Motor News

Volvo is gearing up for its next generation of electric vehicles with a few interesting debuts: a new electric SUV coming soon, a new highway-only self-driving technology called Ride Pilot that the new vehicle will get, and a new subscription service so drivers can actually use Ride Pilot.Volvo is testing its autonomous tech on roads in Sweden and plans to start testing Ride Pilot in California later this year. California is also where the automaker plans to launch Ride Pilot for its customers.Volvo will be asking owners to pay to use Ride Pilot (costs were not announced).Volvo will debut more than a new model when it reveals an electric SUV later this year. The new flagship will introduce three key items, starting with the vehicle itself. The other two are a new, unsupervised autonomous driving feature called Ride Pilot and a subscription service that enables the use of the self-driving technology. Also of note is that when it launches, Ride Pilot will first be available in California before being “gradually” rolled out to other markets and regions. (Pictured is the automaker’s Concept Recharge, revealed in June 2021.)

There are a number of steps Volvo needs to take to make Ride Pilot available to drivers, though. First, obviously, the company needs to reveal the new electric SUV, which is planned for later this year. Second, Volvo needs to verify that the autonomous driving technology that makes up Ride Pilot works as promised on highways in the U.S. Volvo is already testing Ride Pilot in Sweden, together with its partner Zenseact, and gathering data in other parts of Europe and the U.S.

Volvo

Volvo

Volvo plans to start testing Ride Pilot in California by the middle of this year because that’s where, it says, “the climate, traffic conditions and regulatory framework provide a favorable environment for the introduction of autonomous driving.”

Third, and perhaps most controversially, Volvo has to convince people who buy the new SUV to pony up a subscription fee for Ride Pilot to work. Volvo did not provide any insight into how much it will charge for a subscription to Ride Pilot. There’s a hint of how Volvo plans to make its sales pitch in the company announcement this week: “Ride Pilot aims to free up more time for customers and make driving a Volvo even more convenient and enjoyable.” In other words, expect to see arguments that ask you to consider spending money to take advantage of the time you’d otherwise waste driving your car. Mentioning all of the time drivers lose behind the wheel is not a message automakers have been eager to promote in the past, but if the industry is changing to an electric, autonomous future, some of the ad messages are likely to change as well. Here’s another line from Volvo’s announcement: “By using Ride Pilot, drivers will be able to free up time while driving, and spend it on secondary activities like reading, writing, working or socializing. The feature can also help drivers arrive at their destination rested and recharged, by reducing the mental strain that may come with driving, especially in traffic jams or heavy traffic.” The sensor suite Volvo will use in the upcoming electric SUV and other next-generation vehicles is made up of over two dozen sensors, including lidar from another partner in the project, Luminar, as well as five radars, eight cameras, and 16 ultrasonic sensors. Over-the-air updates will also be used to keep Ride Pilot’s software current.

Volvo

Volvo

From the preliminary information Volvo is releasing, Ride Pilot sounds like an enhanced version of self-driving technologies such as GM’s Super Cruise. The car is able to drive itself in limited situations without input from the driver and will be limited to use on highways, at least at the beginning. Volvo said the software and sensors used to enable Ride Pilot will be standard and that the car will be able to benefit from safety features that use the sensor suite, but Ride Pilot’s actual self-driving capability “will only be made available to customers once it has gone through Volvo Cars’ rigorous verification and testing protocol. This includes validation of the technology as safe for use on highways in a number of varying conditions.” And, of course, once you pay your subscription fee. The new electric SUV will also come with a new type of name for a Volvo model. Volvo Cars’ CEO Håkan Samuelsson told Automotive News Europe in July 2021 that the new EV will use a name that one would give to a child, not an alphanumeric designation like XC60 or XC90, and he later added that the name will start with a vowel.
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U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

With self-driving cars at least on the distant horizon, automakers are thinking of ways to change the steering wheel. BMW’s latest idea is to turn it into a steering handle that you can manipulate with one hand.A wide crossbar with two L-shaped handles on either end is the basic shape of BMW’s idea here, and the outside handles can rotate independently of how the center bar has been turned.The whole idea here is to create a smaller steering wheel, one that would allow riders in an autonomous car the ability to read a newspaper or check emails. Yay?We’ll let you make your own “reinvent the wheel” jokes. The subject is a newly discovered patent filing from BMW describing a “steering handle”—basically, a strange little yoke that feels like the next worst thing to a standard wheel. BMW envisages this new wheel/handle/yoke as something that would be used in an “at least partially autonomously driving double-track motor vehicle.” That’s patentspeak for something like a Level 3 or higher autonomous car, where a standard steering wheel would take up too much space when the car is in autonomous mode.

