Motor News

Volvo will continue production of the current XC90 even as it launches a new EV flagship SUV.The XC90 is built in Sweden while its electric replacement will be built in South Carolina.Another facelift is in store for the SUV, according to Volvo’s CEO.The second-generation Volvo XC90’s production run will continue for the foreseeable future, according to an Automotive News report quoting Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson. Although Volvo is planning to launch a new EV crossover flagship that will effectively replace the XC90, Samuelsson said there are plenty of reasons to keep the current model in production, namely the strong demand for hybrids in the U.S. and China.

The new Volvo EV crossover, previewed by the Concept Recharge shown in 2021 (pictured below), is slated to adopt a new name and will be built at Volvo’s plant in South Carolina. This leaves room for the current XC90 to continue for the next several years, as it’s built in Sweden. Volvo has just announced an investment in this Torslanda, Sweden factory to build its next generation of electric vehicles, but the brand doesn’t plan to make the transition to a fully electric lineup until 2030. That gives gas-powered models such as the XC90 plenty of years to phase out.

Volvo Concept Recharge
Volvo

Launched in 2015 as the first model in Volvo’s recent rejuvenation, the XC90 continues to be a strong seller for the company: it sold 38,657 units in the U.S. in 2021, a 13 percent increase over 2020 and second behind the smaller XC60 crossover’s 41,582 units. Samuelsson said that another facelift is coming soon for the XC90, and we also wouldn’t be surprised if Volvo eventually drops the standard T5 and T6 gasoline powertrains and keeps only the plug-in-hybrid XC90 Recharge model.
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Land Rover has handed out seven Defender SUVs to deserving nonprofits as part of its Defender Above and Beyond Service Awards.Each Defender was kitted out with custom paint treatments, off-road equipment, and, in one case, an animal-friendly interior. The SUVs were handed out at an event at the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina.Around this time last year, Land Rover kicked off the Defender Above and Beyond Service Awards, a project to give away seven customized Defenders to nonprofits. After some initial culling of more than 300 nominees, there was public voting, and then the winners were announced last fall. Now, the representatives of the fortunate organizations have finally headed to the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina to meet their new rigs and learn how to use them off-road—to the extent that their mission involves that kind of thing.Wolfe County Search and Rescue, which specializes in tricky mountain rescues in Eastern Kentucky, was probably in its element out in the woods at Biltmore. The people from Hamptons Community Outreach, the winner in the “urban improvement” category, maybe not so much. Although some of the tricks for navigating the trails (air down the tires, use low range) would also apply to driving on the beach in East Hampton.

Land Rover

Each of the seven P300 Defender 110s was outfitted according to its mission. The Wolfe County Search and Rescue Defender was probably the most decked out for off-roading, with a snorkel, front skid plate, winch, roof-mounted auxiliary lights, and snow chains. The Humane Society of Independence County, in Arkansas, focused on an animal-appropriate interior: seat covers, a cargo space divider, rubber floor mats, a pet access ramp, and a portable rinse system. (And also, since you never know where animal rescue might take you, a winch.)

The Defender slated for the New York Marine Center (the winner in the “coastal and marine conservation” category) was outfitted in similar fashion but also included an onboard air compressor, perhaps with beach driving in mind. Montgomery Emergency Medical Services of Belle Mead, New Jersey, exercised uncommon restraint with their build, opting only for mud flaps, an A-frame protection bar, and wheel-arch protection.

Add some surfboards and a Jet Ski, and the New York Marine Center Defender could look like this rendering.
Land Rover

All of the Defenders got a custom wrap with graphics promoting the relevant organization, along with a prominent “Defender Above and Beyond Service Awards” logo—which isn’t just for Land Rover to brag about its good deeds, but also so that the people of Independence County, Arkansas, don’t think that the local Humane Society is out there buying brand-new Land Rovers. Nope: They won it, and they get to keep it.

Gratuitous puppy photo.
JARED KAY/Land Rover

If your favored nonprofit didn’t get enough of the 165,000 public votes that were cast last year, take heart. Maybe Land Rover will run this again, and you can get another chance to make the case for why your favorite 501(c)(3) nonprofit could really use an SUV with a snorkel. And maybe a winch.

JARED KAY/Land Rover

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Mercedes has revealed the AMG version of the EQE electric sedan.It offers up to 677 horsepower and has the same 90.6-kWh battery pack as the non-AMG model.The AMG EQE will go on sale in the U.S. in early 2023.Mercedes-Benz’s electric lineup continues to grow with the Mercedes-AMG EQE. This new version of the electric sedan aims to match the performance of the big AMG EQS but in the EQE’s smaller package.

