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The new 2021 Nissan GT-R T-spec is a limited edition that adopts bodywork from the Track Edition and the carbon-ceramic brakes from the NISMO while using the Premium model’s 565-hp version of the twin-turbo V-6.The T-spec comes in either Millennium Jade or Midnight Purple, two colors made iconic by special-edition versions of the R34 generation, built from 1999 to 2002.The T-spec features a Mori Green interior and gold Rays wheels, and will cost $140,285.For nearly ten years, Nissan has hinted at a next generation for its GT-R sports car. Nissan executives have suggested a hybridized replacement and the company even teased us with the Concept 2020 Vision Gran Turismo, designed for the eponymous video game series. But 2020 has come and gone and the R35 generation of the GT-R, originally unveiled in 2007, soldiers on. While 2021 hasn’t brought a full-fledged redesign, the GT-R will add a new limited edition model, the T-spec, which splits the difference between the cushier Premium model and the more focused Track Edition and NISMO variants.
Visually, the T-spec gains a carbon-fiber rear wing, blacked-out hood ducts, and the wider front fenders seen on the Track Edition. Peeking out from underneath those beefy fenders are gold forged aluminum wheels made by Japanese company Rays, and the T-spec also borrows the carbon-ceramic brakes and brake ducts from the top-dog GT-R NISMO. The special edition is also adorned by numerous gold T-spec badges.While the T-spec uses bits from the more more powerful Track Edition and NISMO, the new model is powered by the same engine found in the standard Premium model. The twin-turbo 3.8-liter V-6 churns out a healthy 565 horsepower and 467 pound-feet of torque (the faster versions up that to 600 hp and 481 pound-feet). The T-spec continues with all-wheel-drive and the same six-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission.

The real draws of the T-spec are its two exclusive paint colors, which pay homage to iconic past GT-Rs. The first is Millennium Jade, which last appeared on the R34 GT-R V-Spec II Nür, a coveted special edition from the early 2000s named after the Nürburgring racetrack. Of the 718 V-spec II Nür units built, just 156 of them were Millennium Jade, and the new T-spec is the first time this color is available stateside. The second color, Midnight Purple, harks back to the Midnight Purple III on the R34 V-spec, of which only 132 units were built. The color also recalls the Midnight Opal that came on a special edition GT-R in 2014 that was limited to 100 units worldwide, of which 50 came to the U.S.
The T-spec’s interior is outfitted in Mori Green and features leather seats with pearl suede accents, a quilted Alcantara headliner, and T-spec badges. The T-spec will be priced at $140,285, around $25,000 more than the Premium and undercutting the Track Edition by about $7,000. While Nissan says it will be a limited production model, the company hasn’t specified just how many will be built.
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The 2022 Mazda CX-5 compact SUV gets a handful of visual and mechanical changes.The CX-5’s more elegant appearance is highlighted by updated front and rear ends with sleeker surfaces.Mazda drops front-wheel-drive CX-5 models, making all-wheel drive standard. Adding to a resume that includes being Mazda’s best-selling model in the U.S. and earning multiple appearances on our annual 10Best list, the 2022 CX-5 compact crossover receives a host of subtle, albeit meaningful, updates.

Although it might be hard to notice without a side-by-side comparison with last year’s model, the 2022 CX-5’s already attractive bodywork is massaged to be more elegant. Not only are its LED headlights more distinctive, but its grille becomes more prominent thanks to wings that extend outwards toward the headlights and a new textured mesh. The lower front fascia now looks smoother, too, with the same type of streamlining appearing at the back of the SUV along with redesigned LED taillights. A new set of wheel designs are also part of the visual evolution.
The 2022 CX-5 lineup is largely unchanged, but the previous Grand Touring Reserve trim is replaced by a new 2.5 Turbo model, which references its 250-hp 2.5-liter turbo inline-four engine. The Turbo slots between the Grand Touring and Signature trims. It has gloss-black exterior bits as well as red accents and stitching inside. The Signature also looks more upscale, as Mazda has replaced the plastic cladding around the wheel wells with body-colored pieces. All models add new seats that are said to be more supportive, and there’s now a wider selection of drive-mode settings. Previously, a single Sport mode was the lone performance adjustment.It’s also no longer possible to order a CX-5 with front-wheel drive. Every version now comes standard with Mazda’s i-Activ all-wheel-drive system. Feeding all four of its wheels is either the 187-hp naturally aspirated 2.5-liter inline-four-cylinder base engine or the available turbocharged 2.5-liter four-pot. While both engines are unchanged and still pair with a six-speed automatic transmission, Mazda says the gearbox is retuned to be more responsive. Likewise, enhancements to the CX-5’s suspension and a more rigid frame are said to improve its noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) levels, which should provide a quieter cabin and a smoother ride.
Mazda hasn’t released pricing for the 2022 CX-5 lineup, but with the newly standard all-wheel-drive system, we expect the previously $1400 option to be baked into the cost. The 2021 CX-5 AWD lineup currently ranges from the $27,945 Sport model to the $38,680 Signature, so expect 2022 models to cost slightly more than that when they reach dealerships this winter.
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Toyota will share all the specs and details on the 2022 Tundra pickup truck on Sunday, September 19 at 9 p.m. ET. The new truck is expected to use a twin-turbo V-6 instead of the current V-8 engine, and will feature coil springs in the rear.We’ve already seen the off-road-focused TRD Pro model, but on Sunday, Toyota will share details on all the other models.

