Despite the best efforts of Volkswagen to kill the appeal of compression ignition engines in America once and for all, Dr. Diesel’s combustion cycle still holds some significant appeal as a means of improving fuel efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The latest automaker to jump in with diesel engines is Jaguar Land Rover with the 2016 Range Rover Td6. While relatively few Americans will ever have the opportunity to drive this high-dollar luxury SUV, it’s actually surprisingly relevant as a probable preview of the 2018 Ford F-150.
A decade ago if you looked deeply in General Motors sales results, you find that the company was selling huge numbers of Chevrolet Cobalts and Pontiac Sunfires, but it wasn’t actually making any money on them. That’s because if you traveled and had to rent a car, chances were pretty good that you’d find row upon row of these cars populating the lots at Hertz, Avis, Budget and Enterprise. Then in September 2008, just before the financial collapse and subsequent bankruptcy, GM introduced a small car that consumers might actually want to buy, the Cruze. It would be two more years before the Cruze would hit American streets, but it actually did pretty well and in June 2015, Chevrolet revealed an all-new second-generation Cruze which I just had a chance to drive for a week.
It’s not often that a single automotive nameplate becomes virtually synonymous with a powertrain technology. Yet over the course of almost two decades, that’s exactly what has happened with the Toyota Prius. When you think hybrid electric, Prius is likely the first and probably only name that comes to mind. Late 2015 brought us an all-new fourth-generation Prius with some of the most substantial changes to date and I finally got an opportunity to drive it recently.
As an engineer at heart, I can’t help but be excited by the technology that is likely to transform the transportation ecosystem over the next couple of decades. But as someone that actually likes to drive, the move toward autonomy is kind of depressing but realistically, that’s unlikely to affect me much for many years to come. On the other hand, the market shift away from cars toward utility vehicles is much more concerning right now. Some automakers are already scaling back their car development efforts in favor of utilities a number of the car nameplates on sale today will not be replaced at the end of their lifecycle. Fortunately, most automakers haven’t given up on cars just yet, among those is Hyundai which has just launched an all-new version of the Elantra compact.
We’re coming up on nearly a decade since Lexus first officially announced its attempt to take on the Ms, AMGs and RSs of the automotive world. Toyota’s premium brand selected F as its official designation for performance-oriented variants of its well-built but staid vehicles. Until the arrival of an LC-F at some future date, the RC-F can arguably be called the current Lexus performance herald.
If you’ve been following along over the past year or so, you’ve probably noticed that I’m quite enamored with the current generation Hyundai’s midsize sedan, the Sonata. Since early 2015, I’ve driven the 1.6-liter turbocharged Eco, the 2.0-liter Hybrid and now the newest member of the lineup, the Plug-in Hybrid. The Sonata PHEV is the first Hyundai-branded model sold in North America with a plug and it’s one of only two plug-in hybrids in the midsize family sedan segment, the other being the Ford Fusion Energi.
+Anton Wahlman do you remember this thread from early 2012? I'm reviewing a report right now and looked up 2015 numbers and found that PHEVs and BEVs totaled just over 114,000 for the year. Depending on how well some new and updated entries do later this year, we might hit between 150K and 200K this year. Maybe
By the end of 2011, the average age of the U.S. vehicle fleet had hit 10.8 years, the oldest ever. That's bad news for plug-in vehicles.
The fleet has been getting steadily older for a number of reasons. First vehicles today are more durable than ever so they just plain last longer. Bodies are less susceptible to rust and with proper maintenance, it's not hard for engines to run 200,000 miles or more. That's means there is no need to dispose of a perfectly useful car or truck.
The second and more insidious reason is the economy. For the past two decades, real incomes for all but the very wealthy have been either stagnant or declining. That means it's harder for most middle and lower income people to actually buy a new car. Up until 2008, automakers got around this by using subsidized lease programs. The increased durability and reliability of cars meant their value at the end of a lease was higher and they brought in more dollars when re-sold.
Following the financial collapse, increased unemployment, tighter credit, more expensive gas, higher prices on new vehicles and other factors have made it nearly impossible for sales to climb back toward their peak of just a few years ago. Thankfully, that same improved durability and reliability has made it easier for many people to keep their existing cars on the road longer, especially after their loans are paid off.
An aging fleet is actually a multi-edged sword. For consumers it means that buying a new car is something that can more easily be put off for a time. For automakers, it means it's harder to grow sales and employ more workers. For the environment and fuel efficiency, it means older less efficient vehicles stay on the road longer before being retired while at the same time avoiding the life-cycle energy costs of manufacturing, delivering and disposal.
All of this also means that it it going to be extremely difficult for plug-in vehicles to gain any traction in the market place soon. The cost of batteries remains stubbornly high while energy capacity remains low. With less need to replace vehicles and less financial wherewithal to do so, I don't see electric vehicles getting beyond a small niche in the market any time soon.
Average age of U.S. light vehicles reaches record high, Polk says DETROIT — The average age of light vehicles on U.S. roads keeps rising, reaching a record high of 10.8 years in 2011, according to an analysis released today by automotive research firm Polk. Polk…
For most of its nearly two decade history, the midsize RX crossover has been the best seller in the Lexus lineup by a fairly wide margin. Like other Lexi prior to the current generation, it also had generally inoffensive, but uninspired design. That all changed in 2015 with the debut of the fourth-generation RX including the hybrid RX450h F Sport that I recently drove. Whether you like the new design direction or not, this latest RX is at least less likely to get lost in a crowd.
A good rule of thumb when attending an auto show is that the more radical looking a concept car is, the less likely it is to ever make it to production. Virtually every major brand is guilty of producing pieces of rolling sculpture that end up doing little more than introducing a couple of new design cues that end up on more mainstream models. When we first saw BMW’s Vision EfficientDynamics concept at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show, it seemed to fall squarely into this category. Nevertheless, five years later something very much like that concept emerged as the first-ever i8.
