It really has been a half-decade since Kia unveiled its fabulous GT concept, and it’s been almost three years since the company pretty much confirmed that a production version would see the light of day. A kissing cousin of the Genesis G70—which is to say it’s in the neighborhood of BMW’s 3-series in size and intent—the soon-to-arrive GT will be known as the K8 in its home market. Now, what looks to be a photo of a production car has surfaced over at Kia-World.net.
The Genesis G70 is slated to arrive sometime in the middle of next year, but the Kia could beat it to market. We’d expect the GT to start a bit below the G70 price-wise, given the premium positioning of the Genesis marque. Under the hood, a turbocharged gasoline four-cylinder likely will power the lower-end models, while the uplevel variant of the GT should get a version of Hyundai’s fine 3.3-liter twin-turbo V-6 (which in the G90 practically obviates the need for the 5.0-liter V-8). Diesels will be available elsewhere in the world, but they almost surely won’t reach our shores.
Expect rear-wheel drive at launch, although given the Snowbelt’s demand for AWD everything, all the time, we wouldn’t be surprised if four driven wheels arrive soon thereafter. While it’s not quite as svelte and sexy as the GT concept, it fits firmly in line with the Korean brand’s current design language, visually bridging the gap between the K900 and the Optima. Further details are sure to emerge as we get closer to what’s likely to be a 2017 Detroit auto show debut.
Cadillac took the wraps off a brand-new race car today while simultaneously announcing that it will return to motorsports this winter, competing in the Prototype class of IMSA’s Rolex WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
The car takes the name DPi-V.R (catchy, no?), with DPi standing for Daytona Prototype international. The DPi-V.R uses a Dallara chassis, one of four approved constructors in the Prototype class. Power comes from a naturally aspirated 6.2-liter V-8, the racing engine’s displacement echoing that of some of Cadillac’s street vehicles. Look for output of about 600 horsepower, motivating 2050 pounds of race car.
Two teams will field the Caddy racers: Action Express (two cars) and Wayne Taylor Racing (one car). Wayne Taylor has some Cadillac endurance-racing history, as he was a driver during the brand’s last outing, at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2002. His 2002 co-driver, Max Angelelli, will once again take the wheel here, sharing driving duties with Taylor’s sons, Ricky and Jordan. The Action Express team, meanwhile, has won all three Prototype titles in the fledgling series.
The DPi-V.R will make its racing debut—battling against entries from Nissan and Mazda—in January at the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona.
Are you the proud owner of a brand-new 2017 Ram 1500 with a Hemi badge on the fender? Does the 5.7-liter V-8 promised by that badge seem to lack a little, er, oomph? Maybe it’s time to pop the hood and do a quick spark-plug count: Apparently, Ram accidentally put Hemi badges on a bunch of 3.6-liter V-6–powered 1500 pickups it sold to customers.
Automotive News brings us the story of Fiat Chrysler Technical Service Bulletin 23-053-16, a repair procedure so delightfully brief, we’ve reprinted it here in full:
TSB NUMBER: 23-053-16
GROUP: Body
DATE: November 15, 2016
SUBJECT: Hemi Emblems Installed On Vehicles Equipped with A 3.6L Engine
SYMPTOM/CONDITION: Customers may notice Hemi emblems on the front fenders of their 3.6L engine and midnight package vehicle.
OVERVIEW: This bulletin involves removing the Hemi emblem on the front fenders of specifically equipped vehicles.
1. If the vehicle has Hemi emblems installed and the vehicle does not have a Hemi engine, the emblem will need to be removed.
This is most assuredly not the first time such a mistake has happened, and the AllPar forum discussion about this Ram mishap is full of examples of mislabeled vehicles being sold without the engines or drivetrains their badges promised.
In the end, it’s a mistake nearly anybody could have made, although we imagine some owners of the affected trucks would undoubtedly prefer that Ram install a Hemi V-8 rather than remove the badging.
