After last week’s unveiling at CES, we were left with plenty of questions about the new 2017 Chevrolet Bolt. Answers came today, at least about its drivetrain.

Notably, GM mentions a low-speed driving mode that allows for single-pedal operation. This “Low” mode allows the driver to control regenerative braking with a paddle behind the steering wheel. This could be a game changer in stop-and-go traffic.

The standard drive mode allows for 0-60 mph times of seven seconds flat.

Volkswagen unveiled a new plug-in hybrid concept for the Tiguan, featuring more aggressive styling than the standard model launched in Frankfurt. Interestingly, Volkswagen has positioned the gas-electric CUV as a more fun-to-drive truck than the standard vehicle.

In other words, it’s a Tiguan Trailhawk.

Nissan-Renault announced Thursday that it would have 10 cars on sale worldwide with autonomous features ready by the end of the decade.

Considering the photo provided by the automaker is of a Nissan Leaf, we can begin there.

One.

Hyundai on Monday revealed its 2017 Hyundai IONIQ ahead of its official reveal at Geneva in March and my goodness it’s already yelling at me.

The hatchback has been in the works for some time by now, which we already knew. Hyundai cleared up some of the technical details that we were waiting on — but not its fuel economy, apparently.

Sheesh.

Regulators may rain on Elio’s parade even before they got started.

That, Volvo takes a serious stab at full-size luxury conventional wisdom, the big get bigger and Ford’s hybrids only go so far … after the break!

General Motors CEO — and Chairwoman! — Mary Barra unveiled on Wednesday the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The compact electric car had already broken cover earlier in the day (oops), but the first look at Chevrolet’s “production” electric car raised more questions than it gave answers.

According to Barra, the car will be produced sometime late this year and sell for around $30,000 after tax incentives. The Bolt will run for 200 miles, either on a charge that will take “overnight” for a full battery, or one hour to 80 percent using a DC fast charger.

It’s unclear when and where it will go on sale, or what its batteries are made of. Oh well, at least we can talk about its “gamification!”

Faraday Future revealed its FFZERO1 Concept in Las Vegas on Monday night. It is a striking artifact that continues to keep the company’s product plans mysterious. This “car of concepts,” as Head of Design Richard Kim called it, is an extreme expression containing select elements that foreshadow the company’s production vehicles.

We now know that Faraday Future (they like to be called FF) can design a theoretical 200+ mph, 1,000 horsepower, single-seat hypercar. Even in a world full of extreme cars, this one looks futuristic. But this is not an attempt to compete with Bugatti, Koenigsegg, or Ascari. It’s an extreme test-bed, right down to the drag reducing, heat-dissipating pair of see-through “aero-tunnels” channeling air directly through the vehicle.

While none of them will look anything like this, Car reports that Mercedes-Benz has a pretty firm plan in place to compete against EV makers and German rivals before the end of the decade.

The magazine reports that Mercedes plans to have a sedan on sale by 2018, followed shortly by a crossover to compete directly against Tesla before the end of the decade. Car also reported that Mercedes will add another crossover and an electric S-Class shortly thereafter.

The first car will reportedly be sized between its C- and E-Class, but it’s price tag sure won’t be.

Volkswagen in Canada rolled out the same “goodwill” package for Canadian customers that they did for U.S. customers last month, according to Green Car Reports (via Autoblog).

Diesel buyers north of the border — up to 100,000 of them — will get the same $500 Visa gift card, $500 dealer gift card and three years of roadside assistance that U.S. owners received in November.

Volkswagen diesel owners can register their cars via Volkswagen Canada’s diesel emissions site.

Fifteen leaders of environmental and health groups signed off on a letter sent to environmental regulators Dec. 18 asking officials to fully punish Volkswagen in response to Tesla CEO Elon Musk and others asking authorities to push for electric vehicles instead.

The letter, which was signed by the policy director for the Coalition for Clean Air and the director of the Sierra Club California, among others, calls for “vigorous enforcement of both criminal and civil laws” to deter actions like Volkswagen’s cheating of diesel emissions tests.

The California Air Resources Board and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency revealed in September that Volkswagen admitted to fitting nearly 500,000 cars in the U.S. with an illegal “defeat device” designed to cheat emissions tests. In November, the agencies said an additional 85,000 cars with 3-liter diesel engines were cheating too.

