Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2021 i MotorTrend

Thank heavens Robert E. Petersen had the forethought to call this magazine Motor Trend when he founded it back in 1949, as the age of electric, motor-driven vehicles is finally upon us. Again. EV 1.0 emerged shortly after the automobile itself, in the late 1800s. Back then the question was open as to what technology should power the newfangled horseless carriage—steam boilers, gas engines, or electric motors. By the time MT arrived, the decision had been cemented by 60-plus years of innovation, but the car world still flirted regularly with alternative propulsion propositions (1969 seemed a particularly provocative year); EVs were always humming in the background. The hum became a roar in November 2012, when we named the Tesla Model S our 2013 Car of the Year. Almost nine years…

I’ve subscribed to the theory that “hydrogen is the fuel of the future (and always will be)” for most of my 30 years on this beat, but a confluence of recent developments suggests maybe we’re nearing a tipping point for the universe’s smallest known molecule. Accelerated development of fuel cells for use in heavy-duty trucking should boost infrastructure and bring the economies of scale needed to hasten light-duty fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) adoption. Proliferation of renewable energy is increasing demand for ways to store surplus grid power. One such method: hydrogen. And a novel means of inexpensively producing green hydrogen is emerging. National Renewable Energy Laboratory senior research fellow and fuel cell group manager Bryan Pivovar tipped me off to this tipping point during a recent panel discussion on…

This month’s Reader on Location is Brian Houts of Maple Grove, Minnesota, who brought us along on a cross-country ski trip. He says: “One of the few things you can do during a pandemic is be outside. I’ve been a cross-country skier for many years now and just completed my 15th American Birkebeiner in Cable/Hayward, Wisconsin. The ‘Birkie’ is the largest cross-country ski race in North America, with more than 8,000 skiers competing each year in both ‘skate’ and ‘classic’ techniques. It was a different experience this year as many skied ‘virtually’ from their own locations. But with a group of friends, we still went to the Birkie and completed the race on site, 45 kilometers through the woods and over challenging hills. It’s an amazing experience and should be…

Convenience. It all comes down to convenience. Our society is built around the convenience afforded by the internal combustion engine. Whether moving ourselves or our goods, gasoline and diesel have made everything possible. As has a network of hundreds of thousands of branded gas stations around the globe; miles apart or across the street, they allow us to refuel a vehicle in a matter of minutes. This is the market reality facing electric vehicles. They’re catching up quickly in price, range, and performance, but even the best haven’t reached parity yet. When you ask which version of the same car you should buy, the answer is a question: What price will you pay for convenience? For clarity, it’s useful to remove variables by examining a vehicle offering both types of…

The dawn of the jet age, the point at which turbine-driven flight had become unquestionably the way forward, came just as piston-powered planes reached their peak. This meeting of eras led aircraft engineers to ease the transition with hybrid, mixed-format designs such as the Navy’s FR-1 Fireball and the Air Force’s B-36 Peacemaker, the latter of which had six 28-cylinder engines and four turbojet engines. We sit at a similar inflection point in the automotive industry today, when modern plug-in hybrid cars and SUVs like the 2021 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and 2021 Toyota RAV4 Prime stand as analogues for those hybrid aircraft, bridging the purely internal combustion powertrains of the past and the electric propulsion of the future. Those early hybrid airplanes leaned on their piston engines for efficiency and…

BMW Although its initial EVs were either compliance cars (i3, Mini EV) or wacky science projects (i8), BMW is now serious about electrification. Coming are the i4 fastback and 2022 BMW iX midsize crossover EVs, as the automaker wants electrified vehicles to account for a quarter of its U.S. sales by 2025 and half of global sales by 2030. Kia Kia’s lineup alone calls for 11 electrified models by 2026, including seven dedicated EVs on the E-GMP architecture. The goal is to sell 1.6 million electrified vehicles (880,000 pure electric) a year by 2030, accounting for 40 percent of its total sales. The first dedicated EV, the EV6, launches later this year to join the Niro EV already on sale. Daimler/Mercedes-Benz Mercedes created the EQ subbrand solely for electric vehicles,…