The Honda CR-V has always been a go-to vehicle for reliability and functionality at an attainable price, and despite getting a dressier makeover, the all-new 2017 model remains an affordable family option. The entry-level, front-wheel-drive LX with a 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine starts at $24,945, up only $200 from 2016.
The biggest changes to the lineup are the introduction of the new 1.5-liter turbocharged inline-four and the elimination of the SE trim, which previously sat one step up from the LX. For 2017, the LX absorbs the SE’s 17-inch aluminum wheels and is the only model that uses the naturally aspirated engine that used to power all CR-Vs.
The second tier now belongs to the EX, which brings the turbocharged engine into the picture for a starting price of $27,595. The EX-L trim opens at $30,095 (up $650 from last year), the EX-L with navigation starts at $31,095, and the top-spec Touring is $33,295. All versions come with the option for all-wheel drive for an extra $1300.
Thanks to the new engine, the 2017 CR-V is slightly more economical. The EPA rates the 2.4-liter at an unchanged 26 mpg city/32 mpg highway with front-wheel drive, while the all-wheel-drive version remains at 25/31 mpg. The turbocharged engine does better, earning 28 mpg city/34 mpg highway with front-wheel drive and 27/33 mpg with all-wheel drive.
As previously outlined in our full 2017 CR-V information rundown, all variants come standard with a capless fuel filler, LED lights, a multi-angle rearview camera, and steering-wheel-mounted audio controls. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto capability and two rear USB ports are notable tech additions to the EX trim. Oh, and the volume knob is back. That alone might be worth the slight uptick in price.
Mercedes-Benz, with the introduction of an entire new sub-brand called EQ—teased by this Generation EQ concept from the Paris auto show earlier this fall—is committing to electric vehicles for the long haul. The launch of Mercedes-Benz’s first EQ model won’t happen until calendar year 2019—almost three years out. In the meantime, there’s much work to be done to put the new sub-brand on the map, not just with the electric vehicles themselves but with the apps, connectivity, and the interface.
That’s where the whole EQ ecosystem comes into play. Just in case you’ve been living in a Westfalia and still use a flip phone, no, “ecosystem” doesn’t mean we’re talking about annual rainfall, soil erosion, and a delicate balance of species, but rather a holistic, Apple-like integration of it all. It’s no longer the exception but the expectation that everything will work in harmony: hardware and software, car and smartphone, driving and being driven, owning and sharing. Every company is talking ecosystem nowadays—so much so that there are even wannabe automakers who are boasting about their vehicle ecosystem long before they offer a car.
There will be plenty of EQ ecosystem to tease in addition to the cars, we learned in a recent interview with Mercedes Cars’ vice president of sales and product management, Matthias Lührs. And while EQ will offer a different user experience, the vehicles themselves are seen as a natural extension of Mercedes-Benz’s electrification strategy, according to Lührs, so the first step toward EQ will be the introduction of plug-in-hybrid versions of every single vehicle in the Mercedes-Benz model range by 2020. “From next year onward, we’ll have 10 vehicles as such—the broadest model range of plug-in hybrids in the luxury market,” he said. “And we see huge customer demand in that respect.”
Lührs said the success of EQ—and the effort ramping up to it—depends on three things: customer demand, infrastructure, and regulations. “We see that more customers are asking for electric vehicles, but the total number is still very small—between 2 and 5 percent of the market.”
Although the automaker is calling EQ a sub-brand, it won’t be limited to just a core model or two like BMW’s i sub-brand. Following the GLC-sized electric crossover—the EQC, we’ll call it—the EQ range will be expanded with a new model about every year after that, according to Lührs, effectively becoming a full-line brand. Some of them will ride on conventional platforms, while others will have shared underpinnings with Mercedes-Benz models; all of them will have distinct sheetmetal and EQ-exclusive interior layouts. “In all, we’re planning to have 10 all-electric vehicles in the next eight or nine years,” he said.
Among the major German automakers, Volkswagen Group and BMW have made major investments to help bolster and support existing U.S. vehicle-charging networks. Mercedes-Benz hasn’t made any such commitments yet and will need a charging solution to bring into its EQ brand, but it’s something Lührs can’t discuss at this point.
