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The 2023 Toyota Crown will debut July 15, and it appears to be a lifted sedan.Patent images show the overall shape, which is of a four-door sedan with body cladding and a raised ride height.We expect the Crown to come standard with a hybrid drivetrain.We first heard about a new SUV version of the Toyota Crown a few months ago, but the actual vehicle, set to debut July 15, will be a bit more interesting than that. Based on leaked patent images and Toyota’s website that asks, “Sedan? SUV?” it appears that the 2023 Crown will be a four-door sedan with SUV styling cues and a raised ride height—much in the vein of Subaru’s long dead Outback sedan, or SUS (Sport Utility Sedan).

Japan Patent Office

The Crown looks larger than the Camry mid-size sedan, which suggests that it could serve as a replacement for the recently discontinued Avalon. Because of its crossover-esque appearance, we assume it will come standard with all-wheel drive. A hybrid drivetrain is a sure bet, although we’re not sure if it will use the setup found in many other Toyota hybrid that uses a 2.5-liter inline-four gasoline engine, or a more powerful hybrid setup such as the new Lexus RX’s top 367-hp configuration that has a turbocharged 2.4-liter inline-four plus electric motors.We also expect the Crown to be more expensive than the Camry, and for it to have a plusher interior. This segment-busting vehicle will likely compete with the few remaining large sedans on the market—the Nissan Maxima, Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger, and VW Arteon—along with mid-size SUVs such as the Nissan Murano, Chevy Blazer, and Ford Edge.We’ll learn more about the Crown soon, as the official reveal will take place next week, on July 15.
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For the 50th anniversary of the Renault 5, which is one of the company’s all-time bestsellers, Renault and French interior designer Pierre Gonalons created the 5 Diamant, an electrified restomod.The 5 Diamant features simplified bodywork, jewel-like lights, and a beautiful pink paint job with gold accents.The unorthodox steering wheel has a marbled finish, standing out in an otherwise minimalist interior.Restomods are all the rage right now, especially when it comes to converting classics into electric vehicles. Ford created the 480-hp F-100 Eluminator truck for last year’s SEMA show, while Hyundai has given some of its earliest models, the Pony and Grandeur, an electric refresh. Now Renault is joining the party with the Renault 5 Diamant, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of one of its bestsellers, with the Renault 5 shifting more than five million units between 1972 and 1984.
The 5 Diamant is a collaboration between Renault and French interior and product designer Pierre Gonalons, and the revised icon takes on an electric powertrain, although no specifics about the motors or battery were provided. The focus is instead on the styling, and Renault says that Gonalons took inspiration from fine jewelry when reimagining the 5.
The bodywork has been smoothed and simplified and the paint job features three layers of paint, with golden hues on top of a pink base covered in what Renault calls a “frosted varnish.” Paired with a gold grille and bumpers, the paint job gives the 5 Diamant a graceful, delicate appearance. The headlights and taillights wear exquisite diamond-like faces, and white wheels, based on those from the sportier Renault 5 Alpine, feature an intricate sun logo in the center.
The snazziest design element comes inside, where the marbled, loop-de-loop steering wheel swirls outward from a polished gold center displaying a complex logo that merges the Renault diamond symbol with Gonalons’s initials. The rest of the interior is minimalist, with three circular dials on the dashboard and a cradle for the driver’s smartphone, which acts as a de facto infotainment system. The 5 Diamant also uses a fingerprint scanner for unlocking the doors.

While the Renault 5 Diamant will unfortunately remain an ornate one-off concept, Renault is reviving the legendary 5 nameplate as a new electric hatchback for 2024. A sharp-looking concept was revealed last year, and there is even talk of a high-performance Alpine version. As with all modern Renaults, however, the new 5 will not make it stateside.
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Called Musou Black, this paint is said to be the darkest water based acrylic paint in the world. This custom Porsche 911 was painted by Pit One Customs garage in Japan.A 100 ml bottle of the paint will run you a little over $18, so painting a full car will cost a pretty penny.Ever looked at the factory black paint on a car and thought it was too reflective? The team over at Pit One Customs in Japan had that thought . . . and found a solution. For those who want the darkest black paint imaginable, KoPro’s Musou Black paint is said to absorb 99.6% of inbound light.

