Aurelia Butler

Honda and General Motors will no longer co-develop a series of affordable compact SUVs, as reported to Bloomberg.Honda cited the current business environment, rising costs for the project, and challenges with getting adequate driving range. While this joint plan has been cancelled, Honda says the two companies will “search for a solution separately.”Promises are easy to make but even easier to break. In April of last year, Honda and General Motors announced they were co-developing a series of affordable compact crossover SUVs that would feature next-generation batteries and arrive in 2027. But now, a year and a half later, Honda says it has cancelled the planned collaboration with GM, according to a Bloomberg report.The decision is the result of the changing economic climate, with Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe telling Bloomberg Television that “after studying this for a year, we decided that this would be difficult as a business.” Honda said that the cost of the program and difficulty eking out enough highway range contributed to the cancellation. GM revealed earlier this week that it is unsure if the company can reach its original $14 billion forecast for profits in 2023, pointing at the United Auto Workers strike as the culprit. The original plan had called for a new platform based on GM’s Ultium battery, found in everything from the Chevy Equinox EV to the GMC Hummer EV and electric BrightDrop vans. The new vehicles would have been priced below the planned $30,000 base-spec Equinox EV, and the companies said they were exploring solid-state batteries and using materials such as lithium-metal and silicon.More on Honda EVsThere is still hope that we may see some sub-$30K electric cars from Honda and GM in the near future. While the joint plans are scrapped, Mibe said, “GM and Honda will search for a solution separately.” But with both companies working on their own, it may take until after 2027 for these vehicles materialize. The divorce should not affect the launch of the Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX, which are closely related to the Chevy Blazer EV and Cadillac Lyriq and utilize GM’s Ultium battery tech. We anticipate deliveries of the Prologue and ZDX to still begin in early 2024.Associate News EditorCaleb Miller began blogging about cars at 13 years old, and he realized his dream of writing for a car magazine after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and joining the Car and Driver team. He loves quirky and obscure autos, aiming to one day own something bizarre like a Nissan S-Cargo, and is an avid motorsports fan. More

EV maker Rivian has rolled out an over-the-air update for its R1T pickup and R1S SUV that moves all drive-related settings close to the driver’s right hand, regroups the drive modes, and makes room for a useful gauge page. Towing is no longer a stand-alone mode but is now a Trailers function you can select from within most any on-road or off-road driving mode. The vehicle now learns a trailer’s weight and drag while towing to adjust the predicted range, and the driver can store these correction factors for up to three trailers.A well-conceived interior made with logically arrayed buttons and knobs can be a frictionless way to interact with a car’s systems, but a poorly designed hardscape can just as easily be an irksome source of frustration you’re stuck with for as long as you own the car. Say what you will about the strengths and weaknesses of interacting with touchscreens, but they do hold a distinct advantage: iffy layouts and suboptimal menu flow can be corrected at any point, and the use of over-the-air updates means that existing owners benefit too.Dan Edmunds|Car and DriverSuch is the case with the 2023.38.0 update we just sampled in an R1S SUV. This new OTA update—which is available to all Rivian owners—doesn’t just simplify the drive mode interface; it adds a whole new array of gauges and unlocks towing functionality that didn’t previously exist. Such an approach works especially well in the Rivian because the easy stuff like headlights, wipers, and the gear selector are physical stalks of the sort that are hard to screw up, and they make Rivian products familiar and approachable. Improvements to the touchscreen and its logic only complement this basic goodness by making the touchscreen controls easy to use as well.Cleaned-Up Drive ModesUntil now, a Rivian driver would select a drive mode using the expansive central touchscreen that was dominated by graphics that seemed to highlight themselves at the expense of usability. The drive modes themselves were close enough at hand, but the ride-height adjustment slider was far away on the passenger edge of the screen, while the regen, suspension, and traction control settings were scattered across the bottom. What’s more, the on-road settings had priority, with the specific off-road choices hidden a layer down. Towing was a mode unto itself that was separate from any of the on- and off-road modes.RivianWith this change, Rivian has created a dedicated space on the driver’s-side third of the screen that is home to all drive-related functions when in the drive configuration mode: you still get full-screen maps and infotainment displays in those modes. The top half of this new zone contains a new drive mode selection widget, with On-Road, Off-Road, and Trailers being the three top-level categories. On-Road opens the door to All-Purpose, Conserve, Sport, and Snow modes. Off-Road houses All-Terrain, Rock Crawl, Sand, Rally, and Drift modes. Trailers looks like a stand-alone third main category, but it’s not. As the new name implies, when you select Trailers, you no longer get a discrete Tow mode that overrides the drive mode you’ve chosen, nor does it preclude you from choosing another.Meanwhile, the bottom half of