“Obviously, in this industry, everyone—including Tesla—is still learning, and so everybody is still talking to everybody,” conceded Lührs. “It’s too early to say that this has already been decided and we’re only talking to this supplier or that.”
And, of course, the ecosystem does have to fit in here somewhere. “Connected vehicles, autonomous vehicles, shared services, we call it an ecosystem . . . we see interdependencies,” summed up Lührs, who pointed to those as core ideas for the EQ brand. And we might see some signs of that ecosystem—in the form of EQ-branded home-charging hardware, or perhaps an app, prior to the GLC-sized all-electric crossover that will arrive in 2019.
Although the sharing aspect of the EQ brand won’t fully take form for a few years, it will most definitely gather from Daimler’s experience with its car-sharing subsidiary Car2Go—which now competes with BMW’s ReachNow and GM’s Maven, among others, and will soon face Volvo’s Lynk & Co, itself a sub-brand of stand-alone sharing-oriented vehicles. “With Car2Go, we are one of the pioneers—if not the pioneer—also with pure electric vehicles [with the Smart Fortwo Electric Drive in some markets],” said Lührs. “We will further expand on that, and with the Car2Go brand we have a very good field where we can test and see what customers are preferring, and then hopefully build on that, and that is part of the whole ecosystem of EQ.
“Imagine one day—let’s say, at the latest, in 2025—there might be a new EQ S-class coming around the corner, and you’re calling it through your EQ app. The car will be picking you up, driving autonomously in the garage, and then picking up the next person. We’re talking about car sharing here—fewer cars on the road, a very friendly ecosystem, and very convenient. You don’t have to call Uber. You call your EQ.”
What Lührs described sounds remarkably close to the vision of, well, almost every other automaker nowadays. But with Mercedes-Benz’s luxury pedigree and its well-earned reputation for engineering, innovation, and fully baked active-safety technology, EQ might translate to a full ecosystem like no other.
November 29, 2016 at 5:02 pm by Bob Sorokanich | Photography by Rob Dahm/YouTube
As you may have heard, YouTuber Rob Dahm is building an outrageous third-generation (FD) Mazda RX-7 featuring a four-rotor Wankel engine. It’s an engine layout that has never been used in a production car before—every factory rotary vehicle has come with only two, at most three, rotors in its spinny-triangle engine. And, as you can imagine, building a four-rotor is way more complicated than just joining two twin-rotor motors at the eccentric shaft.
Jason Fenske of Engineering Explained is here to elucidate just what it takes to build a four-rotor engine that won’t tear itself apart the first time it’s fired up. Just as in a piston engine, the firing order has to be precisely engineered. Imbalanced combustion events will create terminal stresses, bad news for any engine, but especially bad in a high-horsepower build. Dahm is aiming for a 10,000-rpm redline in this monster rotary, so everything has to be done to exacting precision.
The answer? A unique firing order unlike anything you’ve seen in the familiar two-rotor Wankels that prowl the streets of the world. Here’s Engineering Explained to show you the how, and the why, of this unique engine.
Shortly after Nash-Kelvinator and Hudson joined forces against the postwar industrial might of General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford in 1954, the freshly minted concern popped out the Rambler Rebel. While Rambler traces its lineage back to a bicycle built during the latter quarter of the 19th century, “Rebel” was a fresh, new nameplate from a firm attempting to fend off a trio of daunting foes. After a four-model-year run, AMC retired the Rebel badge after 1960, only to wake it from its slumber in the heady days of the late ’60s and goose it with a performance-oriented SST trim level.
The ’66 Rambler Rebel was a transitional model, a halfhearted cop of the muscle car template laid out by John Z. DeLorean two years before with the GTO. In ’67, however, while GM, Ford, and Chrysler intermediates were still clinging to the curves and creases of their mid-’60s designs, AMC launched the squared-off Ramblers, though the historic marque itself wasn’t long for our shores. The Rebel stuck it out a year longer in the U.S. market than hoary old Rambler managed to, surviving the end of the ’60s. For 1970, the AMC Rebel stood as its own machine before giving way to the Matador badge for ’71, a nameplate which came to exemplify chest hair and impotence in equal measure during the doldrums of the Malaise Era.
