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Polestar is partnering with major automotive suppliers, targeting to create a car using zero carbon emissions by 2030.As part of the Polestar 0 Project, the supply partners include Autoliv, maker of safety equipment, and ZF, which builds electric powertrains.As Volvo’s all-electric arm, Polestar’s lineup includes the four-door 2 hatchback and the upcoming 3 SUV. Polestar wants to develop a car by using zero carbon emissions, and it’s partnering with major suppliers in the automotive industry in an attempt to do so. The company committed to creating a carbon-neutral car last year, naming the initiative the Polestar 0 Project.

The project’s stated goal is to eliminate carbon emissions from the supply chain, essentially changing how vehicles are made. When it was first announced last year, Polestar’s plan included creating the carbon-neutral car by 2030 and for the whole company to be fully carbon-neutral by 2040. The latest step toward making those goals a reality is today’s news that Polestar has signed letters of intent to collaborate with several important suppliers in the industry.

Polestar

These suppliers will specialize in producing zero-carbon everything, from aluminum parts to steel to electrical components. Among the most notable suppliers are Autoliv and ZF. The former is focusing on safety equipment like airbags and seatbelts, while the latter is handling electric powertrains and how they can contribute to eliminating carbon emissions.Polestar also says it isn’t finished fishing for partners to help efforts for complete carbon neutrality. The Swedish company says it’s looking for additional collaborators beyond the automotive sector, with invitations to be extended over the next four weeks to researchers and organizations around the globe.For those unfamiliar with Polestar, it more recently morphed from Volvo’s performance subbrand into its own all-electric brand. After the limited-production Polestar 1 coupe’s end of production last year, the lineup currently consists of just the Polestar 2, a four-door hatchback-sedan creation. However, the Polestar 3 SUV and Polestar 5 sedan will come to market over the next couple of years and likely help grow the company’s cachet.
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This Intermeccanica Italia Spyder is a genuine work of art from the 1960s, easier to afford than a Ferrari of the era and yet redolent of its own glorious history.Plus, just look at it.The car is up for auction on Bring a Trailer, and bidding is at $100,000 with six days to go. The auction ends on Monday, February 28.This is no Faux-rari. The Intermeccanica Italia Spyder is original 1960s artwork that rarely comes up for sale and yet is many lifetimes more attainable than the museum pieces from Maranello, Italy. Put your fingerprints over this fast and confusing convertible if you can check your ego and memorize a script. Every stop in this red sports car will provoke a lengthy conversation, so the next owner who buys this 1969 model on Bring a Trailer—which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos—needs to be extra patient.

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Intermeccanica was founded in 1959 by a Canadian couple who, like anyone who visits Italy for the first time, fell madly in love with the country. Frank and Paula Reisner were beatnik 20-somethings, originally from Hungary and Czechoslovakia, buzzing around in a Fiat 500 and camping in the woods. Italmeccanica was a supplier to Fiat. Frank liked the name, changed it to Intermeccanica, and apparently without any trademark complaints, the couple started an aftermarket parts company in Turin. Building carburetors and exhausts ignited a deeper passion to craft custom bodies on a supplied chassis—a true carrozzeria or coachbuilding company like a Bertone or Pininfarina. After their modified Puch 500 beat an Abarth in a race, Abarth himself got so angry he demanded Fiat revoke Puch’s contract with Intermeccanica. The company had made its mark.

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The Italia was a follow-up to the Apollo, a gorgeous coupe with a Buick V-8. Intermeccanica teamed with Robert Cumberford, a former General Motors designer and a respected automotive journalist, who penned a hardtop version called the Griffith at the behest of Jack Griffith, a TVR dealer in Long Island, New York. When that venture failed, the Griffith was renamed Omega, then Torino, and finally Italia after trademark protests from General Motors and Ford and a lawsuit between Cumberford and Griffith. With all that drama, it’s no wonder those cars are rarer than the Italia, which sold roughly 400 copies between 1967 and 1973.

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With a 351-cubic-inch Ford Cleveland V-8 and a four-speed manual transmission, this lightweight two-seater is a steal next to other period Italian-American mashups like the Vignale-bodied, Chrysler-powered Cunningham. This same Italia with 34,000 miles sold at the 2018 Amelia Island auction for $147,840. At the time, Bonhams reported a $10,000 restoration. A year later according to BaT, the owner paid to rebuild the engine (which makes an impressive 319 horsepower on the dyno).