Toyota has gotten close to spilling the details on the 2022 Tundra, but we’ll finally know all the specs this Sunday, September 19, at 9 p.m. ET. The company shared a few photos of the off-road-focused TRD Pro model (pictured below), but soon we’ll learn more about the other models along with the power, towing, payload, and other specs.

Toyota

The Tundra full-size pickup will be entering its third generation, and this is the first time there has been a new model since 2007. It’s expected to have a new twin-turbocharged 3.4-liter V-6 engine producing upwards of 400 horsepower, and there could be a hybrid drivetrain using this six-cylinder as well to compete with the Ford F-150 PowerBoost hybrid. The new truck also ditches the old leaf-spring rear suspension setup in favor of coil springs (much like the Ram 1500), and it’ll continue to use control arms up front.

Some of the most significant changes will be seen inside the cabin. Toyota teased an image of the TRD Pro model’s interior, which gave a look at a massive center mounted touchscreen with Apple CarPlay capability. It also announced that the new truck will have wireless charging, a panoramic sunroof, and its rear window will roll down just like the old truck. Check back here for everything you need to know about the 2022 Toyota Tundra when it’s revealed in full on Sunday at 9 p.m. ET.

Toyota

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Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath revealed some more details about the upcoming Polestar 3 SUV.It will be a two-row crossover with a sloping roofline, and it will offer single- and dual-motor configurations.The 3 will be built in the U.S. and is set to arrive in 2022.Polestar’s creation as a standalone brand back in 2017 came well ahead of any products, but the Volvo EV subsidiary is now trying to catch up with an aggressive schedule that aims to introduce a new model each year. So after the Polestar 1 PHEV coupe and the Polestar 2 EV crossover, we will be seeing the Polestar 3 next year. While Polestar has only released a few details of the forthcoming electric SUV, and a single teaser image of it beneath a sheet, we are able to add some more details following a conversation with company CEO Thomas Ingenlath at last week’s Munich auto show.Firstly, to no great surprise given the low roofline evident in the official picture, Ingenlath confirmed the Polestar 3 will only have two rows of seats. “I have nothing against three-rows per se,” he said, “but the second we did do that you guys would be asking what was the differentiation to to the XC90. . .Having two rows gives the opportunity to give the car that aerodynamic roofline, it gives the chance to emphasize the space between the first and second rows, which really gives the second row a luxurious feeling.”

The Polestar 3 will be built in the U.S, in the South Carolina plant that is building the Volvo S60 and will also make the next-generation XC90. Ingenlath promises the new car will be offered with a powertrain giving “a top power position that is unique to Polestar,” and therefore beyond EV versions of the XC90. But he also confirmed in Munich that, as with the Polestar 2, the plan is to offer both single-motor and dual-motor versions.“I definitely see that as a good combination,” he said, “at the end of the day the twin motor has a bit more power and acceleration, but there are lots of people who don’t need that thrill. And there are lots of people who don’t need all-wheel drive. So in Norway or Austria we will always sell more all-wheel drive. But in China or the U.S. lots of people are happy with the single motor.”Beyond the 3, Polestar is committed to building a production version of its stylish Precept concept. Despite the seemingly unstoppable shift towards SUVs, Ingenlath insists the decision to commission a low-roofed sedan is the right one.

