Cars

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Volkswagen is adding ChatGPT to its infotainment system

Cars, cerence, chatgpt, natural language processing, voice recognition, Volkswagen / /

I’m sure you’re asking why —

VW is using Cerence’s Chat Pro, which now incorporates ChatGPT.

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A VW Golf interior showing the infotainment screen, which is asking the question

Enlarge / From mid-2024, ChatGPT is coming to VWs.

Volkswagen

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show got underway in Las Vegas today. For nearly a decade, automakers and their suppliers have increasingly expanded their presence at CES, such that today, it’s arguably a more important auto show than the once-proud, now-sad, extremely underattended events held in places like Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles. Volkswagen is one of the first automakers out of the blocks with CES news this morning. Working with the voice recognition company Cerence, VW is adding ChatGPT to its infotainment system.

We first experienced Cerence’s excellent in-car voice recognition at CES in 2016—back then, it was still part of parent company Nuance, and the system was called Dragon Drive. Nuance spun Cerence off in 2019, and its conversational AI and natural language processing can be enjoyed in current Mercedes and BMW infotainment systems, among others. I remain in the minority here, but I think it makes a good alternative to poking away at a touchscreen.

From mid-2024, we can add the VW ID.3, ID.4, ID.5, ID.7, Tiguan, Passat, and Golf to the list of cars with decent voice commands. Using “Hello IDA” as the prompt, VW drivers will be able to control their infotainment, navigation, and climate control by voice, and there’s also a general-knowledge search built in. VW notes that ChatGPT doesn’t get access to any vehicle data, and search queries and answers are deleted immediately. The feature should come to VW electric vehicles if those vehicles already have the latest infotainment system, VW told Ars.

“With software at the core of the Volkswagen of the future, it’s critical that we quickly deploy meaningful innovation powered by advancements in AI,” said Thomas Ullrich, a member of VW’s management board responsible for new mobility. “By leveraging Cerence Chat Pro, we are able to bring added value and a fun and engaging experience to our drivers with minimal integration effort and on a short development and deployment timeline, ensuring our customers are benefitting from new AI-powered conversational technology.”

“We’re proud to build on our automotive expertise and our long-term partnership with Volkswagen to continue to bring new innovation to customers, even post-vehicle purchase,” said Stefan Ortmanns, CEO of Cerence. “It was impressive to see the agility and speed of the Volkswagen team as our companies collectively sprung into action to bring this project to life in just a few short weeks, marking our shared commitment to leveraging advancements in AI to enhance to the in-car user experience.”

VW isn’t the only automaker to think about adding ChatGPT. In March, we discovered that General Motors was experimenting with the tech, and last summer, we demoed a similar implementation in a Mercedes-Benz.

That automaker began a beta program that allowed customers with its MBUX infotainment system to try the improvements to the system’s natural language processing from OpenAI’s tech. I was already a convert to MBUX’s (and therefore Cerence’s) speech recognition capabilities, so I found the improvements took a system that was already better at understanding my voice than either Siri or Google’s and further refined it. I just don’t know whether that will be enough for skeptical car drivers to start talking to their cars.

Volkswagen is adding ChatGPT to its infotainment system Read More »

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A week with a Ford F-150 Lightning: This truck is too big for city life

car review, Cars, electric pickup truck, Ford F-150 Lightning / /

stalking horse or white elephant? —

The big electric pickup truck is out of the suburbs and out of its element.

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A week with a Ford F-150 Lightning: This truck is too big for city life

Jonathan Gitlin

I seem to be thinking a lot about Ford’s electric pickup truck, the F-150 Lightning. Earlier this week, we got the news of price cuts and price increases. Before that, there was a pending cut to planned production output. Taken as it is, it’s just the all-electric version of America’s favorite pickup—and arguably the best version unless you need to pull something on the end of a trailer hitch.

But the Lightning doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Depending on who you talk to, it’s a clever attempt to get Americans to go electric, an utterly familiar wrapper on a slab of new technology that, yes, still requires the owner to adjust their mindset a bit from the gasoline-powered way of thinking. To others, it’s a white elephant, one that costs too much and languishes on dealership forecourts, proof positive that electrification is a thing other countries might bother with, but forget that here at home, cowboy.

I’ve never found life to be quite that simple, and neither is the Lightning. Here in Washington, DC, the vehicle remains a rare sight—the only time I’ve seen one in the wild, it belonged to the DC government’s fleet of vehicles (its job was inspecting abandoned vehicles). Out west, it’s much more common to see electric F-150s on the road, and last year, Ford sold about 40,000 Lightnings, despite halting production for a fire and then again to retool part of the line.

Because I last drove one more than 18 months ago, it seemed prudent to book a week with an example from Ford’s press fleet to see how the pickup has matured since its release. The Monroney sticker did little to bust the idea that these things are expensive—$97,374 is a high price, although with the recent adjustment and an ongoing $7,500 incentive from Ford, a 2024 model would be just over $10,000 cheaper, according to Ford’s online configurator.

Jonathan Gitlin

I had bigger concerns than the sticker shock—quite literally. After all, you don’t have to buy a Platinum trim Lightning; a search on cars.com shows 823 Platinums for sale around the country out of a total of 7,531 new Lightnings. Many of the rest of those electric F-150s will be cheaper, but all of them will be the same size. And that size is just too darn big for my life in the city.

Size matters

This was immediately apparent as I backed into my parking space. The Lightning dwarfed my neighbors’ SUVs as it jutted out into the parking lot, almost entirely filling the space between the white lines. There’s no hiding a vehicle that’s 237 inches (6,020 mm) long and 80 inches (2,032 mm) wide before you include the mirrors.