Reduce, reuse, recycle: words to save the Earth by. But how can you apply this ethos in your driveway? The shiniest new battery electric vehicles will draw a lot of attention from your neighbors, but a humble pre-owned Toyota Prius might offset more negative consequences than plopping down cash on a new GMC Hummer EV. And not just in terms of carbon emissions, but also to your fiscal well-being. Every new car carries a carbon and materials penalty created by its production and transport. It can take years for a green car’s reduced “well to wheel” emissions to zero out that figure—not as long as the haters think, but it’s a nonzero number just the same. Many cars also lose considerable value the moment you drive off the lot. Buying…

Successful software entrepreneurs, lifelong automotive enthusiasts, and Drako Motors co-founders Dean Drako and Shiv Sikand aren’t interested in being Tesla. “Tesla only sells one kind of car, a commuter car,” Sikand says. “It can be driven cross-country with Superchargers, but at the end of the day it’s a commuter car. [We’re building] a better-driving car.” That car is the 1,200-hp, four-motor Drako GTE. Ex-Pininfarina design director Lowie Vermeersch reworked its body, based on Fisker Karma architecture, so only the door skins are the same. More important, all the bits you can’t see have been overhauled thoroughly. A multipart battery pack feeds an electric motor at each wheel, and proprietary Drako DriveOS software aims to deliver a driving experience unlike any other. The package yields, the company says, “unprecedented yaw control,…

Some shapes are intoxicatingly cool. They inspire irrational behavior like signing up to buy, lease, or “subscribe to” a vehicle you have no legitimate need for. This all-electric 2023 Canoo Pickup will be that vehicle for fans of the pickup variants of vintage forward-control vans like the Chevy Corvair Greenbriar (Rampside), Dodge A100, Ford Econoline, Jeep FC, and VW Transporter. It’s not quite Dodge Deora cool, but it’s close. Those vintage vehicles placed their front seats on top of the front axle, placing ankles out in the crush zone and rendering them deathtraps in a frontal wreck. Rest assured that—like VW’s ID Buzz riff on the microbus—the Canoo “Lifestyle Vehicle” van and Pickup aren’t really forward-control vehicles. Front seats are positioned safely behind the front axle, but the vehicle designs…

Ford is doubling down on its commitment to electric vehicles, spending $22 billion over five years on SUVs, trucks, and vans for retail and commercial customers. We talked to Jim Farley, who became Ford CEO on October 1, 2020, for an update on the Blue Oval’s efforts to become a dominant e-mobility player. Ford is coming up with more aggressive electrification plans. How is it shaping up? We’re into the second inning of the e-mobility transformation. It’s early days. Allocating capital to some extent is the easiest thing. Our industry is littered with companies making announcements of nameplates they changed, added, or launched this year. And it didn’t really have material impact. The proof is in how the customer experience changes and how our brand comes to life in the…

Elon Musk’s approach to running a company is anything but conventional. But whatever you might think of him or his strategies, there’s little doubt of his indelible impact across multiple industries, including aerospace, personal technology, and, yes, automotive. His vision is a central reason Tesla has come to dominate today’s EV market despite—or perhaps because of—its relative lack of history or legacy. Yet in just 18 years, the electric car manufacturer has gone from producing small-volume baubles like the original Roadster to pumping out hundreds of thousands of mainstream crossovers and sedans like the Model Y and Model 3. Of course, Tesla’s vehicles are only part of the story. The history books are likely to give Musk and his firm just as much credit for getting the general public geeked…

Our choice of vehicles for this SUV comparison test is bound to raise eyebrows. Shouldn’t we compare the new battery-powered 2021 Volkswagen ID4 with another electric car? That’s how our industry has been doing things, but the time is rapidly approaching when Jane and John Consumer will routinely consider an EV to be simply another option on the list.. It’s time to start treating electric vehicles like mainstream cars, so let’s compare the ID4 with one of the best eco-friendly crossovers on the market, the 2021 Honda CR-V Hybrid. Why the Honda? Well, the ID4 is nearly identical to the CR-V Hybrid in dimensions, performance, and—for the moment, at least—price. The limited-run ID4 1st Edition trim tested here bundles a top-of-the-line Pro S version with unique trim and a pile…

