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Chevy plans to add Super Cruise to its 2023 Tahoe and Suburban.The tech is limited to high-end Premier and High Country trims.The semiconductor shortage, however, may ultimately affect Chevy’s plans.The 2023 Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban are the latest General Motors models to offer the company’s Super Cruise hands-free driver-assist system. Or at least that’s what the brand intends to happen.

“Due to current supply-chain shortages, certain features—including Super Cruise—have limited and late availability,” a spokesperson wrote in an email to Car and Driver. When asked if Chevrolet may ultimately need to push Super Cruise’s debut in the Tahoe and Suburban to the 2024 model year, the same spokesperson replied that Chevy is “continuing to monitor chip availability and will make this determination when our business deems appropriate in the model year cycle.”

We wager Chevy feels pretty confident it can get the needed semiconductor chips to bring Super Cruise to these two full-size SUVs for the 2023 model year. Otherwise, the bowtie brand would have surely pushed back announcing this information until it had a firmer grasp on its semiconductor chip situation.Nevertheless, it’s entirely possible Chevy released this information under the guise of “hoping for the best but planning for the worst.” If the worst does happen, and Chevy pulls Super Cruise from the options sheets of the 2023 Tahoe and Suburban, then buyers of these big SUVs will find the brand making only a handful of very small changes for the new model year. Three new exterior hues (Silver Sage Metallic, Sterling Gray Metallic, and Radiant Red Tintcoat) are added to the two vehicles’ color palettes, while a new accessory grill, which forgoes the bowtie badge for the Chevrolet name, is available on LS, LT, RST, and Premier trims.That said, if Chevy succeeds at bringing Super Cruise to the 2023 Tahoe and Suburban, then consumers of these models ought to plan on spending big bucks for the Level 2 driving-assist system, as it’s limited to the SUVs’ pricey Premier and High Country trims.
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Mass-market electric vehicles have been available in the U.S. for over a decade, but we’ve only seen small, incremental changes in sales for most of that time. In the first three months of 2022, though, EV registrations shot up an astonishing 60 percent even as the overall market was down 18 percent. With great EV sales comes great charging station responsibility, and figuring out how to offer public charging options to all of these new EV drivers is an ongoing concern.American car shoppers seem to have discovered the electric car. After a decade of slow but steady sales growth, electric vehicle registrations in the U.S. shot up 60 percent in the first quarter of 2022 even as overall new car registrations dropped 18 percent. It’s the latest indication that domestic EV acceptance may have turned some important but invisible corner recently.The sharp increase in electric-vehicle registrations at the start of this year meant that the EV share of the overall market hit a historic 4.6 percent. While places like Norway—where over 86 percent of all new vehicle sales were electric in March—may laugh at that number, EV advocates know that change happens slowly, then all at once, or something like that.

One big reason we’re seeing more EVs in people’s driveways is the explosion in exciting new models, from the Ford F-150 Lightning to the Kia EV6 to the Hyundai Ioniq 5. Experian calculated that there were 158,689 new EV registrations in the first three months of the year. The big winners were EVs from Tesla (up 59 percent to 113,882 new registrations), Kia (up more than eight-fold to 8,450) Ford (up 91 percent to 7,407) and Hyundai (up more than 300 percent, to 6,964), according to Automotive News. These plus other EV sales (the Nissan Leaf and the Volkswagen ID.4 were both in the top 10) meant the segment grew to that 4.6 percent record, which means that a total of 3.4 million new cars were registered last quarter.More EVs on the road might seem like good news, but some people see danger ahead, particularly when it comes to public charging. Despite the fact that most EV charging happens at home, this isn’t a solution for everyone, which means public charging needs to be readily available for some to keep raising the number of EVs sold. The age-old chicken vs. egg story remains alive and well in the EV charging infrastructure world, with a story in the Los Angeles Times last month saying that DC fast-charging station operators need eight to 10 charge sessions a day to turn a “decent return,” but if you also need to have enough fast-chargers available so that drivers don’t face too many waiting times. Finding the balance, especially with EV sales surging, could prove difficult.

Supply-chain problems plaguing the auto industry may have an impact on which cars are being sold, given that some automakers have to make production decisions about which models to build or not build based on the supply of semiconductor chips or other components in short supply. If you’ll allow a bit of speculation, the fact that EVs command more attention from the public and the higher starting prices for many EVs could be two potential reasons for automakers to prioritize EVs over internal combustion engine vehicles. Automotive News notes that it and Experian used registration data to get a clearer picture of EV sales in the U.S., since, for example, Tesla does not release sales figures. Other industry analysts have slightly different figures for EV sales at the start of 2022, but they all show major increases compared to last year. Cox Automotive’s estimate of the EV market share for the first quarter of 2022, for example, was 5.2 percent compared to 2.5 percent in 2021. Whatever the exact numbers, something’s certainly happening out there.
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• This one-owner, special edition 1993 Saab 900 is up for sale on the Bring a Trailer auction website right now.• Aside from its obvious charms, it’s important as one of the last few hundred coupes Saab built for the U.S. in the 900’s last model year. Having said that, the car was unchanged for more than a decade at that point.• The auction is set to end next Friday, May 20, but bidding is already up to $33,065 with a week to go. The Swedes had no sacrificial justification to build the same cars and fiercely resist change from the late 1970s all throughout the early 1990s. This wasn’t the immediate postwar era, for instance, when automakers had to stick with the limited parts they could get. No, Saab was just conservative, and cheap. And people loved them for it.