Pit One Customs

Starting with a regular black Porsche 911, Pit One transformed it into the sleek and shapeless shadow you see here. As cool as this is, it isn’t the first example of an ultra-black, light-absorbing menace of a car. BMW deployed Vantablack coating on an X6 for the 2020 Frankfurt auto show, with similar results.Vantablack is slightly different than this current Musou Black for a few reasons. First, it’s technically a coating designed for components to help absorb heat and protect the integrity of camera lenses attempting to capture images in space (Vanta stands for Vertically Aligned Nano Tube Array). Musou Black, on the other hand, is a water-based acrylic paint.

Pit One Customs

Since the paint is so dark and essentially absorbs all reflections, it’s tough to see the shape of the car it’s applied to. Looking at the 911, the car looks like a shadow of itself, with no distinct curves or edges. The only shapes that are easy to make out are the headlights, which look like Gollum’s bulbous eyes peering out in the dark.
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Nissan has issued a recall on 180,176 of its Frontier and Titan pickups because they could roll while in Park without warning.The issue affects 2020 through 2022 models, which have a standard nine-speed automatic transmission. Nissan says customers should engage the parking brake when their vehicle is stationary while waiting for a fix.More than 180,000 Nissan Frontier and Titan pickups from the 2020 through 2022 model years are being recalled over the potential they could roll away while in Park. In documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Nissan says the problem affects only these pickups and not other vehicles. Both have a Jatco nine-speed automatic transmission, which was new for the 2020 model year.

The vehicles included in the recall are all from the 2020 through 2022 model years and include 123,987 Frontier and 56,189 Nissan Titan pickups. The automaker blames “dimensional variation during the manufacturing process” for causing the parking pawl to fail to engage as intended. This in turn could cause the vehicle to move although the shifter is in Park. However, Nissan estimates only 0.03 percent of vehicles recalled are expected to have the problem. There have been four reports claiming minor injuries, according to documents Nissan filed with NHTSA. Nissan will notify owners beginning July 20, although its plan to fix the problem is still in progress. In the meantime, Frontier and Titan owners can check the NHTSA recalls website for updates and to see if their vehicle is included in the recall.

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Ziggy is a robotic EV charging station that’s designed to live in parking areas, where drivers can summon it through an app to come charge their vehicle.Charging startup EV Safe Charge has been developing the robots since 2019 and aims to have Ziggys shipped by 2024.Roughly the size of a refrigerator, Ziggy is a battery on wheels that will be able to autonomously navigate parking areas to reserve drivers’ spots and charge their cars. And of course, it’s got ads on it.If you’ve driven an electric vehicle, you know the struggle of arriving at a parking lot only to find the sparse EV charging spots all filled up. Worse yet, one of the cars hooked up to the charging port is fully charged with no owner in sight! Oh, the horror of underdeveloped EV infrastructure. A Los Angeles startup named EV Safe Charge thinks it has a solution: Ziggy, the EV-charging robot. Ziggy is intended to be a solution for parking areas looking to implement EV charging but struggling to overcome the limitations of stationary charging systems. The way it works is this: Drivers enter the parking area and reserve a numbered parking spot through an app. When they arrive at their spot, Ziggy is there, ready to charge their car.