With so many plug-in hybrids to choose from on the U.S. market—30 as of this writing—option paralysis is a real challenge to overcome when deciding which one to park in your driveway. It also presented a bit of a problem in choosing competitors for our comparison test of plug-ins; we ultimately decided compact SUVs were a reasonable starting point given the segment’s popularity. On the invite list: the Toyota RAV4 Prime, Ford Escape PHEV, Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid, and Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Alas, the Escape PHEV and Crosstrek Hybrid were unavailable. Ford delayed U.S. deliveries of its model due in part to a recall in Europe, while Subaru simply didn’t have a Crosstrek Hybrid available in its media fleet. The pluggable Crosstrek and Escape remain notable entries in the segment, though,…

With most crystal balls indicating an impending mad dash toward electric propulsion, the R&D community is working overtime to solve the thorny problems limiting the market penetration of plug-in vehicles to around 4 percent of global passenger vehicle sales: not enough range or raw materials, and too much mass and cost. Here are some key advances to watch for in battery, fuel cell, and motor technology. Battery Tech Today’s lithium-ion batteries mostly use lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide chemistry with a liquid or gel electrolyte. This stuff can freeze or catch fire, lithium “dendrite” spikes can form and cause a short circuit if the battery is charged too quickly, and cobalt is rare, expensive, and increasingly difficult to source ethically. Lithium iron phosphate chemistry eliminates cobalt and is less prone…

If you think the electrification wave is limited to mainstream automakers, wait until lawmakers run out of new internal combustion engines to tax. We’re not saying gasoline-burning classic cars will be banished, but there’s no guarantee they won’t gradually become tougher and tougher to own and operate. Converting a classic car to battery electric power is already a thing, whether inspired by prescience or mechanical frustration. Want to breathe modern life into your baby? Here’s a selection of some of the big-gest names in the EV conversion biz. Chevrolet eCrate (chevrolet.com/performance-parts/electrification) You might need to get used to saying “crate motor” instead of “crate engine.” Chevrolet unveiled plans for a range of electric crate motors and batteries for hobbyists, cleverly called “eCrate,” falling right in line with GM’s ongoing push…

The new world is almost here. By 2030 you won’t be able to buy a new Bentley with an internal combustion engine. You won’t be able to buy a Volvo with one, either. Nor, in Europe, a Ford. By 2030 Jaguar will have been an all-electric marque for five years, and Land Rover will be just six years away from its entire lineup being powered by either batteries or hydrogen fuel cells. The end of the decade sounds a long way off. No more Rolling Stones gigs. The Cubs could win another World Series. The Tesla Model S will almost officially be a classic car. But in terms of designing, engineering, and building new electric cars, trucks, and SUVs, it’ll be here tomorrow. We’re no longer at the dawn of…

The 2021 Lamborghini Sián will catapult to 60 mph in 2.8 seconds and hit 220 mph, leaving in its wake a shock-and-awe wall of sound from its 6.5-liter naturally aspirated V-12. The Sián is long and low and extreme, with a menacing, almost alien road presence that signals its status as a tarmac predator ready to pounce and devour random Ferraris. The Sián packs an 807-hp punch, making it the most powerful Lamborghini road car ever built. It’s also Lamborghini’s first hybrid. Lamborghini will build just 19 roadsters and 63 coupes, to celebrate the company’s founding in 1963. The coupe costs $2.64 million, and 15 are coming to the U.S. No word yet on price for the roadster, U.S. versions of which will arrive between May and December. Finally, its…

50 JUN 1971 PRICE: $0.50 For MotorTrend’s first 20 years or so, it was uncommon to see a foreign car on the front of the book. The gorgeous 1972 Mercedes-Benz 450 SL V-8 on our June 1971 cover was one of the rare cars from overseas to earn the honor. We lauded the Benz for its focus on both safety and driving purity—in an era when U.S. automakers insisted consumers could only get one or the other. 30 JUN 1991 PRICE: $2.95 If the neon colors and questionable words were any indication, we weren’t quite done with the ’80s just yet. The cars in our June ’91 issue were thankfully contemporary, including convertibles like the C4 Corvette, Ford Mustang, and the mighty Geo Metro. 10 JUN 2011 PRICE: $4.99 With…