Part of the reason it’s so big is that the four-door, five-seat pickup truck somehow became the replacement for a sedan in the minds of so many American men. On four wheels, with at least eight inches of ground clearance, you could drive it on an overlanding adventure, but in practice, you’ll just obstruct the views of everyone else on the road. The only way to see around a big truck is in another big truck, and before you know it, the country is buying several million full-size pickup trucks every year.

I'll be honest: I used neither bed nor frunk during the entire week. Groceries and cargo went on the back seat or the floor behind the driver's seat. Which made most of the F-150 Lightning's bulk superfluous to my needs.

Enlarge / I’ll be honest: I used neither bed nor frunk during the entire week. Groceries and cargo went on the back seat or the floor behind the driver’s seat. Which made most of the F-150 Lightning’s bulk superfluous to my needs.

Jonathan Gitlin

For people living in newer homes in suburbs or exurbs who commute to jobs in office parks surrounded by vast expanses of surface parking, the size thing might not even be that noticeable. Garages are built big enough to house brodozers now, and houses out in those parts are set back from their neighbors. Climb up into the driver’s seat of a Lightning in the middle of a dense city, though, and it’s on stark display.

Although I adapted to the Lightning’s size, it was really only once I ventured into the suburbs of Northern Virginia that I started to feel truly comfortable behind the wheel. The multilane roads in places like Fairfax and Tysons Corner were much more the Lightning’s element. No road diets here, nor people on bicycles to be ever-vigilant for. Driving in the city, I was always aware of its size, although the view from the high-up driving position was mostly excellent, and the one-pedal driving mode made it simple to stick to the 20 mph speed limits.

A week with a Ford F-150 Lightning: This truck is too big for city life Read More »

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Technical headaches put the brakes on GM’s big EV push

Cadillac Lyriq, Cars, Chevrolet Blazer EV, Chevrolet Bolt, Chevrolet silverado EV, General Motors, GM, GMC Hummer EV, Ultium / /

has Barra failed? —

GM sold a record number of EVs in 2023, but only thanks to the Bolt EV and Bolt EUV.

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Ultium batteries and components Monday, December 13, 2021 at the General Motors Brownstown Battery facility in Brownstown Charter Township, Michigan. (Photo by Santa Fabio for General Motors)

Enlarge / A GM Ultium battery pack like that found in the Lyriq.

Santa Fabio for General Motors

General Motors ended 2023 as the number one automaker in the United States, selling 2.6 million new vehicles during those 12 months. That’s a 14.1 percent increase from its performance in 2022, and comfortably eclipses the 2.3 million cars that Toyota sold during the same period. It had a strong year in terms of electric vehicle sales too—up 93 percent year-on-year.

But a quick look at the data reveals a somewhat less rosy picture. Yes, it was a banner year for GM EVs, with 75,883 deliveries in 2023. But only because of the Chevrolet Bolt EV and Bolt EUV. Chevy delivered 62,045 Bolts in 2023, a 62.8 percent increase on the 38,120 Bolts it sold in 2022.

But as Ars has detailed in the past, the Bolt is no more. Production ended at the Orion Assembly plant in Michigan on December 18, and GM is laying off 945 workers at the plant as it retools the factory to make electric trucks like the Chevy Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV.

GM CEO Mary Barra has promised a new Bolt EV, this time using GM’s newer battery platform, known as Ultium. But the second-generation Bolt isn’t scheduled to appear until 2025 at the earliest.

Cheap, mass-produced cells?

GM has bet big on Ultium. In 2020 it revealed the new battery platform and told us that the new cells, developed together with LG Chem (which also produced the packs for Bolt) would drop below the $100/kWh barrier “early in the platform’s life.” $100/kWh is the point at which an EV powertrain reaches price parity with an internal combustion engine powertrain, at which point an EV should no longer cost several thousand dollars more than an equivalent conventionally fueled vehicle.

Together with LG Chem and now Samsung, GM is investing billions of dollars in battery factories, and the automaker had said it plans to build a million EVs a year by 2025.

But most of those battery plants are still under construction, and last July it had to pause building some Ultium EVs due to a lack of cells.

In fact, in 2023 GM delivered just 13,838 Ultium-based EVs: 9,154 Cadillac Lyriqs, 482 Chevrolet Blazer EVs, 461 Chevrolet Silverado EVs, 3,244 GMC Hummer EVs, and 497 BrightDrop delivery vans.

A spokesperson for GM told Ars that “cell production is going great, but the automation we use to pack cells into modules was not able to keep up,” and that “things are definitely improving.”

During the automaker’s Q2 2023 call with investors, it said that it had “deployed teams from GM manufacturing engineering to work on site with our automation supplier to improve delivery times,” and that it had added manual module assembly lines and was installing “more module capacity at all of our North America EV plants, beginning with Factory ZERO and Spring Hill this summer, Ramos Arizpe in the fall, and CAMI in the second quarter of next year.”

Three months later, GM told investors that “our battery module constraint is getting better, which helped us more than double Ultium Platform production in the third quarter compared to the second quarter. We are now in the process of installing and testing our high-capacity module assembly lines, which will continue into the first part of next year.”

GM also said that it believes the production constraint will have been overcome by mid-2024.

Software is hard

Unfortunately for GM, a lack of Ultium cells isn’t its only headache where new EVs are concerned. Last year the automaker revealed that it was dropping support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, the extremely popular phone-casting apps, from its EVs from model year 2024. Instead, its Ultium-based EVs would ship with a new infotainment system called Ultifi, built using Google’s Android Automotive OS (not to be confused with the phone-casting Android Auto).

The infotainment system crashed more than once during our drive of the Blazer EV, and the problem is serious enough that GM issued a stop sale for the SUV as a result.