BMW knows we will all want to put our books and tablets in that space where the steering wheel is now, and this is one partial solution. Specifically, BMW said in the filing that a handle like this means “as much free space as possible is to be provided for the driver . . . with the result that he/she can read a newspaper, for example, or can manage emails, for example, by means of a tablet or the like with the aid of the display unit.”As the pictures show, the overall design of the steering handle is a thick central section with a free-rotating grip on either side. BMW said in its filing that when the car is being driven autonomously, the central section of the steering handle would stay in a standard, horizontal position, “even when driving around bends.”

It’s the way that the handle would be used by the human driver, though, that’s most interesting. We’ve seen other unusual yoke designs in cars recently—by Tesla, most famously—but BMW’s is different because of the exterior grips that can be moved clockwise in the steering wheel’s arc while your hand doesn’t change its vertical axis. So, as you move your left hand from the 9 o’clock to 12 o’clock position, it can stay with the thumb pointed upward, for example.

BMW acknowledges that a person could steer a car that’s equipped with a handle like this single-handedly, and that even if some parts of the handle were folded in, it could still be used to maneuver the vehicle. Overall, despite how strange the grips make this yoke, the main idea here is to shrink down the steering control mechanism, which BMW has unquestionably done. The patent was first reported by CarBuzz, which also notes that the patent has been filed in China and Germany, showing that BMW is serious about claiming this kind of design, even if simply filing a patent doesn’t in any way guarantee that the subject of the patent will ever be produced.
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General Motors announced, as part of its program for the 2022 CES technology show, that its heavy-duty trucks will gain electric variants by 2035.Every light-duty vehicle from GM will be electric by 2035, with the automaker pledging last fall to end gas vehicle sales by 2040 globally.This would leave five years in which GM could sell conventional internal-combustion-powered HD trucks alongside electric versions.The pioneering electric vehicles of the 2010s were dorky cars like the Nissan Leaf, designed more for economical operation than any notion of style. A decade later, the EV craze has spread to nearly every corner of the auto industry, with a slew of brawny electric pickups—including the new Chevy Silverado EV and Rivian R1T—hitting the market and even commercial vehicles like the Tesla Semi on the way. One sector, the heavy-duty pickup, seems set to stick with internal-combustion propulsion for the time being, but as part of its program for the CES technology show this week, General Motors revealed a timeline for when its HD trucks will gain electric power, too.

“As previously announced, our plan is to have all new light-duty vehicles be electric by 2035,” GM CEO Barra said during her keynote address. “And today, I’m pleased to announce that we’ll introduce all-electric heavy-duty vehicles on that same timetable.” Barra also emphasized that the electric HD trucks will be geared towards hauling and towing while still delivering enough range, which ideally should be easier to achieve with the battery technology in 13 years’ time. It is still possible that GM will offer internal-combustion HD trucks in 2035. The company entered an agreement with five other automakers in November to end gas vehicle sales by 2040 globally, which could mean five years of overlap between the two types of powertrains. With the electric HD trucks still over a decade away, there are no details yet, and it will likely be some time before we know more about the future heavy-duty pickups.
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This 2005 Porsche Carrera GT is now the most expensive car ever to sell on the auction site Bring a Trailer.The selling price of just over $1.9 million beat the previous high by more than $400,000.To everyone who missed out on this Porsche, do not despair.Record-setting auction results have become routine at Bring a Trailer, but the just-completed sale of this 2005 Porsche Carrera GT is notable for topping them all. Selling for $1,902,000, it vaulted to the top of the auction site’s hit parade to become the most expensive car ever sold on BaT, smashing the previous high-water mark of $1.4 million set by a 1961 Mercedes-Benz 300SL roadster in July 2021.

Bring a Trailer

Bring a Trailer

That Carrera GT prices are skyrocketing is not hard to understand. This purist machine could be considered the last analog supercar, and yet it’s also a true exotic. Its 5.7-liter V-10 is naturally aspirated yet features titanium connecting rods, dry-sump lubrication, and an 8400-rpm redline. It’s mated to a six-speed manual transaxle with a novel twin-plate ceramic clutch and drives the rear wheels. There’s no stability control, although there is traction control and ABS. Derived from Porsche’s stillborn Le Mans prototype, the Carrera GT has a carbon-fiber central tub and front structure and carbon-fiber bodywork. The control-arm suspension features pushrod-actuated horizontal coil-over shocks, and the brake rotors are carbon-ceramic. The design of the production car was hardly changed from the concept car that wowed the crowd at the 2000 Paris auto show. Upon driving it in 2004, we said simply: “We have been to the top of the mountain.”

