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The 2024 Nissan Rogue is transformed into an off-road SUV with the Project Rugged Rogue concept for SEMA. The 2024 Nissan Sentra concept channels past SE-R models with myriad performance upgrades, such as a highly modified turbo four and manual gearbox.The 2024 Nissan Frontier at SEMA isn’t a concept, it’s a real-life off-road race truck that’s packed with NISMO equipment.Right now, the most exciting models in Nissan’s portfolio are the GT-R and Z—both offer track-focused NISMO models. With this year’s SEMA show kicking off next week, Nissan has transformed two of its most mainstream models into tantalizing concepts that are turnt up with NISMO add-ons.A Truly Rugged RogueThe regular Rogue has no business tackling tangled terrain or venturing very far from paved roads. Now imagine a world where the compact SUV has a jacked-up ride height and mud-terrain tires like the Ford Ranger Raptor—amber running lights above the grille are also aped. That’s the Project Rugged Rogue that Nissan is NISMO fitted with all manner of NISMO equipment.Wearing a livery with a Reese’s cups’ color scheme and a topographical design, the Rogue concept has a roof rack packed with a bike and a kayak. There’s a total of six front-mounted fog lights, carbon-fiber fender flares, and side rock rails as well as a front brush guard. NISMO also supplied a three-inch suspension lift and 18-inch wheels that are bronze up front and black out back. Those mount on a set of 32-inch Yokohama Geolander M/T G003 tires.While there’s no mention of any powertrain changes, the Rogue’s 201-hp turbocharged 1.5-liter three-cylinder breaths through a custom center-exit exhaust that, frankly, looks badass.A Modern-Day Sentra SE-RThe NISMO-badged Sentra was killed off after the 2019 model year, and if there had been funeral, we doubt many would have attended. The Sentra DET concept that was built for SEMA is worth shedding a tear for. It features a host of prototype NISMO parts as well as a heavily modified powertrain—that it pairs with a six-speed manual versus the standard CVT is the cherry on top. “DET” is an acronym for Nissan’s past performance engines, but it’s wordy enough to not be worthy of writing out.Sure, we could do without the cheesy graphics, and we prefer the wheels on our cars to have matching colors on both sides, but a Sentra with hood-mounted heat extractors has our attention regardless. Beneath those slots sits the standard cars’s MR20DD 2.0-liter turbo four. Normally it makes a wimpy 149 horsepower and 146 pound-feet of torque, but this isn’t the normal engine. It has been souped-up with a higher compression ratio, a bigger turbo, stronger internals, and an upgraded fuel system. If you don’t see this Sentra coming, you’ll likely hear its cat-back exhaust setup. Nissan didn’t mention the Sentra’s new output, but rest assured its considerably more than the stock engine.NissanNissanIn addition to the overhaul under the hood, the Sentra DET concept has a revised chassis that benefits from brakes pulled from the Nissan Z and coil-overs and anti-roll bars courtesy of NISMO. It grips and rips on a set of 18-inch Yokohama Advan Neova summer tires, with front-seat passengers being better held in place with Recaro competition seats.Frontier for Off-Road RacingThe Frontier is a fine mid-size pickup truck, and we dig the new retro-inspired Hardbody model. The Forsberg Racing-developed Frontier that’s heading to SEMA is more than fine, it’s frickin’ sweet! It’s also not a concept, it’s a race-proven rig that competed in the NORRA 500 (look it up).The Forsberg Frontier features more stickers than a Lisa Frank booklet, but they’re all tastefully applied. The look is completed by black beadlock NISMO wheels wrapped with gnarly Yokohama Geolander mud-terrain tires, which are buoyed by a lifted and enhanced suspension. Current Frontier owners can also find parts such as the roof rack, light bar, and rock sliders in the NISMO catalogue to copy the off-roader’s look.Nissans We’ve TestedThis content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Senior EditorEric Stafford’s automobile addiction began before he could walk, and it has fueled his passion to write news, reviews, and more for Car and Driver since 2016. His aspiration growing up was to become a millionaire with a Jay Leno–like car collection. Apparently, getting rich is harder than social-media influencers make it seem, so he avoided financial success entirely to become an automotive journalist and drive new cars for a living. After earning a journalism degree at Central Michigan University and working at a daily newspaper, the years of basically burning money on failed project cars and lemon-flavored jalopies finally paid off when Car and Driver hired him. His garage currently includes a 2010 Acura RDX, a manual ’97 Chevy Camaro Z/28, and a ’90 Honda CRX Si. More