When was the last time you stopped to think about how electric cars actually work? We superfans of the car biz have mostly developed a reasonable understanding of how combustion powertrains work. Most of us can visualize fuel and air entering a combustion chamber, exploding, pushing a piston down, and rotating a crankshaft that ultimately turns the wheels. We generally understand the differences between inline, flat, V-shaped, and maybe even Wankel rotary combustion engines. Mechanical engineering concepts like these are comparatively easy to comprehend. But it’s probably a fair bet to wager that only a minority of folks reading this can explain on a bar napkin exactly how invisible electrons turn a car’s wheels or how a permanent-magnet motor differs from an AC induction one. Electrical engineering can seem like…

When the Chevrolet Bolt EV’s SUV sibling broke cover, we wondered: Why’d Chevy make the two Bolts look so similar? How will salespeople steer buyers into the Bolt EUV over a cheaper gas SUV? Why does the longer EUV have less cargo space than the EV? And what’s it like to drive? We’ll tackle that last one first. The EUV’s extra 90 pounds and 6.3 inches of length relative to the junior Bolt go unnoticed from the driver’s seat. Floor it, and the two front tires still struggle for grip—especially when turning—and it always feels even zippier than its mid-6-second 0–60 time suggests. In its one-pedal driving mode, lifting off the accelerator provides ample deceleration for most driving conditions. A paddle on the left side of the steering wheel provides…

A showroom of affordable (and profitable) electric vehicles in all shapes and sizes has long been the holy grail for automakers and regulators alike. It is a long-standing dance that has gone on for nearly 50 years: Regulators set ambitious emissions-reduction targets with long lead times, the established automakers cry, “Impossible!” then hunker down and either work to defang the mandates or occasionally hit the targets, sometimes ahead of schedule. Solutions to date have been a mix of improving the efficiency of the gas-powered fleet, adding hybrids, and developing a few token electric vehicles sold at a loss to the few buyers who want them. Lather, rinse, repeat. Automakers have attempted to lure the public into electric vehicles but made little headway. Part of it is confirmation bias: Automakers spend…

We were originally told tired EV batteries would get a second life storing green energy or providing emergency backup power before being fully recycled. How’s that going? Nissan set up systems to assess and repackage its Leaf EV battery modules as replacement Leaf batteries, forklift batteries, and as the xStorage Home energy storage system. Similar home units reusing EV batteries are offered by Australia’s Relectrify, U.K.-based Powervault, and Sweden’s Box of Energy, but it’s hard to determine exactly the number or percentage of retiring EV batteries reused each year. When batteries are no longer usable, roughly 100 companies will recycle them, according to London-based Circular Energy Storage. Together they reportedly processed about half the 200,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries retired worldwide in 2019. Most are in China and Korea, near…

Combustion engines won’t vanish completely any time soon, if ever. Certain transportation tasks or operating environments simply don’t lend themselves to battery- or hydrogen-powered electric propulsion. A century and a half of research and development has greatly increased the efficiency of combustion engines, and engineers have loads of additional tricks up their sleeves that promise to extract even more work from a molecule of fuel while producing even fewer harmful emissions. Here are but a few we’re keeping our eyes on, listed in order of complexity and cost to implement. A 98-Octane Fuel Standard Simply being able to design an engine to run 15:1 or higher compression greatly improves its thermodynamic efficiency and power density, permitting further engine downsizing. That requires higher-octane fuel, and a research-octane number (RON) of 98…

Gasoline or electric? For the first time in more than a century, both are viable options, but what was the decision like 100 years ago? With the help of the Henry Ford museum in Michigan, we traveled back in time to pit a Ford Model T against a Detroit Electric Model 90. Both cars were mature products. Ford had made few changes to the T since its 1908 introduction, and in 1921 it was approaching the peak of its popularity. Likewise, the Anderson Electric Car Company had kept its Detroit Electrics more or less the same since 1914, when sales of electric cars rivaled those of gasoline-powered ones, thanks to high fuel prices during World War I. By the time our test car was built in 1922, though, electric car…