Enlarge / The infotainment system crashed more than once during our drive of the Blazer EV, and the problem is serious enough that GM issued a stop sale for the SUV as a result.

Jonathan Gitlin

In December, GM told Motor Trend that it dropped CarPlay and Android Auto because they caused stability issues. Which probably makes it all the more awkward that the company has had to issue a stop sale for the Blazer EV—which Motor Trend inexplicably crowned its SUV of the year—thanks to a litany of problems with its infotainment system crashing. Indeed, during Ars’ brief time with a Blazer EV on the first drive last month, we also experienced these problems, with the system crashing randomly.

A spokesperson for the company told Ars that “GM is working quickly to address these issues and to implement a fix. Customers will be able to bring their Blazer EVs to Chevrolet dealers once they are notified that the related software update is available. Our engineering teams are working around the clock toward a solution.”

Listing image by Jonathan Gitlin

Technical headaches put the brakes on GM’s big EV push Read More »

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Tesla sold 1.8 million electric vehicles in 2023

BYD, Cars, Tesla, Tesla earnings / /

38 < 50 —

It met its sales goal, but growth is well below CEO Elon Musk’s stated target.

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Workers walk past a large Tesla logo.

Getty Images | San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers

Tesla found new homes for 1.8 million electric vehicles last year, it revealed on Tuesday afternoon. That will no doubt please CEO Elon Musk—it means the company has met its sales volume goal given to investors when it released its 2022 financial results at the end of last January.

Tesla built 494,989 vehicles in the last quarter of 2023, of which 18,212 were the more expensive but aging Models S and X. More importantly to the bottom line, Tesla built 476,777 Models 3 and Y. For the same three months, it delivered 484,507 EVs, of which 461,538 were the popular Models 3 and Y.

Cumulatively, Tesla built 1,845,985 EVs—1,775,159 Models 3 and Y and 70,826 Models S and X. And it delivered 1,808,581 EVs (1,739,707 Models 3 and Y; 68,874 Models S and X)—meeting the 2023 sales goal of 1.8 million cars sold.

That’s another record year for Tesla, but it’s also another year where the company has fallen far short of its targeted cumulative annual growth rate of 50 percent. Last year, it grew by 40 percent; this year, it grew by just 38 percent.

For that 50 percent CAGR to become a reality, 2024 will need to be a much stronger year than Tesla has had in the past. But that might prove easier said than done. BYD, a Chinese automaker, eclipsed Tesla in EV sales for the first time in Q4 2023, and Tesla’s market share is declining—albeit slowly—in the US as dozens of new EVs have gone on sale of late.

China and the US are Tesla’s two most important markets, and it seems investors have taken notice—Tesla’s share price has fallen almost five percent since the start of trading this morning.

Tesla sold 1.8 million electric vehicles in 2023 Read More »

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It’s a new year, and these are now the only EVs that get a tax credit

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lease instead of buy —

Strict rules about battery components from China make most plug-ins ineligible.

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concept of ev tax credit

Getty Images

It’s a new year, and while few of us still have the headache of needing to remember to write the new year on checks, 2024 brings a new annoyance of sorts. As of yesterday, tough new US Treasury Department rules concerning the sourcing of electric vehicle batteries went into effect; as a result, most of the battery and plug-in hybrid EVs that were eligible for the Internal Revenue Service’s clean vehicle tax credit until Sunday have now lost that eligibility.

Under the federal government’s previous program to incentivize the adoption of plug-in vehicles, it offered a tax credit, up to $7,500, based on the battery capacity of a BEV or PHEV, and once a car maker sold more than 200,000 plug-in vehicles, it lost eligibility for the tax credit—Only Tesla and General Motors reached this threshold.

Changes came as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and went into effect at the start of 2023. Thanks to heavy industry lobbying, credits linked to union-made EVs went by the wayside, with US Senator Joe Manchin acting as point man for companies like Toyota that sought to slow down the EV transition.

As we’ve detailed in the past, the new rules allow for a tax credit of up to $7,500 for the purchase of a new EV. But there are plenty of conditions. Final assembly must take place in North America. There are income caps for the buyer and a price cap for the vehicle—no more than $55,000 for a sedan or $80,000 for an SUV, truck, or minivan. Half of the tax credit is tied to a certain amount of domestically refined or processed minerals in the battery pack, the other half to a certain value of the pack having been assembled domestically.

While that includes countries that have free trade agreements with the United States, it significantly limited the number of new EVs that were eligible for the tax credit. (However, the IRS chose to read the law in such a way as to still allow the full $7,500 tax credit for clean vehicles that were leased, even if not assembled in North America.)

The list of eligible cars changed throughout the year as the rules were implemented in stages, and as automakers refined their supply chains as required. But toward the end of 2023, the Treasury published another new guideline. Now, any car with a battery that contains material from or made by a “foreign entity of concern”—which means Russia, Iran, North Korea, or China—cannot be eligible for the tax credit.

While the first three nations on that list are not particularly far down the road of EV battery making, the same isn’t true for China, which dominates the field, particularly in terms of processing the critical minerals used in lithium-ion batteries. The FEOC rule also applies to batteries made by Chinese-owned companies even if the cells are produced here in the US.

