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    2021 Nissan Armada Gets a Sharper Look, Starts at $49,895

    The redesigned 2021 Nissan Armada’s starting prices range $49,895 for the rear-wheel-drive base S model and topping out at $69,295 for the all-wheel-drive Platinum.
    Rear-wheel drive is standard on the Armada, but all-wheel drive is available for an extra $3000 on all models. All are powered by a 400-hp V-8.
    The 2021 Armada is on sale in the U.S. now.
    Nissan’s Armada full-size SUV has been renewed for 2021 with redesigned front and rear, including a bolder grille, and it’s also the first vehicle in the States to rock Nissan’s new logo. It also gets an updated interior with a standard 12.3-inch infotainment screen and wireless Apple CarPlay capability to compete with the new full-size utes from GM and Ford. A Midnight Edition package is newly available for $1990 to give the Armada a blacked-out appearance. The 2021 Armada’s base price is $49,895, up $1000 over the previous model year, while the 2021 Ford Expedition and Chevrolet Tahoe both have base prices just over $50,000.

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    Nissan

    That price is for the base S model, which is an addition to the lineup for the 2021 model year and comes equipped with cloth seats, 18-inch wheels, and a four-speaker audio system. The former base model, the SV, now starts at $53,895, up $5000 from 2020, and includes heated leatherette seats, roof rails, two additional speakers, wireless charging, and a trailer brake controller.

    2021 Nissan Armada Gets a Modern Makeover

    2021 Nissan Armada Gets a New Look, Updated Tech

    The Armada SL costs $3600 more than the 2020 model at $57,295, and it’s equipped with leather seats, power moonroof, a Bose sound system, a 360-degree camera, and 20-inch wheels. The top-of-the-line Platinum model starts at $66,295 and gets quilted leather seats, rear heated seats, power reclining seats in the third row, a digital rearview mirror, and 22-inch wheels. The 2021 Armada Platinum is $2970 more expensive than the 2020 model.

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    Nissan

    All 2021 Armadas are powered by a 5.6-liter V-8 engine paired with a seven-speed automatic transmission that was used in the outgoing model, but it now makes 400 horsepower and 413 pound-feet of torque. Rear-wheel drive is standard on all Armadas, though all-wheel drive can be had for an extra $3000 on each model. Both rear- and all-wheel-drive models of the 2021 Armada can tow up to 8500 pounds, 100 more pounds than the Chevrolet Tahoe.
    The 2021 Armada is available on dealer lots now.
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    Yes, Rolling Down Windows Can Reduce COVID Transmissions in a Car

    File this one under “common sense that has now been confirmed,” but if you’ve been curious whether or not opening the windows in a moving car will help reduce the chance of catching COVID-19, rest assured.
    A new study in Science Advances proves that opening up all of the windows is the best strategy, but even opening one does help.
    If you can’t open all four windows, open two on opposite sides to create an “air curtain” that keeps moving air between the passengers, minimizing the potential for the virus to move from driver to passenger.
    Cranking up the tunes and blasting them through open windows isn’t a common move during the winter, but this year, that might be just the thing to ask your Lyft driver to do. While the music is optional—may we recommend Pearl Jam’s “Alive”?—there are good medical reasons to make the ask. Given the chance of catching COVID-19, it’s valuable to now have proof that increased airflow means decreased chance of catching the virus while riding in a car.

    Getting by during COVID by Getting on the Road

    Is It Safe to Go Out in the Car During a Pandemic?