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Intermeccanica still exists in Vancouver and churns out Porsche 356 replicas under Frank’s son Henry. Their badge includes the original Prancing Bull that’s now behind a British Union Jack in the shape of a Porsche crest. It’s all one hell of a roundabout story that deserves to be told at the new owner’s next car show.

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UPDATE 2/22/22: General Motors will discontinue the Marketplace app starting next month. While the ordering-on-the-go app has been available in millions of Buicks, Cadillacs, Chevrolets, and GMCs since 2017, usage rates didn’t match expectations, with only “thousands” of drivers utilizing the app, according to a GM spokesperson quoted by CNBC. For some commuters who make stopping for a cup of coffee part of their daily routine, the morning drive to work may never be the same. In the wee hours of the morning, General Motors enabled a new feature, called Marketplace, in about two million vehicles, with the ultimate aim of enabling twice that many. It lets car owners order things like coffee and fast food using the touchscreens in their dashboards and pay for items in advance. No more waiting for an order to be assembled at the local fry shack. It should be ready and waiting when commuters arrive.Many retailers, including Starbucks, already allow mobile ordering via smartphone apps. But with cars morphing into what industry insiders call “the third screen,” auto executives foresee some portion of commerce shifting to in-vehicle purchases, with the result of entirely new revenue streams as they snag a percentage of those transactions.Using the 4G LTE connection in millions of GM vehicles produced for the 2017 and 2018 model years, the automaker is linking customers with restaurants, gas stations, coffee shops, and hotels.“Whether customers prefer to stick with the app-enabled purchases on their phones or shift their business to thein-vehicle screens remains a central competitive question.”GM’s initial partners include retailers such as Dunkin’ Donuts, TGI Fridays, Shell, ExxonMobil, and Priceline.com. Starbucks has signed on, too, and will enable the service in GM cars early in 2018. Other participants include Parkopedia, a service that allows drivers to find, reserve, and pay for parking, and the restaurant chains Applebee’s and IHOP. A spokesperson said more retailers will be added quickly, adding that the company is having conversations with national pizza-delivery outfits that have shown early interest in the platform.Competitors will be watching the way motorists treat this ability to order from their infotainment screens. In some cases, such as ordering from Starbucks, GM will need to offer a superior experience to lure drivers away from their smartphones. In other cases, such as a motorist searching for a roadside hotel along an unknown route, the immediate benefit seems more evident.The arrival of GM’s Marketplace through an over-the-air software update in the middle of the night marks a separate milestone. To date, Tesla Motors had been the undisputed leader in the remote addition of new features. Most other automakers have either not attempted remote updates at all or used them only to patch back-end bugs that most motorists didn’t notice. With Tuesday morning’s update, GM has joined an exclusive club. And it says Marketplace is only the “first of a suite of new personalization features” the company will roll out in the coming 12 to 18 months.Customers who received the update should be notified via email this morning. Some customers who don’t get notifications may be eligible to enable Marketplace but will need to download it via GM’s app store.

General Motors

This in-vehicle shop is designed to for motorists to use while they’re driving. That may be a concern considering that fatal crashes involving distracted driving accounted for 3450 deaths last year, according to the latest federal figures. But, like features that project phones onto infotainment screens such as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, Marketplace was designed to meet federal standards set to minimize the time drivers look away from the road, according to GM.On average, a driver spends 46 minutes per day in his or her vehicle, according to AAA research. Marketers have long wanted to reach consumers during that time, but aside from roadside signage, that has been a vexing problem. Some car owners may not welcome the new intrusions, but others might find Marketplace an incentive-laden gateway to purchases they already intended to make.In part, the system is the outgrowth of the company’s partnership with IBM, announced in 2016, which intertwines IBM’s artificial-intelligence platform, Watson, with the vehicle’s infotainment underpinnings. If drivers buy a tall cappuccino each day from a certain Starbucks, for example, Watson will learn those preferences and subsequently make it easier for motorists to make their usual selections.Initially, the Marketplace platform does not pair with voice-recognition systems in the cars, although GM says it eventually intends to let customers place orders via voice commands rather than swipes on the touchscreen.Whether customers prefer the app-enabled purchases on their phones or will shift their business to the screens in their vehicles remains a central competitive question. Whatever the outcome, GM seems poised to be the first automaker ready to learn the answer.This story was originally published December 5, 2017.