Consequently, the list of BEVs and PHEVs that are still eligible for the new clean vehicle tax credit now looks rather meagre. The following clean vehicles still qualify for the full $7,500, although we should note that the first two on the list (the Chevrolet Bolts) have ceased production now:

  • 2022-2023 Chevrolet Bolt EV
  • 2022-2023 Chevrolet Bolt EUV
  • 2022-2024 Chrysler Pacifica PHEV
  • 2022-2024 Ford F-150 Lightning extended range battery
  • 2022-2024 Ford F-150 Lightning standard range battery
  • 2023-2024 Tesla Model 3 Performance
  • 2023-2024 Tesla Model X Long Rage
  • 2023-2024 Tesla Model Y All-Wheel Drive
  • 2023-2024 Tesla Model Y Performance
  • 2023-2024 Tesla Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive

Additionally, the following vehicles qualify for a $3,750 tax credit:

  • 2022-2024 Ford Escape Plug-In Hybrid
  • 2022-2024 Jeep Grand Cherokee PHEV 4xe
  • 2022-2024 Jeep Wrangler PHEV 4xe
  • 2022-2024 Lincoln Corsair Grand Touring
  • 2023-2024 Rivian R1S Dual Large
  • 2023-2024 Rivian R1S Quad Large
  • 2023-2024 Rivian R1T Dual Large
  • 2023-2024 Rivian R1T Dual Max
  • 2023-2024 Rivian R1T Quad Large

But there is one bright piece of news concerning the clean vehicle tax credit in 2024. From January 1, dealers are now able to pass the entire credit on to the buyer at the point of purchase. This applies to both new and used EVs, even in cases where the buyer may not have a large enough tax liability at the end of the year to claim the full credit the old-fashioned way.

It’s a new year, and these are now the only EVs that get a tax credit Read More »

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Here’s how the EPA calculates how far an EV can go on a full charge

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Here’s how the EPA calculates how far an EV can go on a full charge

Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

How does the US Environmental Protection Agency decide how far an electric vehicle can go on a single charge? The simple explanation is that an EV is driven until the battery runs flat, providing the number that goes on the window sticker. In practice, it’s a lot more complicated than that, with varying test cycles, real-world simulations, and more variables than a book of Mad Libs, all in an effort to give you a number that you can count on to be consistent and comparable with other vehicles on the road.

The start of EPA mileage testing

The EPA started testing vehicle fuel economy in 1971, and that initial testing still plays a major role in how modern cars are measured.

The year before, President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (followed by the Clean Air Act of 1970) and established the EPA with a mandate that included lowering motor vehicle emissions. Part of the EPA’s plan to reduce emissions was to let buyers know just how much fuel a car would use so they could cross-shop cars effectively.

Testing started with a route called the Federal Test Procedure. The EPA adopted an 11-mile (18-km) route that was originally done on real roads in Los Angeles. The route had an average speed of 21 miles per hour (34 km/h) and a top speed of 56 mph (90 km/h). Tailpipe emissions were measured, fuel economy was calculated, and the “city” fuel economy rating was born.

By the time the 10-mile (16-km) Highway Fuel Economy Test was added in 1974, the tests were performed in a lab on a dynamometer. Running tests on the dyno made them more consistent and easier to repeat, though it wasn’t perfect.

Small changes and tweaks were made over the years, with the biggest change announced in 2005. That year, the EPA announced changes to the test to meet new highway speeds, account for heating and air conditioning use, and make the test more relevant to real-world driving. Drivers weren’t able to hit the published numbers, and the EPA wanted to fix that. The system was introduced for the 2008 model year and is largely the one we use today.

Modern range testing

Today, automakers have two different test options for EVs. The automaker can decide that it wants to perform a “single cycle” test. On that test, the car drives the EPA city cycle over and over again until the charge runs out, then does the same on the highway cycle, starting with a full charge. The process is repeated for reliability. The alternative is that the automaker can perform a multi-cycle test that has completed four city cycles, two highway cycles, and two constant speed cycles.

Getty Images

The test cycles

The city cycle

The EPA’s Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule is the official “city cycle” test loop. It is a complicated graph of time, vehicle speed, and allowable acceleration. The total test time is 1,369 seconds, the distance simulated is 7.45 miles (12 km), and the average speed is 19.59 mph (32.11 km/h). As with all of the tests, the exact speed required at each second of the test is laid out in a spreadsheet.

The highest speed reached on the test is 56.7 mph (91.25 km/h), and there are several periods where the vehicle sits stationary. Stationary seconds of the test made more sense when it was designed to measure a gas vehicle’s idle emissions and consumption, but it does still have some relevance today when it comes to climate control use and energy required to accelerate the vehicle.

The highway cycle

For higher speeds, vehicles complete the Highway Fuel Economy Driving Schedule (HFEDS). This test has a top speed of 59.9 mph (96.4 km/h) and an average of 48.3 mph (77.73 km/h), and it takes 765 seconds to complete.

Only the UDDS and HFEDS tests are required to certify an EV. But a top speed of 59.9 mph is a much lower highway speed than most drivers will experience.

Driving more quickly or using climate control can greatly impact range. More tests were introduced to help give a more realistic range, and they’re part of the 5-cycle test covered below.

Here’s how the EPA calculates how far an EV can go on a full charge Read More »

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Here are the 10 best cars we drove in 2023

2023 Kia Niro, 2023 Kia Niro EV, 2023 Toyota Prius Prime, Car of the Year, Cars, Genesis GV70 Electrified, Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, Hyundai Ioniq 6, Polestar 2, porsche 356, Porsche 911 Sport Classic, Toyota GR Corolla, toyota prius, Volvo EX30 / /

fewer EVs than last year —

EVs, hybrids, and a couple of sports cars—here are the 10 best cars we drove in 2023.

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Here are the 10 best cars we drove in 2023

Aurich Lawson/Getty Images

The mince pies have been eaten, the crackers have been cracked, and the days are starting to get longer. That means it’s time to look back on the best vehicles we tested in 2023. It has been a good year for electric vehicles, which accounted for almost one in ten new vehicles sold in the US this year. We’ve also driven some rather good hybrids, as well as a pair of sports cars that reminded us that there’s still room for enthusiast cars. Read on to find out which cars made the cut.