this newly created control zone is a permanent home for top-level adjustments such as suspension stiffness, brake regeneration, ride height, and stability control. The default settings for each and the range of selections available change with the drive mode you’ve selected, and it’s all presented in a clear, understandable, and easy-to reach location close to the steering wheel rim.What about the formerly dominant splashy graphics that illustrated the truck/SUV performing in your selected mode? They’re still here, but they now occupy the right-hand two-thirds of the main screen. And if you’d rather look at something more useful than a picture of a Rivian, you now can.RivianSwipe Left for the Gauge PageThe graphic image of the truck hasn’t just shrunk by a third; it has also gained a pair of subtle rectangles that indicate it is now one of two pages. Swipe to the left to see an entirely new display to the right of the new Drive-mode region. The left half of this added screen is an overhead view of the powertrain, showing what’s happening at each of the four contact patches, plus a graphic that shows the steering angle. The new right half has an array of six gauges, including a compass, altimeter, trip odometer, TPMS readout, and temperature gauges for the battery and the four motors (if your Rivian has four motors).If you’re in an off-road mode, the battery temp and odometer get swapped out for roll and pitch indicators. We like the additions but think something else needs to go so the trip odometer can stay. Dead reckoning using trail mileage is a staple of off-road guidebooks, and it’s hard to point to electronic map substitutes because Rivian still doesn’t support smartphone mirroring such as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and the widely used off-road navigation apps that both of them support. Your smartphone will still be suction cupped to a window if you use those.RivianThere’s a Lot More to TowingAs mentioned earlier, the Trailers page is no longer a path to a stand-alone towing mode. Instead, it’s a window to a new towing interface that now co-exists with most other drive modes. Towing a trailer isn’t something you do instead of, say, driving off-road; it’s something you can do at the same time. Selecting Trailers while in an off-road mode will certainly affect the behavior of the traction control and corral your ride height choices, but it’s no longer an either/or proposition; it’s complementary. The Rally and Drift modes are excluded from this, for hopefully obvious reasons. Rock Crawl, on the other hand, is fair game if you’re towing an adventure trailer with a quad-motor Rivian.But the bigger get has to do with towing range, and how the truck more accurately calculates the available range while towing. In the first mile you tow a new trailer, the truck now learns the trailer’s weight based on internal measurements of how acceleration and braking were affected. From this, a range correction factor is computed, and you can save this for later use by naming and saving your trailer in one of three available memory spots.Why save a trailer if it only takes a mile to learn a trailer’s weight? During longer trips, aerodynamic drag enters the frame, and the correction factor gets further refined, making any range prediction more accurate. Saving your trailer both shortcuts this process for the next trip and also saves your electronic trailer brake gain setting. Beyond this, the other new towing feature has to do with the camera system, which now enables the R1T’s rear-facing bed camera to be available when moving forward with a trailer attached. This doesn’t apply to the R1S SUV, because its rear camera is too far aft to be of any use seeing around the trailer.It Boils Down to an Electronic FaceliftThere’s a lot to like about this new interface, both in terms of newly added features and the greatly improved simplicity and ease of use that makes what is essentially the same touchscreen interface far less distracting. Rivian’s engineering team has done much to put oft-used drive mode controls near the driver’s fingertips. We love the new gauge page too, but we do see room for improvement. Some of them are a bit out of the driver’s eye line, and we think the trip odometer is more important off-road than the designers imagined. It’d be nice if an owner could nominate any of them for temporary residency on the instrument panel, too.But that’s picking nits, and it’s overlooking the larger point. This profound change is the kind of thing you could only hope for in most vehicles when facelift time comes around and probably wouldn’t see until the next full model change. In either case, the current owners who complained about the gaffes in surveys and got the ball rolling wouldn’t benefit unless they traded in for the new model. That’s not the case here, because everyone benefits when an OTA is involved. Any minor beefs with 2023.38.0 that may arise can be corrected in future updates, and it lays the groundwork for future tweaks. We can imagine trailer tongue weight sensing as a possibility, for example. And just think how much more we’d like the R1S and R1T if they added Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Thing is, they still can.More RivianTechnical EditorDan Edmunds was born into the world of automobiles, but not how you might think. His father was a retired racing driver who opened Autoresearch, a race-car-building shop, where Dan cut his teeth as a metal fabricator. Engineering school followed, then SCCA Showroom Stock racing, and that combination landed him suspension development jobs at two different automakers. His writing career began when he was picked up by Edmunds.com (no relation) to build a testing department. More

