+++ FORD ’s next-generation Fiesta is in doubt for Australia following a new focus for the blue oval. The brand has unveiled a replacement for the smallest car it sells in Australia, bringing new looks and updated tech to the compact hatch. But the car is in doubt for Asian markets including Australia, which has not confirmed plans to import the car. Robert Stiller, head of Ford’s light car program, told Romanian reporters in July that the Fiesta’s footprint will shrink in coming years. “The previous model was a global Ford product, and with the new generation, we are targeting only Europe, the Middle East, and Africa”, he says. “In North America, especially the US, China, and Latin America, the demand for such subcompact vehicles is declining, and we are reacting accordingly”. City cars such as the Fiesta have dropped in popularity, with sales diving by more than 13 percent for the year to date, following a decline of 15 percent in 2016. Buyers in the once-popular segment seem to be switching to light SUVs such as the Mazda CX-3, along with cars such as the Ford Focus and Hyundai i30. The problem is that Australia’s current-generation Fiesta is built in Thailand, a closer (and cheaper) source than Ford’s German plant. It’s possible that the new Fiesta may arrive only in hot hatch ST form, something Volkswagen and Renault tried with the Scirocco and third-generation Clio. +++
+++ GERMAN manufacturers including Daimler, BMW Group and Volkswagen Group have allegedly been colluding on technology for emissions control in diesel engines since the 1990s. The news comes less than a week after Daimler and Audi announced they would be extending their diesel engine emissions fix programs to include 3 million and 850,000 vehicles, respectively. The allegation came about from a document submitted by Volkswagen to German authorities in July 2016, which stated that the 5 German brands (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche) coordinated research including diesel technology. The alleged discussions concerned activities related to vehicle technology, strategies, costs, suppliers and diesel emissions controls, and involved more than 200 employees working in areas such as gasoline and diesel motors, brakes, transmissions and auto development. In bad news for the car-makers, the discussions also allegedly involved the size of tanks for AdBlue fluid for automatic diesels, which is one of the central tenets of the dieselgate scandal. The letter was originally sent by Volkswagen as an admission to possibly anti-competitive behaviour, with the manufacturers allegedly working together to fix prices on components and systems. As for the recalls, Mercedes and Audi have emphasised that they are responding proactively to the diesel problem, with Daimler investing approximately 220 million euro to remedy pollution levels in almost all European Euro5 and Euro6 compliant vehicles. The Audi software upgrade will affect 850,000 six- and eight-cylinder diesel engines with Euro5 and Euro6 compliance, and will also affect Volkswagen and Porsche models fitted with the same type of engine. Since breaking in September 2015, the dieselgate scandal has cost Volkswagen billions of dollars in fines as well as a huge hit to its reputation, while dragging other Volkswagen Group brands such as Audi along with it. +++
+++ LAMBORGHINI sold a record 3,457 of its supercars last year, and is already on track to beat that number this year, having delivered 2,091 units in just the first six months of 2017. And it only stands to sell more (many, many more) once production of the Urus gets underway. So what’s it doing with the revenues from those increased sales? It’s reinvesting them in expanding its facilities. The company announced an expanded prototype and small-scale production facility last month and a new on-site paint shop the month before that. It even revamped its museum recently. Now it’s opened a new office building at its headquarters in Sant’Agata Bolognese. In fact, the structure is the first in Italy to receive Platinum certification for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. All told, the Raging Bull marque is doubling the size of its production facilities from 80,000 square meters to 160,000; or roughly 40 acres. While production of the Huracan and Aventador continues to climb (up 2 percent and 7 percent, respectively, over last year’s numbers) the real beneficiary will be the Urus. The third model line is expected to more than double the automaker’s output all on its own, throwing it into the growing market for super-high-end SUVs for the first time since the LM002 in the 1980s and early ’90s. +++
+++ The MASERATI GranTurismo has been with us since 2008 and is certainly showing its age against more modern rivals such as the Aston Martin DB11 and Mercedes-Benz S-Class Coupe. During Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ 5-year strategy announcement in May 2014, CEO Sergio Marchionne said Maserati would redesign the GranTurismo as well as launch an all-new sports car based on 2014’s Alfieri concept car. Both were promised for launch by the end of calendar year 2018, but both have since been delayed. Instead, Maserati has given its GranTurismo a refresh for 2018. As for the Alfieri sports car, Maserati is debating whether to turn it into a pure electric tech halo. A redesigned GranTurismo won’t arrive until calendar year 2019. The good news is that Maserati will offer coupe and convertible versions of the next-generation model, the automaker’s European boss, Giulio Pastore, has confirmed. Under previous plans, the current GranTurismo Convertible was to be phased out to make way for a convertible version of the Alfieri sports car. Speaking of the Alfieri sports car: it’s not likely to arrive until 2020, at the earliest. Why all the delays? The main reason is the need to develop a new platform. Maserati engineer Davide Danesin revealed in 2016 that performance-oriented cars like the Alfieri sports car and GranTurismo can’t simply ride on the platform found in the Ghibli and Quattroporte. He said they need to be lighter, have a lower center of gravity and lower mounting of the engine. He also mentioned moving the front wheel assembly forward to allow that classic sports car proportion of a long hood and cabin over the rear wheels. +++