The AMG EQE53 raises the power level from the two electric motors to 617 horsepower and 701 pound-feet, and the addition of the optional Dynamic Plus package brings total power to a lofty 677 horsepower and 738 lb-ft of torque. The sprint from 0 to 60 mph take a claimed 3.4 seconds in the standard car and 3.2 seconds with the package, and top speed is governed at either 137 or 149 mph. The torque routes through a single-speed transmission. A lower-powered AMG EQE43 model will be offered in Europe but not in the U.S.AMG says it has upgraded the powertrain and cooling system for the 53 version. The motors are AMG-exclusive and the power distribution is rear-biased, and we fully expect the AMG EQE models to be ready for play and go sideways if the driver so desires. The battery pack is the same 90.6-kWh unit as the standard EQE, so range will likely be reduced compared with the less powerful non-AMG model.

Mercedes-AMG

The AMG EQE comes with a standard air suspension that’s stiffened compared with the standard EQE’s. Carbon-ceramic brakes are optional, and they are probably a good idea given the considerable heft of this electric sedan: it tips the scales at a whopping two and a half tons. While the AMG-engineered EQS is fitted with identical tires up front and in the rear, the AMG EQE models have a staggered setup with fatter tires in the rear. This not only makes for a more athletic stance but could also give the EQE a slight edge in cornering.Visually, AMG EQE models share their body panels with the regular EQE models but the unique wheel and tire combinations and AMG decor will give them an extra sense of presence on the road. The tail is accentuated by a gurney-style spoiler. A “sound experience” functionality, part of the Dynamic Plus package, adds a few additional artificial sounds. And the electronic instrument cluster comes with AMG-specific designs. Several seat designs are AMG-specific, too.

Mercedes-AMG

Competition will include the Tesla Model 3 Performance, the Tesla Model S, and the BMW i4 M50; we also expect some cross-shopping with the Audi e-tron GT and the Porsche Taycan. Mercedes says the AMG EQE will arrive in the U.S. starting in early 2023.
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Fisker has announced that its second model, the Pear, will go on sale in 2024.The Pear will start at $29,900, slotting in below the Ocean in Fisker’s lineup.Taiwanese electronics maker Foxconn will build the Pear in Ohio, presumably in the same plant set to produce the electric Lordstown Endurance pickup truck. Fisker Inc., which rose from the ashes of the Karma-producing Fisker Automotive, has revealed one vehicle to date: the Fisker Ocean. Production of the Ocean is set to commence in November 2022. While there are still nine months until Fisker delivers its first electric crossover, Fisker has already announced that a second model, the Pear, will go on sale in 2024, and has made the ambitious claim that it will start at $29,900.

The Fisker Ocean
Fisker

The Pear—the name stands for Personal Electric Automotive Revolution—will be a compact, five-passenger crossover slotting below the Ocean in Fisker’s lineup. Fisker is promising “intuitive controls, sporty driving, clever storage, and a focus on industry firsts.”

While the Ocean will be built by Magna Steyr in Austria, Fisker is partnering with Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn for production of the Pear. Fisker says that Foxconn will build the Pear in Ohio, so it seems likely that Pear production will occur at the Lordstown Assembly plant which Foxconn purchased last fall. Foxconn is also set to built the electric Lordstown Endurance pickup truck at the Ohio factory, although Fisker would not confirm that the Pear will be constructed in the same facility. Fisker says deliveries of the Pear will begin in 2024, with a minimum initial production of 250,000 units per year. Fisker is now accepting reservations for the Pear, and interested customers need to plunk down $250 for the first reservation and $100 for a second reservation at a later date.
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The Maserati Grecale SUV will be officially revealed on March 22.Along with the reveal date, Maserati also released new teaser images of its upcoming luxury ute.These pics are our best look yet at the Grecale, and its camouflage contains hints about its features and specs.Those who have been eagerly awaiting the reveal of the new Maserati Grecale SUV will finally be rewarded on March 22, according to an announcement today by the company. News of the official reveal date coincides with the release of more teaser photos, except this time the Grecale’s camouflage is more revealing than the prototype we saw testing last month.