That brings us to this a one-owner 1993 Saab 900 selling on Bring a Trailer (which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos). As the Commemorative Edition, the car’s owner explains, this 900 is one of the last 325 hatchbacks built for the U.S. in its final model year. Another 500 cars ended the convertible’s run for 1994. Esoteric discussions over headlights, grilles, and carbureted versus fuel-injected engines could go on forever. We’ll keep it simple: This was the same damn car Saab had been selling since 1978.While an all-new 900 dropped in 1994 and later renamed itself the 9-3, General Motors helped develop those cars (it purchased half of Saab in 1990). Among the Saab faithful, the 900,000 900 models built during the first generation were the purest, most iconic expression of the brand before GM butted in. Its devoted owners were furious when GM killed the company in 2011, as they should have been.

Bring a Trailer

When it was new, a 900 was the smart look among compact luxury cars. It was upscale without the glam, overengineered to a charming fault, and, with a double-wishbone front suspension and turbo engine, surprisingly quick and agile. Of course Saab built very safe cars. But where Volvo avoided speed and risky styling, Saab made Swedish cars desirable. The graceful notchback slant of the huge tailgate, long overhangs, and expansive rear windows seem at total odds with the shorter hood and narrow wheelbase. That’s how your mind first processes a 900. Saab played with a cab-rearward layout like a sports car but kept the footprint of a front-wheel-drive family sedan. Yet the 900 doesn’t feel like one. These proportions, plus the curved windshield, rear fender vents, high-mounted spoiler, and three-spoke dish wheels, were a genuine nod to Saab’s jet fighter division. Then or now, it’s never an ordinary car.

Bring a Trailer

The CE came only as a coupe in black over tan leather and featured a five-speed manual paired to Saab’s most powerful turbo-four. With 185 horsepower at 5500 rpm and 201 pound-feet of torque at a low 2800 rpm, the 2.0-liter engine was a true pioneer for turbocharged output and response (Saab had a regulator that could modify boost based on temperature and fuel octane, a big deal back then). This 900 CE appears to have all the correct parts, including the requisite headlight wipers and gray 15-inch wheels. There’s even an accessory louvered window cover. While the shift knob is worn out and the carpets have some strange cutlines along the transmission tunnel, the leather trimming the seats and door pockets is nearly crack-free. The back seat looks like no one ever sat there. The burl walnut trim is practically dripping.

Bring a Trailer

The current owner spent $1800 to make repairs, which is entirely normal for an old Swedish car. It’s now selling for a third of its $33,065 sticker price (and can you believe Saab offered a six-year/80,000-mile warranty?). The Saab parts community is very strong, so all the second owner must do is gaze upon this beauty, twist the ignition key between the seats, and send the turbo gauge to the red zone. That’s good enough reason to build the same car for 16 years.

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Pininfarina has announced it’s selling five non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, related to the 1970 Modulo concept.The RM Sotheby’s auction house is handling the transaction in an event that happens later this month.Could there be a worse week than this week to announce it, with the way the metaverse is trending? Well, we can’t be sure.The late Norm MacDonald had a routine about giving lottery tickets as gifts. It went something like, “Here’s what I got you: nothing!” Speaking of which, let’s talk about NFTs! Can we presume you’re up on NFTs? If not, here’s the idea: you own a digital file and it’s all yours—a photo, a video, whatever. For a while there, NFTs were going strong, with Bored Ape Yacht Club (pictures of sleazy humanoid monkeys) leading the way. But somehow, it seems that public sentiment is turning, and now maybe some people are reconsidering the idea that a JPG of a monkey, or of anything, should be worth more than a house.

So, just in time for the NFT market bloodbath, Pininfarina has announced a new NFT collection devoted to its 1970 Modulo concept car, with the five NFTs to be auctioned by RM Sotheby’s later this month. Right about now Pininfarina is probably wishing that last sentence was past tense and read “last month,” before Tether untethered and Luna crashed and Coinbase stock dropped 75 percent. Okay, let’s talk about cars. Sort of.

Pininfarina

What is Pininfarina auctioning, exactly? Well, not the Modulo, or course. But Pininfarina does have original design sketches of the Modulo—which it also is not auctioning. What they are selling is a sort of digital diorama of the Modulo set in each of the five decades since its unveiling, with soundtracks created by Sasha Sirota. Perhaps sensing that this project needs a little bit of an IRL hook, winning bidders also take home two physical prints of the design sketches, each signed by Pininfarina’s chairman, Paolo Pininfarina. Oh, and you get a private tour of the Pininfarina museum and a hang sesh with the design team. Back on the virtual side of things, this prize package also includes unique digital replicas of the Pininfarina Modulo that will give you serious imaginary-car-collector cred in the Metaverse. What’s your bid? The contestant who bids the nearest Ethereum value without going over wins the showcase!
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In its quest to rapaciously separate the dull rich from their money, we wish Pininfarina all the best. But the venerable design house may be overestimating the overlap between people who own NFT wallets and know who Sasha Sirota is, and people who care that Pininfarina is responsible for both the Cadillac Allanté and the Daewoo Lacetti. To us, Lamborghini seems more like the kind of company that would be in tune with the NFT crowd, a brand that would pump out some NFTs while the market was still fizzing. Oh, wait: they did, for a total of more than $600,000. Lamborghini even set up a secondary market page on its NFT site, so original owners can resell them. So far, it has no listings.
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