So what do we have here, then? The last year of the Rambler Rebel models, the dorky cool of the stoic, blocky, late-’60s AMC design language, and the desirable SST trim. All well and good. The kicker, of course, is that it’s a damn wagon with a mere 24,000-odd miles on the odometer. According to the seller, the owner purchased the car new and basically parked it once the warranty ran out. It’s the archetypical nerd’s semi-musclewagon, with what’s apparently its original 343-cubic-inch V-8, a three-speed automatic transmission, boss American Motors hubcaps on its steel wheels, and a “Praise the Lord” front license-plate frame.
A magical midsize time capsule, this thing is, a car from an era when we all thought we’d soon be flying in supersonic planes—the Concorde made its maiden flight the year this wagon rolled out of Kenosha—and still riding high on a wave of turbulent change, one that would come crashing down with the implosion of the Nixon administration and the imposition of the OPEC oil embargo. This old SST is a symbol of the ’60s, if a somewhat minor one. Think of it as an automotive Kinks to the Beatles, Stones, and Who of the Detroit Three. Less than two decades after the death of the Rebel, American Motors would be absorbed into Chrysler, but not before pioneering the crossover with the Eagle, birthing the compact family off-roader with the XJ Cherokee, and, of course, attempting to mainstream French weirdness during its lash-up with Renault. As a history-minded American, there might just be a thing or two wrong with you if somewhere deep inside, you haven’t got a hankering to spend some time in this SST wagon. The kicker is that you could have. The AMC was for sale yesterday on Craigslist up in Portland, Oregon, for $11,900. Today, it’s gone.
November 29, 2016 at 12:53 pm by Greg Fink | Photography by THE MANUFACTURER
In case you thought the rabid McLaren 570S wasn’t raw enough as is, McLaren is adding a racy Track Pack to the 562-hp supercoupe’s option sheet for 2017.
Priced at $23,660, the new Track Pack promises to cut the 570S’s weight by approximately 55 pounds thanks to a combination of lightweight wheels (in a dark finish), carbon-fiber seats, and microsuede replacing leather on the seats, the dashboard, and the steering wheel.
The Track Pack doesn’t just trim the 570S’s bits of fat, though. The package’s taller rear spoiler assists in adding 64 pounds of additional downforce to the car at 150 mph. Additional visual flair comes courtesy of a dark-finished roof and exhaust system. McLaren’s Track Telemetry system, which shows information such as lap times, driver comparisons, and vehicle speed through different track sectors, is also included.
Although we have no proof that the 570S’s showing at C/D’s Lightning Lap 2016 had anything to do with McLaren’s decision to create a Track Pack for the 2017 570S, we’d like to think our 2:47.4 lap around Virginia International Raceway had McLaren engineers contemplating clever ways to shave a few milliseconds off that time. Maybe we’ll get to find out how effective the 570S’s available Track Pack is at Lightning Lap 2017.
Here’s our first look at the all-new 2018 Ford Fiesta subcompact, courtesy of Ford of Europe’s Twitter account. The redesigned hatchback won’t make its official debut until later today, so we don’t have details, but the photo does show the Fiesta’s new design, at least in its Europe-spec form.
With headlights and a grille shape that largely mimic the bigger Focus, the Fiesta’s face doesn’t come as too much of a surprise. Its stance is wider and lower compared with the current Fiesta, and the side surfacing appears a bit more refined. The four-door hatch pictured above has the sporty ST Line trim package that Europeans get, with a body kit and upsized wheels, but it isn’t the full-blown Fiesta ST hot hatch that we’re holding out for. That performance-oriented Fiesta is likely to come out a few months later than the standard model.