1. Polestar 2

You'd be hard-pressed to spot the difference between the 2023 Polestar 2 and the 2024 Polestar 2, but the improvements are obvious when you drive one.

Enlarge / You’d be hard-pressed to spot the difference between the 2023 Polestar 2 and the 2024 Polestar 2, but the improvements are obvious when you drive one.

Jonathan Gitlin

In addition to claiming the top spot in 2023, Polestar might also win a prize for the most significant reengineering job for a midlife refresh. Normally, an automaker might restyle the bumpers or change the headlights and tweak the interior when it gives a model its spruce-up after a few years on sale. Not Polestar—it mostly left the cosmetics alone but moved the electric motor in the single-motor Polestar 2 from under the hood, where it drove the front wheels, to the rear, where it now drives the rear wheels.

Combined with a bit of a bump in power (ok, 29 percent more power and 48 percent more torque), the result is a real driver’s car, with better steering and handling than the front-wheel drive Polestar 2 it replaces. There’s more standard equipment than before, and it’s more efficient, too. Only about 30 percent of US Polestar customers have picked the single-motor model in the past, but they’re missing out. The twin-motor car might be faster, but it’s less engaging to drive, has less range, and costs a whole bunch more.

2. Hyundai Ioniq 6

From this angle there's a hint of the 1994 Lagonda Vignale concept to the Ioniq 6, and that delights me.

Enlarge / From this angle there’s a hint of the 1994 Lagonda Vignale concept to the Ioniq 6, and that delights me.

Jonathan Gitlin

Korean EVs built using Hyundai Motor Group’s highly competent E-GMP platform took the top spot in 2021 and 2022, but this year Hyundai will have to settle for first runner-up with the Ioniq 6, a somewhat eccentrically styled but highly efficient sedan. Like the other E-GMP EVs, its battery pack operates at 800 V, which means (among other things) it’s capable very fast DC charging—just 18 minutes connected to a 350 kW charger will return the Ioniq 6’s battery pack to 80 percent, which earned this EV the top spot in a recent test of which EVs added the most range the fastest.

The Ioniq 6’s bold exterior is partnered with a more restrained interior that, while not flashy, is spacious and comfortable. And its little whale tail spoiler is a delight, especially when the sun catches the inset prismatic panel on its upper surface.

3. Toyota Prius

The Prius used to be considered quite cool back when it was the first mainstream hybrid on sale. Now in its fifth generation, the new one finally looks really cool.

Enlarge / The Prius used to be considered quite cool back when it was the first mainstream hybrid on sale. Now in its fifth generation, the new one finally looks really cool.

Jonathan Gitlin

The transformation of the Toyota Prius from fourth- to fifth-generation would be worthy of one of Hans-Christian Anderson’s fairy tales. Out went a weird-looking car that appeared to have been designed by two entirely separate teams that then crashed their creations together; in came a super-sleek replacement with a more-steeply raked windshield than a Lamborghini Huracan.

Lower and wider than before, the dramatic-looking Prius is still all about fuel efficiency despite the makeover. The engine has grown slightly in capacity, there’s a lithium ion traction battery in place of the previous car’s NiCad pack, and electric all-wheel drive is an option now too. But the real headline is 57 mpg (4.13 L/100 km)—assuming you picked a Prius on the smaller wheels.

In fact, we tested two different Prius variants in 2023, the parallel hybrid and the slightly more expensive plug-in hybrid, which features a bigger battery pack and about 35 miles of electric range. And since I can’t pick which one of the two I prefer, I’m counting them both.

Here are the 10 best cars we drove in 2023 Read More »

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Daily range isn’t a problem with the 2024 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV

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The front of a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV

Enlarge / The previous Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV was the world’s best-selling plug-in hybrid, apparently. Now the new one has more power and a bigger battery, among other improvements.

Jonathan Gitlin

What to make of Mitsubishi, now we’re almost a quarter of the way into this century? For enthusiasts of a certain age, the brand is synonymous with rallying and fire-breathing all-wheel drive sedans with extremely short service intervals. To my old driving instructor, Mitsubishi was the Mercedes of Japan. And a Mitsubishi was even the first electric vehicle I reviewed for Ars, way back in 2012.

These days it feels very much like the third brand at the Nissan-Renault alliance. The rallying heyday is long past, and its lineup here in the USA is down to just three SUVs and the sub-$20,000 Mirage, all focused on value for money rather than all-out luxury. Mitsubishi didn’t follow up the electric i-MiEV with another battery EV, but it does make a plug-in hybrid powertrain for the Outlander SUV.

The Outlander is relatively affordable by today’s standards, starting at $40,345, and a week with a model year 2024 example found it to be a solid PHEV with a big enough battery to make most of one’s daily motoring emission-free.

Yes, the US government considers this a compact SUV.

Enlarge / Yes, the US government considers this a compact SUV.

Jonathan Gitlin

Going by sentiments from our audience, it’s possible to feel that the PHEV has almost been abandoned in favor of more on-trend battery EVs. And data from Consumer Reports isn’t particularly complimentary about PHEV reliability, although the same publication did find PHEVs (and BEVs) are cheaper to maintain than a car that just burns gasoline.

Ars actually tested the new Outlander PHEV—albeit briefly—just over a year ago. But a first-drive event held by an automaker is stage-managed in a way that just spending a week with a car isn’t, and I figured since I quite liked the last model, it wouldn’t be a wasted week.

