Motor News

Chinese EV maker Nio unveiled its first sedan, the ET7, expanding its lineup to four vehicles.
The ET7 offers buyers several battery and charging options, including 70.0 and 100.0-kWh batteries and a forthcoming 150.0-kWh battery. Drivers can also opt into Nio’s battery swapping service.
The ET7 also offers Nio’s latest autonomous technology and features a lidar system. It isn’t yet clear what Nio’s autonomous system is capable of.
Nio, a China-based electric-vehicle maker, unveiled its fourth production vehicle and first sedan, the ET7, over the weekend at an event it called Nio Day. The company has made a name for itself in its home market through impressive technology, and the ET7, which the company claims will offer a solid-state 150.0-kWh battery by 2022, follows suit.

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The ET7’s standard 70.0-kWh battery offers a range of more than 310 miles, according to Nio. A 100.0-kWh battery with up to 435 miles of range is also offered; a solid-state battery, which won’t become available in China until next year, will give drivers a range of more than 620 miles. The largest battery in the ET7 would easily best the longest-range battery Tesla offers, which comes on the Model S and rings in at 402 EPA-rated miles.
Way back in 2018, Nio discussed plans to eventually enter the U.S. market with a possible electric crossover. But the company has not provided any details or an estimated timeline for when that might happen.
Starting at around $69,000 for the 70.0-kWh option, the ET7 and the Model S will battle for the same buyers. That said, the price drops to around $58,000 if the buyer opts for Nio’s Battery as a Service (BaaS) subscription, which allows drivers to swap their batteries at Nio Power Swap stations in China for a fee of around $150 a month. The Power Swap stations are Nio’s answer to the time-consuming process of charging an electric vehicle. The ET7 features motors at front and rear with a combined output of 643 horsepower and 627 pound-feet of torque. The sedan is claimed to accelerate to 62 mph in a swift 3.9 seconds.

Nio

The Nio ET7 is a luxury sedan with a simple yet attractive design. The look is sleek and clean with sharp in front accentuated by the narrow headlights. The gentle slope of the roofline meets a slim taillight that runs the width of the vehicle.
Inside, the ET7 features a 12.8-inch infotainment screen and a digital gauge cluster, and it drops the air-vent design seen in Nio’s other vehicles to adopt a look more akin to that of the Tesla Model 3. Buttons are few and far between, and the steering wheel has a two-spoke design like that in new Genesis vehicles.
Nio claims the ET7 is an autonomous vehicle, but it’s unclear what the advanced driver-assist system in the ET7 is capable of in terms of driver intervention and monitoring. We know that the system does have 11 8-megapixel cameras and what Nio calls “ultra-long-range high-resolution lidar,” along with five radar and 12 ultrasonic sensors, among other technologies.

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The Rad Report via Subaru

This pristine 1990 Subaru Legacy was posted on Craigslist and spotted by Jalopnik.
It has 215,000 miles but looks like it’s in fantastic condition.
Subaru of America ended up buying it for its vintage collection.
We all love to browse used-car listings on the internet for no good reason. But every so often, a true diamond in the rough appears. Consider the heartwarming story of this 1990 Subaru Legacy wagon posted on San Francisco Craigslist that has now been purchased by none other than Subaru of America for the company’s own historic collection.

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We can see why the car caught the attention of someone at Subaru HQ. Although it has 215,000 miles on the odometer, the stick-shift Legacy longroof looks as if it just rolled off the showroom floor. The car’s remarkable condition and storied history are well documented in the extensive and detailed Craigslist ad penned by the car’s owner, Aaron, who runs a page called Rad Report that focuses on—you guessed it—Craigslist ads featuring stick-shift cars from the ’80s and ’90s.
The Legacy will now make its way to Subaru’s vintage collection in New Jersey, where it will live out the rest of its days in a climate-controlled garage. According to Aaron, it will be trotted out for various car shows and events, so if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll spot the legendary Legacy at a future instance of the ’80s and ’90s–themed Radwood car show.

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Nobody can actually visit the Tokyo Auto Salon this week, thanks to COVID-19, but if you check out the Honda booth online starting on January 15, you’ll see two concepts that expand the limits of a small car.
A modified Honda Fit called the e:HEV Crosstar Custom gets the little hatchback ready for more time in the outdoors with a slightly raised suspension and all-terrain tires, along with a rougher—but still cute—look.
The N-Van Custom, a.k.a. the “3rd Place Van,” is ready to tackle urban duties like operating as a food truck or a “third place” for adventures that’s not work nor home.
Good things come in small sizes. Especially when they’re modified Japan-domestic-market Hondas that have been transformed from basic transportation options to quirky multi-use vehicles. We’ll take one of each, thank you.