All Fiestas will ride on the same B platform as the outgoing model and are expected to use updated versions of the same 1.6-liter four-cylinder, 1.0-liter turbo three-cylinder, and 1.6-liter turbo four-cylinder engines of the current car. Rather than a mechanical overhaul, Ford has made revisions to focus on improving interior quality and increasing the level of available technology.
We’ll get a lot more information on the new Fiesta later today, and U.S.-specific details should follow the European model’s debut by a few months. The Fiesta is expected to arrive on our shores late next year as a 2018 model, with the Fiesta ST to follow shortly after that.
Can’t wait until the new 2018 Jeep Wrangler hits the sales floor? Well, Jeep would like to keep interest in the current model from waning, so it reportedly is planning on introducing several limited-edition variants before the new Wrangler premieres.
According to Automotive News, new dealer-ordering information indicates that Jeep will bring Sport Freedom and Sahara Winter editions of the Wrangler to market in December to help keep sales strong right up until the new model is introduced.
The patriotic Sport Freedom edition will be decked out with “Freedom star” decals on the hood and rear fenders, an American-flag decal on the driver’s-side front fender, 18-inch Granite Crystal wheels, taillamp guards, and other exclusive badges.
The off-road-focused Sahara Winter edition will come with rock rails, full LED lighting, a standard hardtop, remote start on automatic-transmission vehicles, and, of course, a bunch of special badges and decals.
Automotive News says even more special editions will become available later next year to fully capitalize on the end of the JK-series Wrangler production run. According to its sources, those variants include a Sport Big Bear edition, a Sahara Chief, a Sahara Smoky Mountain edition, and a Rubicon Recon.
November 28, 2016 at 2:12 pm by Tony Markovich | Photography by THE MANUFACTURER
The replacement for the Volkswagen CC won’t make its debut for another three months, when the Geneva auto show gets underway, but the hype machine is already churning. With a short video teaser, Volkswagen gave a glimpse at a sketch of the new “four-door fastback” and revealed its name: Arteon.
As expected, the car in the sketch looks nearly identical to the Volkswagen Sport Coupe Concept GTE, the plug-in-hybrid show car that made its debut at the 2015 Geneva auto show. It furthers the CC’s streamlined coupe exterior with an even more athletic stance, a more severely sloped roofline, and a “wholly new” front end with a grille that bleeds into the headlights and looks awfully similar to the front end of the Aston Martin Lagonda Taraf.
The car will sit above the Passat in the VW lineup as an all-new model and is expected to be a bit longer than the current CC. Arteon might sound like the name of a Greek god, but it’s actually a simple pairing. “Art” literally indicates art (“harmonious lines and emotionality”), and “eon” is Volkswagen’s indication of a premium model (see: Phideon). VW claims that, despite its sporting shape, the car will retain usefulness thanks to a hatchback rear rather than a trunk, as on the CC. So far, there’s no word whether the production model will have any of the hybrid tech offered in the Sport Coupe Concept PHEV.
After showing its face for the first time next year in March, the Arteon will go on sale next summer.
It can be as loud as standing alongside a Boeing 767 at takeoff. And it’s about as irritating as having someone thumping on a bass drum in the back seat. Whether you call it wind throb or buffeting or just plain annoying, it happens when someone in the car opens a single window at speed and it stops when a second window rolls down.
The phenomenon that produces this noise is the Helmholtz Resonance, the same principle that makes a bottle hum when you blow over its open top. It’s the interaction of the gas in a container with a single orifice and the other gases that are, um, passing over that orifice. In this case, the container is the car. The interaction between the two masses of air produces vortexes that compress and decompress the air, producing the throbbing effect. Hermann von Helmholtz, the German physician and physicist who described this interaction, died in 1894 and was thus unavailable for comment.
How intrusive buffeting can get depends on the car’s shape and the size of its windows as well as the speed the vehicle is traveling. Modern cars and trucks are more subject to air thump because they’re so aerodynamically efficient and well sealed against wind intrusion. Jim Zunich, GM’s global vehicle performance chief engineer for wind noise, explains: “We want nice, smooth attached air for aerodynamics, but that’s worse for buffeting.”