Polestar Precept Concept
Polestar

“I really believe in a world where everyone is not happy with one dish,” he said, “that would be so boring. Most restaurants try to cater for different tastes, and being a brand that would only have SUV would be terrifying for me.”While predicting the Polestar 2 will be the brand’s biggest seller globally, Ingenlath said the Polestar 3 should help to propel the brand’s total production to over 100,000 cars. Which won’t scare Tesla, but which would—if delivered in the short term—make it one of the more successful pure EV brands. One thing Polestar won’t be doing is returning to top-flight racing, despite the brand’s origin running touring cars for Volvo. “We have so many things to concentrate on, I don’t think our customers would understand if we were to indulge in that,” Ingenlath said, although he suggested lower-level collaborations could still happen. We’ll bring you more information about the Polestar 3 as we get it, and ahead of sales beginning late next year.
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Every Chevrolet Bolt EV and Bolt EUV that GM has made is under recall because their batteries could be defective and cause a fire.What is it about the batteries—lithium-ion cells sourced from LG Energy Solutions and made on two different continents—that could have led to this?Car and Driver talked to a battery engineer who gave us the full explanation. Plus, we give Bolt owners a checklist of what to do and how to get more information from Chevrolet.General Motors has planned a full suite of electric vehicles launching over the next five years. So the ongoing recall of Chevrolet Bolt EV batteries—for which replacements can’t even start until GM works out what went wrong—threatens to cast a pall over the fall debut of the 2022 GMC Hummer EV pickup and next spring’s launch of the 2023 Cadillac Lyriq.

The recall has become a slow-motion catastrophe since it started last November. That was when GM identified 50,930 Bolt EVs from model years 2017 through 2019 that might have defective cells. That number later grew to 68,700 vehicles. In July, it recalled the same cars again after its engineers identified two potential defects that could, in rare cases, be present in the same cell.

Chevrolet Bolt battery unit.
Chevrolet

Then it got worse: On August 20, out of “an excess of caution,” GM added all 63,680 Bolt EV and EUV models from the 2020 model year through the present day, along with a further 9340 Bolts from the 2019 model year that hadn’t been previously recalled. The new Bolt EUV model was just being delivered to dealers; activities around that launch are now suspended. Meanwhile, Chevrolet had lowered Bolt prices considerably for 2022, recasting the car as an affordable entry-level EV complementing the upcoming luxury GMC and Cadillac models.The total recall now numbers 141,000 electric vehicles over six model years, every Bolt the company has built since sales began in December 2016. No schedules have been given for any cell replacements. Roughly a dozen fires in Bolt EVs have been publicly identified. To date, no injuries or deaths are attributed to the problem. But Bolt EV owners are confused, even as many continue to use their cars while parking and charging them outside. More troubling, the recall and the prospect of Bolt fires has spread. Bolts are apparently banned from one outdoor parking lot in San Francisco, for instance, where a sign cited “public safety” as the reason. Still, there’s little reason for public panic or widespread bans on EVs. “Yes, we’ve seen some battery fires, but the numbers are small, and they need to be put into perspective,” Sam Abuelsamid, lead auto analyst for Guidehouse Insights, told NBC News.