    The New Ethics of Driving in the Time of COVID-19

    A new study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Brown University, published this month in Science Advances, looked at “complex airflow patterns that exist inside the passenger cabin of an automobile” and how these patterns affect possible virus transmission between a driver and a passenger. The authors note that a viral load can build up inside the microclimate of a vehicle even on drives as short as 15 minutes, and the virus can remain viable in the air for up to three hours.
    The study authors looked at just one basic interior configuration: one driver in a left-hand-drive vehicle and one passenger sitting in the back right of a five-seat, four-door passenger car. They used a theoretical Toyota Prius moving at 50 mph as the model for the vehicle’s exterior geometry. Under these settings, the authors then simulated the in-vehicle airflow under six different window configurations.
    All the Windows Down: Safest
    The safest option—here defined as the situation with the highest amount of air changes per hour (ACH) and thus the most airflow to get potential viruses out of the car—is with all of the windows down. Shocker, we know, but the science says that having all of the windows down “establishes two distinct airflow paths within the car cabin, which help to isolate the left and right sides, and maximizes the ACH in the passenger cabin.” This results in an estimated 0.2 to 2 percent of the aerosols exhaled by a driver reaching the passenger. With all of the windows up, this number was around 8 to 10 percent. The second-best configuration is to have three windows down. The fourth window to leave up is the rear passenger window (next to where the passenger is sitting).
    Two Windows (Not Next to People) Is Second-Safest
    The one surprising finding is that opening the two windows closest to the two people is not that much better for ACH than having all the windows down. Having just these two windows open “does not effectively dilute the tracer particles and . . . the passenger receives a fairly large contaminant load from the driver,” the study says. It’s safer, it turns out, to keep the opposing (that is, the front passenger and rear driver’s side) windows open to create a sort of “air curtain” between the vehicle’s two occupants. Wearing masks or installing physical barriers in the car, the authors say, can be effective steps as well.
    Looking forward, the authors plan on studying just how vehicle speed affects in-vehicle airflow and how much rolling the windows down part of the way helps, or hurts, the chance of infection. Perhaps we’ll hear the results by summertime.
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    Battery Health Reports Coming for That Used Electric Car You're Considering

    It’s still in the early stages, but Recurrent has a plan to provide used-car shoppers with independent, detailed information on the battery pack for the EV they have their eye on.
    Recurrent is based in Seattle and currently limits EVs in its program to Washington State, but if the technology proves worthwhile, look for this “Carfax for batteries” when you’re shopping in a few years.
    Recurrent raised $3.5 million in funding in December and is now opening up its user rolls to more Washington-based drivers.
    Residual values for many electric vehicles drop at an alarming rate compared to those of traditional internal-combustion vehicles. There are a number of reasons for this, including lower overall supply, fewer people looking to buy an EV instead of ICE models, and a fair amount of uncertainty about just how long the battery will last.

    2023 Battery Prices Will Make EVs Cheaper

    Our Model 3 Has Lost 7% of Its Battery Capacity

    In 2020, We Charged Toward an EV Future

    For the EV hesitant, there’s reason to look into Recurrent, the Seattle-based company that offers its own independent battery life reports for used EVs that provide detailed information on the EV a customer may be thinking about buying. As others have said, because it’s an easy way to understand what Recurrent offers, the service is like a Carfax report for EV batteries, giving buyers and sellers a verified way to know the shape a three-year-old Nissan Leaf battery, for example, is in. In September, Recurrent CEO Scott Case told Car and Driver that battery health is “the new odometer for electric cars.”
    After announcing itself to the world last June, Recurrent raised $3.5 million in seed financing in December for its independent verification technology. The funding round included a number of venture capital firms as well as the Washington chapter of the American Automobile Association (AAA). This week, according to Green Car Reports, AAA Washington and Recurrent announced a new partnership in a pilot project that remotely monitors the battery health of subscribers’ EVs and then compares them to the live of batteries in similar vehicles.
    People who sign up for the (for now) invite-only program will then get an alert if Recurrent determines their pack shows signs of “unusual wear and tear.” Participants also get tips on ways to keep their battery in top shape so that, when the time comes to sell, the EV will be able to command a premium compared to non-Recurrent EVs, Case wrote on the Recurrent company blog. Questions about battery health can block used-EV sales, which then “holds up the entire market in this really critical way,” Case told GCR.
    Thanks to a partnership with Smartcar, which provides end-to-end 256-bit encryption, Recurrent’s algorithm downloads four data points from registered EVs up to three times a day: charging status, battery level, odometer, and the car computer’s own range estimate. Most modern EVs are eligible to participate, as long as the current owner or lessee has an active account with an automaker’s connected vehicle service (for instance, NissanConnect EV or FordPass). So far, just over 2600 drivers with 18 different makes and models have volunteered to have their electric vehicles added to Recurrent’s program and more drivers are getting their invites in mid-January.
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    Amazon Opens Alexa to Let Automakers Make Custom Voice Assistants

    Amazon announces that Alexa can be customized by companies for their own use, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) is the first automaker planning to use it.
    The automaker’s custom voice assistant with its own custom features will work side by side with the Alexa voice assistant.
    FCA hasn’t announced which vehicles will get the new Alexa/FCA voice assistant system first or how soon it will be available as part of the automaker’s Uconnect infotainment system.
    Online retailer Amazon has announced it’s opening up its Alexa voice assistant so other companies can make their own customized versions for their devices and vehicles. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) said this week that it will be the first automaker to create an Alexa Custom Assistant, with others sure to follow. That should be good news for those who have already become used to Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant as an at-home helper. For tasks from controlling devices and checking on the weather to answering questions and reading books aloud, Alexa’s place in the home is well established at this point. Although Alexa is already available in some vehicles for tasks such as to pay for gas, but it’s usually alongside an automaker’s own voice assistant.