Audi on Monday delayed construction of a new wind tunnel because of the company’s massive diesel scandal, but announced that it would invest nearly $3.3 billion for 2016 — including bringing to market a new Q2, an updated Q5 and a SUV based on the concept shown above in two years.

The automaker’s chief, Rupert Stadler, affirmed the company would release a battery-powered vehicle by 2018, inspired by the e-tron quattro concept revealed at Frankfurt.

No word if the delayed wind tunnel would have allowed Audi to develop real mirrors.

The fine, fine reporters at Yahoo Autos have learned that Ford and Google will announce next month a joint project to build self-driving cars.

According to the report, Google and Ford would spin off a separate company for the project, and Google would still shop around its technology to other automakers.

Both Ford and Google wouldn’t comment on Yahoo’s report, which said three sources familiar with the plans divulged the relationship ahead of their announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month.

The fine, fine folks over at Car & Driver spotted a trademark filing made by General Motors for “Corvette E-Ray,” which probably means they’re going to ruin the Corvette soon.

The trademark filing was made on Dec. 16, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, about three weeks after General Motors applied for a patent for a “Hybrid Powertrain and Modular Rear Drive Unit.”

Wait, what … so you’re saying hybrid, mid-engine brown manual Corvette could be real? Kill my mind.

Nissan and BMW announced Monday that they would add 120 public fast-charging stations in 19 states to significantly expand electric vehicle infrastructure for cars not called Tesla.

The 120 stations would supplement to Tesla’s network of more than 200 Supercharger sites around the U.S. and Canada, placed throughout the countries that serve as a backbone for long-distance EV travel. (Coast to coast records are already a thing.)

Sorry, North Dakota, still no love for you. It’s a shame. Fargo is such a super town.

Tesla chief Elon Musk and more than 40 other executives called on the California Air Resources Board to release Volkswagen from its mandate to fix thousands of polluting cars in that state and instead invest that money in electric vehicles.

Musk, and other executives including Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said regulators would more effectively reduce emissions to “cure the air, not the cars,” according to the letter:

A satisfactory way to fix all the diesel cars does not likely exist, so this solution side steps the great injury and uncertainty that imposing an ineffective fix would place on individual diesel car owners. A drawn out and partial failure of the process will only exacerbate the public’s lack of trust in the industry and its regulators. By explicit design, this proposal would achieve, in contrast, a minimum of a 10 (times) reduction in pollutant emissions as compared to a complete fix.

Ford will have a rear-wheel drive, hybrid F-150 truck by the end of the decade, Ford CEO Mark Fields told NPR on Tuesday.

“Well, we do have plans to have a rear-wheel drive hybrid truck but the end of the decade. So yes, we’re working on electrified F-series, and it’s really around a conventional hybrid,” Fields said during an interview.

The automaker announced earlier this month that it would invest $4.5 billion in electrification and will unveil a refreshed hybrid Fusion at the North American International Auto Show next month as part of that plan. The hybridized, full-size pickup will arrive by 2020, although the automaker doesn’t plan on total market domination for the truck — at least right now.

The internal combustion engine, with all its amazing sounds and brutal power, looks slated to become endangered if a group of politicians have their say about it. The ZEV Alliance wants to completely ban the sale of non-zero-emissions vehicles in its members’ constituencies by 2050.

That’s just a mere 35 years away, folks.

Multiple outlets are reporting that the vehicle seen in this teaser photo from Volkswagen is none other than an electrified version of the Microbus concept and it will debut at the Consumer Electronics Show next month. The photo follows an earlier report by Autocar (which has since been updated with the same photo and new text) that said Volkswagen would bring a new Microbus to the Las Vegas convention.

We won’t disagree. We also won’t hold our breath for a production model.

(Update: With EPA comment and clarification on their tests.)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved for sale Friday the 2016 BMW X5d after new tests of that car revealed that it did not use an illegal “defeat device” to cheat emissions standards, Reuters reported.

Well it didn’t use a defeat device as far as they could see, anyway.

“Our screening tests found no evidence of a defeat device in the 2016 BMW X5,” EPA spokeswoman Laura Allen told Reuters. “No evidence” is hardly a clean bill of health from the environmental agency, but at this point we’ll take what we can get.