Bring a Trailer

Obviously, any Carrera GT is desirable. This one was made more so, first by its ultralow mileage, and second by its rare Guards Red livery. It’s believed only 42 Carrera GTs in Guards Red cars were imported to the United States versus 103 Black and 362 GT Silver. This car also has two special options: the wood shift knob and a set of fitted luggage.

Bring a Trailer

Bring a Trailer

This sale also garnered more than 122,000 page views—which would have put it among the top-10 most popular BaT auctions last year—and just over 700 comments. There were also 4910 auction watchers. As for the underbidders, chin up! There’s another Carrera GT on BaT right now. It’s GT Silver but it has even fewer miles: just 250. Raise high your [virtual] paddles, Porsche fans.

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The Cadillac InnerSpace concept was revealed as part of the 2022 CES technology show, which was a mostly virtual event this year.The InnerSpace is an electric vehicle with autonomous driving capability, and it eschews a steering wheel for a screen.The concept joins the PersonalSpace and SocialSpace concepts revealed at last year’s CES in Cadillac’s Halo Concept Portfolio.If you need further proof that Cadillac is moving away from its internal-combustion past, here it is. Ahead of the release of its electric Lyriq SUV, which will go on sale in the first half of 2022, Cadillac is showing this InnerSpace concept, which imagines a self-driving luxury two-person EV of the future.

Cadillac

The InnerSpace is, of course, powered by electricity and utilizing the Ultium platform that also underpins the upcoming Hummer EV and Chevy Silverado EV. Cadillac says that the platform’s wireless battery management system allows the battery modules to be spread around the vehicle. This let the designers maximize interior space and create a low floor, giving the InnerSpace a “sports-car-like” seating position with seats that can be separate or move together into a loveseat configuration.

The InnerSpace’s dramatically raked roofline features panoramic glass, and the roof and doors open in conjunction with each other to ease entry and exit. Inside, the reclined, two-person seat faces a wraparound LED display. Cadillac says passengers can choose from Augmented Reality Engagement, Entertainment, and Wellness Recovery themes on the screen.

Cadillac

The InnerSpace concept joins two vehicles revealed at last year’s CES as part of what Cadillac calls the Halo Concept Portfolio. The PersonalSpace is a single-seater, vertical takeoff and landing concept that would allow its passenger to travel over ground traffic, while the SocialSpace is a boxy, vanlike vehicle that can seat six. Cadillac also hinted at another concept, called OpenSpace, to be revealed later.
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The 2024 Volkswagen ID.Buzz Microbus will be revealed on March 9, 2022. It will arrive in the United States in 2023 in its three-row passenger van configuration. Pricing is expected to start around $40,000, and both single- and dual-motor version should be available. The wait is almost over for the return of the Volkswagen bus. Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess announced via Twitter that the 2024 ID.Buzz Microbus will be revealed on March 9.
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The ID.Buzz is inspired by the iconic Type 2 Microbus that was introduced in the 1950s, and its design will be appropriately retro. We’ve seen prototypes testing and VW revealed a glimpse of the production version last fall (pictured). It’ll be built on VW’s Modular Electric Drive (MEB) platform that currently underpins the ID.4 electric crossover on sale now in the States. We expect the ID.Buzz to offer a driving range of around 300 miles and both single- and dual-motor configurations providing rear- or all-wheel drive.

Volkswagen

We’ll only get a long-wheelbase passenger van version here in the U.S., and it will arrive in 2023 for the 2024 model year. It will offer three rows of seats that can be configured in multiple different ways—and they can even be removed. We expect pricing to start around $40,000 to make it competitive with other EV offerings. A commercial cargo version without windows will be sold in Europe. Check back here in March for more specs and details when the new electric Microbus makes its debut.
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The current Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 is the most extreme machine ever to wear the iconic pony-car nameplate. Designed as a tool for both the dragway and the road course, the Shelby has more in common with the likes of Europe’s best sports cars than many of its fellow American-made cars. For those of us unable to get the real deal, the folks at Lego have just created a new GT500 kit for the masses.