Gimme Buffet
See the top image for how the side-mirror shape can affect air movement around the front windows, and the middle image for how not much can influence flow around the rears. A pop-up deflector would shift airflow over the open sunroof rearward, mitigating those annoying vortexes.
When the car was designed with little concern for aero, the haphazard mass of air boiling around it only coincidentally adhered to the vehicle’s surface and only occasionally allowed the Helmholtz Resonance to generate its vortexes. And even when the problem did arise, the car’s other windows and doors were hardly airtight, so the air leakage around them relieved any pressure differences. But a modern cockpit is a well-sealed drum from which only minimal air pressure leaks. In this small, particular way, a modern vehicle is too good for its own good.
But why is buffeting so much worse when just a rear window is down? Two words: side mirrors. They’re one of the last things developed in a vehicle’s design, and they’re placed and shaped precisely to direct airflow in a way that minimizes buffeting at the front windows. But there are no easy tweaks to be made to tune the airflow around the rear windows.
Buffeting is likely to get worse as vehicles get more aerodynamic. “Obviously, if we could resolve it free of charge, it’s something we would do,” concludes Zunich. “But because it comes with styling, aero, and noise penalties, it’s a trade-off engineers have to make.” Well, whether or not we understand how buffeting works, most of us have figured out a solution: Crack another window.
Powering Up
Software supplier Exa developed PowerFLOW, the simulation software that generated the images on this page. PowerFLOW is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) program. CFD generates a detailed mathematical model of a fluid flow, in this case allowing engineers to observe and tweak how air flows over, around, and through a car on a molecular level. It’s just one of the tools that allows automakers to design a complete car before a single part is stamped or cast. Suck on that, Instagram. —Jared Gall
Last week, Volkswagen brand CEO Herbert Diess laid out a global recovery plan for Volkswagen. The plan, Transform 2025+, includes company restructuring, turnaround plans for some regions including the United States, and a goal of becoming the world market leader in e-mobility by 2025. Diess also disclosed one surprising footnote: that the company has effectively dropped all plans for future diesel models in the U.S.
“At the moment, we assume that we will offer no new diesel vehicles in the U.S.,” Diess told the German-language European business publication Handelsblatt. The story wasreported in English by Reuters.
That’s quite different from what Volkswagen Group of America CEO Hinrich Woebcken said just days earlier—that while there would be no diesel models for the 2016 or 2017 model years, diesels may be considered for 2018 and beyond on a case-by-case basis. Woebcken then said that changing priorities toward electrification would mean “diesel will not come back to the same magnitude.” Diess himself showed a more sympathetic attitude toward diesels less than two months ago. At the Paris auto show, when the company teased its I.D. long-range EV concept, he said that the company could continue to offer diesel models in the U.S. market.
The new focus of Volkswagen, under Transform 2025+, doesn’t contain a single mention of the company’s diesel-emissions scandal—or even of diesel or TDI. Instead, it includes a lofty goal of selling a million electric cars per year—roughly one-tenth of the brand’s current global sales—by 2025. Volkswagen’s TDI-branded diesel vehicles in recent years have accounted for 20 percent or more of the brand’s sales volume in the U.S.
If you’re holding out for a TDI version of the upcoming Volkswagen Atlas SUV—which, ironically, will be built in diesel guise in Chattanooga to be shipped to other markets—you’re probably out of luck. While Diess’s statement doesn’t completely slam the door on diesels, it appears there’s little likelihood they’ll be back for many years, if ever.
When a designer tells us a new interior is coming, usually we just nod. When that designer is Thomas Ingenlath, the designer who determines what “Volvo” means to our eyeballs, our ears stand up like those of an elkhound that just heard the word “walk.” Ingenlath is the chief emotion stirrer behind the XC90 and S90, and the striking interiors of those Volvos are only the most recent credits on his impressive résumé.
