, reports Allpar.
Multiple outlets are reporting that the vehicle seen in this teaser photo from Volkswagen is none other than an electrified version of the Microbus concept and it will debut at the Consumer Electronics Show next month. The photo follows an earlier report by Autocar (which has since been updated with the same photo and new text) that said Volkswagen would bring a new Microbus to the Las Vegas convention.
We won’t disagree. We also won’t hold our breath for a production model.
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