The 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 6 costs up to $4100 less than last year, with a new starting price of $38,615.That’s for the base rear-drive, standard-battery Ioniq 6, the others see price cuts between $2450 and $3050. A Hyundai spokesperson told Car and Driver the lower prices are due to “production efficiencies and scale.” The 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 6 lineup comes with huge discounts for the new model year. The slippery electric sedan and our reigning EV of the Year sees its base price slashed by $4100, meaning the entry-level SE trim level now starts at $38,615. Its fellow trims also see their price tags trimmed by as much as $3050 or as little as $2450.What spurred Hyundai to drop the Ioniq 6’s prices? A brand spokesperson told C/D it’s a byproduct of “production efficiencies and scale.” Whatever the case, we’ll never complain about new cars costing less.Ioniq 6 Price CheckThe most affordable Ioniq 6 is the rear-wheel-drive SE with the standard-range 53.0-kWh battery. All other models have the bigger 77.4-kWh battery, which is available on the SE RWD for $43,565; adding all-wheel drive pushes the price to $47,065. Compared with their 2023 counterparts, both are now $3050 cheaper.The SEL and Limited are the Ioniq sedan’s upper-crust trims, and each sticker for $2450 less than last year. For 2024, the SEL RWD starts at $43,565 and the Limited RWD starts at $51,265. The new discount extends to their AWD dual-motor doppelgängers, which have base prices of $49,895 and $54,765, respectively.Ioniq 6 Range RefresherWith the smaller battery, the 149-hp Ioniq 6 has an EPA-estimated driving range of 240 miles. The bigger battery helps rear-drive configurations earns estimates up to 361 miles—just know that the available 20-inch wheels shave off 56 miles. The same goes for Ioniq 6 models with AWD, whose 316-mile max estimate with 18-inch rims shrinks to 270 miles with 20s.We tested a 2023 version of the latter on our 75-mph highway fuel-economy route, and it traveled 220 miles on a full charge. A ’23 Ioniq 6 SE RWD Long Range (18s standard) made it 270 miles in the same test. Obviously, the EV sedan’s real-world range is much lower than its EPA estimates, but at least its prices now follow suit.The Best Ioniq 6 StoriesThis content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Senior EditorEric Stafford’s automobile addiction began before he could walk, and it has fueled his passion to write news, reviews, and more for Car and Driver since 2016. His aspiration growing up was to become a millionaire with a Jay Leno–like car collection. Apparently, getting rich is harder than social-media influencers make it seem, so he avoided financial success entirely to become an automotive journalist and drive new cars for a living. After earning a journalism degree at Central Michigan University and working at a daily newspaper, the years of basically burning money on failed project cars and lemon-flavored jalopies finally paid off when Car and Driver hired him. His garage currently includes a 2010 Acura RDX, a manual ’97 Chevy Camaro Z/28, and a ’90 Honda CRX Si. More

The Lexus LF-ZL large electric SUV concept looks set to become brand’s flagship.The Tokyo auto show concept is similar size to a Lincoln Navigator. Details like sliding rear doors are unlikely to make production.Lexus unveiled two electric vehicles at the 2023 Tokyo auto show. Most attention went to the low, sleek LF-ZC which is set to go into production in 2026, but the larger and considerably grander LF-ZL SUV looks to be previewing the brand’s luxury flagship as it moves towards full electrification.Although officially presented as a future-looking concept rather than confirmation of a production model, you don’t need to look too hard at the LF-ZL to see the production SUV that we believe sits underneath. And while many of the concept’s more exotic details doubtless won’t make the journey to reality, the basics all seem viable presuming that consumers’ appetite for grand luxury SUVs survives the transition to electrification.The exotic details are certainly fun. The LF-ZL’s sliding rear doors open with an elaborate theatricality far removed from the sort of sliders more commonly associated with minivans, moving outwards as they roll back to improve access to the rear of the cabin—without B-pillars to get in the way. Lexus designers refused to rule out the possibility of something similar making production, although in our experience outlandish door mechanisms tend to be one of the most frequently lost details between concept and reality. But the promise the ZL’s reclining rear seats, and bamboo-detailed cabin, seem much more realistic.Mike Duff|Car and DriverThe ZL’s size also suggests a production version would sit right at the top of the Lexus hierarchy. Lexus says it is 208.7 inches long, just shorter than a Lincoln Navigator, although with the lack of the need for engine accommodation allowing a slightly cab-forward stance to maximize interior room. The claimed 66.9 inch height makes it exactly as tall as the current BMW X6, although it would seem likely any production version would gain height-adjusting air springs. Regardless, the concept’s floor was impressively low, intended to illustrate the virtues of the ultra-compact battery cells Toyota will soon shift to, helping it to also deliver the most vertical as well as horizontal space.The ZL is also demonstrating the future power of the new Toyota-Lexus Arene OS, demonstrating features including an augmented-reality system dubbed Interactive Reality in Motion which will overlay information about passing points of interest when an occupant points at the them. As with the ZC, the ZL features a yoke-type steering wheel and—in production form—would use the same steer-by-wire system.Presuming Lexus can deliver sufficient quantities of performance and range, with confirmation yesterday that the ZC is targeting 620 miles from a full charge, the LF-ZL could become a flagship for Lexus’s electric revolution.More on LexusSenior European CorrespondentOur man on the other side of the pond, Mike Duff lives in Britain but reports from across Europe, sometimes beyond. He has previously held staff roles on UK titles including CAR, Autocar and evo, but his own automotive tastes tend towards the Germanic, owning both a troublesome 987-generation Porsche Cayman S and a Mercedes 190E 2.5-16. More