We’re seated in a glass pod 20 feet above the Los Angeles auto show’s South Hall, in a hyper-Scandinavian expression of a modern show stand. Downstairs, a massive screen displays images of a frigid sea, cloudy skies time-lapsing to clear and back. You can see those blues and grays translated to colors on Volvo’s display cars. Further images of vast forests seem to connect with the abundance of warm wood used in the exhibit and in the cars themselves.
While I’m listening to Ingenlath, occasionally my eyes dart around the room. The floor is wood, with contrasting circle inserts in the planks. Plates and a carafe of coffee rest on a textured wood table, with lines and protruding square shapes that give the wooden table stand a 3D matrix effect. Just behind that is a wall made of vertically slanted wood. Something Ingenlath will say in just a few moments will make all of these details distinctly important.
We’re already anticipating many details about Volvo’s new mid-size SUV, which we’ve spied in testing. To be built on a downsized version of the same Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) that underpins the XC90, the 2018 XC60 will be powered by Volvo’s latest 2.0-liter four-cylinder engines, the turbocharged T5 and the turbo- and supercharged T6. The T8 Twin Engine plug-in hybrid is also likely, and a pure-electric version could arrive a couple of years after launch. Exterior design will evolve the XC60’s current aesthetic and incorporate cues such as Thor’s Hammer headlight flourishes and LED taillights.
Where things get really interesting is interior design, a field where Volvo is particularly excelling of late. While the industry has heaped praise on Volvo for the concept-car-like interiors of the current production versions of the XC90 SUV (photo below) and S90 sedan, the Swedish automaker is wary of resting on its successes.
2016 Volvo XC90 Interior
“We’ve had some momentum, and that really allows us to be playful. We can now say, ‘Okay, let’s push this a step further,’ ” Ingenlath said. “I know a lot of the industry is watching us, and they’re looking at our stuff, especially the interiors, and here we can show them we have one more trick in our basket and play with it, not just repeat ourselves. The XC60 will be the next evolution of our interior, and we’ll be presenting that next year.”
What might this evolution look like? First, Ingenlath confirms that Volvo’s Sensus Connected Touch infotainment system will come down from the 90-series cars but will be tweaked. “We won’t have smaller screens—it will be this great delightful screen that we have now. Our system in the XC60 will reflect the next evolution, and this won’t stay in the 60, it will come to all of our lineup.”
For those just getting used to Volvo’s new system, fear not. “It will not be like suddenly everything is different, but it will be a clear step.” Ingenlath said future Volvos, to include the S60 and V60 sedan and wagon, will also incorporate the ability to update the software in order to continuously refine the use and ease of the system during the term of ownership. “We’re not going to be like Apple, issuing updates every three months, but you will be able to update how you interact with the car. We’ll keep pushing the interfaces further to get closer to the imaginary state of perfection. We want to make it as delightful as possible, as easy as possible, while still keeping the brand flair.”
Another area that could differ from the current XC60? “What we’re definitely exploring is our wood history. Now, we have a very, very natural expression of wood, which we of course want to keep. But I’m very convinced that even in a very young and more avant-garde interior, you can have very interesting wood expression in there.”
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“Do we always have to have leather in a luxurious car? That definitely is a big question for us.” – Thomas Ingenlath, Volvo design chief
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While premium and luxury brands employ wood to warm a cabin’s interior, the options usually consist of colors or finishes. Two exceptions are Bentley and Rolls-Royce, both of which have a rich heritage of fine woodwork. Those cars also cost a quarter of a million dollars and up on average. If the woodwork on Volvo’s show stand is an indicator, the prospect of seeing something fresh—and in a five-digit price range—is intriguing.
Ingenlath said the team is also exploring modern textiles and materials. “Do we always have to have leather in a luxurious car? That definitely is a big question for us. We’d love to convince the customers that there is an alternative car interior beyond leather.”