Look, this is pretty awkward. While nearly every auto journalist in the country has congregated in Dearborn, Michigan today for Ford’s annual Christmas party, we’re here at work pounding out stories about Camaro steering wheels and drinking cheap coffee. We weren’t invited to the party, it’s cool. We can both be adults about the sitch.

But according to various Twitter feeds — including the Wall Street Journal’s Detroit Bureau Chief John Stoll and WWJ’s Jeffrey Gilbert— Ford is talking battery packs and showing off a covered car that looks like a Fusion with a half-assed bed sheet covering it.

Oh, and there’s a plug running right into it, as if Kevin the Ford shop hand forgot to unplug the damn thing before letting a roomful of journalists snap pictures of it.

Toyota announced Wednesday it would lower its global sales goal for the 2016 Prius in light of low fuel prices curbing sales of fuel-efficent vehicles.

According to Reuters, Toyota’s new target is to move an annual average of 300,000 to 350,000 Prii out of the lot around the world, compared to the 300,000 to 400,000 annual sales average sought for the outgoing model. A company representative said a decline in global sales of the hybrid since 2013 was one of the reasons behind Toyota’s decision.

A month after questions arose regarding how Volkswagen measured CO2 and fuel consumption in their cars, the troubled automaker says all is well.

Per VW’s PR machine, the automaker found “no unlawful change to the stated fuel consumption and CO2 figures” in the majority of its European lineup, with only nine vehicles for the 2016 model year having slight variations in conflict with their originally stated fuel consumption and CO2 stats.

The nine vehicles found out of step?

The nice people at Marketplace, who provided the above photo, have a fun website where you can put Chinese smog on your favorite city. Thankfully, most American cities haven’t had a smog problem in the 21st century. Beijing, on the other hand, is experiencing the proverbial terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Hyundai announced Monday it would bring back silliness to car names and make the world’s first hybrid, plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicle available in the same body, catering decadently to an individual’s fondness for electrons.

The Ioniq — which sounds like it’s spelled — will be unveiled January in South Korea and later next year in Geneva and New York. It will go on sale next year.

According to the automaker, Ioniq is the type of car people have been asking for: a model named after slightly obfuscated common words to fit with an over-stretched marketing philosophy rather than alphanumeric letters and symbols that require no creativity whatsoever. (God, I miss the Integra.)

Porsche announced Friday that it would build its Mission E car — an all-electric sedan with looks that a Panamera would kill for — and sell the car by 2020. The Mission E concept was announced at Frankfurt earlier this year.

In addition to the car’s 0-60 mph time in under 3.5 seconds, the Mission E (no word on whether that is the final name) will also boast a 310-mile range and an 800-volt charge capability that could recharge the battery up to 80 percent in 15 minutes, providing you can find a charger for it.

Porsche didn’t announce pricing or availability yet, because presumably they’re figuring out exactly how much people will be willing to pay for the Stuttgart coat of arms and how many sales they’ve already lost to Tesla.

FIA’s Formula E first brought its electrified take on open-wheel racing in 2014. Come 2016, the series will bring autonomous racing to the party, as well.

Which begs the question: Is it still racing if there are no drivers in the cars?

Through a partnership with technology investment company Kinetik, Formula E’s 2016-17 season will do away with the driver entirely in a new support series dubbed ROBORACE. Ten teams will field two autonomous cars each, competing on the same circuits as the main Formula E series in one-hour races throughout the entirety of the championship season. The cars will be identical through and through, with “real-time computing algorithms and AI technologies” making the difference between taking the checkered flag first or last.

Or is it a 1991?

We could pore over the details of a Toyota pickup festooned with more weed than the University of Colorado Boulder campus, or we could just admire the grapes on “Mike” for selling his truck “not used for much than errands” with that kind of photo in Washington on Craigslist.

What would you say your business is, Mike?

Volkswagen will have to submit Friday its plans to the California Air Resources Board and Environmental Protection Agency to fix hundreds of thousands of illegally polluting cars in the U.S., Reuters reported ( via Automotive News). Although a fix is due today, testing that fix could take months before it would be installed in cars.

The deadline for the automaker comes after it announced it would ask Michael Steiner, head of Porsche development and quality, to oversee Volkswagen’s compliance with officials worldwide to fix up to 11 million cars. In Europe, Volkswagen demonstrated a fix for its 1.6-liter diesel engine that included an air sensor and software update that cost around $10.68, according to German outlet Wirtschaftswoche.