    You Can Now Pay for Gas Using Amazon Alexa

    GM and Amazon Team Up to Bring Alexa to Your Car

    Alexa, Start the Car

    With this new solution, automakers can create their own in-car voice assistants like those we’ve seen in Mercedes’s MBUX and BMW’s Personal Intelligent Assistance without having to start from scratch or deal with the intense development of constantly having to update the voice assistant system themselves. And yes, this means that different automakers can create their own voice-assistant persona and wake word. So in addition to the ability to say, “Alexa, adjust the temperature,” FCA could set up one just for Jeep that would have its own voice and wake word so drivers could say, “Jeep, how far to Lake Tahoe?”
    FCA and others could also create custom capabilities within the Alexa framework. For example, a Jeep could be told to turn on the front camera while driving off-road, or a Chrysler Pacifica minivan could have a voice command that opens all the sliding doors. It’s essentially two voice assistants working side by side inside the system: the one from Amazon and the automaker’s Alexa Custom Assistant, with the system directing queries to the correct digital helper.
    FCA, while not giving a launch date or specifics on which vehicles will get this capability, confirmed that the technology will be built into its Uconnect infotainment system, where it will employ the two assistants side by side. FCA’s will “act as the product specialist with features and capabilities specific to the vehicle,” leaving Alexa to handle its usual duties such as taking music requests, answering questions about weather, and controlling smart-home features.
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    This Amazon video demo shows a driver asking Alexa for parking and the Alexa voice deferring to a vehicle’s brand voice assistant, named Brandon (created specifically for the demo only), who answers the query for the driver.
    As you would expect, either voice assistant will be able to order items from Amazon. The system will also be able to prompt the driver when the vehicle is low on, for instance, washer fluid to either schedule a trip to the service center or order more fluid with, of course, their Amazon account.
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    A Microchip Might Be Why the New Car You Want Is Hard to Locate

    Automakers are facing a supply shortage of semiconductors, the technology used to make microchips, and are being forced to pause production on certain vehicles.
    In North America, Ford, FCA, Toyota, and Subaru have all had to adjust production schedules; outside North America, VW, Nissan, and Honda have had to do the same.
    The supply disruption could ultimately impact the availability of the affected vehicles, industry analysts told C/D.
    Even as automakers adapted to the restraints of a pandemic, the challenges faced by suppliers prevented a smooth return to production after the six-week shutdown in the spring. And although 2020 is now behind us, many of the challenges persist. Now a microchip shortage is forcing automakers to adjust production schedules and, in some cases, pause production once again.

    Supplier Issues Hurting Restart of Car Production

    U.S. Automakers to Extend Production Shutdown

    With the consumer electronics industry claiming more and more chips to fulfill increased demand for electronics, automakers are lacking one small but crucial component to build their cars. “Semiconductors are becoming much more important across the entire value chain for a vehicle, and such is the case in more expensive vehicles with more technology, but in particular for electric vehicles,” Gaurav Gupta, vice president analyst at consulting firm Gartner, told Car and Driver. The potential for a shortage of semiconductors—the technology from which a microchip is made—was first noticed in December, as warnings came from automotive suppliers Continental and Bosch.
    “Some of these modern vehicles have thousands of semiconductors . . . and some of these things are probably a nickel a piece, and some are probably $150,” said Chris Richard, a principal at Deloitte Consulting who works in the semiconductor segment. “Different cost points, but any one of them can stop your production. A five-cent part can stop your production, or the $150 part.”
    Ford, FCA, Toyota, Subaru, VW Having to Adjust
    All automakers are feeling the supply crunch, and currently, not all have had to adjust production schedules to properly allocate the supply of microchips. Nonetheless, plenty of others have, including in North America. Ford paused production this month at its Louisville, Kentucky, assembly plant where it builds the Escape and Lincoln Corsair. FCA delayed the restart of production at its plant in Toluca, Mexico, where the Jeep Compass is assembled, and also paused production at its Brampton, Ontario, plant, where the Chrysler 300 and the Dodge Charger and Challenger are built.
    For Toyota, the shortage of semiconductors has forced the automaker to reduce production of the Tundra, which is manufactured in Texas. A Subaru spokesperson said it has “modified” production at both its Gunma plant in Japan and its plant in Lafayette, Indiana, where the Ascent, Legacy, Outback, and Impreza are assembled but declined to saywhich models were specifically affected by the semiconductor shortage.