Kia is updating the Carnival minivan with a new look for the front and rear ends.We don’t know about interior updates at this point, but it may receive some new features.Look for U.S. specs on the the 2025 Carnival to be released within the next few months.The Kia Carnival’s looks were already one of its strong suits, and the minivan is getting an update for the 2025 model year that gives it an even more attractive appearance. Kia released photos of the Korea-spec Carnival with new front- and rear-end designs, plus different wheels and a new trim level called Gravity with a blacked-out color scheme.KiaUp front, the new grille texture and the larger headlights with futuristic-looking LED accent strips make a stronger statement. The taillights are also new and feature LED strips that stretch nearly the width of the car, while also extending downward into the fender. We’re particularly partial to the silver and black wheels on the pictured model, which feature a cool geometric pattern.Kia is also introducing a new trim level called Gravity that has black accents including the wheels, the window surrounds, and other bits of trim. We don’t know if this version will come to the U.S., or what name it would use if it does.KiaPhotos of the interior haven’t been released yet, so we’re not sure if it will include updates as well. We wouldn’t be surprised if Kia introduced some new features or updated the Carnival’s infotainment screen as part of this facelift. Some new upholstery and trim options might also be added.KiaWe don’t expect changes to the Carnival’s powertrain, which is a 3.5-liter V-6 engine that’s available only with front-wheel drive and an eight-speed automatic transmission. Look for Kia to release more details on the U.S.-spec version of the 2025 Carnival within the coming months. It should go on sale on our shores either late this year or early in 2024.More on the CarnivalSenior EditorDespite being raised on a steady diet of base-model Hondas and Toyotas—or perhaps because of it—Joey Capparella nonetheless cultivated an obsession for the automotive industry throughout his childhood in Nashville, Tennessee. He found a way to write about cars for the school newspaper during his college years at Rice University, which eventually led him to move to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for his first professional auto-writing gig at Automobile Magazine. He has been part of the Car and Driver team since 2016 and now lives in New York City.   More

Honda and General Motors will no longer co-develop a series of affordable compact SUVs, as reported to Bloomberg.Honda cited the current business environment, rising costs for the project, and challenges with getting adequate driving range. While this joint plan has been cancelled, Honda says the two companies will “search for a solution separately.”Promises are easy to make but even easier to break. In April of last year, Honda and General Motors announced they were co-developing a series of affordable compact crossover SUVs that would feature next-generation batteries and arrive in 2027. But now, a year and a half later, Honda says it has cancelled the planned collaboration with GM, according to a Bloomberg report.The decision is the result of the changing economic climate, with Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe telling Bloomberg Television that “after studying this for a year, we decided that this would be difficult as a business.” Honda said that the cost of the program and difficulty eking out enough highway range contributed to the cancellation. GM revealed earlier this week that it is unsure if the company can reach its original $14 billion forecast for profits in 2023, pointing at the United Auto Workers strike as the culprit. The original plan had called for a new platform based on GM’s Ultium battery, found in everything from the Chevy Equinox EV to the GMC Hummer EV and electric BrightDrop vans. The new vehicles would have been priced below the planned $30,000 base-spec Equinox EV, and the companies said they were exploring solid-state batteries and using materials such as lithium-metal and silicon.More on Honda EVsThere is still hope that we may see some sub-$30K electric cars from Honda and GM in the near future. While the joint plans are scrapped, Mibe said, “GM and Honda will search for a solution separately.” But with both companies working on their own, it may take until after 2027 for these vehicles materialize. The divorce should not affect the launch of the Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX, which are closely related to the Chevy Blazer EV and Cadillac Lyriq and utilize GM’s Ultium battery tech. We anticipate deliveries of the Prologue and ZDX to still begin in early 2024.Associate News EditorCaleb Miller began blogging about cars at 13 years old, and he realized his dream of writing for a car magazine after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and joining the Car and Driver team. He loves quirky and obscure autos, aiming to one day own something bizarre like a Nissan S-Cargo, and is an avid motorsports fan. More

EV maker Rivian has rolled out an over-the-air update for its R1T pickup and R1S SUV that moves all drive-related settings close to the driver’s right hand, regroups the drive modes, and makes room for a useful gauge page. Towing is no longer a stand-alone mode but is now a Trailers function you can select from within most any on-road or off-road driving mode. The vehicle now learns a trailer’s weight and drag while towing to adjust the predicted range, and the driver can store these correction factors for up to three trailers.A well-conceived interior made with logically arrayed buttons and knobs can be a frictionless way to interact with a car’s systems, but a poorly designed hardscape can just as easily be an irksome source of frustration you’re stuck with for as long as you own the car. Say what you will about the strengths and weaknesses of interacting with touchscreens, but they do hold a distinct advantage: iffy layouts and suboptimal menu flow can be corrected at any point, and the use of over-the-air updates means that