Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2016 i MotorTrend

FIRST LOOK Faraday Future, the secretive EV startup that prefers to go by just “FF,” has unveiled its first-ever car, a concept race car called the FFZERO1. Described as a “proving ground” for the company’s engineering, design, and technological skills, it’s unlikely to ever go into production. A combination of design exercise and technology showcase, the FFZERO1 is a single-seat electric race car. If it were to go into production, FF says, it would have four electric motors producing more than 1,000 hp together, hit 60 mph in less than 3 seconds, and reach more than 200 mph. Details on the company’s first production car remain a mystery. Being a concept from a virtually unknown company, many of the FFZERO1’s features are qualified with words like “could” and “might,” but…

2016 CHEVROLET VOLT OR 2016 TOYOTA PRIUS? Sam Boyle is holding one gallon of regular-grade gasoline. The color of apple juice, it has the hydrocarbon content of 98 tons of buried prehistoric plant matter. It’ll ping your credit card for about $3 at our local Southern California prices. And after being combusted in a car engine, two of its 20 pounds of exhausted CO2 will still be inhaled by your descendants— 1,500 generations from now. Only a few years ago we thought we were running out of gallons like the one Sam’s holding. At a technology seminar I attended just five years ago, a nattily dressed oil expert clicked through a harrowing set of graphs. Its chilling climax predicted “Peak Oil”—the moment the world’s production would top out, triggering violent…

The purely electric Bolt is a real car with a useful package and respectable ride. It even has a racer as its chief engineer. Is 200 the magic number? Would that many miles of reliable electric driving range make you consider an electric vehicle as your daily driver? Chevy hopes so and as such has invested considerable effort into making sure the purely electric Bolt is a real car with a useful package and respectable ride and handling. Heck, Chevy even installed an SCCA racer, Josh Tavel, as chief engineer to make that happen. Did he and his bicontinental team (most design and engineering were done in Korea, most development work in the U.S.) succeed? To find out, I attended the production car’s unveiling in Las Vegas at CES and…

BMW’s CES concept car does look a bit like an i8 Concept Spyder, but the news is mostly inside. The i Vision Future Interaction concept welcomes the era of the networked cockpit and features gesture control, 3-D displays, new touch-sensitive surfaces, enhanced voice control, varying degrees of autonomous driving capability, and of course the Internet of things. When tackling that favorite twisty back road in Pure Drive drive-it-yourself mode, the head-up display and all the support screens present all vehicle-system vital functions in a focused manner. The most pertinent info appears on the HUD, including things such as indicating the ideal driving line or braking points on selected stretches of road. (We’d guess the Tail of the Dragon, near BWM’s South Carolina factory, will be supported.) The 3-D instrument cluster…

“If just 10 percent of mothers decide that football is too dangerous for their sons to play, that is it—it is the end of football.” That ominous warning from the sports biopic thriller “Concussion” expresses a growing concern as the world learns more about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain condition brought on by multiple, successive concussions and sub-concussive hits to the head. It was considered a factor in the suicides of former NFL stars Junior Seau and Dave Duerson, among others. Concussion is a functional injury to the brain that, at least for now, cannot be detected by an MRI or other imaging tests. Currently the best means of diagnosing it is the Balance Error Scoring System (BESS) test, developed at the University of North Carolina. It requires that…

WRITE US AT 831 S. Douglas St. El Segundo, CA 90245 Email us online at motortrend.com or send an email direct to motortrend@motortrend.com Scheme of the Month RE: OTY contenders. This is not a challenge to whom I think the winners are. I think it is obvious you will drive more vehicles in a month than the average reader does in a lifetime. I’m inquiring about the selection of contenders. It used to be simple; either an all-new design or significant change in design/function was required. Meaning just an engine option was not enough to allow a contender. That changed a couple years ago when you allowed an identical Ram 1500 (other than engine) to enter (and win) twice (“Red Alert!” February 2014). I understand that without the entry, the…

Just like that, the view ahead transformed into a brown-tinted blur. I looked around, puzzled. “Blows in from China,” the Kia engineer said from the back seat. My god. It’s what I’d imagine London looking like in Jack the Ripper’s time. Except we were on the other side of the world, somewhere along South Korea’s eastern seaboard. “Smog from China, eh?” I slowly smiled—because I suddenly knew how this story would be starting. “No,” he replied. “Just dust the winds carry over sometimes.” “You sure?” I double-checked. “Just dust,” he said. Nuts. I mean, driving into a Chinese smog bank would have been a helluva stage for this prototype of Kia’s Niro hybrid I’m piloting. The Korean firm’s first dedicated hybrid— what the Prius is to Toyota—the Niro is expected…