    David Zalubowski via AP

    A statement from the Volkswagen Group said that the company “needs to adapt production at its various Chinese, North American, and European locations to the current supply situation in the first quarter of 2021. Models based on the MQB platform of Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Škoda, Seat, and, to a limited extent, Audi are affected.” Reports have said that the VW Golf is particularly affected, but a VW spokesperson said that this isn’t the case in North America.
    These adjustments to production could ultimately impact the availability of vehicles on dealer lots, Kristin Dziczek, VP of research at the Center for Automotive Research, told Car and Driver. Nonetheless, Dziczek added, “Automakers are prioritizing the chips they have for the high-demand vehicles.”
    Even those that haven’t had to curtail production in North America have taken those steps elsewhere, as is the case for Honda, Mercedes-Benz, and Nissan. Nonetheless, the nature of the semiconductor shortage is that the situation is constantly changing, a reality the spokespeople from nearly all the automakers Car and Driver reached out to emphasized. Pauses to production can be short lived and can also be introduced rather suddenly, keeping some spokespeople from going into specifics.
    Kinks in the Supply Chain
    A convergence of macroeconomic and political events led to the semiconductor shortage, Gartner analyst Gupta said. In the spring, demand for cars fell. In response, automakers cut orders for microchips. At the same time, the demand for consumer electronics—notably the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, as well as laptops and desktops for working from home—skyrocketed. Microchip suppliers adjusted production accordingly, and now that car demand has recovered much more quickly than expected, suppliers haven’t been ready to respond.
    “With lead times of six to nine months, the semiconductor industry has not been able to scale up fast enough to meet this unexpected growth in automotive demand,” auto supplier Continental told Car and Driver in a statement. “The bottlenecks from the semiconductor industry are expected to continue well into 2021, causing major disruptions in Continental’s production.”

    Comezora via Getty

    Additionally, several moves by the Trump administration in the U.S.-China trade war resulted in fewer semiconductors coming into the marketplace, ultimately exacerbating the supply glut, Gupta said. And then, lastly, the older microchips that the auto industry relies on—commonly referred to as eight-inch wafers—can’t be produced quickly enough by automotive chip manufacturers such as NXP Semiconductors and Infineon due to manufacturing limitations.
    Through the second half of last year, new-vehicle inventories were much lower than the industry prefers, and although inventories have made a recovery, they are still lower than where they were at this time last year. Automakers are attempting to taper back production of vehicles that have higher inventories. Still, to take one example, there is a less than 30-day supply of the Toyota Tundra, which has had production cut back, according to Cox Automotive.
    Similar to the supply challenges the automotive industry faced in the second quarter of 2020, the full impact of this semiconductor shortage likely won’t be completely understood until it’s behind us. The same goes for the degree to which dealer inventories, and therefore consumers, are affected.
    One thing is for certain, though: the impacts and challenges of the pandemic are far from behind the auto industry.
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    What to Buy with Your $600 Stimulus Check: Window Shop with Car and Driver

    With a second round of stimulus checks putting $600 in the hands of people across the U.S., the Window Shop team decided to take a look at vehicles you could buy for that amount of money. Most of us prioritized reliability and ease of repair. We quickly discovered that the vast majority of cars being sold at this price point don’t have working engines or have some other immediate need. We also noticed that when the outlay dips this low, the for-sale postings often lack photos—something you need if you’re going to try to do a show about cars for sale on the internet. Fortunately, we’re—ahem—rather good at finding cars online.Senior editor Joey Capparella’s search skills pay off when he finds a very practical 1995 Toyota Corolla wagon. Judging from the condition of the paint, this Corolla has probably never seen the inside of a garage, spending its 26 years exposed to the elements. We can only guess at the condition of the interior because there are no photos. But we’re willing to look past these problems because of the five-speed manual transmission.Contributor John Pearley Huffman counters Capparella’s working Toyota with a 2002 Dodge Durango that may or may not run and that probably needs a new engine. Practicality is at the top of deputy testing director K.C. Colwell’s list, and he lands a 2002 Honda Odyssey that needs only a water pump. And searching for the definition of “normcore” leads contributor Jonathon Ramsey to a 2000 Saturn L-series.In addition to arguing the merits of one another’s finds, we question easily verifiable facts, discover what’s inside a 1996 Buick Riviera’s leather seat, and discuss why the panel gaps on a Saturn L-series are so incredibly large. The cars might not be great, but have a lot of laughs with this one. It’s possible you will, too.
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