+++ ASTON MARTIN will give details of the new cars it will launch over the next 5 years (including plug-in hybrids and full electric cars) at its capital markets day on 27 June, chairman Lawrence Stroll has confirmed. The marque’s first electric car is “on schedule” to arrive in 2026, Stroll said in an interview, despite the fact that “I don’t have many customers asking me for a BEV”. It will be a “new product” on a “new platform”, not a case of “putting batteries in an old platform”, according to chief creative officer Marek Reichman. This new platform won’t come from any tie-up with Geely (which recently raised its stake in Aston Martin to 17%), technical boss Roberto Fedeli confirmed. “You will see we have a different target, we have in mind something completely different to the technology out there already”, said Fedeli. “Our thought is that electric is not a powertrain but a new vehicle dynamic. For this reason, we have in mind our own road map”. Stroll was more bullish about the opportunity provided by plug-in hybrids, saying the technology would “last well into the 2030s”. Aston’s first PHEV will be the Valhalla supercar, revealed in production form last year and due on sale by the end of 2024. The British firm will also reveal “the balance of ICE cars coming over the next 18 months”, said Stroll. These will be the 7 models following the DB12 in replacing the members of Aston’s existing DB11, Vantage and DBS ranges, with a drop-top DB12 Volante tipped to arrive first. The new Vantage will follow shortly after, evolving into a more overtly sporting model to differentiate it from the larger DB12. The new line-up will lay the foundation for Stroll’s ambition of building 10.000 cars per year, with each made to order on an 18-24-month wait list. Each model range will take “10% less than the demand”, which “is leaving money on the table but keeps residuals values high” and gives the “luxury experience”. Stroll added: “I’m looking for higher gross margins, not volumes. That’s luxury. My vision and dream is for Aston Martin to be ultra-luxury wedded with high performance and take marketing and technology from Formula 1”. Before Stroll’s Yew Tree consortium first invested in Aston in 2020 before an eventual takeover, the firm had planned to build up to 20.000 cars per year across its Gaydon and St Athan sites. When asked if he would have opened the latter should he have been in charge when the decision was made, he said: “Probably not, but the goals were different. You can’t do a 20.000 goal at Gaydon”. Stroll said he “still wanted 2 production sites, just not 2 shifts”. To that end, production at St Athan will be around 4.000 units of the DBX (and derivatives) per year over 1 shift, with a similar number at Gaydon for the front-engined models, also on 1 shift. The mid-engined models will be built at Gaydon, and Stroll said “we’re looking at the EV there” too, pushing it up towards its 6.000-7.000 capacity. Stroll said that Gaydon could be expanded “by acquiring more land and rejigging inside” and this is something that Aston is considering. However, there’s no threat at all to St Athan now Stroll has inherited it. “It would cost more to close a factory than to keep it going”, he said. “Right at the beginning, it’s a fair question on whether Aston Martin needed it. But now it doesn’t make financial sense to put Humpty Dumpty back together”. +++
+++ JLR bosses are confident that the Land Rover DISCOVERY makes sense a standalone brand, as the company separates its line-up into 4 distinct pillars: Defender, Discovery, Jaguar and Range Rover. Questions hang over the viability of carving out Discovery as a brand in its own right, given that it’s currently the slowest-selling Land Rover model, but bosses say it can survive (and thrive) because of the unique role it plays in the JLR portfolio. Describing it as “the ‘we’ brand” and calling it “an enabler to make every day exceptional”, marketing boss Anthony Bradbury told work is under way to determine how the Discovery family of the future will look. “Of the 4 brands, it’s the one that, in terms of its future state, there’s the most work to do on internally”, he said. “But that’s massively exciting, because, certainly in our view, it’s got enormous potential to grow”. JLR sold just over 12.000 units of the Discovery in the 12 months to March, compared with nearly 75.000 examples of the Defender, but Bradbury said this was largely a result of the semiconductor shortage forcing the company to prioritise more profitable models. “You can’t take that too literally as an indication of demand”, he