+++ China’s biggest search engine, Baidu, and MICROSOFT are expanding their self-driving-vehicle partnership to cover data storage, security, and artificial intelligence services for the companies’ open-source autonomous vehicle platform, Apollo. Microsoft’s Azure cloud-storage service will allow self-driving cars that run on the Apollo platform to store information, such as map and roadway updates, marking the latest evolution of a system that’s had inputs from 50 automakers, suppliers, and other tech companies. The expanded Baidu/Microsoft partnership is the latest effort from a technology company (or in this case, companies) to push into the budding self-driving car industry, where software, data, and technology are nearly as important as the car itself. Apollo’s open-source nature makes it unique in the world of self-driving vehicles. Companies are free to use the platform in its entirety, or marry specific features to in-house technology. Apollo includes software that allows autonomous vehicles to locate themselves in their surroundings, plan routes, and control mechanical functions of the car. Looking toward the future, Baidu is keen to become a leader in self-driving car software as a one-stop-shop for cutting-edge software, while Microsoft wants in on the promise of autonomous cars. However, the same can be said for dozens of Silicon Valley start-ups, established technology companies, and even traditional automakers. +++
+++ The trouble with Donald TRUMP is that he wants it both ways. Because he’s desperately trying to protect US jobs, he has a problem with cars built anywhere other than the USA. Fair enough. Yet when Asian and European firms build new factories on his soil, then go on to prove the cars they build are generally better and more desirable than those from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler (the US Big Three), he has a very different kind of problem. Those pesky Asians/Europeans/other aliens in the American south are only supposed to be the support act to the ‘true American’ manufacturers based in Detroit, not the headliners. In 1971, foreign auto makers built just 1 percent of the vehicles that came off production lines in America. Last year that figure stood at 47 percent, and is likely to rise in the future. Trump can’t get his head around the prospect of his US Big Three building the minority of cars in his USA. And the revelation last week that yet another Chrysler factory in Detroit is closing offers further proof that Trump’s domestic auto firms are increasingly weak. Trump seems torn by non-American firms producing ‘non-American’ cars on his patch in larger than expected volumes. In turn, European and Asian makers in America are fed-up with the lack of love from Trump and unimpressed they don’t have a seat at the Trump table in Washington. Also, these nations are reminding the President that they’ve invested billions in the US, creating vehicle and engine plants, research centres, dealerships and decent, well-paid jobs. And the enormous tax revenues they and their employees generate help prop up Trump’s Treasury. Meanwhile, the USA’s Detroit-centric auto unions are warning American motorists to buy only American-made products built at unionised plants. But since the vast majority of Asian or European car factories in the States, in addition to Tesla’s production lines, are union-free and far from the crumbling Motor City, these trade unions are effectively echoing Trump by urging Americans to buy Chrysler, Ford and General Motors products. US consumers are responding by ensuring that America’s top5 selling cars are built by foreign firms in (non-union) US factories. They dominate the Top20. The American Big Three do not. +++
+++ VOLKSWAGEN , Germany’s largest car maker has asked Europe’s antitrust watchdog to scrutinize decades of coordination efforts by the country’s main auto manufacturers amid growing concern they might have breached antitrust regulations. The revelation comes after Volkswagen alerted European antitrust authorities about a year ago to discussions between itself and its main German rivals, a person familiar with the situation said. The decision by Volkswagen to lift the veil on behavior it thinks could have been illegal was part of an effort by management to review past practices and invite closer scrutiny by authorities after a diesel emissions-cheating scandal engulfed the company, the person said. The German car maker’s new management, installed after the diesel scandal, discovered documents during the course of a German antitrust investigation into steel price-fixing in 2016 it thought might constitute collusion by companies including Volkswagen, BMW, Porsche, Audi, and Daimler. In a letter sent to the European Commission in mid-2016, Volkswagen provided details of years of discussions between car makers to find common positions on a range of technologies, including the diesel emissions systems at the center of the emissions-cheating scandal, the person, a high-ranking auto industry executive, said on condition of anonymity. The European Commission declined to