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Ford has revealed the new Raptor version of the Ranger mid-size pickup.This model follows the Raptor treatment we’ve seen on the F-150 and Bronco, with a more powerful engine and off-road goodies.Ford CEO Jim Farley confirmed that the Ranger Raptor will go on sale in the U.S. next year.The global reveal of the Ford Ranger Raptor is exciting enough, but we also now have confirmation from Ford that this off-road pickup is officially coming to the U.S. next year. It’ll look much like what you see here, but likely with a few tweaks to its appearance and slightly different specifications.
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The Ranger Raptor largely mirrors the Bronco Raptor in terms of its powertrain: it has the same twin-turbo 3.0-liter V-6 engine, making 392 horsepower and 430 pound-feet (those figures may change for the U.S. market). A 10-speed automatic transmission and four-wheel drive are standard, as is a two-speed transfer case and front and rear locking differentials.

While the Bronco Raptor shares its 3.1-inch diameter Fox Racing adaptive shocks with the F-150 Raptor, the Ranger gets 2.5-inch diameter Fox shocks. The same anti-lag feature from the Bronco is found here, which allows the turbos to remain spooled when you lift off the throttle for brief periods. Several driving modes will be available that will affect the tuning of the shocks, the loudness of the exhaust, and other factors.As is de rigeur for any Raptor model, there’s a large “FORD” script that dominates the front grille, and the body looks to be wider than the standard next-generation Ranger thanks to exaggerated fender flares. 33-inch BF Goodrich K02 all-terrain tires can be seen in the photos, along with 17-inch bead-lock-capable wheels that will be optional.
Inside, the interior is far more modern than the current Ranger’s and features a large 12.0-inch vertically oriented touchscreen and a digital gauge cluster. The touchscreen runs Ford’s Sync 4A software and a premium audio system will also be offered. We expect the Ranger Raptor to be offered only as a crew cab, as is the F-150 Raptor.Look for more U.S.-specific information to come on the Ranger Raptor within the next few months, as it’s slated to go on sale on our shores sometime in 2023.
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Mazda has announced pricing for the 2023 CX-50, which starts at $28,025.It’s a bit more expensive than the CX-5 but offers the same engine choices: a naturally aspirated 2.5-liter inline-four and a turbocharged 2.5-liter inline-four.A rugged-looking Meridian Edition is coming later on, as is a CX-50 hybrid with a Toyota-sourced powertrain.Mazda will soon have two entries in the popular compact-crossover segment with similar price points. The 2023 CX-50 is the newer of the two, and we now know it will be more expensive than the existing CX-5 that’s just received small updates for 2022. The CX-50 starts at $28,025 and ranges up to over $42,000 in its fully loaded turbocharged trim level. That starting price is $900 more than the CX-5’s base price, while the loaded CX-50 is $2900 more than a CX-5 Signature.

The CX-50 has a similar trim structure as the CX-5, with 2.5 S models coming with the same naturally aspirated 187-hp 2.5-liter inline-four engine that we’re familiar with from other Mazda models. Select ($29,425), Preferred ($30,725), Preferred Plus ($33,165), Premium ($35,625) and Premium Plus ($37,625) packages will be available with varying levels of equipment. A more powerful 256-hp turbocharged version of the 2.5-liter engine is offered on the CX-50 2.5 Turbo models, starting at $37,625.Unlike the CX-5, the CX-50 won’t call its top trim level Signature, instead going with the Premium Plus moniker for the fully loaded 2.5 Turbo model that costs $42,775. All-wheel drive and a six-speed automatic transmission are standard across the board, and a hybrid model is coming later on with a powertrain sourced from Toyota.Mazda also says it will eventually launch a Meridian Edition version of the CX-50 with a more rugged look that includes 18-inch wheels with all-terrain tires, hood graphics, and a few other outdoorsy accessories. We assume this is the version of the CX-50 that Mazda showed in the initial press pictures (pictured below). Pricing isn’t available yet but we reckon it will also be more than $40,000.
Mazda says production of the CX-50 has already begun at its new plant in Alabama that’s a joint venture with Toyota. We don’t yet have a specific on-sale date for the CX-50 but it should start arriving at dealerships within the next month or so.
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