Volkswagen has said that its newer cars would likely only need a software update to be compliant. Older cars that are equipped with EA189 2-liter diesel engines may need more costly fixes.

Kia on Monday released teaser images of its Prius-fighting hybrid, dubbed Niro, and said the car would go on sale late next year — maybe when gas prices aren’t $2 a gallon.

According to the automaker, the Niro’s hybrid powertrain and lightweight construction could help the car achieve up to 60 miles per gallon when it goes on sale. A plug-in variant will go on sale after a conventional hybrid arrives in 2016.

The car is positioned to fight directly against the next-generation Toyota Prius, which will go on sale later this year. It isn’t immediately clear whether the car is pronounced “NEE-ro” (like the Roman emperor) or “NY-ro” (rhymes with Cairo) because one of those would be an interesting choice.

The National Resources Defense Council’s Urban Solution program will study the impact ride-sharing services have on the environment, the group announced Friday. The study will be conducted with the University of California Berkley Transportation Sustainability Research Center to determine what environmental impacts services such as Lyft and Uber have on pollution and congestion.

” … Others wonder if these companies are competing with public transit, substituting for walking and biking trips, or perhaps adding more cars to the road,” wrote Amanda Eaken, a researcher for the NRDC, a non-profit environmental group.

Update: A spokesman for Volkswagen of America said U.S. cars aren’t affected.

Volkswagen announced Friday that more than 400,000 of its cars with “irregularities” in reported carbon dioxide emissions were new cars, which could shed new light on how many more cars the beleaguered automaker would have to pay for.

This month, Volkswagen announced 800,000 cars emitted more carbon dioxide than reported to regulators. Of those cars, Volkswagen announced Friday that 430,000 were 2016 models across many of the automaker’s brands including Volkswagen, Audi, Skoda and Seat. It’s unclear how many older models may be added to the list of cars that emit more carbon dioxide.

Volkswagen will announce Thursday a deadline for whistleblowers to come forward with information related to the ongoing diesel scandal without reprisal.

According to the CBC, German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Wednesday the automaker is working to gather as much information on the scandal as possible by applying more pressure to employees who may have known anything about what happened regarding the rigging of diesel emissions through software.

I guess I cover the reverse trike beat here at TTAC.

It started with a post about a Chinese death trap three-wheeler I’d seen advertised. In the comments to that post, one of our readers suggested looking into the Elio project. We’ve done that a few times since then, including an exclusive review of one of their prototypes. Because of our coverage of Elio Motors, a group of Elio deposit holders who have become disenchanted by continued production delays asked us to consider their charges. While it’s true that I’m in what may be a minority of automotive writers that don’t think Elio is a scam, I’m not naive. There are ample reasons for skepticism and we take the word truth in our title seriously, so Mark Stevenson and I looked into the critics’ complaints and we both decided they were adding nothing new to issues raised by Elio’s critics before.

However, I do keep tabs on their Facebook group, which is how I found out about Arcimoto, a Eugene, Oregon company that hopes to put their highway capable electric reverse trike in production by the end of next year with a starting price of $11,900.

Speaking at the Barron’s Investment Conference last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted EVs would be good for 500 miles per charge by 2025.

According to Green Car Reports, Musk believed such vehicles would be possible in 10 years, but tempered those expectations by cautioning that more assembly and battery production facilities would be needed to realize that future.

UPDATE: Another TTAC reader is seeing different prompts without the Goodwill Package offer.

The Volkswagen Diesel Information website is now listing the “2.0L TDI Customer Goodwill Package” and requesting vehicle identification numbers (VINs) for registration in the program. However, it does not seem to be working for all website visitors.

The signup form asks owners for a physical address, email address and vehicle mileage before asking for permission to use the information to contact the owner regarding future diesel emissions related updates.

TTAC was able to obtain a VIN for one of the affected vehicles with an owner’s permission to complete the sign up process.

Government agencies from the United States, Canada and Germany will be testing diesel vehicles from automakers other than Volkswagen to check their compliance with emission laws.

According to The New York Times, regulators in North America “are significantly expanding their on-the-road emissions tests to cover all makes and models of diesel cars.” The same on-road tests found 3-liter V-6 diesel engines to emit more NOx than they did in EPA testing.

