+++ There’s a new BENTLEY FLYING SPUR headed our way, and while many details are still under wraps (including the reveal date for the next-generation luxury saloon), I know it will produce 782 hp and a nice round 1.000 Nm of torque from a plug-in hybrid V8 powertrain. For comparison: Bentley’s new ‘Ultra Performance Hybrid’ system delivers 123 hp and 100 Nm more than the old W12 engine in the outgoing Flying Spur Speed. It will make this new model the most powerful and efficient 4-door in Bentley’s 105-year history, so the brand says. It’s the same setup found in the recently revealed Continental GT Speed, and consists of a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 engine working together with an electric motor. Bentley claims the new Flying Spur will offer at least 70 km of pure-electric range, CO2 emissions below 40 gram/km and should cover more than 800 km before needing to stop; a great boast for a continent-crossing saloon. The brand says the ‘Ultra Performance Hybrid’ powertrain is Bentley’s future, delivering astonishing flexibility from incredibly accessible supercar performance to silent, effortless electric luxury. When fitted to the new Flying Spur, the powertrain will create the ultimate Bentley sedan: potent and tranquil in equal measure”. The powertrain probably won’t be the only technology that will carry over from the new Continental GT Speed. I expect the new Flying Spur will feature the same dual-valve dampers and dual-chamber air suspension system, plus a rear-wheel steering system to help with low-speed manoeuvrability and high-speed stability. Based on the teaser image Bentley released, the new Flying Spur won’t look radically different from the current model, though we can see the front bumper has been redesigned and there’s a new grille pattern. I’m sure to get more glimpses of the design in the build up to the car’s reveal, which is likely to happen later this year. +++
+++ Sold on the sleek looks and electronic wizardry of the CADILLAC ESCALADE IQ , but have zero interest in going electric? Well, Cadillac has confirmed today what I’ve long suspected: You can get most of those goodies on the 2025 Escalade and Escalade-V without making the switch from gasoline. Diesel fans, I’m afraid, will be missing out on the party for 2025. The Standard Escalade retains the 420-horsepower 6.2L-liter V8 and the V-Series returns with its supercharged 682, but the light-duty 6-cylinder oil burner is nowhere to be found on the spec sheet. While the traditionalists may bleat out a funeral dirge for the Duramax, futurists will delight in the standard Escalade’s new iQ-inspired interior. Standard on all Escalades is a new 55-inch “pilar-to-pillar” screen incorporating the instrument cluster and infotainment systems (35 and 20 inches, respectively) for both the driver and front passenger. Beneath these sits the “Command Center” screen, which houses controls for in-demand functions, such as your heating and cooling, seat controls, vehicle safety functions and camera views. The massive touchscreen also comes with a redundant multi-function control knob (shown above right) for those who’d rather not lean forward to interact with the big display. The eagle-eyed reader will note that the automatic gear selector has been moved from the center console to make room for the Command Center and multifunction control interface. The shifter is now a column-mounted stalk. The steering wheel is also new for 2025; the Edvard Munchian curved spokes are no more. Other features inherited from the iQ include a new auto-opening driver door option along with power-operated (but not automatic) passenger doors, a 126-color ambient led lighting system, and the available 40-speaker version of its premium AKG audio system.
But that’s not all, of course. While the 2025 Escalade was not redesigned from the ground up, Cadillac considers this a “major” enhancement. What good is an overhaul if your customers can’t tell the difference? Not only is the 2025 model getting some new styling features and an iQ-inspired signature lighting animation, but it will be the first Escalade offered with 24-inch wheels from the factory. They’re joined by 3 new exterior colours: Aegean Stone (green-grey), Aegean Stone (metallic blue) and Latte Metallic (light bronze). Inside, Renaissance Red and Sheer Grey join the palette, and the V-Series can now be optioned with a carbon fiber trim package. The 2025 Escalade will go on sale in the United States late 2024. +++
+++ The DACIA SANDERO was Europe’s best-selling car in the first half of 2024, pushing the Volkswagen Golf into second place and the Renault Clio into third, while the Tesla Model Y (last year’s global best-seller) languished in eighth. The Romanian hatchback racked up 143.596 sales between 1 January and 30 June. That’s a rise of 16% compared with the same period in 2023. This is the first time the Sandero has held top spot (it placed second in 2022 and 2023), despite being Europe’s best-selling private car since 2017, which shows the power of fleet sales that have been felt by other models. Sales of the second-placed Golf, which was renewed earlier this year, rose 43% to 125.993, closely followed by the Clio (114.623, up 15%), the Volkswagen T-Roc (111.381, no change) and fifth-placed Peugeot 208 (107.097, up 1%). +++