Steve Fecht/Chevrolet

Not Just Korean CellsThe Bolt’s lithium-ion cells were provided by GM’s longtime battery supplier LG Energy Solutions (the battery arm of giant Korean manufacturer LG). For several months, the carmaker believed the affected cells were limited to those produced in LG’s plant in Ochang, Korea. Those cells were used only in 2017–2019 Bolt models. Then in July, it said: “After further investigation into the manufacturing processes at LG and disassembling battery packs, GM discovered manufacturing defects in certain battery cells produced at LG manufacturing facilities beyond the Ochang, Korea, plant.” That means LG’s U.S. plant in Holland, Michigan, which supplied cells for the 2020–2022 Bolt line, was also affected.So what went wrong?GM says it has identified two different manufacturing defects. Two DefectsOne is a torn anode tab, the piece of the negative electrode that allows the cell to be wired into a group of cells, called a module, and then into full battery pack. The other is a folded separator, the thin sheet of material (typically a nonwoven polymer) that separates the anode and cathode. In rare cases, GM said, the two defects may be present in the same cell, increasing the chance of a fire within affected cells, which can then spread through the module. GM told Bloomberg its modules are “passive propagation resistant,” meaning that fires in one module should not spread to adjacent modules. Nonetheless, a fire within even part of the battery pack remains a serious event, one that can damage a vehicle substantially. Since GM has declined to comment beyond the wording in its August 20 press statement, we asked Haresh Kamath, who designed battery cells for spacecraft at Lockheed Martin, to give us his take on what GM’s statements meant. He’s presently the director of distributed energy resources and energy storage at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the R&D arm of the U.S. electric utility industry.A main principle of all device design, Kamath said, is to avoid single points of failure. He suggests that neither of the faults named by GM by itself leads to a cell failure. “Each of these things is not a big deal” individually, he said. But, in the very rare case that they both occur within the same cell, the combination of the two can create a point of failure—but not one either LG or GM likely thought to test for.How could the companies only have become aware of the combined faults now, after 141,000 Bolts were built and sold over five years? Defect Rates and Specific Use ConditionsKamath suggests two possible sets of circumstances that could have produced the combination of flaws that apparently led to short circuits in one or more cells, and subsequent fires.First, some unrecognized defect in the manufacturing process may have caused one flaw to occur at a higher rate than projected—even though, by itself, that flaw would not have led to a short circuit. A purely hypothetical example of the resulting math would be a projected rate of one flaw occurring in every 1 million cells that was actually far higher: say once in every 10,000 cells.Other battery experts have offered reasons for how and why the flawed cells may have been produced. One suggestion: a misaligned robot on a cell production line. Second, some combination of specific vehicle uses may be required for the pair of faults to produce a serious short within the cell. Those may be operating conditions—does the driver use full acceleration often, drawing maximum current from the cells?—and other factors including ambient temperatures, charging rates, and whether the battery packs are routinely charged to full capacity and then depleted almost to zero percent.Those variable use conditions combine to produce a different pattern of heating and cooling for virtually every Bolt EV pack. Perhaps, Kamath said, only some sets of repeated use conditions exacerbated the pair of manufacturing flaws—one of which may have occurred at a considerably higher rate than expected—to the point where the cell’s expansion and contraction caused a short.Both GM and LG clearly have scores of battery engineers devoting far more than 40-hour weeks to trying to answer these questions—often a tough task in a battery pack from a burned car. What Now?While GM has committed to replacing affected battery modules, it says it won’t do so until it’s confident it has identified the root causes of the defects. It believes they lie in the manufacturing process, but it hasn’t ruled out design defects. Meanwhile, all Bolt production has been suspended, and new Bolt models are not available to buy.Added together, the three recalls are expected to cost GM about $1.8 billion. The company took an $800 million charge this year, and it has said it will pursue reimbursement from LG for $1 billion in additional costs related to the expanded recall and future fixes. The more cells and modules GM ascertains need to be replaced, the greater the concern over availability of suitable cells. Full replacement of all 141,000 battery packs would require sourcing roughly 8.4 gigawatt-hours of new cells from LG—cells that GM likely has not planned for.

While GM and LG are separately building two joint-venture cell plants to fabricate GM’s next-generation Ultium cells—to be used in more than a dozen EVs starting production late this year—those cells have a different chemistry, use a different battery-management system, and are even a different size than the Bolt cells. GM is unlikely to explore the possibility of using them in Bolts. It is unclear whether manufacturing defects in the LG cells delivered to GM affect other cells it provided to other carmakers. Earlier this year, Hyundai recalled 82,000 of its own electric cars, which used LG Chem cells that the Korean carmaker said posed a fire risk. The cost of roughly $900 million was split between LG and Hyundai. There was also a recent recall for LG residential battery-storage systems purchased from 2017 to 2019.This week, the Detroit News reported that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has asked LG Energy Solutions whether any other electric cars that use its cells have been affected by the same problems.

Chevrolet

What Should Bolt Owners Do?In August 2021, GM advised that until replacement modules can be installed, owners of all Bolts should: (1) Set their vehicle to a 90 percent state of charge limitation using Target Charge Level mode. GM asks customers who are unable to successfully make these changes, or do not feel comfortable doing so, to visit their dealer to have these adjustments completed; (2) Charge their vehicle more frequently and avoid depleting their battery below approximately 70 miles of remaining range, where possible; and (3) Park their vehicles outside immediately after charging and not leave vehicles charging indoors overnight.Bolt EV customers can visit Chevrolet’s Bolt recall site, call the Chevrolet EV Concierge at 833–EVCHEVY, or contact their preferred Chevrolet EV dealer.Some early research for this story was done for an earlier summary of the Bolt EV battery recall prepared by the author for the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).

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