#Trends

Hyundai is offering customers willing to buy an all-electric vehicle a Level 2 home charger for no extra cost. While the ChargePoint device is framed as being free, it does require the purchase of a new automobile through the automaker’s captive finance arm Hyundai Capital America.

That makes the $33,550 (before any federal tax credits or state incentives) Kona Electric the most affordable way to take advantage of the deal. But you’ll still have to find someone to install the unit into your home, to which the manufacturer has offered a $600 credit toward installation.

With the brunt of the automotive industry vowing to electrify their lineups and government regulators keen on restricting emissions, many have wondered how the change will impact American brands. While Tesla has managed to solidify the United States as the dominant purveyor of all-electric vehicles, American performance has long been synonymous with exceptionally large motors boasting the kind of oomph foreign manufacturers might consider excessive at a price point that seems downright reasonable.

The concern here is that the changing landscape is about to close the door on American muscle cars for a second time. However, Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis is trying to assure the world that this won’t be the case. He’s telling anyone willing to listen that its forthcoming products will continue to deliver the kind of performance Mopar fans are accustomed to.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation (AAI) is reportedly prepared to tell the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that its proposal to significantly reduce vehicle emissions through the 2032 model year is wildly unrealistic. The lobbying group believes that the government’s proposed targets are “neither reasonable nor achievable in the timeframe provided."

An internal memo was released on Wednesday, stating that the regulations introduced by the U.S. government earlier this year were so stringent that they were "a de facto battery-electric vehicle mandate.”

Ford CEO Jim Farley took to social media on Tuesday to announce that the automaker is reversing a decision to remove AM radio from its vehicles. The alleged concern was that all-electric vehicles would interfere with the signal and that listening trends were moving away from the relevant bandwidth. However, opponents noted that localized emergency broadcasts frequently end up on AM radio and that the airwaves likewise tend to be home to political talk shows or religious broadcasts.

Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kallenius has told the German media that the brand has no intention of cutting ties with China, saying such a move would be unwise for the whole of Germany industry. 

"The major players in the global economy, Europe, the U.S. and China, are so closely intertwined that decoupling from China makes no sense," he was quoted as saying in Bild am Sonntag.

If you’re someone who follows automotive trends, you’ve undoubtedly noticed just how much effort is going into infotainment screens and features associated with connectivity. This is because auto manufacturers believe leveraging consumer data in a manner similar to tech companies (e.g. Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet) will yield oodles of cash. However, this is also why we’ve started seeing businesses dumping things like Apple CarPlay from their vehicles and some of us have a sneaking suspicion this practice will continue.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has been under fire for pushing ahead with the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) expansion poised to encompass the entire city and its surrounding suburbs. Critics have said the decision will effectively force poorer residents to buy brand-new automobiles capable of passing modern emission standards or confront daily congestion charges as they attempt to motor around town.

Citroën CEO Vincent Cobée is under the impression that sport utility vehicles are about to become extinct. “The world of SUVs is done,” he remarked in an interview with Auto Express, claiming that the aerodynamics of electrified vehicles – designed to maximize efficiency – will probably put an end to flat-faced SUVs.

Wholesale used-vehicle prices continued to climb during the last weeks of 2022, though the overall trend actually had secondhand valuations down by 15 percent for the entire year. That’s due largely to auction prices cooling off after the summer ended and the situation has many speculating that 2023 could be the first year we see massively inflated car prices begin to return to normal.

Connecticut legislators from both sides of the political fence appear to be less than thrilled with Ford about the deadline it’s imposing on dealerships vying to sell all-electric vehicles. Blue Oval wants retailers to make sizable investments to install on-site charging stations and retrain their staff on how to service EVs. For some stores, this means doling out over one-million dollars just to have the privilege of selling the latest models coming from the Ford Motor Company.

Despite the automotive industry having had the concept on its mind since the 1950s, autonomous vehicles still have yet to manifest in a manner that would allow them to be safely fielded in large numbers. With manufacturers previously vowing to have self-driving cars available to customers by 2020, consumers are starting to write the technology off as an industrial chimera. It’s also starting to look like the government is having doubts, especially now that U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg seems to be calling the technology to task.

Amazon Web Services and BMW are reportedly joining forces to establish a new cloud-based software designed to deliver and manage the data amassed by connected vehicles – which is great news if you happen not to value your privacy.

If you’ve started hoarding auto parts in the event that future car prices fail to stabilize, leaving you indefinitely maintaining whatever heap is currently in your garage, there’s some good news incoming. Used vehicle prices have begun to fall, even if they’ve not yet reached the kind of valuations we might actually consider reasonable.

Most people who know their way around a wrench will tell you that vehicles haven’t gotten any easier to work on over the years. While modern automobiles tend to be longer lived than earlier models and on-board diagnostics have made issues somewhat easier to diagnose, decades of added complexity have made resolving those problems substantially more troublesome and costly. Modern engine layouts are focused on packaging, not on providing mechanics with easy access, and the sheer number of electrical components in today’s cars means that many parts that could have been repaired before now have to be replaced.

An acquaintance of mine recently said he would never purchase an all-electric vehicle and offered up a reason I never heard before. “They don’t come with AM radio,” he said.

While this surprised me, shifting technological preferences have indeed started to change how automobiles and broadcasters interact. As an example, a gaggle of Mazda owners found their vehicles stuck tuned to National Public Radio this February after a local station transmitted an FM data packet that effectively froze the cars’ infotainment system amid the swap to next-generation broadband services. That transition has already caused some interesting problems for the industry and electromagnetic interference has likewise become the default explanation for automakers limiting your frequency band choice in certain vehicles. But it doesn’t explain why some companies are ditching AM radio outright. In fact, a little research has shown a lot of the explanations given by manufacturers leave a lot to be desired.