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Aston Martin has redesigned its logo, removing the U-shaped line in the wings to create a cleaner look.The British sports-car maker also announced a plan to raise $783 million to help pay down its debt and develop new vehicles, including EVs.Part of the investment will come from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which will spend $93.5 million to take a 16.7 percent stake in Aston Martin.The introduction of an Aston Martin SUV, the DBX, in 2021 was meant to bolster the British sports-car brand’s sales and help the company that has outlived seven bankruptcies avoid an eighth. But DBX sales haven’t exactly taken off, and as of March, Aston Martin had a net debt of nearly $1.2 billion, according to Autocar. Now executive chairman Lawrence Stroll, who led a group of investors to take over the company in 2020, has announced a plan to raise $783 million in capital to pay down that debt and develop new models. And as part of this massive reinvestment, Aston Martin has also given a subtle update to its logo and coined a new tagline.

Aston Martin

The logo, which was redesigned in collaboration with British art director and graphic designer Peter Saville, is minimally changed, simply removing the U-shaped line that previously ran beneath the “Aston Martin” text. There are also slight revisions to the font and the thickness of the lines in the wing design. This is the first update to the logo since 2003, and the icon has only been changed eight times in Aston Martin’s 109-year history. The refreshed wings arrive alongside a new motto—”Intensity. Driven.”—and Aston Martin says the new marketing strategy is meant to attract a younger audience.The new wing design will be seen for the first time this weekend on the Aston Martin AMR22 Formula 1 car at the French Grand Prix. Aston Martin says the revised logo’s first appearance on a road car will be on its “next generation of sports cars,” with updates to the Vantage, DB11, and DBS rumored for 2023.

Aston Martin

But more important for Aston Martin’s continued existence than a slightly redrawn logo are the wave of new investments that should give the firm some breathing room when it comes to launching refreshed models and preparing for an electrified future. The reinvestment plan, as first reported by Autocar, includes a $93.5 million deal with the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) for a 16.7 percent stake in the company. Stroll suggested that the PIF’s $1 billion investment in EV startup Lucid Motors could provide a path for Aston Martin’s electrification strategy; the PIF also became a major investor in McLaren earlier this year.

The Saudi backing will be joined by contributions from Stroll’s investment group, Yew Tree, and Mercedes-Benz to raise $401.6 million, and an extra $381.2 million will be raised by issuing more shares. This will drop Yew Tree’s stake from 22 to 18.3 percent, but the group says it will buy an additional $126.4 million worth of shares to boost its stake back up. Similarly, Mercedes-Benz’s portion will fall from 11.7 to 9.7 percent, but the German automaker will reinvest $67.2 million to increase its stake following the rights issue. Along with the reinvestment plan, Aston Martin confirmed that its first full EV will arrive in 2025 and will likely ride on a Mercedes platform. The British sports-car maker says that it aims to use the new funds to reach 10,000 sales by 2024 or 2025. In the first half of 2022, 2676 Aston Martins found buyers, down from 2901 units in 2021. The company says it expects to sell 6600 cars this year, so a big sales increase will be required for Aston Martin to reach its goals in 2025.
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These are challenging times for customers looking to buy any kind of vehicle but, a newly released study shows, particularly difficult if you’re shopping with an EV startup.The Pied Piper research firm studied customers of 25 premium auto brands, using “mystery shoppers” to evaluate the shopping experience, checking things such as response to website inquiries and the quality of the in-person shopping experience.The resulting Prospect Satisfaction Index found Lucid, Polestar, Rivian, and Tesla were less responsive to shoppers than established brands such as Cadillac and Infiniti, even though EV customers may need more questions answered than people shopping for traditional gas-powered vehicles.Electric-vehicle advocates and early adopters have long maintained the experience of learning about EVs, shopping for them, and buying them is better at those few brands that sell directly to buyers—Tesla foremost, now also Lucid and Rivian—than at conventional third-party franchised dealers of the sort used by Toyota, GM, Honda, Ford, and other established carmakers.

Now a study from the research firm Pied Piper appears to turn that conventional wisdom on its head. Conducted from July 2021 to June 2022, it compared the helpfulness and responsiveness of sales staff from established brands against those at independent locations operated by EV startups. Covering 25 premium brands, it spanned more than 1000 measurements of the in-person sales experience and 1650 measurements of responsiveness to customer inquiries on the company’s website. The five top-ranked brands were Cadillac, Infiniti, Mercedes-Benz, Acura, and Volvo, while four of the five lowest scorers were EV companies: Tesla, Lucid, Polestar, and Rivian.