The Grecale in the latest images is covered in light camouflage that gives us a virtually undisguised look at its front end. While its headlights are more upright than those on the larger Maserati Levante SUV, the grille design with its vertical slats and large trident logo are hallmarks of the brand. The shape of the Grecale’s rear quarter panel and C-pillar are also reminiscent of the Levante, and the quad-tip exhaust, as well as the sizable front brake rotors and calipers, hint at this being a performance-oriented model.
We know that the Grecale is going to be built at the same factory in Italy as the Alfa Romeo Stelvio SUV, but what we don’t know is which components they will share or any of the Maserati’s exact specifications. However, a close inspection of messages on the Grecale’s camo may offer some clues. The fill-in-the-blank sections are like something you’d see on Wheel of Fortune.One message reads, “My cockpit flaunts more than **” in display surfaces.” Another one says, “I see your eyes on my **L interior storage.” It’s worth noting that the specs Maserati is referencing are in metric units, with the “L” standing for liters. The same goes for the line about legroom that’s described as “more than ****mm.”
We can make some educated guesses just based on the number of digits. The new Grecale’s stereo, for instance, should offer at least 10 speakers and more than 999 watts. It’ll have more than one drive mode, too, and its cargo area will measure at least 100 liters, or 3.5 cubic feet. Maserati’s “Intelligent Assistant” will be controlled by voice commands, but we probably could’ve prophesied that without the hint. It’s up to you if you want to scour these photos to play the guessing game, or if you’re willing to wait for the full reveal next month.
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This Alfa Romeo GT Veloce 1750, on sale now on Bring a Trailer, underwent a full restoration that was completed in March 2020. The Alfa GTV 1750 weighs about 2300 pounds, has 120 horsepower, and is known for its rich character, playful handling, willing four-cylinder, and raspy exhaust note. The current high bid is $60,000, but expect it to go higher still; prices for the best examples have crested $100,000. The auction closes on Thursday, February 17.It would be a wonderful world indeed if every car enthusiast could rack up some miles behind the wheel of an Alfa Romeo GT Veloce 1750. I say that as someone who once had the good fortune to put miles on a well-maintained GTV similar to the one pictured here. And this one, luckily for you, is currently for sale on the auction site Bring a Trailer—which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos.The diminutive Alfa sports coupe, better known as the GTV 1750, represents everything that was right about Italian cars of the late 1960s. It’s one of those rare automobiles in which the ride, handling, engine, gearbox, and major controls are in perfect balance, imbuing it with a special sort of harmony that makes every drive memorable. The exhaust note is alone is reason enough to want it. This is a car with personality. Early in my career, I got to drive a friend’s GTV during a trip to Palo Alto, California. We cruised the San Francisco area for several days, and I would have happily driven it all the way back home to New York City.

Bring a Trailer

Even though that GTV was by then a dozen years old—ancient in car years—it felt totally contemporary. The GTV 1750 was built at a time when small cars were light; at about 2300 pounds, the car is roughly 500 pounds lighter than the current Toyota GR86/Subaru BRZ twins. Thanks in part to that featherweight mass, there was a magical delicacy to the way it drove. It felt lithe and lively and agile, with light-to-the touch unassisted steering, an easy-shifting five-speed manual gearbox, and solid four-wheel disc brakes.

Bring a Trailer

Its ride was a sweet compromise between taut and supple. Best of all, the spunky double overhead-cam four-cylinder engine, which would feel merely peppy by today’s standards, nonetheless snarled like an angry German shepherd with each prod of the accelerator. The GTV seemed made for brisk drives on the kind of two-lane roads you find in Napa Valley, California, or in the hills near Modena, Italy.

Bring a Trailer

The dark blue GTV on Bring a Trailer looks to be a spectacular example of the breed. It’s described as a Europe-market model, which is why its 1779-cc four-cylinder is fitted with dual Weber DCOE carbs rather than the Spica fuel injection found on U.S. GTVs. (The fuel-injection system was needed to meet early U.S. emissions requirements.) This means that the buyer will need to find a local Weber carb expert in order to keep their new-old GTV running smoothly—or learn the tuning intricacies of the finicky Italian air-fuel mixers so they can do it themselves.

The BaT GTV underwent a full restoration, which was completed to seeming perfection in March 2020, and there are ample photos documenting the build. This car’s original color was Gialo Ocra, which is a shade darker than school-bus yellow, but it was refinished in an Alfa-correct dark blue named Blu Olandese. The interior was reupholstered in black vinyl. It rolls on silver-painted 14-inch wheels topped with Alfa hubcaps and shod with narrow 165/HR-14 Pirelli Cinturato tires, which sport the tall sidewalls of high-performance radials that were available 53 years ago. This car also was treated to a complete mechanical restoration, according to the seller. Its engine was given a full rebuild, so we’d expect it to deliver its all of its advertised 120 horses. The brakes, rear axle, and five-speed manual gearbox were also overhauled. A shot of the car’s underside looks factory fresh. The seller says that the car has been driven about 7500 miles since it was reassembled. Bring a Trailer recommends that shoppers conduct an in-person inspection of the vehicles that they’re interested in before they start bidding, which will take some doing with this GTV; it’s located in Mallorca, Spain. Obviously, the winning bidder will also have to plan on higher-than-usual shipping costs, but BaT has an app for that. And there may be one other complication: though the car is located in Mallorca, it is registered in Sweden in the name of the seller’s business. We hope the transaction will not be bogged down by this Alfa’s multinational status.Bidding for the beautiful blue GTV 1750 closes on Thursday, February 17, and we envy the lucky winner who scoops it up. We expect that the driving experience will be as full of brio now as it was more than a half-century ago.