said. “We were very constrained in what we could build”. The newer and more expensive Range Rover and Range Rover Sport were “clearly going to get priority” as a result, he said, “because they were the cars being launched”. Even with the focus on more expensive cars, JLR sold 3 times as many examples of the smaller and cheaper Discovery Sport in the same period, potentially lending weight to the viability of a diverse family of Discovery models. JLR United Kingdom managing director Patrick McGillycuddy echoed Bradbury’s outlook: “For us, Discovery is an important brand and it has absolute equity. It has space in the market and it has a very loyal customer base. What we’re going through now is understanding how we reimagine the Discovery brand. What space will it fill? How does it fill a space that’s unique to the other brands? That is the kind of internal work that we’re going through now in terms of that assessment”. +++
+++ New car registrations in EUROPE increased by 16% year on year in April, which industry analytics firm Jato Dynamics has attributed to the easing of supply chain pressures across the continent. The number of new cars sold reached 960.191 units across 28 European markets, with growth credited to the increased availability of new models and a healthy influx of electric vehicle and SUV sales. “These results are directly related to the easing of supply chain pressures, which has increased the availability of new cars”, said Felipe Munoz, global analyst at Jato. “On top of this, demand has continued to rise in response to the push from OEMs to widen their EV offering”. SUVs earned a record share of the market, taking 51.3% of all registrations. The likes of Volkswagen, Hyundai-Kia and Stellantis were the month’s most popular brands. Electric cars formed 13% of the overall sales volume in April, compared with 10% in April 2022. Volkswagen led sales of battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), with 31.900 units sold; a year-on-year rise of 98%. Tesla, meanwhile, shipped 14.200 units, an increase of 865% year on year. This follows the news that more than half of all new car registrations in Europe were BEVs in the first quarter of 2023. The volume of all-electric models increased by 43% to more than 219.000 units, which, Jato says, was down to an increase in model choice, appealing incentive packages and lower prices. EV market share also reached its highest level yet, taking 13.4% of the European car market in the first quarter of the year. However, it was the Dacia Sandero that once again emerged as the month’s bestseller. The small hatchback notched up 18.695 sales in April (+44% year on year), ahead of the Volkswagen T-Roc (16.746 sales, +19% year on year) and the Opel/Vauxhall Corsa (16.578 sales, +40% year on year). Next are the Renault Clio, 15.729 sales, +119% year on year), the Peugeot 208 (15.026 sales, -4% year on year), the Abarth / Fiat 500 (13.775 sales, +7% year on year), the Toyota Yaris Cross (13.626 sales, +41% year on year), the Volkswagen Golf (13.209 sales, +31% year on year), the Dacia Duster (12.953 sales, +38% year on year) and the Skoda Octavia (12.817 sales, +230% year on year). +++
+++ LEXUS ‘ hybrid cars are still “relevant”, despite the looming ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars, Lexus Europe boss Dimitris Tripospitis has told. Discussing the launch of the new LBX, deliveries of which are set to begin in the first quarter of 2024, Tripospitis said he was unworried by the potentially short life of the crossover. He said: “You can imagine we’ve done a lot of clinics, as everybody does, I guess. It was very obvious that for the next few years, the majority of the European market is still not moving to EVs. Which means that if you look at the continent, it’s a relevant technology to have the hybrid for the car. For the next few years, I believe the technology is relevant, because it has all the benefits. The ‘self-charging’ hybrid in its fifth generation has a lot of technology benefits”. Autointernationaal.nl recently reported that Lexus parent company Toyota believes that its parallel-hybrid powertrains perform enough zero-emissions running to qualify as significant-zero-emission vehicles. European manufacturing boss Richard Kenworthy said: “What we can demonstrate is that 80% of the time and 50% of the distance is zero-emissions for hybrids in urban environments”. Kenworthy added that “we believe hybrid is part of the solution that allows us to get carbon down as quickly as possible”. As for the LBX, product manager Bart Eelen told journalists that “over 50% of EV running is what we expect” and its CO2 emissions are likely to be “comfortably below 120 g/km”. Tripospitis also pointed to the strong residual values of non-EVs in markets with a high ratio of electrification as reason not to be concerned. He said: “If I give you an example, in Norway, which is the most electrified market in the world, the used car value of non-EVs is very high, although the market is 85% EV already. I can have an explanation: they’re selling very well at a good price because the supply is not so high, so people who want to buy a used non-EV car, may have trouble to find one and they pay good money for it. So for new car sales in the coming years, I think non-electric cars are an important market for us, and I hope people will buy a lot of this car. +++
+++ OPEL is committed to producing superminis in the B-segment and has no plans to exit this area of the market as its great rival the Ford Fiesta has, design boss Mark Adams has confirmed. The revised Corsa has just been revealed and a successor will be forthcoming later in the decade. Speaking at a showcase for the new model, Adams said Opel being part of Stellantis was key for it being able to commit to a future in the supermini segment. “It’s scale and smart sharing”, said Adams, when asked how Opel was able to make a success still out of superminis. Adams added that while the Corsa might have a close relationship in areas hidden to customers underneath to the Peugeot 208, the customers would not be able to tell the relationship between the cars in areas that mattered to them. “We’re fortunate for the economies of scale to allow us to do things the customer doesn’t care about but then also doing things they do care about with the brand”. Indeed, Adams said that Stellantis didn’t just create 1 ‘toolbox’ with an architecture for each brand to make their own model, they made “1,5 toolboxes which allows brands to then add their own bits on”. Opel was now realizing its goal of becoming an upper mainstream brand, seen it the higher transaction prices paid by buyers and improvements to the brand image, products and profitability, but Adams said Opel had no plans to push to become a premium brand and desert its existing customer base. +++
+++ The new Panamera will launch by the end of this year, PORSCHE has confirmed. The announcement comes shortly after a prototype was spotted testing in winter conditions as the German firm prepares to launch the third-generation model. The car, which will be the first Porsche to wear its new badge, was pictured with a solid black exterior paint. Its front-end design is similar to the current Panamera, while the rear features new lights and an updated spoiler. The new third generation model, which goes by the internal working name 972, is set to continue the German company’s long tradition for small, evolutionary changes between generations, with an exterior design that subtly progresses the look of the 6-year-old second-generation. Underneath its steel and aluminium bodywork, Porsche is lining up more significant modifications to the BMW 8 Series Gran Coupé and Mercedes-Benz CLS competitor. With the 2-year-old Porsche Taycan saloon leading the firm’s electric vehicle push, the Panamera is due to receive a revised range of petrol powertrains, all with heavily reworked exhaust systems and tweaked software aimed at meeting the upcoming Euro 7 emission regulations. Along with updated versions of today’s twin-turbocharged 2.9-litre V6 and 4.0-litre V8 engines, featuring 48V mild-hybrid properties, the new Panamera looks set to adopt a heavily revised plug-in hybrid powertrain that is also planned for the upcoming fourth generation Cayenne. Details remain scarce, but successor models to the 4 E-Hybrid, 4S E-Hybrid and range-topping Turbo S E-Hybrid will receive both revised petrol engines and electric motors in combination with a larger-capacity battery pack and newly developed software that will enable faster charging rates. Although nothing is official yet, the overall power output of each Panamera variant is said to have been increased. In combination with revised driving mode functions, the reworked plug-in hybrid system is expected to offer “significantly more” than the 50 electric-only kilometres of the current E-Hybrid models. It has yet to be seen which changes Porsche will make to the Panamera’s interior. It will, however, receive a further developed version of the Porsche Communication Management system with 5G data compatibility. Although there have been doubts about whether the newly spied prototype actually previews the third generation Panamera, the life-cycle history of previous incarnations of the luxury liftback suggests that it is indeed an all-new model rather than just a facelifted version of the existing one. The original Panamera arrived in 2010 and was subsequently facelifted in 2013. The second-generation was introduced in 2016 and received a round of mid-life upgrades in 2020. In each case, Porsche planned the Panamera for a life cycle of between 6 and 7 years, with a facelift 3 to 4 years after its introduction. If Porsche sticks with this strategy, the next generation is likely to be unveiled by the third quarter of 2023, with sales beginning later that year. +++