Kia has revealed an updated version of the K5 mid-size sedan in Korea.The front and rear ends are restyled, and the interior receives new features including a rotary shifter and a digital gauge cluster.We expect to see the refreshed K5 arrive in the U.S. for the 2025 model year.Kia is sharpening the looks of its K5 mid-size sedan for the upcoming model year if this updated Korea-market version is any indication. The facelifted 2025 Kia K5 adopts new headlights and taillights, plus a heavily revised interior, and will likely reach the U.S. market within the next few months.The restyled front end incorporates more prominent daytime running lights with an interesting zig-zag pattern, while the taillights are larger than before and feature LED accent lights that extend downward into the fenders. We can also spot cool-looking new wheel designs and a possible blackout styling package shown in some of the images.KiaKiaChanges to the interior appear significant as well, with a new digital gauge cluster now integrated in a single panel with a larger central infotainment screen. There are also new touch controls for climate and navigation functions, and a rotary shifter on the center console that appears to free up more storage space. The steering wheel is new and there appears to now be a brown leather upholstery option.KiaWe’re not expecting any significant changes to the K5’s available turbocharged four-cylinder engines, as the related 2024 Hyundai Sonata sedan features a mostly carryover powertrain lineup. The turbo 1.6-liter four in the base models should still be available with either front- or all-wheel drive, while the more powerful 2.5T engine in the K5 GT is likely to offer the same 291 horsepower as before.Look for more specific U.S. information on the 2025 K5 to come soon as we find out which of these changes will be making their way stateside.More on the K5This content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Senior EditorDespite being raised on a steady diet of base-model Hondas and Toyotas—or perhaps because of it—Joey Capparella nonetheless cultivated an obsession for the automotive industry throughout his childhood in Nashville, Tennessee. He found a way to write about cars for the school newspaper during his college years at Rice University, which eventually led him to move to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for his first professional auto-writing gig at Automobile Magazine. He has been part of the Car and Driver team since 2016 and now lives in New York City.   More

Pininfarina has just revealed its newest design project to be none other than the ZX5 Zamboni.Yes, that Zamboni. The ice-cleaning one. Initial production of the new resurfacer will feature a lithium-ion-powered electric powertrain.Currently, Zamboni (the company) offers gasoline and electric powertrains for its ice resurfacers (Zambonis).In a lateral move away from its usual high-end automotive designs of vehicles like the Ferrari Testarossa, Ferrari Enzo, or Lancia 037, the Italian design house Pininfarina just announced its newest design: the ZX5 Zamboni. Yep, that’s correct. Pininfarina and Zamboni paired up for the creation. Why would Pininfarina choose to design a Zamboni? As The Great One once said, “you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” Italian-Designed Zamboni If you’ve ever seen Happy Gilmore, or perhaps spent time of your own at an ice rink, you certainly know what an ice resurfacer looks like. Much like Band-Aid or Google, Frank Zamboni’s creation became ubiquitous with the product and now everyone refers to ice resurfacers as Zambonis. ZamboniWhen the winter-sports brand decided it was time to produce a new-generation Zamboni, it partnered with the Italian design house Pininfarina. The initial production of the ZX5 will feature a lithium-ion-powered electric powertrain. The dual-propulsion motors for the ZX5 combine to produce a meager 27 horsepower. Pininfarina’s design is a more modern take on what is basically still a box on wheels, but the addition of lights at the front helps to liven up the look. According to Zamboni, the new resurfacer features new tech to reduce inconsistency between operators, as well as save time, labor, and water. There’s also a newly optional onboard edger and quick-blade-change system, which the company says improves safety. The ZX5 is the first Zamboni product to be designed by a third-party outfit, and with Frank Zamboni emigrating from Italy, Pininfarina was a fitting choice to design. We’re not as up to speed with the ice-resurfacing world as we are with the automobile industry, but we do think this thing looks pretty badass. That Time We Drove a ZamboniThis content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Associate News EditorJack Fitzgerald’s love for cars stems from his as yet unshakable addiction to Formula 1. After a brief stint as a detailer for a local dealership group in college, he knew he needed a more permanent way to drive all the new cars he couldn’t afford and decided to pursue a career in auto writing. By hounding his college professors at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he was able to travel Wisconsin seeking out stories in the auto world before landing his dream job at Car and Driver. His new goal is to delay the inevitable demise of his 2010 Volkswagen Golf. More