The plan may as well carry the heading “Operation Don’t Leave Us.” As Ford dealers meet in Las Vegas, the automaker has shifted its focus from luring buyers from other brands to keeping Ford owners in the family.

Helping firm up that relationship are a series of “Built Ford Proud” ads poised to hit the airwaves this weekend, with Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston serving as the brand’s spokesman. For dealers, product assurances top the most-wanted list. Apparently, they got them. (Read More…)

Nissan did Leaf fans a favor when it upped the model’s driving range to 151 miles for 2018, a healthy increase from the previous generation’s 107 miles. Still, 151 miles falls well short of the industry’s nice-sounding gold standard of 200 miles — the figure to beat (or at least reach) for most automakers. With range like the new Leaf’s, long-distance travel remains complicated, inconvenient, and perhaps even impossible.

It’s no secret that Nissan plans to offer an upgraded battery next year, but just how much extra cash you’ll need for that 60 kWh model remained a mystery. Until now. (Read More…)

“A new era begins” in November, Mazda’s YouTube video announces, but the automaker is likely referring to more than just the car seen in the teaser.

The next-generation Mazda 3, snippets of which can be seen in both hatchback and sedan form, will be joined by a new gasoline engine that’s far more monumental than any revamped compact car. (Read More…)

It’s finally here and it’s, um, polarizing. BMW’s largest utility vehicle, the X7, uses the brand’s versatile CLAR platform as a starting point for the most controversially styled Bimmer since Chris Bangle left the building.

Arriving at dealers in March, the X7’s derrière is not, nor ever will be, the main source of viewer displeasure. This large vehicle has a big face and BMW knows it. It’s proud of it. Poised to tackle the likes of Mercedes-Benz’s GLS and other capacious, three-row premium utilities, the X7 makes sure it will never go unnoticed. (Read More…)

A big question mark hanging over the auto industry concerns the rate of electric vehicle adoption, but BMW — unlike some of its rivals — isn’t prone to wild predictions about the public’s enthusiasm for clean, green EVs.

Despite rolling out a global plan earlier this year for 25 plug-in hybrid or electric vehicles by 2025, the automaker knows customers won’t abandon their love of inline sixes and turbo fours just because a big battery batted its eyelashes. It’s keeping diesels around, too. Those other guys, the company’s R&D chief implies, just don’t know how to make them right. And politicians are being unfair.

As for EVs, too many people have unrealistic expectations, he adds. (Read More…)

Nio, originally launched as NextEV in 2014, announced that it had delivered 3,268 electric SUVs in the third quarter of 2018. Not only does this beg the question of when Nio swapped from Formula E and electrified hypercars to utility vehicles, but it also makes us wonder how a burgeoning EV firm managed to surpass production goals. Aren’t all zero-emission automobiles that aren’t developed by established automakers supposed to languish in purgatory?

Answering the first question is easy. Nio started deliveries of the ES8 crossover last June, though it still sells the high-performance EP9 for $1.2 million. We doubt that model provided any significant contributions to overall volume in Q3. The trickier bit of this equation is figuring out how the Nio moved all that metal. While 3,200 cars is a paltry some for a mainstream manufacturer, it’s pretty damn good for a company that just started building a volume electric. Even Tesla would have been envious in 2012.  (Read More…)

Porsche’s Taycan, a slinky electric sedan that used to carry the Mission E moniker, is only a starting point for the German performance brand. Several EVs are sure to follow that model’s 2019 debut, a couple of which saw light shed on them last week.

For the Taycan, it seems Porsche has plans to instill a little 911-themed heritage into its green car flag-bearer, starting with the car’s roof. (Read More…)

Volkswagen’s Passat has long been the choice for Euro-fetishists who believe themselves too good to purchase a Honda Accord or Toyota Camry. That decision was easier to make in 2012, when VW moved 117,023 of them in the United States, diesel cars were still tolerated, and Japan had basically given up on styling its vehicles. But things are different now.