They say it’s a compact

Mitsubishi classifies the Outlander PHEV as a compact SUV. One can quibble about whether an SUV that’s 185.4 inches (4,709 mm) long and 75 inches (1,905 mm) wide really is compact, but that starts to get into philosophical debates about technical definitions versus the commonly accepted meaning of words. The Outlander PHEV’s 106.5-inch (2,705 mm) wheelbase is sufficiently long to allow for a third row of seats in the back though, so it will seat seven humans, as long as the two in the back are pretty short.

Daily range isn’t a problem with the 2024 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV Read More »

chinese-smartphone-company-says-it-wants-to-build-a-porsche-challenger

Chinese smartphone company says it wants to build a Porsche challenger

battery electric vehicle, Cars, Xiaomi / /

did they copy Sony this time? —

Xiaomi wants to be a top-5 automaker within the next 15-20 years.

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A turquoise Xiaomi SU7

Enlarge / I know it looks like someone grafted the nose from a McLaren onto a Porsche Taycan, but it’s actually a Xiaomi SU7.

Xiaomi

Xiaomi, a Chinese maker of consumer electronics perhaps best known for taking plenty of inspiration from Apple, is getting into the automotive industry. Earlier today in Beijing, Xaiomi CEO Lei Jun debuted the Speed Ultra 7, a luxury electric vehicle that’s squarely aimed at the spot in the market currently served by the Porsche Taycan and Tesla Model S sedans.

Xiaomi wanted to branch out from smartphones and tablets to EVs—that wasn’t exactly news, as the company announced its plans about three years ago. Lei has big ambitions though; he wants Xiaomi to be a top-five automaker within the next two decades.

Making a car isn’t that hard, Lei told the audience. “If you want to build a car, 300 or 400 people and a bit over a billion, and you find a benchmark car and you just need do reverse-engineering and you can do it,” Lei said, then acknowledged that “to build a good car it is still very very difficult.”

That effort was helped by recruiting designers and engineers like Tianyuan Li and James Qui, who can boast cars like the BMW iX and Mercedes-Benz Vision EQXX on their resumes. And the company is using the controversial Chris Bangle as a design consultant.

The SU7 will come in two configurations, one with a rear-wheel drive powertrain and the other with a twin-motor, all-wheel drive layout. The RWD car uses a 400 V, 73.7 kWh battery pack and has a range of 415 miles (668 km) accordant to the Chinese government’s test cycle. With 295 hp (220 kW) and 295 lb-ft (400 Nm), this variant will reach 62 mph (100 km/h) in 5.3 seconds.

Xiaomi

The AWD SU7 comes with a 101 kWh pack that runs at 800 V—that enables much faster charging. The pack also gives this version a range of 497 miles (800 km), again based on the Chinese test cycle, not the EPA’s. The twin-motor SU7 has a lot more power and torque, offering 663 hp (495 kW) and 618 lb-ft (838 Nm), sufficient for a sub-3 second 0-62 mph time.

Although Xiaomi is bringing in batteries from CATL, it says the motors are its own design and claims that the current spec, dubbed V6s, exceeds anything currently made by Tesla or Porsche in terms of power to weight or speed, reaching 21,000 rpm and generating 6.78 kW/kg (compared to 6.22 kW/kg for Tesla and 5.29 kW/kg for Porsche).

It’s also responsible for the software in the car. Much like Sony’s Afeela EV, you can expect the SU7 to sync up with all the other Xiaomi gadgets in your life, plus mobile apps and streaming content. And if you were expecting some kind of self-driving capability, you guessed well—there’s a roof-mounted Lidar and viewers of the keynote were treated to clips of SU7s driving and parking autonomously.

Xiaomi isn’t actually building the cars itself though. Like Sony (which has contracted with Honda) and Fisker (which commissioned Magna), the car will be contract-built, in this case by China’s BAIC. Pricing is yet to be revealed, and there’s no word yet about any possible US imports.

Chinese smartphone company says it wants to build a Porsche challenger Read More »

evs-and-hybrids-had-a-noticeable-effect-on-us-fuel-consumption,-says-epa

EVs and hybrids had a noticeable effect on US fuel consumption, says EPA

Cars, corporate average fuel efficiency, Environmental Protection Agency, US Environmental Protection Agency / /

still want more small cars —

Model-year 2022 cars, crossovers, and yes, even SUVs are the most-efficient, ever.

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Fuel gauge's red needle indicating full gas tank on black background. Horizontal composition with copy space.

Getty Images

I like the idea of drawing the year to a close with some good news for a change, and I think maybe the US Environmental Protection Agency does as well. On Wednesday, the EPA published its Automotive Trends Report, which now included data for model-year 2022 vehicles.

And the data is good: record-low carbon emissions and record-high fuel economy, and the biggest improvement year on year for almost a decade.

For MY2022, the EPA says that the average real-world CO2 emissions for all new vehicles fell by 10 g/mile to 337 g/mile, the lowest average it has ever measured. Similarly, real-world fuel economy increased by 0.6 mpg for MY2022, to 26 mpg—this, too, is a record high and the single-largest year-on-year improvement for both CO2 and mpg for nine years.

And it’s not a one-off. Despite the occasional off year, the EPA’s data shows that since 2004, US passenger fleet emissions have decreased by 27 percent, or 123 g/mile. And over the same time, average fuel economy has increased by 35 percent, or 6.7 mpg. Even better, the EPA says its preliminary data shows even greater declines in carbon emissions and greater increases in fuel efficiency for MY2023.

The report splits light passenger vehicles into five buckets: sedan/wagon, car SUV (aka a crossover), truck SUV, pickup truck, and minivan/van. (The difference between a car SUV and truck SUV is a regulatory definition that includes weight thresholds and things like “does it have all-wheel drive?”.)