The EPA had already notified General Motors that its new Colorado and Canyon diesel pickups would undergo increased scrutiny.

Officials from Volkswagen will meet Thursday with the Environmental Protection Agency to explain to regulators how a “temperature conditioning” mode isn’t illegal, Reuters reported ( via Automotive News).

“(Auxiliary Emission Control Device) software does not alter emissions levels, but it ensures after a cold start (of the engine) that the catalytic converters quickly reach their working temperature and emissions cleaning takes effect,” VW said, according to Reuters.

In its notification to the automaker Monday, officials from the EPA specifically outlined how a “temperature conditioning” mode, specifically timed to the length of the EPA’s initial tests, reduced emissions up to nine times in cars equipped with VW’s 3-liter diesel engine.

Speaking to Automotive News, Mitsubishi CEO Osamu Masuko said that the automaker would add a small crossover to its North American lineup, between Outlander Sport and Outlander, to compete in the growing small crossover segment.

Masuko said the car would take styling cues from the company’s Tokyo Motor Show eX Concept, but it’s unclear how much of the concept’s electric powertrain will live into production.

Next year, Mitsubishi will sell a plug-in hybrid variant of the Outlander in the U.S.

Sometime this year, Tesla Motors quietly ended its Ranger program that would dispatch service technicians to fix or send for service Tesla cars for a flat rate, Automotive News reported.

The program, which was touted by the company in 2012 as “ transforming automotive service” said the service would cost $100 “regardless of how far away owners live from a Tesla Service Center.” Tesla’s service page now says: “Tesla Ranger service may be available in your area. Service begins at $100 per visit and increases based on your distance from the nearest Tesla service center.”

A four-year, prepaid service plan for the cars, which cost $2,400 and included unlimited Ranger service visits, now only costs $1,900 without mentioning Ranger service, according to the company. A spokesman for Tesla didn’t immediately comment on the report.

Tesla could start building cars in China within two years, which could help the automaker jumpstart sales there and increase volume for the small automaker, Reuters reported.

Tesla chief Elon Musk said the car company could cut costs on cars for sale there by one-third. Normally, foreign automakers are required to partner with domestic companies before building cars in China. For example, General Motors has partnered with SAIC Motor since 1998, who also partners with Volkswagen.

Musk said Tesla is already partnering with Baidu, China’s largest search engine, to provide GPS data.

Wait. Tesla is already partnering with China’s largest search engine company? That sounds, um, interesting.

In its proposal Wednesday, U.S. House Republicans offered a carbon credit plan for automakers to trade tougher emissions standards for more safety technology. ( You know, the safety features that people are already willing to pay for.)

“This is a life-saving endeavor,” Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., said according to Reuters (via Automotive News). Trading pollution for safety, “incentivizes automakers to invest in new safety technology that will save more lives.”

The plan would relax future carbon dioxide requirements up to 9 percent in cars with advanced safety systems. An automotive lobby group said reducing crashes would reduce CO2 emissions.

Nissan is sending 10 Renault Twizys Nissan New Mobility Concept vehicles to San Francisco as part its citywide ride sharing service Scoot.

The small, all-electric Renault Twizy Scoot Quad will seat two people, have a range of roughly 40 miles and a top speed of 25 mph. The cars will cost $8 per ride or $80 per day to rent.

According to Nissan, the cars are being sent to the ride-sharing service to study transportation in urban areas — and to see if they can sell them anywhere else, probably.

Almost three out of four electric cars on the road are leased — not purchased — according to data from Edmunds, which was compiled by CNBC. (The leasing data excludes Tesla, who does not report leasing rates.)

The overall lease penetration rate for electric cars, which is 74.9 percent, is much higher than the overall rate for all cars, which is 28 percent. The leasing rate for luxury cars is roughly 50 percent, according to Edmunds.

According to the report, EV drivers are more likely to be early adopters but are hesitant to own the vehicles due to increasing battery capacity and rapidly evolving technology. In other words, electric cars are becoming the new iPhones.

Volvo announced Thursday that it would make an all-electric car available by 2019 and offer more plug-in hybrid versions of its cars sooner, starting with the S90. Volvo already sells a plug-in hybrid version of its XC90 SUV.

The automaker’s announced plans follow news that it would make a compact crossover by 2018, likely called the XC40, which would eventually share the same architecture as its V40 and V40 Cross Country.