Diesel might as well be a four-letter word when not affixed to trucks and Japan’s automakers have gone mental with their newer designs. Volkswagen only sold 60,700 Passats in the U.S. last year. The automaker needs to work some real magic if it hopes to bring that number up in the years to come. While Europeans get ready to wrap their paws around an MQB-based Passat, Americans remain stuck with an older platform shared with China, South Korea, and the Middle East.

Fortunately, it looks like VW has been hard at work in Asia, delivering a sharp new sedan for the Chinese market that it might share with the U.S. next year.  (Read More…)

The headline should read “teased again,” as this isn’t the first peek we’ve had of the automaker’s upcoming three-row SUV. Much of the model’s visage was already on display a year ago, when BMW unveiled the X7 iPerformance concept. (It’s funny how the passage of time lessens visual horrors.)

A pre-production model also appeared in a photo taken at BMW’s Spartanburg, South Carolina factory late last year, looking no less grotesque than the concept. This is the real thing, however, and a quick brightening of the above photo shows Bimmer took pains to tone things down. (Read More…)

Jaguar Land Rover has a problem, and it’s not Land Rover. The Indian-owned (but still quintessentially British) automaker has seen sales of is fairly vast Land Rover family flourish, at the expense of its Jag models. Sedan sales are grim, and the two SUVs launched to prop up the brand haven’t kept its head above water, volume-wise.

Reportedly, JLR has proposed a radical solution: turn the brand into an all-electric family, thus boosting the corporate MPG of the automaker as a whole while keeping Jaguar viable in a rapidly changing regulatory landscape. Putting aside heritage and associated romance, it’s hard to come up with an argument against it. (Read More…)

According to California Air Resources Board (CARB) certification documents, the Japanese won’t be the only ones enjoying the gutsy turbo 2.5-liter that just landed in that country’s CX-5 crossover. The hotter inline-four would be just the thing to bring additional customers to Mazda’s best-selling model, and it seems the automaker’s U.S. arm has done the groundwork for a potential launch.

Getting the kids to daycare faster is nice, but the changes coming to Japan’s CX-5 aren’t solely about horsepower. (Read More…)

The Buick Cascada, known to Europeans as the Opel Cascada, appeared on North American shores for the 2016 model year, offering buyers (and renters) a pleasant, four-seat replacement for the discontinued Chrysler 200 drop-top.

Now wholly owned by France’s PSA Group, not General Motors, Opel plans to ditch the model once 2019 is up, meaning America stands to lose its last non-sports car convertible. It would also knock the Buick brand down to five models. (Read More…)

Tesla deserves credit for building useable, long-range electric cars, but shares a good deal of the blame for causing the public to associate EV driving with the expenditure of one’s retirement savings. Fledgling technologies carry a steep price in the early days, and other automakers weren’t immune from this reality. A base 2011 Nissan Leaf cost $32,780 before destination and federal incentives and offered 73 miles of range. A 2018 model retails for $29,990 and offers 151 miles.

Volkswagen, currently planning a massive electric vehicle assault on the Western world, knows the price gap between ICE cars and EVs is a major impediment to adoption. That’s why it’s couching its pricing strategy in terms buyers will understand. (Read More…)

There’s a raft of changes coming to Jeep’s Renegade for the 2019 model year, but the brand’s run-down of the various alterations for the U.S. market didn’t include the possibility of a gas-electric variant. That’s what’s coming to the model, however, as Fiat Chrysler looks to ditch its overseas diesel powerplants by 2021 and curry favor with green governments (and buyers).

On Monday, Jeep announced it had begun preparations for the production of a plug-in hybrid variant of its smallest model. (Read More…)

The long-suffering Elio Motors, whose ambition to launch a low-cost, high-MPG three-wheeler was recently revived by the launch of a weird cryptocurrency, is no longer seeking a custom engine for its novel automobile.

Early Elio prototypes carried a transplanted three-cylinder engine sourced from the illustrious Geo Metro, with the fledgling automaker claiming it had a 900cc triple of 55 horsepower in its sights. Well, plans change. The company, which hopes to start production in Louisiana next year, says it has secured a deal with an existing automaker for the car’s powerplant. (Read More…)