TorqueNews Hot Topics (Page 113)

Four years in the making and now its second year of production, the first European full production full electric response to Tesla is a British SUV already on its way in Jaguar fashion toward iconic status. If this represents the latest theater of battle in the cultural British invasion of America between David Beckham, tea and toast, the Mini, Elton John, James Bond, Range Rover, fish and chips, the BBC, Duran Duran, Bentley, the Beatles and so forth, then bring it on!

For the last couple of years -- okay, it seems like that long -- Bugatti has been hinting that it would be building an SUV. However, any comments in that direction were just left hanging in mid-air as the commenter moved on to other topics. Now, though, it looks a little more likely. But -- there's always a but -- it will only come if VW (Bugatti's parent) can find the bucks to do the job.

Bollinger Motors recently made changes to the B1 with their newly added four door sport utility BEV SUT truck variant that gives the truck a roll cage structure with the doors off if the driver wishes to modify. The removable glass panel roof are just some of the unique features the B1 engineers thought out to make design and production of the B1 as simple and easy as possible to get it ready for soon upcoming production.

Volkswagen's next-gen Jetta has been receiving accolades since it was introduced a couple of months ago. It is easy to see why. VW designed the new Jetta to be a bridge to the connected car of the future. And, after looking at it more than bit, we an say we agree.

OPINION: As the Tesla Model 3 becomes less of an exotic out in the American wilderness to soon become a common domesticated pet, its oddness will continue to stick out while its familiarity will acquaint the many verses the few. Until then getting stopped by police for a giant screen on your dash should not shock everyone. Here’s what the do’s and don’ts are of getting stopped by police while we give the cops time and patience, please, thank you, to wrap their heads around it.

Which shall it be? Betamax or VHS? Although fully driverless autonomous cars are years and miles away, as we get there shortly, cars need to learn now, how to communicate to each other as they robotize. But car makers are battling each other over older radio DSRC v. the newer cellular V2X, and the debate, like American politics, is getting intense. It’s the same kind of moment we went through when deciding which video platform to use 40 years ago, even 100 years ago which kind of car, gas or electric?

It seems Tesla Corporation has another crisis at hand that they seem able to, in the end, solve one way or another, their way of course, and this time in the opposite of extremes. They are up to their necks with Model 3’s all around them that they can’t deliver them to customers on time. Actually because of either apparent poor planning or lack of a good relationship with several transportation companies to plan ahead, Tesla fabricates its own car carriers so they can ship their inventory.

After not being able to meet a target production date this year due to evaporated funding, Lucid Motors recently did all the things it needed to do to ensure it can meet its next target production date for its first car by 2020. And unlike other electric car companies, it did it quietly without much fanfare.

The President of the United States took delivery in New York City recently of the first of twelve “one-off” handbuilt vehicles which will routinely switch off to be designated the US Presidential State Car, Cadillac One, “the Beast.” Expected to be delivered for his inauguration two years ago, no explanation for why it was apparently late. But with no noteable Secret Service action required lately, its absence wasn’t apparently missed.

ANALYSIS AND OPINION: One of the fringe benefits of golden state citizenry is you get exemption from occupancy rules on California HOV lanes if you drive some kind of electric plug-in. But lately too many single occupant cars are clogging up the lane. They need to narrow the criteria. They started by asking WHO should be allowed access? Instead, maybe Californians need to start a national conversation with a reset to ask exactly: WHAT KIND OF ELECTRIC CAR should have access?

In a segment that was once considered exclusive to Americans only, that no foreign pedigree need apply, the French automaker in a bold and daring attempt to go where no foreign car maker has gone before, produces a concept in electric form with a warning to Ford and Chevrolet, that there’s a weakness with their own muscle pony cars, and Peugeot is ready to take advantage it, in the electric car market.

9/24/2018 UPDATE TO ORIGINAL STORY: A source apparently close to Chrysler is indicating that the rumors that Chrysler is looking to cancel the 300 and Charger sedans are not true. And instead of building the Portal minivan Chrysler is looking to have the Dodge Grand Caravan replaced by a mini MPV based on the Portal Concept instead.

With Type 1 Beetle Mark 3 in its swansong, VW decides in good timing that it’s ready to try its luck and good fortune on another storied halo, that some say as a van, has more potential of being even more popular and longer lasting than Beetle, even as an electric. Let’s hope Samba reaches its 100th Birthday in 2049 that Beetle almost made in 2038 (or earlier?), but didn’t quite live as long.

Instead of going over the top like most car makers do, especially startups when introducing autonomous technology in their concept vehicles, BMW took a more practical approach recently with theirs, called iNext, a new electric driverless capable concept CUV but still a human hands on driving car which includes a steering wheel and pedals. So practical they intend to put something much like it into production in as little time as in 2021.

Meet Vera. She’s Swedish, and she means it, damn it. She’s a badass Level 5 Volvo robot electric tractor pod almost as low to the ground as a Porsche, only three times bigger. So low, if you’re not careful, she might mow you down before her collision avoidance and passive emergency braking systems are autonomously activated! Potential roadkill beware! No airbags need apply . . .