Ingenlath contends that it wouldn’t be a new faux leather, either. “We’re not trying to pretend. It wouldn’t be a pretend leather. We want to look at different fabrics. But there’s definitely a real challenge to convince customers’ perceptions.” The Gothenburg-based designer said he had a similar challenge when he first came to the United States to show off the matte wood in what was then the future XC90. Despite initial reluctance and pushback, he said that it is now accepted and has been a huge success.
Asked when we might specifically see this evolution of Volvo’s interior design language, the answer was clear: “March.” So look for the 2018 XC60 to make its debut at the 2017 Geneva auto show.
On the dilapidated grounds of a former factory best known for powering the Arsenal of Democracy during World War II, Michigan officials have moved one step closer to building a national proving ground for connected and autonomous vehicles.
At a groundbreaking ceremony for the nonprofit American Center for Mobility (ACM), government leaders joined company leaders at the 335-acre site at Willow Run, about 30 miles west of Detroit, where they hope legacy automotive manufacturers and tech companies alike will work to test and validate future transportation systems.
A portion of the facility dedicated to highway-style testing of self-driving vehicles is expected to open in December 2017. Other portions of the proving ground are to become operational in gradual phases. Parts of the highway loop will incorporate the use of public roads, and crews will build a 700-foot curved tunnel as part of the test track.
Automakers are itching to use the facility now, said John Maddox, ACM’s CEO. He said companies want to test autonomous vehicles that are now in early stages of development as soon as possible. Maddox claims to have received 45 letters of support from OEMs, major suppliers, and others who are interested in using the facility.
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“We’re facing very tough competition from a number of Asian countries making substantial investments.”
– Senator Gary Peters
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Ford, General Motors, and Toyota have expressed particular enthusiasm for the project, he said during remarks at the groundbreaking, which took place on the property of the former Willow Run Assembly Plant. So far, the engineering group SAE International has signed a memorandum of understanding to use the facility in hopes of creating and evaluating standards for new transportation technology.
“We’re talking with other standards bodies, too,” Maddox said. “We really want to accelerate standards. If you’re an automotive nerd, you know that standards are critical. We’re working on them not just for vehicles, but for infrastructure.”
With construction underway, Maddox and others will turn to determining exactly how future users will want to collect data from the sensors and cameras installed in the infrastructure. They’ll also need to figure out how much they want to share with other manufacturers and how much will remain proprietary.
Sharing data might be key for car companies. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently urged autonomous-vehicle developers to share such data to shorten learning curves and improve the overall safety of the self-driving fleet.
“How they want to use that sensor data and correlate it to what they test will be one question,” said Tony Gioutsos, an executive with TASS International, which will handle data management at ACM. “In how they want to share it, or not, we’re starting to survey potential users and lay that framework. That’s the next step.”
Longer-term plans at the facility include building a national cybersecurity research center, where the defenses of connected cars and smart infrastructure such as traffic lights could be tested and fortified. Examining the role of dedicated short-range communications and future 5G networks will be part of those plans. While the actual laboratory remains years away, ACM isn’t wasting time getting started. Next week, company leaders will host a workshop aimed at beginning the planning for that portion of the facility.
These are the same grounds where Rosie the Riveter and her colleagues once cranked out B-24 bombers at the rate of a plane per hour for the war effort. Michigan’s government leaders hope the facility will ensure the state stays relevant in the coming decades, as the auto industry morphs from producing vehicles for traditional owners and human operators into a more comprehensive mobility provider.
In a rare show of bipartisan cohesion, politicians took turns extolling the urgent need for such a facility to keep tech-centered and engineering jobs in Michigan.
“We’re facing very tough competition from a number of Asian countries making substantial investments,” said U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, a co-founder of the Senate’s Smart Transportation Caucus, speaking about testing facilities in China, Japan, and South Korea.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder noted that the cyclical nature of the automotive industry has hurt the state’s fortunes in the past. Although the industry is coming off a year of record sales, that shouldn’t necessarily be cause for celebration, he said. “In the past, I think we’d take that for granted.
“When you’re at the top, you don’t get complacent. You need to make sure you’re out there leading for the next generation, and that’s what we’re doing.”