comment and it remains unclear if an investigation into anticompetitive behavior by the participants is under way, or if it will ever be launched. A spokesman for Germany’s federal cartel office declined to comment. The office said it had been looking into possible steel-price fixing by car makers and suppliers since last summer. But the revelation comes at an awkward time for German (and European) manufacturers that face accusations that the diesel-powered cars that have become ubiquitous on European roads emit far more toxic fumes than advertised. Volkswagen has been fined in the U.S. after admitting to installing cheating software on its cars that reduce the level of harmful emissions environmental tests can detect. Other car makers have recalled millions of cars for their engines to be fixed after they were shown to emit more dangerous chemicals than they should. It is standard practice in industry for manufacturers to work together to agree on technical standards for new technology. In the case of diesel, auto manufacturers established standards for emissions-control systems that regulated certain aspects, including fluid used to neutralize nitrogen oxide emissions, the size of tanks containing the fluid, and other details. “We meet every month to discuss a wide range of issues important to the industry and unify positions with the government. Where do these discussions cross the line into antitrust territory?” said another auto industry executive. That was the question that Volkswagen’s legal experts raised in 2016. Under intense scrutiny in the wake of the diesel scandal, Volkswagen decided to let antitrust authorities make the determination. By offering itself as a whistleblower, Volkswagen could also be hoping for leniency in the event that Brussels rules against the German car industry. Volkswagen admitted in 2015 to rigging nearly 11 million diesel engines world-wide to cheat emissions tests and pleaded guilty in 2016 to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and U.S. consumers. The company agreed to pay more than $22 billion in fines, penalties and compensation for consumers. By blowing the whistle on cartels and cooperating in investigations, some companies that had engaged into anticompetitive behavior have managed to obtain substantial penalty reductions, and sometimes complete exemptions, in recent years. Germany’s antitrust authority launched a witness leniency program in 2000, offering companies reduced fines if they report themselves for potential cartel violations. A fine can be reduced by up to 50 percent, depending “on what stage you come forward and what we already knew”, said the cartel office’s spokesman, Michael Detering. The authority demands “continuous and unlimited cooperation” with investigations in return for reduced fines, according to its publications on the leniency program. Over half of all cartel proceedings are triggered by information from applications to the leniency program, according to the cartel office. +++
+++ VOLVO has confirmed that the XC40 will be the smallest SUV in its line-up. This quells rumours that Volvo’s recently hinted-at ’20’ series, which will be the smallest models the company makes, will spawn an SUV variant akin to the Mini Countryman and Audi Q2. Despite this, Volvo is aggressively taking aim at the current premium small SUV market in which the XC40 will compete, going so far as to describe the segment as “lacking in individuality and playfulness”. The XC40, which will be the first car based on Volvo’s Compact Modular Architecture, aims at a more youthful audience than the more grown-up XC60 and XC90 models. The XC40 offers a number of customisation options to reflect this, with a greater level of exterior and interior colour combinations than any previous Volvo. Unusual interior options such as orange carpet and red upholstery have been suggested. The XC40 will be revealed this autumn, and the brand’s description of the model distances it from the rest of the range, including a wider variety of materials used. A panel embossed with map-like patterns is shown in the official teaser shots that have been released, as are more rugged, block-metal and driftwood-like materials. “We wanted the XC40 to be a fresh, creative and distinctive member of the Volvo line-up, allowing its drivers to put their personality in their driveway”, said Volvo design boss Thomas Ingenlath. “XC40 drivers are interested in fashion, design and popular culture and often live in large, vibrant cities. They want a car that reflects their personality. The XC40 is that car”. Volvo also confirmed its 3 trim levels for the XC40 range: Momentum, R-Design and Inscription. Despite being the entry-level trim, Momentum is described as the most fashion-conscious in the range. As per Volvo’s other models, R-Design will be sportier and Inscription more luxurious. A full list of engine options hasn’t yet been confirmed, but at the heart of the range will be a 1.5-litre three-cylinder petrol unit derived from the brand’s 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol. Diesel engines are certain to appear too, and both naturally aspirated and turbocharged petrol and diesel engines will feature. A 225 hp hybrid, with a 150 hp petrol engine and a 75 hp electric motor, will top the range, under the T5 Twin Engine badge. It’ll be front-wheel drive, with a 7-speed automatic gearbox, and it will have the capacity for 50 kilometers of electric-only range. Prices for the diesel engined XC40 range are expected to start at around 42,000 euro in The Netherlands, undercutting rivals such as the upcoming Jaguar E-Pace (priced from 48,300), as well as the Audi Q3 ((43,275) and Range Rover Evoque (45,570). +++