EV Safe Charge

The robot is essentially a refrigerator-sized battery with four independently driven wheels and cameras on all sides, allowing it to autonomously navigate from its home base to parking spaces at speeds slower than a walking pace. Though it can’t plug in and unplug your car for you, the usage cost of Ziggy can be based on time to discourage people from monopolizing the robots. Alternatively, parking areas can provide Ziggy’s services for free. It also has two screens with optional touchscreen capacity on the long sides that can display advertisements or parking structure maps.
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Parking areas will be able to lease Ziggys, so maintenance is taken care of by EV Safe Charge, and fleets of the robots can be deployed temporarily for events. While a Ziggy charging station will need to be installed, the system is supposed to eliminate some of the hassle of stationary chargers for both drivers and property owners. Production to Start in 2024EV Safe Charge began developing Ziggy in 2019, working with San Francisco design firm Box Clever to make Ziggy welcoming and intuitive, factors that are important for the integration of autonomous robots into human spaces. The company hopes to start shipping the mobile charging systems by 2024 after starting production in 2023, and it has recently begun taking reservations for Ziggys. It seems like a great idea: EV Safe Charge advertises Ziggy as immediately deployable and easily scalable, things EV charging systems haven’t yet become, really. Anyway, robots are already serving your food at IHOP and fetching packages at warehouses. Deploying to charge your EV at your chosen spot in a parking garage is just another way robots can be helpful. However, there are still some questions surrounding the system. Will some poor Ziggy fall victim to distracted driving? In a tight, one-way parking garage, will drivers get stuck behind the slow rollers? How many Ziggys does a parking area need to meet demand, and how much will the service cost relative to stationary chargers? There’s plenty of time to figure out the answers to those questions, though, so for now, think of Ziggy as a window into some of the unexpected ways EVs will shape the future.
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The Chevrolet Express and its twin GMC Savana will take their final bows after the 2025 model year.The pair will be replaced with electric models similar to the new BrightDrop Zevo 600, though with much smaller capacity. The van pair’s basic designs can be traced back to the 1971 model year, with an all-new model for 1997 and its last major update for the 2003 model year.Last of the big-box American-style cargo and passenger vans, the Chevrolet Express and its badge-engineered GMC Savana clone finally will be discontinued after the 2025 model year, with battery-electric vans replacing them in the 2026 model year, according to a competitive analysis source. Unlike Ford’s new E-Transit battery-electric full-size van, the Express/Savana replacements will be based on GM’s EV-specific “skateboard” chassis and Ultium modular battery pack, and it could be similar in design to the all-electric BrightDrop Zevo 600 commercial fleet delivery van, though very likely quite smaller.The Zevo 600 has cargo capacity of “more than 600 cubic feet,” while the current Chevy Express/GMC Savana has capacity of 284.4 cubic feet for the long-wheelbase version.BrightDrop delivered its first 150 Zevo delivery vans to FedEx last week. Unsexy as this part of the EV business is, it’s huge, with perhaps the best potential to quickly get the automotive business out of carbon-spewing internal-combustion engines. FedEx plans to eventually have 2500 BrightDrop vans in its fleet, on the way to an all-electric vehicle fleet by 2040.The lame-duck GM van twins—their tooling long ago paid off—fall short of Ford and Ram competitors based on much fresher European styling, though the strategy to go directly from 35-year-old designs to EVs might prove smartest. The Chevy/GMC’s basic designs can be traced back to the 1971 model year, with an all-new model for 1997 and its last major update for 2003.
By comparison, the Ford Transit, with three roof height options, has cargo capacity of 246.7-542.2 cubic feet (excluding bare-chassis vans from any of these brands available with larger “cube” cargo boxes that cannot be accessed from the driver’s seat).The BrightDrop Zevo 600’s range of 250 miles practically doubles the Ford E-Transit’s top-range of 126 miles on low-roof versions. The Zevo 600 can be recharged at the rate of 170 miles an hour using a 120-kilowatt fast charger.Ford has delivered some 2022 E-Transits and says the average commercial customer drives 74 miles per day. The 2023 model is now available for order, with cargo and cutaway chassis cabs available.

Ford’s 2022 E-Transit electric van comes in eight configurations, including three roof heights and three body lengths, plus cutaway and chassis cab versions.
Ford

The 2026 BV1 Chevy Express/GMC Savana replacements will add significant volume to GM’s Ultium battery platform—key to easing the cost of the new technology—while the E-Transit is based on the conventional gas-powered Transit van. Ford might not have that disadvantage for long: A dedicated battery-electric Ford E-Transit is expected about the 2027 model year, according to another source in competitive analysis. Stellantis’s Ram is expected to offer a ProMaster EV, also based on the current ICE model, about the 2024 model year.What about window vans? The 2022 Chevy Express/GMC Savana can be configured for seating of up to 15, but there’s no intel, yet, that the BV1 will be available as a family bus. Another key segment for EV conversion—school buses—proves modern battery chemistry makes high-capacity EV passenger vehicles viable. The World Resources Institute this month announced it has tracked commitments for 12,000 battery-electric school buses out of the nation’s fleet of about 500,000, largely consisting of 10,000 diesel-to-EV conversions planned for Midwestern schools as part of the organization’s e School Bus 4Kids initiative. It gets a big push from government: Conversions will be funded by the $5-billion clean school bus program included in last year’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.