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General Motors submitted a preliminary test document to the EPA revealing a few interesting specs on the 2022 GMC Hummer EV Edition 1 pickup. The new electric truck will go 329 miles on a single charge with 212.7 kWh of usable energy and achieve 47 MPGe combined, according to GM’s test data.The Hummer is as heavy as 9063 pounds, and the big battery alone weighs 2923 pounds. CORRECTION 2/15/22: This story has been updated to correct the Hummer EV Edition 1’s price, which is $110,295.When the GMC Hummer EV pickup debuted more than a year ago, General Motors claimed that the electric pickup would travel 350 miles on a single charge of its 200.0-kWh Ultium battery, putting it above the EPA’s estimates for the first electric truck to arrive in the marketplace, the Rivian R1T. Test data that GM filed recently with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now brings those claims into focus and provides a number of other interesting details regarding the 1000-hp, $110,295 Edition 1 electric pickup.

The document shows that the Edition 1 model, the only version available at launch, has an Ultium battery with a usable capacity of 212.7 kWh, which is significantly larger than the Ford F-150 Lightning’s available 131.0-kWh Extended Range battery pack and the Rivian R1T’s 128.9-kWh lithium-ion battery. According to the EPA filings, the Hummer will achieve a 329-mile EPA combined range, consuming electricity at 47 MPGe EPA combined, some 33 percent less than the Rivian’s 70-MPGe rating. It’s important to add that the range figure does better the Rivian’s 314-mile rating—and also Ford’s 300-mile estimate for the Lightning. Also interesting is that the Hummer’s front and rear reduction ratios are nearly 30 percent different (13.3:1 in front, and 10.5:1 in back), so it likely shifts the primary propulsion source to whichever axle will be more efficient during different driving circumstances. A GMC spokesperson told Car and Driver that it will not be displaying the Hummer’s MPGe figures on its window sticker, as vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) above 8500 pounds are not required to. So, here they are: 51 MPGe city, 43 MPGe highway, and the aforementioned 47 MPGe combined. Automakers can always choose to display those figures, as Rivian does with the R1T, which has a GVWR just over 8500 pounds. In real-world usage during our recent test of the Rivian R1T, however, we achieved 35 MPGe, or half of its combined figure, so the Hummer might also do worse in the real world. Obviously weight is a huge factor, and we now know a few more details about that, too. The big battery pack alone weighs 2923 pounds, almost as much as an entire Honda Civic. GMC reports in the EPA document a curb weight of 9063 pounds, which is nearly 2000 pounds heavier than the Rivian R1T Launch Edition we just tested.The data also shows a battery capacity of 617 amp-hours. Multiplied by its 400-volt operating voltage, that yields 246.8 kWh, which should equate with the double-stacked pack’s gross capacity. That would mean its usable capacity is 86 percent of the total, which is a little lower than what we’re seeing in other EVs today, where the ratio is often closer to 90 percent. Perhaps that’s why the Hummer EV’s losses when charging from empty to full on a 240-volt Level 2 outlet, which these documents show at 10 percent, are slightly better than the roughly 12 percent average by other EVs in EPA tests. GMC says that this test is the final certification for the Hummer’s 2022 model year. Cheaper models will arrive in the next few years, including the dual-motor base model in 2024.
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Audi has released U.S. details on the updated 2022 A8 lineup.The S8 is now the only model with a V-8, and the plug-in-hybrid has been dropped.The A8 starts at $87,595 and the S8 starts at $118,995.Audi is slimming down the A8 lineup along with the luxury sedan’s updates for the 2022 model year. The V-6–powered A8 55 and the V-8–powered S8 will now be the only versions available in the U.S., meaning that the previous V-8 and plug-in-hybrid versions of the A8 have been dropped. Fortunately for eight-cylinder diehards, the S8’s base price is significantly lower than before to bring it closer to the previous A8 60’s cost.

The 2022 A8, with its 335-hp turbocharged 3.0-liter V-6 engine, now starts at $87,595. That’s a $50 increase from last year and significantly less than the equivalent Mercedes S-class, the $112,150 S500. The S8 comes with the same 563-hp twin-turbo 4.0-liter V-8 as before and starts at $118,995, a whopping $14,250 decrease from last year.The U.S.-market A8 and S8 receive the same visual updates that we saw on the Europe-market car a few months back. The interior is largely carryover, but the S8 does receive a few new options including a $5900 package that converts the rear seat to a two-seat layout with a center console and fold-out tables.

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