LEGO Technic Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 42138 Model Building Kit; Pull-Back Drag Race Car Toy for Ages 9+ (544 Pieces)

LEGO
amazon.com

$49.99

This plasticized muscle car is part of the Lego Technic series, which brings a greater focus on engineering and challenging designs than your typical Lego set. The Shelby is composed of 544 pieces, and measures in at just over 3.0 inches high, 10.5 inches long, and 4.5 inches wide when finished. The general shape of the model is unmistakably American muscle, though the Mustang’s front fascia proved difficult to accurately re-create out of bricks. The same can’t be said out back, as the rear end is perhaps the most authentic-looking section of the build. The thing does look like a GT500, though it certainly looks like one made of Lego bricks.

Lego

Building a model that looks the part wasn’t the only way Lego decided to honor the Shelby GT500. Among those 544 pieces are two pull-back motors that will allow the completed Lego GT500 to do some actual racing. As this is the modern era, the toy company has even integrated some unique virtual test tracks into its Lego Technic augmented reality app. These tracks feature unique challenges for the model drag racer in your life to complete. Lego states that the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 kit is intended for builders ages nine and up, and have the kit listed as item #42138 on its website. The Shelby is $49.99, which is a lot more affordable than some of the brand’s other automotive options. It’s also gotta be one of the cheapest ways to get your hands on a GT500 of any kind right about now.

Lego

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Mercedes-Benz revealed its Vision EQXX concept as part of the CES technology show this week.The powertrain is notable for promising 620 miles of range thanks to a compact, energy-dense battery and motor, both of which Mercedes developed in-house.With 201 horsepower and a top speed limited to 87 mph, it diverges sharply from the Mercedes flagship image of the past.Mercedes has released more details about the pioneering powertrain in the Vision EQXX concept that was shown earlier this week, with the company confirming that the first car to use a version of the long-range EV powertrain will be in production by 2024.This is more than a concept car; it is a technology program,” chief technology officer Markus Schäfer told journalists in an online call after the unveiling. “All the elements on this car will make it into series production. The battery, for example, is an early prototype of the chemistry that you’re going to see in the new generation of concept cars.”

The new battery’s enhanced energy density is thanks to next-generation silcon carbide anodes that Mercedes has developed in-house, allowing the EQXX to store similar energy to the range-topping EQS’s 107.8-kWh pack in a space 50 percent smaller. Mercedes is planning to use the same technology for smaller capacity packs as well, which will be lighter and cheaper, but the company’s engineers also insist that the EQXX’s claimed 620-mile range will be achievable under everyday conditions rather than just simulated testing. “It is 1000 km on real streets, so the WLTP range [the way Europe measures electric range] will be even higher,” Eva Greiner, the drive system’s chief engineer, said. We’re promised that the Vision EQXX will be sent into the real world to prove its ability to deliver those numbers.Mercedes-Made MotorWe’ve also learned that the ultra-efficient 201-hp motor that turns the EQXX’s rear wheels is a radial flux unit that has been developed in-house by Mercedes based on the technology that it is already using. Work on it predated the company’s recent acquisition of Yasa, a British manufacturer of high-performance axial flux motors. Merc’s next generation of compact EVs will use this newly developed radial flux unit, with Schäfer confirming the plan is to also offer all-wheel drive by adding a second motor; we presume axial flux motors will therefore be reserved for higher-performance models. The EQXX (and production cars that will share its powertrain) have been designed for efficiency rather than outright speed, but even using a single motor Greiner says it can run from zero to 62 mph in a respectable 7.0 seconds, although the concept’s top speed is limited to just 87 mph.

The relatively modest output of the new motor is also what allows the battery pack to use air cooling rather than liquid cooling. This might look technically retrograde compared to the wider EV market, where almost all cars now use liquid cooling (the Nissan Leaf being the notable holdout). But careful temperature management through what is described as a cooling plate on the base of the cell pack means the EQXX can do without the use of a more energy-intensive cooling system, part of its impressively frugal six-mile-per-kWh consumption. That’s about 50 percent better than the longest-range Tesla, the 405-mile Model S, which gets roughly four miles per kWh.Despite air cooling, Schäfer promises the new powertrain can still support respectably rapid charging speeds, with the targeted ability to support rates that will able to add at least 186 miles of range in 15 minutes by the time production versions reach the market. He also makes the point that if you have a 600-mile plus battery pack, you won’t need to worry about charging it nearly so often.
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