Here’s another ex-Ford that got spit out by the blue oval to go on with life and do better without them, since partnering up with Chinese Geely, Volvo is whipping out some amazing products even a new division, and the baby XC40 electric is a prime example. A BEV competes with Jaguar iPace, Audi eTron, and Tesla Model X, all at Model 3 prices. Another ex-Ford in your future. Not bad!

Instead of waiting to wonder what a Mustang BEV CUV will come to, rogue ex-Forder Aston Martin shows their former boss they don’t even need an SUV platform to electrify one of their products, they can do it on a current production car: their flagship saloon, the Rapide. Attention American Cops: this ex-Ford is definitely a Crown Vic and Explorer Inceptor Killer!

Thieves are hacking Tesla vehicles and their key fobs worldwide with special hacking computer hardware tools to steal the car within seconds. It took Tesla a year to solve it. All this, from the company that wants to bring us a world of electric cars without drivers, the problems that may seem too difficult for Tesla to solve over the electric cars they already have that still need them.

Sono Motors is a Bavarian startup electric car company that actually has a very good chance of making it to production being months/weeks away from making their sole solar BEV with the 7,200 orders they already have. Yes, that’s right, a BEV that has solar panels all over the car that provides a range extending 30 km or 18 miles for the 155 mile battery range a day.

After abandoning plans for Zil, the storied Russo-Soviet official state car builder that was supposed to make Vladimir Putin’s next set of wheels back in 2012, the Russian Federation tapped and funded a government entity to develop a LWB car. Here’s the thing: instead of relying on unreliable Russo-Soviet engineering, they German engineered and are now ready to market this SWB car with Europe in mind. Both cars have Porsche developed engines. I get it now. A Zil this is not. Not bad at all.

In formulating a response to Audi’s rollout of its first BEV e-Tron very soon, more so than responding to anything Tesla, Daimler AG bizarrely unveils a whole year before its debut, its first head-on to Tesla full production BEV, a historical vehicle on its electric E-Mobility platform in CUV variant in the separate Mercedes EQ line. But they baffled the media giving it only a puzzling 200 mile range.

With the continued uptick purchases of trucks and SUVs by US consumers, while global new car sales are slowing down, and gas prices remaining low the last two years, there is now a glut of used EV cars on the market, with bargains to be had if you know where and how to find one for the right price.

In setting up its charging network for its upcoming flagship all electric sports saloon, the Taycan, Porsche gives clues as to how premium, luxury, and performance brands outside of the Tesla universe will be treated until as such time as all brands have access to everyone eles’s networks.

People would laugh at a vacuum company investing money and its reputation in building all electric BEV cars it’s never done before. But Dyson has something that took Tesla years to get and another thing it still doesn’t have, that gives Dyson an edge against Tesla: a manufacturing apparatus to build solid state batteries, and the key patents to make them, which are better than what Tesla is using.

As new car sales slow down for the first time since the Great Recession, car makers have had to make key decisions about marketing and production efficiencies, and Ford is no exception. Ford may be limiting itself with choices that customers will grow tired of, if it’s all about just one car: Mustang.

German camper manufacturer Dethleffs continues its experimentation in the EV camper market with another prototype. The last one we reported was a Type 3 RV EV camper covered head to toe with solar panels. This time it’s a EV RV trailer already in production as a conventional camper, that it’s still hitched to a vehicle, but self propels itself with two electric motors on each wheel. A large battery pack has implications for off grid camping and auxiliary home power.

In opening the first Jaguar Land Rover Classic facility in the US, the first of its kind, JLR is cleverly taking steps to preserve its heritage with the cars already in the wild. By expanding the restoration market by offering electrification and restoration options, it also takes steps not only to help clean the environment, but also cleverly erase the mechanical troubles its cars have been known for, for decades.

Poor Tesla: First it was the Shorts, now even the Russians are coming after them with a new Kalashnikov CV-1 electric car. Kalashnikov wants to build an electric car. But this Russian response from the inventors of the AK-47, to Tesla’s earth soothing, humanity healing, eco-conscious electric car lineup, is a retreaded 1970’s Soviet Era hatchback retro-electrified. Classic car conversion: maybe. State of the art design prototype: no. Roadware! Very nice!

Ohio electric commercial mobility company Workhorse Group has been in the news lately with either new products or updates on the progress of ongoing ones. They diversified their product line by rolling out a new helicopter drone recently in Manhattan. With the recent news of Ford introducing a hybrid, and Tesla’s plans to introduce a BEV pickup, eyes are now paying closer attention to Workhorse and their new pickup.

We have no one to blame for the destruction of the manual transmission except for the few of us that were gifted to know how to use it. If we only knew how few of us existed, maybe we could have coordinated consumer demand to prevent the inevitable from happening. Electrics would have sealed their fate anyway.