Even more good news here: in MY2022, four of the five categories are now the most efficient they have been since the EPA started keeping tabs on this sort of thing. Sedans and wagons saw their emissions decrease 11 g/mile for MY2022. Car SUVs decreased their emissions by 27 g/mile for the same model year. Pickup trucks recorded an 18 g/mile decrease, and truck SUVs improved by 4 g/mile.

Bad news for minivans, however. Not only are there barely any left for sale—accounting for just 3 percent of new vehicles produced for MY2022—this category also saw its average emissions increase by 17 g/mile.

But I’m also not thrilled that 63 percent of all new vehicles built in MY2022 were truck SUVs, pickup trucks, and minivans/vans, which are subject to less stringent corporate average fuel economy standards, as opposed to the more stringent light-duty regulations. The EPA says this is the highest percentage of trucks since 1975, and it’s only going to get worse for model-year 2023.

All you readers who rush to post that “Not Just Bikes” video, cue that up now. Because despite the best real-world fuel efficiency on record, model year 2022 vehicles are larger and heavier than they’ve ever been.

Some of the increase in size and weight is due to improved passive and active safety systems—crumple zones, side-impact protection, better rollover protection, and in some cases almost a dozen airbags throughout the cabin. But some of the growth in size, and much of the increase in power, is down to what the EPA calls “market trends”—it’s what US customers want from their new vehicles, like it or not. And the bad news is that the EPA doesn’t see those trends changing for model-year 2023.

Who did best, who did worst?

The EPA report also calculates trends for each OEM over the past few years, so we can see who’s getting better and who’s getting worse.

I’m often effusive about the engineering and quality of new Korean vehicles, and there’s yet another data point in their favor: They lead the way in fleet average efficiency (29.1 mpg) and carbon emissions (302 g/mile), although obviously brands like Tesla and Rivian that don’t sell any combustion engines have fleet emissions of 0 g/mile.

Kia also showed big gains from 2017-2022, coming in third place after Honda, which actually got dirtier and less efficient over the same timeframe.

Toyota showed the greatest improvement over time, reducing carbon emissions by 32 g/mile and increasing fuel efficiency from 25.3 mpg to 27.8 mpg. Meanwhile Mazda went the other way. It’s now selling many more big SUVs than it used to, and went from 29 mpg for MY2017 to 27 mpg for MY2022.

EVs and hybrids had a noticeable effect on US fuel consumption, says EPA Read More »

7.1-million-miles,-3-minor-injuries:-waymo’s-safety-data-looks-good

7.1 million miles, 3 minor injuries: Waymo’s safety data looks good

Cars / /
Sensors on top of a Waymo car.

Waymo

Waymo on Wednesday released new crash data based on the company’s first 7.1 million miles of fully driverless operations in Arizona and California. The data show that human-driven cars are more than twice as likely to get into a crash that is reported to the police. And depending on how you do the math, human-driven cars are four to seven times more likely to get into crashes that lead to an injury.

Through October 2023, driverless Waymo vehicles have had only three crashes with injuries—two in the Phoenix area and one in San Francisco. Waymo says all three injuries were minor. If those same miles had been driven by typical human drivers in the same cities, we would have expected around 13 injury crashes.

The new data comes at a crucial time for the self-driving industry. In October, a woman was dragged about 20 feet underneath a vehicle by Waymo’s main rival, Cruise. Since then, Cruise has lost its CEO, laid off 24 percent of its workforce, and suspended driverless operations nationwide.

Cruise’s implosion has left Waymo as the undisputed leader in the driverless taxi market. But it has also heightened public skepticism about self-driving technology in general. So Waymo is going to have to work hard to convince the public that its technology not only has the potential to make the roads safer in the future, but is already doing so now.

The new data provides Waymo fresh ammunition to make that case. If Waymo can maintain its excellent safety record in the coming months and years, it will have a strong argument for continued expansion regardless of what happens in the rest of the industry.

7 million miles, 3 injuries

Since their inception, Waymo vehicles have driven 5.3 million driverless miles in Phoenix, 1.8 million driverless miles in San Francisco, and a few thousand driverless miles in Los Angeles through the end of October 2023. And during all those miles, there were three crashes serious enough to cause injuries:

  • In July, a Waymo in Tempe, Arizona, braked to avoid hitting a downed branch, leading to a three-car pileup. A Waymo passenger was not wearing a seatbelt (they were sitting on the buckled seatbelt instead) and sustained injuries that Waymo described as minor.
  • In August, a Waymo at an intersection “began to proceed forward” but then “slowed to a stop” and was hit from behind by an SUV. The SUV left the scene without exchanging information, and a Waymo passenger reported minor injuries.
  • In October, a Waymo vehicle in Chandler, Arizona, was traveling in the left lane when it detected another vehicle approaching from behind at high speed. The Waymo tried to accelerate to avoid a collision but got hit from behind. Again, there was an injury, but Waymo described it as minor.

The two Arizona injuries over 5.3 million miles works out to 0.38 injuries per million vehicle miles. One San Francisco injury over 1.75 million miles equals 0.57 injuries per million vehicle miles. An important question is whether that’s more or less than you’d expect from a human-driven vehicle.

After making certain adjustments—including the fact that driverless Waymo vehicles do not travel on freeways—Waymo calculates that comparable human drivers reported 1.29 injury crashes per million miles in Phoenix and 3.79 injury crashes per million miles in San Francisco. In other words, human drivers get into injury crashes three times as often as Waymo in the Phoenix area and six times as often in San Francisco.

Waymo argues that these figures actually understate the gap because human drivers don’t report all crashes. Independent studies have estimated that about a third of injury crashes go unreported. After adjusting for these and other reporting biases, Waymo estimates that human-driven vehicles actually get into five times as many injury crashes in Phoenix and nine times as many in San Francisco.

