Report: Tesla Close to Choosing Austin?

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made it painfully clear that Texas is his first choice when it comes to locations for a second U.S. vehicle assembly plant. The executive, disillusioned and annoyed with Silicon Valley and the general California experience, had somewhere in the central or southern U.S. on his mind when he started hunting for a new plant location.

A report out of Austin Monday suggests Tesla could be close to sealing a deal.

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Incentivised From the Start: Hyundai Sonata Hybrid Aims to Persuade

In the midsize sedan war, the Hyundai Sonata is like Japanese forces in the Pacific — slowly losing ground as powerful enemies amass an ever larger share of the territory. When faced with the name recognition and brand appeal of the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord, maintaining your position means throwing everything you have into the fight.

Into that battle came the radically restyled 2020 Hyundai Sonata, joined imminently by the Sonata Hybrid — a sedan that gets up to 52 mpg on the combined cycle. Hyundai has apparently decided that money talks, and that the new hybrid will ride into battle waving cash at local townfolk.

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The Only Way Forward? Germany Goes All-in on EVs

Germany isn’t fooling around anymore. Electric cars are going to become the norm, and that’s final.

After pledging last year to boost electric vehicle subsidies by 50 percent over the first half of the decade, Germany has doubled down on its EV efforts in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. If you’re in the market for a gas-free car, expect the government to fill your pocket with cash. If you’re the buyer (or the maker) of a gas-guzzling SUV, look out.

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Rebounding Premium Rides Can Only Do So Much to Budge a Flat Market

The new vehicle market has stopped marching. For three weeks in a row, sales in the U.S. plateaued, mirroring COVID-19 case levels in many locales. Try as they might, neither doctors nor dealers seem capable of eradicating all of the bad and returning the country to its coronavirus-free, spend-happy ways.

Things take time.

If you’re a purveyor of premium cars, however, things are looking up. If mainstream’s your bag, uncertainty reigns. And if you thought Memorial Day Weekend sales offers would stimulate the industry and kick-start a renewed sales climb, well, you were out of luck.

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Pandemic Discounts: One Buick Tops Them All

Not sure about you, but these past few weeks has seen yours truly think more about remdesivir and potatoes (at alternating times) than the Buick brand. I’d put the ratio somewhere close to 99:1, though you could add an extra digit to that first number and probably still be bang-on.

Yes, it’s a brand that’s not top of mind, earning itself more headlines for ditching cars than for adding crossovers. And yet, when our lockdowns end the the virus is vanquished and the open road cries out its alluring siren song, cushy, long-legged cruising machines might be the first thing to cross your mind. It seems Buick has just the thing for you, but you’ll have to act fast — and search long and hard.

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Volkswagen and Daimler to Merkel: Spiff Our Rides

Amid steep drops in operating profit and a dismal sales outlook, both Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler are appealing to the state in a bid to generate sales demand.

Both automakers appealed to the German government for assistance on Wednesday, Reuters reports, ahead of a meeting of auto industry leaders. With vehicle production making up a big part of Germany’s GDP, the shutdowns enacted to slow the spread of COVID-19 has left the sector hurting. That pain is expected to last through 2020.

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Everyone's Doing It: Toyota Joins the Club, Slashes Rates

When venturing out of the home carries an extra degree of danger, automakers know there needs to be a reward for breaking self-isolation. Even if physically entering a dealership isn’t necessary, there’s still the current economic uncertainty to dissuade customers.

As we told you yesterday, U.S. auto sales are on the rebound, slowly rising from the rock-bottom position reached less than a month ago. While per-vehicle incentives are, on average, on the decline (the byproduct of a smaller pickup slice in the retail mix), discounts aren’t the only way to lure customers into a buy. There’s also loan rates — and it seems Toyota has finally arrived at that party.

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Healthy Sales Start to 2020 Gains Steam in February

The affliction of quarterly sales reporting seems to be particularly virulent, as the practice has jumped from its domestic host and is now infecting foreign automakers. Regardless, some OEMs still report sales on a monthly basis.

Despite gathering economic gloom and an approaching pandemic, February was a hot month for new vehicle sales, though the numbers weren’t entirely organic.

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Dead Car, Dismal Discounts

Yesterday was a sad, sad day for lovers of the traditional domestic full-size sedan — a rapidly vanishing breed. The last Chevrolet Impala rolled out of Detroit-Hamtramck, and with it the last General Motors big car.

Chapter closed.

It’s a sign of the times. By the end of this year, Buick’s lineup won’t even play host to a single car, let alone a big, four-door one. Cadillac dropped its CT6 in January. But if you’re thinking that the Impala’s discontinuation will lead to immediate, juicy discounts, think again.

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Cash Piling Up on the Hood of Volkswagen's Arteon

A perplexing vehicle we discussed not long ago has never been cheaper, but don’t expect to read about it in an ad.

The Volkswagen Arteon, a large-ish midsize premium sedan that exists despite the presence of Audi beneath the VW Group umbrella, was apparently struck by Cupid’s arrow on Valentine’s Day. Contained in that arrow (fired from a window at VW of America HQ) was incentives.