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The 2023 Acura TLX Type S PMC Edition will be built at the same Performance Manufacturing Center that is currently building the final version of the NSX, the 600-hp Type S.The TLX Type S PMC Edition will be offered in three paint colors from the NSX—Curva Red, 130R White, and Long Beach Blue.The PMC Edition also gains a carbon-fiber lip spoiler and rear diffuser, as well as blacked-out trim and unique interior treatments paired to each exterior hue. The Acura NSX bows out after the 2022 model year, ending a six-year run with the limited-production 600-horsepower Type S variant. But while Acura’s Performance Manufacturing Center in Ohio will soon be finished building the hybrid mid-engined sports car, the Center’s technicians will stay busy crafting the 2023 Acura TLX Type S PMC Edition, which takes inspiration from the NSX with design updates and a fresh color palette.

Acura

The PMC Edition gains minor visual changes—the roof, antenna, and door handles are painted in Berlina Black, while the quad exhaust tips are finished in black chrome. The 20-inch wheels feature a copper hue, while the special edition also adds a carbon-fiber lip spoiler and rear diffuser, as well as black side sill trim and exterior badging. The PMC Edition will be offered in three colors borrowed from the NSX—Curva Red, 130R White, and Long Beach Blue.

Acura

Carbon fiber also makes an appearance on the PMC Edition’s interior, along with exclusive floor mats and illuminated door sills. Each exterior paint option is paired with a different interior color—Curva Red is matched with a black interior with red stitching, Long Beach Blue comes with an white interior and blue stitching, and 130R White gets a red interior. There is also a small numbered plaque on the lower center console to serve as a reminder of the PMC Edition’s exclusivity.

The PMC Edition also receives the same special post-production treatment as the NSX, with a dyno check, paint inspection, and rough-road simulation test. The vehicles are protected by a car cover and shipped to dealers in closed, single-car carriers. Orders for the TLX Type S PMC Edition will open later this year ahead of a limited-production run, but Acura hasn’t said how much it will cost. Expect a sizable increase over the Type S’s $54,795 starting price.
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Vehicles equipped with Apple CarPlay might soon move the payment part of gassing up at the pump to the dashboard, without the need to pull out a credit card each time.Exactly how this will all work remains a bit under wraps, but the 1600-station Sinclair network hopes to make CarPlay payments an option when the software is updated this fall.GM tried a version of in-dash fueling in 2017 and 2018, but the automaker ended the Marketplace technology behind the service this past March.Most of the hype surrounding easy, contactless payments in the automotive space has to do with plug-and-charge electric vehicle stations, but gas-powered vehicles might not be left out of updates to a more tech-driven future if rumors about changes coming to Apple CarPlay pan out.

Reuters is reporting on a new, dashboard-based fuel payment feature scheduled to be released this fall in an updated version of CarPlay. While Apple apparently showed off the feature at its developer conference in June, details about the fuel payments were not made public until now. Reuters has confirmed with at least one gas station chain owner, HF Sinclair, which markets its diesel and gasoline brands at over 1600 stations in 30 states. The company said that it hopes to integrate the new CarPlay payment options with its stations and will provide more details soon. “We are excited by the idea that consumers could navigate to a Sinclair station and purchase fuel from their vehicle navigation screen,” HF Sinclair’s Jack Barger told Reuters. Gas station pumps have increasingly been equipped with contactless tap readers that can get payment information from a compatible credit card or a digital device like an Apple Watch. The general idea for the CarPlay update is that you will be able to use your car’s touchscreen to pay for fuel without the need to pull out a credit card. The technical details of how a car with Apple CarPlay will communicate with compatible pumps was not divulged by Apple or Sinclair, but you will need to download compatible gas station apps in order to make it work. Once everything is installed, the navigation app will be able to not only direct you to a station but also be able to start the refueling session. CarPlay can already be used to pay for parking sessions, EV charging, and ordering food, Reuters notes, saying that the ability to use the software to log miles driven on business trips is also on the horizon.GM’s Short-Lived ExperimentFive years ago, General Motors introduced a pay-from-the-dashboard feature in some 2017 and 2018 Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac models, but the technology only worked at some Shell stations and was accompanied by what The Verge called a “baffling” user interface that required so many steps to make work – registering with Shell, getting three-digit codes that needed to be entered into the pump’s keyboard and more—that customers never really took to the service. GM shut down its Marketplace technology in March 2022, telling Reuters it was because of “a supplier exiting the business,” but said it plans to introduce another, similar technology in the future.
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