To help evaluate the study, I talked to David Zuby, the chief research officer at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The IIHS is a well-respected non-profit that is funded by the insurance industry, which has a strong interest in promoting automotive safety.

While Zuby had some quibbles with some details of Waymo’s methodology, he was generally positive about the study. Zuby agrees with Waymo that human drivers underreport crashes relative to Waymo. But it’s hard to estimate this underreporting rate with any precision. Ultimately, Zuby believes that the true rate of crashes for human-driven vehicles lies somewhere between Waymo’s adjusted and unadjusted figures.

7.1 million miles, 3 minor injuries: Waymo’s safety data looks good Read More »

disgraced-nikola-founder-trevor-milton-gets-4-year-sentence-for-lying-about-evs

Disgraced Nikola founder Trevor Milton gets 4-year sentence for lying about EVs

Cars, Electric vehicles, fraud, hydrogen fuel cells, Nikola, Nikola trucks, Policy, Trevor Milton, zero-emission vehicle / /

Web of lies —

Prosecutors had asked for a heavier sentence to deter future fraud.

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Trevor Milton, founder of Nikola Corp., arrives at court in New York on Monday, Dec. 18, 2023. Milton is set to be sentenced on Monday after being found guilty of securities fraud and wire fraud in October 2022.

Enlarge / Trevor Milton, founder of Nikola Corp., arrives at court in New York on Monday, Dec. 18, 2023. Milton is set to be sentenced on Monday after being found guilty of securities fraud and wire fraud in October 2022.

The disgraced founder and former CEO of the “zero emissions” truck company Nikola, Trevor Milton, was sentenced to four years in prison on Monday, Bloomberg reported.

That’s a lighter sentence than prosecutors had requested after a jury found Milton guilty of one count of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud in 2022. During the trial, Milton was accused of lying about “nearly all aspects of the business,” CNBC reported.

From 2016 to 2020, Milton’s “extravagant claims” were fueled by a desire to pump up the value of Nikola stock, The New York Times reported. He was accused of misleading investors about everything from fake prototypes of emission-free long-haul trucks to billions worth of supposedly binding orders for hydrogen fuel cells and batteries that were never shipped. In a sentencing memo, prosecutors said that Milton targeted “less sophisticated investors,” the Times reported, engaging “in a sustained scheme to take advantage of” their inexperience.

Nikola’s stock peaked in 2020, but then dozens of fraud allegations were reported by the investment firm Hindenburg Research, causing Nikola stock to plummet promptly. “We have never seen this level of deception at a public company, especially of this size,” Hindenburg Research’s report said. Facing backlash, Milton resigned, voluntarily withdrawing from his company and selling off $100 million in Nikola stock to fund more than $85 million in luxury purchases, the Times reported. Today, Milton remains Nikola’s second-largest shareholder, Bloomberg reported.

By 2021, Nikola had admitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission that nine statements made by Milton were “inaccurate.”

The price of these lies to investors was more than $660 million, prosecutors claimed.

Through it all, Milton has denied the charges, requesting to be sentenced to only probation while holding back tears, Bloomberg reported. At his sentencing hearing, he said that his “misstatements” came from a place of “deeply held optimism,” and he did not intend to cause any harm, Yahoo reported.

“I was not a very seasoned CEO,” Milton reportedly said.

Prosecutors sought heavier consequences, asking the judge to order Milton to pay a $5 million fine and sentence Milton to 11 years in prison.

Milton is likely to appeal, Bloomberg reported.

Nikola’s spokesperson provided Ars with a statement on the sentencing.

“Nikola has a strong foundation and is in the process of achieving our mission to decarbonize the trucking industry, which is our focus,” Nikola’s statement said. “We have made significant progress year-over-year and will continue with the same level of discipline and commitment in 2024. We are pleased to move forward and remind the public that the company founder has not had any active role in Nikola since September 2020.”

Nikola’s shaky road to recovery

Current Nikola CEO Steve Girsky has recently said that Nikola will recover by attracting “world-class people to execute on our business plan” and working toward “establishing ourselves as the leader in zero-emissions commercial transportation,” Forbes reported.

Girsky seems keen to move past the scandal by promoting Nikola’s latest successes. In September, Girsky boasted that daily tests showed that one of Nikola’s fuel cell trucks could successfully run for 900 miles.

“This was quite an accomplishment, and I defy anyone to find another zero-emission vehicle truck anywhere that can run up to 900 miles in a day,” Girsky said.

However, since the 2020 scandal, Nikola’s stock has dropped 99 percent, Forbes reported, and now an investor analytics company called Macroaxis has estimated that Nikola has an 81 percent chance of going bankrupt.

While Forbes credited Milton with most of Nikola’s current woes, it’s not just the scandal causing investment setbacks for Nikola. In August, Nikola also recalled most of its battery-electric trucks—about 209—after a fire probe revealed a “defective part” that “is believed to have caused a battery to overheat” and risk setting trucks on fire, The Wall Street Journal reported.

This represented “virtually all” the battery-electric trucks that Nikola had shipped to customers, the Journal reported. While engineers worked on a solution to keep battery-electric trucks on the roads, Nikola temporarily halted sales of the battery-electric trucks, ramping up production instead on hydrogen fuel-cell electric trucks that remain Nikola’s core focus.

In September, Girsky described the recall as a setback but pointed to all of Nikola’s progress since Milton’s departure.

“It’s a setback, but we’re in it for the long haul,” Girsky said. “We’ve proved the skeptics wrong who said we couldn’t engineer a truck, couldn’t build a truck, and couldn’t sell a truck, and we’re not planning on stopping any time soon.”

Disgraced Nikola founder Trevor Milton gets 4-year sentence for lying about EVs Read More »