According to the automaker, Volvo expects 10 percent of its sales by 2020 to be of electric cars. The automaker reported 465,000 sales in 2014.

Toyota officials insisted Wednesday that its hydrogen-powered cars, such as the Mirai, will comprise up to 30,000 sales by 2020, and will help the automaker eventually reduce emissions from cars it produces by 90 percent by 2050.

The Associated Press ( via Detroit News) reported that the automaker said it would work with investors and governments to deliver on its promise of producing only a small number of gasoline-powered cars for small countries in 35 years.

“You may think 35 years is a long time. But for an automaker to envision all combustion engines as gone is pretty extraordinary,” Senior Managing Officer Kiyotaka Ise said, according to the AP.

Tesla will begin rolling out its firmware update Thursday to enable some Model S and Model X cars to partially drive themselves, the company’s CEO announced on Twitter.

Tesla’s AutoPilot feature will reportedly steer the car during some highway driving and help parallel park the car. A valet feature that would park and retrieve the car without a driver will reportedly come later. It’s unclear how autonomous the cars will be after Thursday, so we’ll save up the $75,000 and let you know as soon as we can.

Model S cars built after September 2014 will reportedly be eligible for the driver-less updates. Cars without the needed sensors and cameras receive a UI update, according to CEO Elon Musk.

Volkswagen in Germany announced Tuesday that its diesel cars on sale in Europe and the U.S. would be fitted with an emissions-scrubbing urea tank instead of a lean nitrogen-oxide trap and the automaker would develop further its all-electric vehicles, starting with the Phaeton.

“The Volkswagen brand is repositioning itself for the future. We are becoming more efficient, we are giving our product range and our core technologies a new focus, and we are creating room for forward-looking technologies by speeding up the efficiency program,” Volkswagen passenger cars board chairman Herbert Diess said in a statement.

The automaker announced it would trim €1 billion ($1.1 billion) from current projects, but didn’t specify what three-row SUVs those projects would be.

A self-professed reformed BMW enthusiast says backlash against Tesla comes from car owners “stuck in the past” who consider grease under their fingernails as a “manliness” status symbol among “nostalgic car weenies.” Basically, military-grade trolling.

Mike Barnard, a writer at Slate.com, says that the time is coming for internal combustion engine fans to give up the ghost and get with Tesla because:

People who don’t like hybrid race cars and production supercars are saying that they don’t like better all-around performance—they just really only love things with cylinders and pistons, make of that what you will.

Volkswagen of America CEO Michael Horn told a congressional committee Thursday that the fixed diesel cars would achieve the fuel economy figures advertised on the cars when they were purchased as new.

“We know we can fix these vehicles to achieve emissions standards,” Horn said.

Horn said that performance such as horsepower and torque for the cars could be impacted, but by keeping those cars at or above advertised mileage, the carmaker could mitigate damage brought by forthcoming class-action and federal lawsuits.

Mitsubishi will show off a crossover-sized electric vehicle at the Tokyo Motor Show this month that will preview what the automaker has planned for electric vehicles and, likely, elements of the next generation of its Outlander Sport.

The eX electric crossover is roughly the same size as the Outlander Sport currently on sale — the concept crossover is 167 inches long, compared to the Outlander Sport’s 169 inches.

According to the automaker, the EV has two electric motors with a combined output of 184 horsepower and a range of roughly 250 miles.

Volkswagen lobbied hard in 2011 to receive the same — or higher — clean vehicle credits as electric cars, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

“They wanted a special deal for diesel cars that we now know weren’t even meeting the standard,” Margo Oge, a former director of the E.P.A. Office of Transportation and Air Quality, told the New York Times.

The LA Times reported that roughly $51 million in credits was paid by taxpayers in 2009 for diesel cars that lied about mileage and emissions — essentially a cheap bar trick.

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas issued a lower target for Tesla on Wednesday, saying the automaker’s SUV price tag is too hefty for the carmaker to meet its production volume goal for 2016.

Jonas wrote that the $130,000 SUV is just too pricey (via Business Insider):

Even allowing the Model X (average transaction price) to decline over time through the introduction of lower-spec models leaves what we believe to be a higher-priced vehicle than we expected that may struggle to meet the volume expectations of the market and our forecasts.

If you remember correctly, Jonas was the analyst that called for Tesla’s stock to effectively double because he had a good idea for the automaker, which he said was the world’s most important.