Pied Piper Industry Studies

The Prospect Satisfaction Index (PSI) study has been issued annually since 2007. It uses mystery shoppers who rate locations against “customer helpfulness and sales best practices,” which, the company notes, “measure and report how effectively retailers help their shoppers become buyers.”

Pied Piper Industry Studies

The audience for the study is both carmakers and national dealer groups, but Pied Piper funds the study itself. “Our business is helping [automakers] improve their sales,” CEO Fran O’Hagan told Car and Driver, “by calculating sales best practices and then measuring and reporting dealer by dealer whether those best practices are followed.”Owners and advocates note, correctly, that the process of deciding to buy an electric car involves more research and education than replacing a five-year-old compact crossover with a new compact crossover. Questions on how EVs are charged and what their real-world range may be under a variety of use cases, plus concerns over battery life, are among the most common queries.

For that reason, this study can be viewed as handicapping EV-only makers, since a majority of their buyers will be new to EVs and require more time and more handholding. A first-time buyer may require more visits to the Chevrolet dealer to choose a Bolt EV over a Trax, but that extra time is rolled into the far larger pool of more conventional sales of vehicles without plugs—which require none of that education.For the first time, this year’s survey included seven exotic brands, including Ferrari and Rolls-Royce, and three new EV brands (Lucid, Polestar, and Rivian) along with Tesla. The exotics’ scores were variable at best: high on some measures, low on others. But the EV-only brands as a group scored lower on responsiveness and steps toward closing a sale, and Tesla’s ratings slid.Wakeup Call for StartupsStill, many of the study’s findings suggest EV-only makers simply aren’t as responsive to inquiries as dealerships. For instance, more than 50 percent of the time, the best of the 25 premium brands responded to customer web inquiries in 30 minutes or less. Polestar, Rivian, and Tesla (as well as Ferrari) did so less than 10 percent of the time. EV brands also scored lower on use of texts, phone calls, and immediate responses to shoppers’ use of website chat features. As for visits to the brands’ locations—the study calls them “dealerships” throughout—there too EV brands suffered against the standardized processes of third-party franchised dealerships for established makers. (Because Rivian has no retail outlets, the study notes its in-person measurement was “carried out instead by customers contacting the brand by phone call, to give the brand an opportunity to interact in a [similar] manner.”)Tesla, the highest-volume EV maker, had rated above average or leading in earlier Pied Piper studies in 2019, 2021, and 2022. But its ratings have now slipped below the average. Tesla’s “sales methodology has transformed more into order-taking than customer assistance,” the company concludes. “Tesla’s model today appears to be, ‘If you want what we sell, and require no assistance, it’s easy to order,’ ” commented O’Hagan. “With an online focus and few retail locations, these new EV brands have a great opportunity to excel with phone, chat, and email interactions with their customers,” O’Hagan said. “However, we found that when their customers reach out for help or with questions, they are usually met with brand reps who answer only simple, scripted questions without being proactively helpful.” He called it a “missed opportunity” to turn inquiries into potential customers.
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The 2023 Porsche Taycan has a quicker infotainment system and updates to its battery that promise to slightly improve both charging speed and range.Other equipment updates made for 2023 Taycan include Variable Light Control available on all Taycans with the panoramic glass roof, easier setup of the Porsche Dashcam, and the deletion of the 19-inch fully-painted Taycan Aero wheels.The 2023 Taycan can be ordered starting at $88,150. Since its debut in 2020, Porsche has sold more than 75,000 of its all-electric Taycan sedan, and Sport and Cross Turismo wagons, globally. For a moment, it looked like its EV would outsell the brand’s crown jewel 911 here in the U.S., but six months into 2022, Taycan sales lurk behind sales for one of our favorite sports cars by 726 units. With plenty of time to heal that divide, Porsche has announced 2023 Taycan pricing and updates that will affect even the earliest Taycans sold three years ago.