existing owners benefit too.Dan Edmunds|Car and DriverSuch is the case with the 2023.38.0 update we just sampled in an R1S SUV. This new OTA update—which is available to all Rivian owners—doesn’t just simplify the drive mode interface; it adds a whole new array of gauges and unlocks towing functionality that didn’t previously exist. Such an approach works especially well in the Rivian because the easy stuff like headlights, wipers, and the gear selector are physical stalks of the sort that are hard to screw up, and they make Rivian products familiar and approachable. Improvements to the touchscreen and its logic only complement this basic goodness by making the touchscreen controls easy to use as well.Cleaned-Up Drive ModesUntil now, a Rivian driver would select a drive mode using the expansive central touchscreen that was dominated by graphics that seemed to highlight themselves at the expense of usability. The drive modes themselves were close enough at hand, but the ride-height adjustment slider was far away on the passenger edge of the screen, while the regen, suspension, and traction control settings were scattered across the bottom. What’s more, the on-road settings had priority, with the specific off-road choices hidden a layer down. Towing was a mode unto itself that was separate from any of the on- and off-road modes.RivianWith this change, Rivian has created a dedicated space on the driver’s-side third of the screen that is home to all drive-related functions when in the drive configuration mode: you still get full-screen maps and infotainment displays in those modes. The top half of this new zone contains a new drive mode selection widget, with On-Road, Off-Road, and Trailers being the three top-level categories. On-Road opens the door to All-Purpose, Conserve, Sport, and Snow modes. Off-Road houses All-Terrain, Rock Crawl, Sand, Rally, and Drift modes. Trailers looks like a stand-alone third main category, but it’s not. As the new name implies, when you select Trailers, you no longer get a discrete Tow mode that overrides the drive mode you’ve chosen, nor does it preclude you from choosing another.Meanwhile, the bottom half of this newly created control zone is a permanent home for top-level adjustments such as suspension stiffness, brake regeneration, ride height, and stability control. The default settings for each and the range of selections available change with the drive mode you’ve selected, and it’s all presented in a clear, understandable, and easy-to reach location close to the steering wheel rim.What about the formerly dominant splashy graphics that illustrated the truck/SUV performing in your selected mode? They’re still here, but they now occupy the right-hand two-thirds of the main screen. And if you’d rather look at something more useful than a picture of a Rivian, you now can.RivianSwipe Left for the Gauge PageThe graphic image of the truck hasn’t just shrunk by a third; it has also gained a pair of subtle rectangles that indicate it is now one of two pages. Swipe to the left to see an entirely new display to the right of the new Drive-mode region. The left half of this added screen is an overhead view of the powertrain, showing what’s happening at each of the four contact patches, plus a graphic that shows the steering angle. The new right half has an array of six gauges, including a compass, altimeter, trip odometer, TPMS readout, and temperature gauges for the battery and the four motors (if your Rivian has four motors).If you’re in an off-road mode, the battery temp and odometer get swapped out for roll and pitch indicators. We like the additions but think something else needs to go so the trip odometer can stay. Dead reckoning using trail mileage is a staple of off-road guidebooks, and it’s hard to point to electronic map substitutes because Rivian still doesn’t support smartphone mirroring such as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and the widely used off-road navigation apps that both of them support. Your smartphone will still be suction cupped to a window if you use those.RivianThere’s a Lot More to TowingAs mentioned earlier, the Trailers page is no longer a path to a stand-alone towing mode. Instead, it’s a window to a new towing interface that now co-exists with most other drive modes. Towing a trailer isn’t something you do instead of, say, driving off-road; it’s something you can do at the same time. Selecting Trailers while in an off-road mode will certainly affect the behavior of the traction control and corral your ride height choices, but it’s no longer an either/or proposition; it’s complementary. The Rally and Drift modes are excluded from this, for hopefully obvious reasons. Rock Crawl, on the other hand, is fair game if you’re towing an adventure trailer with a quad-motor Rivian.But the bigger get has to do with towing range, and how the truck more accurately calculates the available range while towing. In the first mile you tow a new trailer, the truck now learns the trailer’s weight based on internal measurements of how acceleration and braking were affected. From this, a range correction factor is computed, and you can save this for later use by naming and saving your trailer in one of three available memory spots.Why save a trailer if it only takes a mile to learn a trailer’s weight? During longer trips, aerodynamic drag enters the frame, and the correction factor gets further refined, making any range prediction more accurate. Saving your trailer both shortcuts this process for the