+++ STELLANTIS is aiming to extend the life of its vehicles beyond the current 12-year average now, with 15 years “not crazy” as a new target, its head of circular economy has said. The company (whose stable of 14 brands includes Citroën, Fiat, Peugeot and Opel) is looking to harvest reusable parts from scrapped cars among other initiatives to extend the life of its cars in order to cut its overall CO2 footprint. If successful, the move “potentially” could impact Stellantis’ new-car sales in Europe, Alison Jones said on a media call with journalists, but the company is eyeing increases in sales in other parts of the world to mitigate that. Reusing parts as well as designing cars to last longer is part of the company’s pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2038. +++
+++ TOYOTA ’s Gazoo Racing division has unveiled an upgraded version of the new Prius hybrid inspired by the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which this week celebrates its centenary. Dubbed the Prius 24h Le Mans Centennial GR Edition, it receives an aggressive bodykit inspired by the Toyota GR010 Hybrid hypercar, the winner of the past 2 Le Mans races. It features a lightweight carbonfibre bonnet, wide-track suspension and a bespoke set of alloy wheels, claimed by Toyota to provide enhanced performance. The concept is likely to serve as an acid test for a production GR Prius, with the public reaction to it informing the viability of such a car. New Toyota boss Koji Sato (who previously headed the Lexus and Gazoo divisions) last month hinted that more GR-branded sports cars would be on the way. Sato said: “The Gazoo brand will be acknowledged for the future and maybe we can even speed it up. Our Master Driver (Akio Toyoda) was also president of the company at the same time as he had a steering wheel in his hand for Gazoo. Now he is only chairman, maybe he will have a lot more time to develop cars for them”. The Prius GR Edition features as part of a display celebrating Japanese success at Le Mans, produced in collaboration with Mazda (which became the first Japanese winner of the event with 1991’s rotary-engined 787B) and artist Masahito Soda. The exhibit also explores carbon-neutral solutions for the future of motorsport, including electrification, hydrogen and sustainable ICE fuels. +++
+++ The 8th VOLKSWAGEN GOLF is due for an important mid-life facelift that will bring refreshed styling and heavily overhauled infotainment. The ‘Mk8.5’ Golf was spotted testing on public roads around Germany almost completely without camouflage in the final stages of its development. The current Mk8 Golf is only available to order from stock. The facelifted edition will get a restyled, deeper front bumper, new headlights and a slightly reshaped rear end with wider exhaust graphics and restyled brake lights. More significantly, the Golf will follow its newer, electric siblings in gaining a larger, 15.0 inch touchscreen, which will host an evolved version of Volkswagen’s MIB3 infotainment system that has been re-engineered with a focus on improved utility and functionality. This facelift (like that recently rolled out to the Volkswagen ID 3) will also no doubt look to address issues surrounding quality and user-friendliness, bringing a new direct-access bar for core functions such as home screen configurations, and relocating the main climate controls to a touch panel permanently positioned at the bottom of the screen. The Mk8.5 Golf will otherwise largely follow the current car inside, with soft-touch materials featuring on the dashboard and top of the front door sills, but new trim pieces on the steering wheel are among the tweaks. The refreshed Golf will go on sale at around the same time as the similarly upgraded Touareg, as well as the new-generation Passat and Tiguan, as Volkswagen seeks to sustain the appeal of its ICE car line-up in the run-up to going all-electrified by 2030. +++