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Up first is the black-and-tan Fit e:HEV Crosstar Custom, an adapted hatchback based on the Fit e:HEV Crosstar. Honda has discontinued the Fit in the U.S., but even before it canceled the car here, we were not getting the hybrid version. The Crosstar is a CUV-ish trim level for the regular hybrid Fit, and for this Custom version, the show team raised the Fit’s suspension a bit, threw on a rugged Yakima roof rack, and added Toyo All-Terrain Open Country tires on black steel wheels to emphasize the fact that even small cars sometimes deserve to drive off the beaten path.

Honda

When you’re back in the city and feeling peckish, head on over to the other customized Honda, a food truck version of the N-Van. The metallic silver N-Van Custom, called the “3rd Place Van,” is meant to adapt to whatever boxy functions users might need. With a large roof rack on top and a string of inviting lights out back, its main work use is as a café, selling food out of the side door that’s covered by a red and white awning. Then, when it’s time to play, it can be used (if our translation is accurate) as a place to rest—a “third place” to be away from both work and home.
We expect to get more details on both of these cars once the Tokyo Auto Salon opens, virtually, on Friday, January 15. During the event, Honda will also make an announcement regarding participation in four-wheel motorsports in 2021. For its virtual visitors with a need for speed, the company will showcase some of the vehicles that raced for the brand during 2020. The list includes the Aston Martin Red Bull Racing RB16 and Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda AT01, both of which raced in the 2020 FIA Formula 1 World Championship’ the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing IR-12 from the 2020 IndyCar Series; and the Team Kunimitsu Raybrig NSX-GT from the 2020 SUPER GT Series GT500 Class.
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GM cars from the 1990s are the stars in this list of vehicles with the lowest car-insurance bills. More

Automotive News reports that GM will build Honda EVs in Mexico and Tennessee.
The two vehicles will be crossovers for the Honda and Acura brands and will be about the same size as the 2023 Cadillac Lyriq.
Honda and GM entered into a partnership earlier this year to use GM’s Ultium battery platform in Honda vehicles.
It looks like the Honda partnership with GM to use the Ultium battery platform, which we told you about last spring, is already bearing electrified fruit. According to a report from Automotive News, GM plans on building two electric crossovers—one a Honda, one an Acura—at two different plants, with release dates in 2023 and 2024.

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For the Honda brand, a crossover will be built at GM’s Ramos Arizpe, Mexico, plant where General Motors currently builds the Equinox and Blazer. There have been reports that the factory would be transformed for EV production, but GM has yet to confirm that. The Honda is slated to go into production in 2023.
On the Acura side, a second crossover is slated to start production in 2024 at the Spring Hill, Tennessee, facility alongside the upcoming 2023 Cadillac Lyriq. The vehicle is reportedly about the same size as the Lyriq. The Cadillac SUV is slated to go on sale in 2022.

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This report lines up with official news out of Honda and GM that the two automakers would team up to build two electric vehicles and the first would go on sale in 2024. In both of these instances, it’s likely that, as noted by Honda back when the partnership was announced, Honda will design the vehicles and the Ultium battery platform powering them will be engineered to support Honda’s driving character.
GM for its part, has recently accelerated its transition to electric vehicles and plans to have 30 EVs on the road by 2025 as it invests $27 billion in electrification and self-driving technologies. The automaker’s Ultium platform will support battery pack capacities up to 200.0 kWh and ranges up to about 400 miles.

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Letting the car decide when you should brake makes a difference, it turns out.
Based on insurance claims for some GM and Subaru vehicles, IIHS said rear AEB can reduce damage liability claims by 28 percent, while a backup camera or those beeping sensors reduce that by just 5 percent.
Since rear AEB is not widespread, IIHS said it is not going to use it as a requirement for its Top Safety Pick designations anytime soon.
Backing up a car is often a safe process, but it could certainly be safer. And it is, when a vehicle is equipped with rear automated emergency braking (AEB) technology. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has released results of a new study that found rear AEB helps reduce the number of insurance claims more than any other safety technology the group has studied.

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Rear AEB uses the same ultrasonic sensors that in many vehicles beep at the driver if there’s something in the way of the moving car, but the “A” means the vehicle will automatically stop if it determines it’s about to hit an object. That small but important change drops the number of property damage liability claims by 28 percent and the number of collusion claims by 10 percent, IIHS found. Compared to other backup safety technologies that help prevent incidents, none are as effective as rear AEB. Rear cameras and parking sensors, for example, each reduced property damage liability claims by 5 percent and had minimal impact on collusion claims.

IIHS

“When you compare vehicles with [rear AEB] and vehicles without, we’re seeing significant reductions in the frequency of insurance claims, bigger than the reductions we’re seeing for other technologies,” Joe Young, IIHS director of media relations, told Car and Driver.