According to Reuters, Volkswagen may have suspended engineers — including top engineers for Audi, Volkswagen and Porsche — without any evidence.

According to the report, more than 10 engineers were suspended in the fallout after it became clear the automaker cheated its way through emissions tests in the U.S. and Europe. It’s not clear if the suspended engineers would be reinstated at the company.

Reuters reported that VW’s internal investigation revealed that the illegal “defeat devices” began appearing in cars around 2008 after engineers discovered that their engine, which was costly to produce, wouldn’t pass emissions tests.

A researcher from Leeds University says that at least four other automakers’ cars are polluting above the legal limits for Europe, including Ford, BMW, Mazda and Mercedes-Benz, the Daily Mail reported.

James Tate, a researcher and lecturer at the university measured over 300 new cars to comply with new Euro 6 diesel emissions standards. According to Tate, Mazda’s diesel engines, on average, emitted more than six times the European limit for nitrogen oxide emissions in new cars. Ford’s cars may have polluted more, but Tate said the automaker’s sample size was too small to tell.

According to the report, Tate used a roadside sniffer for testing in the UK, similar to ones used in the United States.

“This research shows that building cars so they perform well in laboratory emissions tests but emit high amounts of NOx in real urban driving is an endemic practice across the industry,” Tate said, according to the Daily Mai l. “There is very little known about how the manufacturers conduct their tests because they take place behind closed doors.”

German transportation authorities said Friday that Volkswagen can’t phone a friend for help, they’re on their own.

“At this point we have no indication of other manufacturers being involved,” a government spokesman, said according to Reuters (via Automotive News Europe).

Being the only automaker embroiled in the scandal — for now — means that Volkswagen will have to face alone the wrath from governments tripping over themselves to charge the automaker with just about anything they want. In the U.S., Volkswagen faces a pending congressional inquiry; in France, prosecutors have opened an investigation for “aggravated deception;” in Italy, the government’s antitrust authority has begun an investigation; in Switzerland — you get the idea.

Tesla finally rolled out its third model, the Model X last night to loyalists and some media (not us) Tuesday in California.

The SUV’s falcon doors and ludicrously insanely fast 0-60 mph times (3.2 seconds for a car that weighs 5,441 pounds) may get most of the headlines, but the rest of the car’s features and specifications are just as impressive. Tesla says that the batteries in its Model X — which are the same as the Model S — are good for 250 miles. The combined torque for its front and rear engines motors, which produce 259 hp and 503 hp respectively, is more than 700 pound-feet.

And the air filtration system inside may protect you from mustard gas, or something.

Honda took the wraps off its hydrogen-powered FCV sedan Wednesday. It that will pick up from where the FCX Clarity left off last year.

The FCV will be shown Oct. 28 at the Tokyo Motor Show this year, alongside the automaker’s NSX and Civic Type R. (Any bets on what goes on sale first?) However, it probably won’t be called the FCV when it goes on sale next March in Japan in sometime after in the U.S. Like the FCX Clarity, the FCV may not have much of a life outside California — that’s really the only state with a semblance of hydrogen fuel infrastructure.

New Volkswagen CEO Matthias Müller told about 1,000 high-level managers Monday that the company had a “comprehensive” fix for its cars, and that the solution would be forthcoming.

“We are facing a long trudge and a lot of hard work,” Müller said, according to Reuters.”We will only be able to make progress in steps and there will be setbacks.”

Müller said the company would ask consumers “in the next few days” to bring their cars in to be refitted. It’s unclear if the recall program would be a software or ECU fix, or if it would include a selective catalytic reduction system (urea or AdBlue) to bring the diesel Volkswagens down to a legal emissions level.

Cars were banned from the city center of Paris for seven hours Sunday as that city finds ways to manage its growing pollution and congestion problems, Time reported. A group called Paris sans Voiture organized the event in an effort to bring attention to climate policy.

Buses, ambulances and other public transportation were allowed on city streets during the ban, however private vehicles were forbidden from city streets in a broad swath of neighborhoods and tourist destinations including the Champs Élysées, Place Stalingrad, Place de la Republique, the Left Bank, the Place de la Bastille, the area around the Eiffel Tower and the Bois de Vincennes and Boulogne.

The city will be hosting a UN Climate Change conference in December.