“Brake hard. Don’t swerve,” our affable, efficient Toyota Australia rep says. “More people get hurt trying to avoid hitting a kangaroo than by the actual impact.” That’s sound if not especially comforting advice, seeing as the vast majority of SUVs on Australian roads have a heavy-duty front bumper. Our pristine, U.S.-spec Land Cruisers, however, are intentionally naked. Adding protection would block most of the external updates to the 2016 Land Cruiser: the new double bubble hood, new bumper, and new three-bar grille. The only preventive countermeasure we’re rocking is a giant magnetic bumper sticker slapped onto the back that reads, “CAUTION LEFT HAND DRIVE.” Why are we driving on the right side of the car but wrong side of the road and with eyes peeled for long-footed, leaf-eating leapers? Because…

There’s a photo of him hunched over the handlebars of an old bicycle, a gangly, knockabout teenager with a ready smile. My favorite pic, though, was taken more than 30 years later. His Yamaha YZ250 is stuck fast in the mud midway through a 24-hour enduro. He’s been wrestling to extract the damned thing for an age, and now he’s sat there, helmet off, taking a breather. He’s tired and aching, but the smile’s still there. He grew old. But a part of him never really grew up. He could make anything. He once made his own telescope, spending hours a night for six months painstakingly hand-grinding a mirror for it, mainly because he didn’t have the money to buy one, but also, I suspect, partly because he couldn’t see…

The Volkswagen BUDD-e Concept, an electrified van that showcases a new platform and a next-generation multimedia interface, made its debut at CES. Featuring two electric motors and a flat 101-kW-hr battery, the BUDD-e rides on Volkswagen’s new MEB platform, designed specifically for electric vehicles. The BUDD-e can travel up to 373 miles on a single charge, though that figure is based on the New European Driving Cycle; EPA numbers might be closer to 230 miles, VW says. The BUDD-e’s exterior design was inspired by the classic Microbuses, which were produced for two generations from the 1950s through the 1970s. Like the van that inspired its design, the BUDD-e puts practicality first and features a clean, restrained exterior. The car also has an upright greenhouse for maximum interior space, just like…

@MT_TheGoods The intersection of priceless and worthless knowledge Fragrance Xyrena 66 o $18-$54 o xyrena.com The first whiff reminded us of J-B Weld, leather, and gasoline fumes, taking us back to working on the car with dad. It’s nontoxic and vegan, so it’s less like gasoline and leather than the first whiff suggests. Timepiece Piston Desk Clock o $125 planetags.com Because sometimes all the gears in a regular clock just aren’t mechanical enough. These 1940s-era Jacobs radial engine piston clocks make a great addition to any man cave. Coffee Table Ferrari V-12 Table $1,800 and up to the U.S. o enginecoffeetables.co.uk This engine, which suffered irreparable damage during a race, was carefully crafted into a work of art worthy of center stage by craftsman Gergely Bajzath in the U.K. If…

COMPARISON | 2016 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 VS. 2016 Dodge Viper ACR VS. 2016 Porsche 911 GT3 RS Jay Lamm, founder and chief perp of the 24 Hours of LeMons, has described racing thusly: “Going around and around in a circle is one of the stupidest things you can do.” With that in mind, we present to you $434,365 worth of dumb. These three cars, the Chevrolet Corvette Z06, Dodge Viper ACR, and Porsche GT3 RS, not only represent the current tip of the their respective companies’ performance spears but are also the three fastest sorta/kinda normally priced supercars we’ve ever tested. Around Laguna Seca at any rate. These three cars are special. Incredibly, undeniably, unyieldingly special. But as is always the case in any comparison test, one is better than…

TRUCK ROUND UP Mind the Gap 2017 Honda Ridgeline When we crowned the unibody Honda Ridgeline our 2006 Truck of the Year based on innovations such as a two-way tailgate and an in-bed trunk, we heard an earful from readers questioning whether any front-drive-based vehicle could ever qualify as a “real truck.” Sure enough, by 2011’s end, Toyota was selling 11 Tacomas for each Ridgeline Honda moved. Now the midsize pickup segment is heating up, and Honda is rebooting the Ridgeline to catch this wave. The quasi flying buttresses are swapped for an upright rear window, and there’s a rubber-filled body gap that your eye will perceive as a flex gap between the box and the cab. It’s pure trompe l’oeil—you’ll never see it flex on the hairiest frame-twister trail.…