Porsche says it has updated the Taycan’s 71.0-kWh and 83.7-kWh batteries’ cooling and heating strategy, as it did last year, to allow it to precondition quicker and to a higher temperature. The result is getting the battery ready to reach its 270-kW maximum charging speed at a higher state of charge. This means instead of having the peak available only between states of charge between 5 to 15 percent, even if charging begins at 30 percent, it’s possible to reach DC fast-charging speeds of up to 270 kW thanks to the car’s 800-volt architecture. This charging functionality will be offered as a free update for current Taycan owners, Porsche said.In theory, reaching that max charging speed more often and more quickly should reduce charging times, and Porsche says the 2023 Taycan also gains 50 kilometers (31 miles) in overall range as measured by Europe’s WLTP test protocol. That’s thanks to the latest software updates, including switching off the front motor in Normal and Range modes in dual-motor variants.
EPA figures aren’t yet out for the 2023 Taycan, but using current WLTP and EPA estimates as a benchmark, the farthest-driving Taycan 4S Performance Battery Plus model earned a 254-mile rating on the WLTP scale and a 227-mile EPA estimate here in the U.S. That means it’s reasonable to assume the max range for Taycan could reach as high as 250 miles from the EPA. The optimizations don’t stop there. 2023 Taycans come with updated PCM 6.0 infotainment software with a revised and more colorful user interface, and the addition of wireless Android Auto. Porsche will offer this as a free update to current Taycan owners, but it will require a visit to a Porsche service center for what Porsche says could take as much as a day to complete. The upgraded PCM 6.0 will allow drivers to filter charging stations by power output, allowing users to prioritize the quickest chargers nearby.In terms of equipment, the new Porsche will look a lot like the outgoing model with the exception of the deletion of the fully-painted 19-inch Aero wheels. Those are gone, but the polished and painted 19-inch Aero wheels remain. Variable Light Control is now available on all Taycans with the panoramic glass roof which allows the driver to electronically change the roof from clear to opaque. Porsche now includes the preparation treatment for its dashcam, in the form of a wiring harness for optional front and rear Porsche Tequipment safety cameras. The 2023 Porsche Taycan is live on the configurator today, with pricing starting at $88,150 for the sedan and $99,150 for the Taycan Cross Turismo wagon.
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Supernal, a subsidiary of Hyundai, has revealed its eVTOL Vehicle Cabin concept, showcasing the passenger compartment inside its flying shuttle.The eVTOL’s cabin design took inspiration from the automotive sector’s entertainment systems and lighting, while also including sustainable materials. Supernal hopes to launch its flying pod in the U.S. by 2028, while another Hyundai division works on a hydrogen-powered shuttle that can travel longer distances.Flying cars have been touted as the future of transportation for decades, and while a plethora of companies have claimed to crack the code, their efforts have never amounted to more than a few working prototypes. The race to solve the flying car conundrum has only heated up in recent years, with independent startups like Terrafugia and PAL-V facing new competition from transportation giants like Uber and Airbus. Hyundai is also investing heavily in the nascent industry, launching a U.S.-based subsidiary called Supernal last November to focus on the so-called “Advanced Air Mobility market.” Now, Supernal has unveiled its eVTOL Vehicle Cabin concept at the Farnborough International Airshow in England, showing what the passenger compartment inside its upcoming intra-city air shuttle could look like.

Hyundai

Supernal worked with Hyundai’s studios to draw inspiration from automotive design for the creation of its eVTOL cabin concept. The pod seats five, and the lightweight structure is constructed from forged carbon fiber. Each “ergonomically contoured” seat features a deployable control center designed after the center consoles found in cars. Each passenger has a charging port and a small storage compartment. The overhead lights mimic a car’s sunroof, and the lighting adjusts during different phases of the flight. Getting in and out of the eVTOL is made easier by grab handles on the vehicle’s doors and seatbacks. Supernal also touts the eVTOL concept’s sustainable construction, with includes interior materials such as recyclable carbon fiber, reinforced thermoplastic, plant-based leather, and recycled plastic fabric.

Hyundai

Supernal says it is in the process of certifying the eVTOL for commercial use in the United States starting in 2028, with plans to launch the flying vehicle in Europe soon thereafter. Supernal’s eVTOL will be just one electric air vehicle in a family planned under the Hyundai umbrella. Hyundai’s Korean division is currently in the process of creating a hydrogen-powered, mid-sized flying vehicle for inter-city cargo and passenger shuttle services. However, it doesn’t expect to launch that until the 2030s. While Hyundai certainly has more resources than many of the startups that have tried to make the flying car a reality, we won’t be holding our breath.
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