next trip and also saves your electronic trailer brake gain setting. Beyond this, the other new towing feature has to do with the camera system, which now enables the R1T’s rear-facing bed camera to be available when moving forward with a trailer attached. This doesn’t apply to the R1S SUV, because its rear camera is too far aft to be of any use seeing around the trailer.It Boils Down to an Electronic FaceliftThere’s a lot to like about this new interface, both in terms of newly added features and the greatly improved simplicity and ease of use that makes what is essentially the same touchscreen interface far less distracting. Rivian’s engineering team has done much to put oft-used drive mode controls near the driver’s fingertips. We love the new gauge page too, but we do see room for improvement. Some of them are a bit out of the driver’s eye line, and we think the trip odometer is more important off-road than the designers imagined. It’d be nice if an owner could nominate any of them for temporary residency on the instrument panel, too.But that’s picking nits, and it’s overlooking the larger point. This profound change is the kind of thing you could only hope for in most vehicles when facelift time comes around and probably wouldn’t see until the next full model change. In either case, the current owners who complained about the gaffes in surveys and got the ball rolling wouldn’t benefit unless they traded in for the new model. That’s not the case here, because everyone benefits when an OTA is involved. Any minor beefs with 2023.38.0 that may arise can be corrected in future updates, and it lays the groundwork for future tweaks. We can imagine trailer tongue weight sensing as a possibility, for example. And just think how much more we’d like the R1S and R1T if they added Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Thing is, they still can.More RivianTechnical EditorDan Edmunds was born into the world of automobiles, but not how you might think. His father was a retired racing driver who opened Autoresearch, a race-car-building shop, where Dan cut his teeth as a metal fabricator. Engineering school followed, then SCCA Showroom Stock racing, and that combination landed him suspension development jobs at two different automakers. His writing career began when he was picked up by Edmunds.com (no relation) to build a testing department. More

The 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 6 costs up to $4100 less than last year, with a new starting price of $38,615.That’s for the base rear-drive, standard-battery Ioniq 6, the others see price cuts between $2450 and $3050. A Hyundai spokesperson told Car and Driver the lower prices are due to “production efficiencies and scale.” The 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 6 lineup comes with huge discounts for the new model year. The slippery electric sedan and our reigning EV of the Year sees its base price slashed by $4100, meaning the entry-level SE trim level now starts at $38,615. Its fellow trims also see their price tags trimmed by as much as $3050 or as little as $2450.What spurred Hyundai to drop the Ioniq 6’s prices? A brand spokesperson told C/D it’s a byproduct of “production efficiencies and scale.” Whatever the case, we’ll never complain about new cars costing less.Ioniq 6 Price CheckThe most affordable Ioniq 6 is the rear-wheel-drive SE with the standard-range 53.0-kWh battery. All other models have the bigger 77.4-kWh battery, which is available on the SE RWD for $43,565; adding all-wheel drive pushes the price to $47,065. Compared with their 2023 counterparts, both are now $3050 cheaper.The SEL and Limited are the Ioniq sedan’s upper-crust trims, and each sticker for $2450 less than last year. For 2024, the SEL RWD starts at $43,565 and the Limited RWD starts at $51,265. The new discount extends to their AWD dual-motor doppelgängers, which have base prices of $49,895 and $54,765, respectively.Ioniq 6 Range RefresherWith the smaller battery, the 149-hp Ioniq 6 has an EPA-estimated driving range of 240 miles. The bigger battery helps rear-drive configurations earns estimates up to 361 miles—just know that the available 20-inch wheels shave off 56 miles. The same goes for Ioniq 6 models with AWD, whose 316-mile max estimate with 18-inch rims shrinks to 270 miles with 20s.We tested a 2023 version of the latter on our 75-mph highway fuel-economy route, and it traveled 220 miles on a full charge. A ’23 Ioniq 6 SE RWD Long Range (18s standard) made it 270 miles in the same test. Obviously, the EV sedan’s real-world range is much lower than its EPA estimates, but at least its prices now follow suit.The Best Ioniq 6 StoriesThis content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Senior EditorEric Stafford’s automobile addiction began before he could walk, and it has fueled his passion to write news, reviews, and more for Car and Driver since 2016. His aspiration growing up was to become a millionaire with a Jay Leno–like car collection. Apparently, getting rich is harder than social-media influencers make it seem, so he avoided financial success entirely to become an automotive journalist and drive new cars for a living. After earning a journalism degree at Central Michigan University and working at a daily newspaper, the years of basically burning money on failed project cars and lemon-flavored jalopies finally paid off when Car and Driver hired him. His garage currently includes a 2010 Acura RDX, a manual ’97 Chevy Camaro Z/28, and a ’90 Honda CRX Si. More