Subaru reverse automatic braking.
Subaru

IIHS first calculated data for insurance claims for vehicles with rear AEB technology in 2017, using numbers from 2015 model General Motors vehicles (and some some from 2013 and 2014), including the Cadillac ATS, CTS, SRX, XTS, and Escalade. The new study adds in details for model year 2015–2018 Subarus, including the Legacy, Outback, Forester, Impreza, and Crosstrek. These two automakers were chosen because they were able to provide IIHS with the feature-level data required to analyze the numbers.
Despite the dramatic impacts rear AEB has on insurance claims, the technology is available on only around 30 percent of 2020 models, either as standard or optional equipment, Young said. IIHS is not pushing for any regulatory changes around rear AEB at the moment and has no plans to incorporate it into the group’s Top Safety Pick assessments in the near future. IIHS does use front crash prevention performance in deciding which vehicles are named Top Safety Pick or Top Safety Pick+ recipients. It’s also keeping a list of automakers that have fulfilled earlier pledges by adopting front or rear AEB.
“We hope that automakers see the clear benefit to their customers and add the technology to more vehicles,” he said. “While we do carry some ratings for rear AEB systems, given that the technology isn’t as widespread, it’s not a major focus of our testing at the moment . . . It’s our hope that more automakers will add the technology since the potential is clearly quite large.”
While precise figures are not public, Young said it’s unlikely that adding rear AEB is a big expense for automakers since the cost of adding rear AEB is often bundled with other technologies and relies on the ultrasonic parking sensors that are already standard or optional on many new vehicles.

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A motorsports company in the U.K. is building new versions of the Mk 2 Ford Escort from the 1970s.
Successful as a rally car for decades, the European second-generation Escort generation was the last to feature a rear-wheel-drive layout.
Motorsports Tools’ newly built RWD Escorts start at around $90,000.
Although the Ford Escort rarely features high on the list of the Blue Oval’s most memorable models in the U.S., the Escort name was attached to some considerably more exciting cars in Europe. That list includes both the famous RS Cosworth variant from the 1990s and its double-decker rear spoiler, but also the spectacular rally cars of the earlier rear-wheel-drive Mk 1 and Mk 2 generations.

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These RS Escorts were hugely successful racing cars back in the day, with Ari Vatanen driving a Mk 2 RS1800 to the World Rally Championship in 1981. Thanks to progressive upgrades to engines, transmission and suspensions, they have stayed at the sharp end of European rallying ever since, especially in the U.K. and Ireland, remaining competitive even against more advanced all-wheel-drive rivals. Check out the late Colin McRae’s savagely fast Mk 2 or Northern Irishman Frank Kelly’s spectacular ‘Baby Blue’ to see just how exciting these evolved Escorts can be.
The huge popularity of the Escort has created a thriving market in both upgrades and parts, with U.K. motorsport specialist Motorsport Tools now having taken the next step to move to create brand-new cars. You’re looking at images of the first rear-wheel-drive Escort to be registered in the U.K. since 1980, with the company planning to produce around 10 finished cars per year. Prices starting at £65,000—nearly $90,000 at current exchange rates.

Motorsport Tools

One thing you won’t see is a Ford badge, as MST has not been given official sanction to bring the Escort out of retirement.
“Our main business is rally car parts and all the parts are available to build these cars,” Motorsport Tools managing director Carwyn Ellis told Car and Driver from his company’s HQ in Wales, “all we’ve done is taken them and put them together. We can’t sell it as a Ford of course, especially as these cars are now very different to the original cars from the 1970s. But I know Ford is very proud of what the car has achieved and continues to achieve.”
While most interest has been from those planning to take their new Escorts rallying, Ellis confirms that some will be built as highly tuned road cars. “A lot of our customers aren’t intending to go rallying with them,” he said, ”they want a toy that looks like a rally car and performs like a rally car—the performance that they can use on road or on a race track. There are lots of people out there who are realizing that supercars are getting too fast to drive hard on the road—something like this, you still can.”

Motorsport Tools

The first Motorsport Tools demonstrator has been built to a relatively tame road-biased specification, using a naturally aspirated Ford Duratec four-cylinder engine with its capacity increased to 2.5 liters and separate throttle bodies. That means it makes around 200 horsepower, enough to be exciting in a car weighing less than 2200 pounds with no driver aids. It has a six-speed manual gearbox driving its live rear axle with Bilstein shocks, AP racing brakes and gold Minilite wheels within extended wheel arches. Buyers will be able to opt for much more power with more aggressive engines—U.K. supplier Millington produces Escort engines making up to 370 hp—as well as sequential transmissions and other pricey upgrades. Tick every box and the finished car will be substantially more than $140,000.
“We will work with individual customers, they will all be unique,” Ellis says, “it depends on what people are looking for, whether they need to follow the restrictions for certain championships and how fast they want to go.” He also confirmed there will also be a similar “continuation” version of the earlier Mk 1 Escort which was produced between 1968 and 1974 and which will have more appeal to those who compete under historic rallying regulations.
“Interest has been a bit overwhelming, to be honest,” Ellis admits, who says there has even been interest from potential buyers in the U.S. Production will be limited to no more than ten cars a year, and Ellis has no doubt he will be able to find willing buyers for all of them.
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