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Big Discounts Could Mean Big Trouble for Midsize Jeep Gladiator

Jeep dealers are now discounting Gladiator models by as much as $9,000, indicating demand for the Wangler-based pickup has seriously cooled off. Considering the insane markups we saw at launch, that’s not much of an insult.

Now that Fiat Chrysler only reports sales on a quarterly basis — an obnoxious trend sweeping through the industry like a plague — we don’t know how many Gladiators leave dealer lots month-to-month. It looks like the pickup averaged a hair above 5,000 U.S. deliveries every thirty days in 2019. That’s a far cry from the midsize pickup segment leaders, but it was also the first year of Gladiator production.

With oodles of character, legitimate off-road capabilities and higher-than-average pricing, it’s also a bit of an odd duck. While interesting designs can occasionally be too much for a (sometimes large) subset of shoppers, pricing can make or break a car’s sales prowess. Some are of the mind that Jeep expected too much from consumers and that these lofty discounts are proof.

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French Tax on Inefficient Vehicles Riles Automakers

Next year, the European Union plans to adopt aggressive new rules that would see automakers fined if their total annual vehicle sales exceed predetermined carbon limits. Obviously automakers aren’t thrilled with the new fines and higher emission mandates, but France is facing additional criticism for its decision to take things a step further.

France’s parliament has adopted a new law penalizing cars that emit carbon dioxide above a certain threshold while still adhering to EU regulations. Vehicles failing to adhere to the French rules will be subject to a 20,000 euros ($22,240) tax in 2020, nearly twice the current fine. Meanwhile, the country is mulling the possibility of culling EV incentives — an odd move, considering its aim to transition its populace to zero-emission vehicles.

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All in the Family: Turns Out There *Are* Mustang Mach-E Deals to Be Had

In the lengthy run-up to the Mustang Mach-E‘s arrival date, Ford made the fairly unusual decision to order dealers not to advertise the EV crossover at a price that falls below MSRP. Ford wants its first ground-up electric vehicle to sell for full price, and to ensure it does, it made the even more unusual choice of eliminating invoice pricing, making both invoice and MSRP the same.

At the customer-dealer level, things may be different, but not all buyers have to worry about paying full MSRP for the Mach-E. The first discounts are on the books, but you’ll need to be a member of the Blue Oval clan to ensure any savings.

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Bank on It: Glut of Unsold Cars Pushes Fiat Chrysler Into Bargain Mode

Earlier this fall, word arose that Fiat Chrysler had resurrected a practice from the bad old days of the company — a sales bank of unallocated vehicles churned out by over-productive factories and pushed on dealers with little use for them. The company claimed otherwise, saying that its new “predictive analytics” system was simply in the process of being refined to better guide the flow of certain models and configurations to dealers.

With 2019 nearly at an end, unordered inventory is once again on the rise, Bloomberg reports. And not by any small amount, either. In response, FCA is reportedly pulling out all the stops to get these vehicles into consumers’ hands before 2020.

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Can EVs Go the Distance? EU Approves 3 Billion Battery Development Fund

The European Union has approved a 3.2 billion-euro fund to promote the research and development of battery technology, with cash pouring in from Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Sweden. While Brussels has been on an electrification push ever since Europe fell out of love with diesel, now may not be the best time to double down on EVs.

We recently covered China’s ailing automotive market, noting the poor performance of new energy vehicles (which fell by at least 40 percent vs the previous November). We’ve also covered a survey showing how eager the nation’s consumer base appeared to be to purchase them, with both writer and readership wondering how reliable those figures actually were. Our collective dubiousness appears to have been valid. Despite being the top region for EV sales, new data from Bernstein Research claims about 70 percent of the 1.2 million electric or gasoline-electric hybrid models sold in China over the past year went directly to government or corporate fleets. When the government started removing subsidies, sales plummeted with little private interest to soften the impact.

Europe may be on a vaguely similar path. While worldwide EV sales are up about 13 percent through October, sales in North America are down 2 percent (at 301,000 deliveries), with Europe rising 37 percent (to 395,000). That’s partially due to European cities being closer together (with more charging points between them), though most EU member states also offer various electric vehicle purchasing incentives and tax exemptions. They’ve likewise adopted stricter environmental rules that make EVs more appetizing to own in the future.

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  • Carson D At 1:24 AM, the voyage data recorder (VDR) stopped recording the vessel’s system data, but it was able to continue taping audio. At 1:26 AM, the VDR resumed recording vessel system data. Three minutes later, the Dali collided with the bridge. Nothing suspicious at all. Let's go get some booster shots!
  • Darren Mertz Where's the heater control? Where's the Radio control? Where the bloody speedometer?? In a menu I suppose. How safe is that??? Volvo....
  • Lorenzo Are they calling it a K4? That's a mountain in the Himalayas! Stick with names!
  • MaintenanceCosts It's going to have to go downmarket a bit not to step on the Land Cruiser's toes.
  • Lorenzo Since EVs don't come in for oil changes, their owners don't have their tires rotated regularly, something the dealers would have done. That's the biggest reason they need to buy a new set of tires sooner, not that EVs wear out tires appreciably faster.