+++ FORD ’s electric vehicle boss says the company’s plan to go all-electric by 2030 in Europe was “too ambitious”, and the firm will continue to offer a range of hybrids in light of wavering EV uptake. Marin Gjaja, CEO of Ford’s Model E electrification division, has told that the company is no longer planning to stop selling combustion cars in Europe within the next 6 years, as it said it would in 2021, because of the “uncertainty” around EV demand and legislation. “I don’t think we can go all in on anything until our customers decide they’re all in, and that’s progressing at different rates around the world”, he said. He cited wavering customer adoption of EVs (fuelled by high battery costs and the removal of government incentives) as the primary reason for the renewed focus on hybrid powertrains, which are currently offered in the Puma, Focus and Kuga. Asked if the company was rethinking its 2030 EV ambitions, Gjaja said: “I think customers have voted, and they told us that was too ambitious, is what I would say, and I think everyone in the industry has found that out the hard way. I would also say reality has a way of making you adjust your plans. We don’t see that going all-electric by 2030 is a good choice for our business or, especially, for our customers”. Ford recently revealed the new Capri as its third electric passenger car for Europe, following the Mustang Mach-E and Explorer, and will introduce electric versions of the Puma and Tourneo Courier next year. Come mid-2025, the Focus will join the Fiesta in retirement, leaving the Tourneo, Mustang, Puma and Kuga as the brand’s only combustion cars on sale. But Gjaja said maintaining a flexible powertrain offering is crucial, and a new ‘multi-energy’ platform currently in development for European cars will be vital in ensuring Ford maintains its footing in Europe’s mainstream car market. The company has not fully outlined the future of its Valencia factory beyond the end of production of the current-generation Kuga, but has revised its plans to build EVs there in favour of models that could be powered (at least in part) by combustion engines. Gjaja said: “We’re all in from the standpoint of we’re going to compete aggressively, whether it’s a pure ICE, whether it’s a pure battery-electric vehicle, or hybrids in between, because what we’re seeing is customers want that freedom of choice to pick the right powertrain and the right vehicle for their use case. We’re going to bring something to Valencia, but we haven’t committed to what that’s going to be. We’re still working on that. I think it’s going to be multi-energy. That’s our current thinking, because we think it gives us the best chance of success given the European market and where we are in adoption”. Production of the first model on this new platform (the size and shape of which remain unconfirmed) is scheduled to begin in 2027, with projected volumes of up to 300.000 units per year, according to Spain’s industry ministry. It is possible that Ford plans to put a new generation of Kuga on the line, with that car expected to end its current life cycle in around 2026. Ford delayed a substantial investment into the Valencia plant in 2022, citing a revised economic outlook for Europe, and instead prioritised the ground-up overhaul of its ex-Fiesta factory in Cologne, Germany, to enable it to build the Explorer and Capri EVs. More recently, the firm has made swingeing workforce reductions at the Spanish plant, announcing 1.100 job cuts last year, and in May of this year revealing plans to axe a further 1.600 roles, but it has suggested it could reinstate 1.000 of these roles in line with an expected boost in output from 2027. Gjaja said solidifying an investment strategy in the context of today’s market environment is difficult because it is unclear when actual demand for electric cars will be in line with the legislative and regulatory framework around them. “It makes it hard for manufacturers because the investments aren’t trivial”, he said. “But right now, we feel like we need to be investing across those, as we wait, fundamentally for the uncertainty of how this is going to play out”. Nonetheless, he remains confident that “it’s going to end at a highly electrified fleet; maybe ultimately completely electrified if we can get the battery costs and energy density right”. But he said: “That’s a destination, and is that 10 years out or is that 30 years out? I don’t think anyone’s crystal ball is good enough to say”. +++
+++ After struggling to compete with the latest electric SUVs for the past few years, the MERCEDES EQC has been dropped from the company’s range. First previewed in 2016 by the Concept EQ and then put into production in 2019, the EQC was Mercedes’ first crack at a mainstream EV and its first pure-electric SUV of any kind. However, it was rushed to market and didn’t use a bespoke electric car platform; instead, the EQC was based on the combustion-engined GLC. This resulted in compromises in several key areas, such as range (which was limited to 410 km), efficiency and interior space. It also led to the EQC weighing around 2,5 tonnes. This all meant the EQC quickly became overshadowed when newer rivals emerged. Competition was limited when the EQC first launched, and really only included the Audi e-Tron (now Q8 e-Tron), Jaguar I-Pace (also going out of production soon) and Tesla Model X. The BMW iX3 and iX arrived a few years later, while other alternatives like the Porsche Macan Electric, Audi Q6 e-Tron and Polestar 4 all launched recently. I’ve already spotted the replacement for the EQC out and about testing, however it’s not due to go on sale until sometime in 2025. Buyers looking for an electric Mercedes SUV are still fairly well catered for in the meantime, with the closest alternative to the EQC being the EQE SUV, which does use a bespoke EV platform and features the company’s latest technology. The EQC’s forthcoming replacement is unlikely to wear the same name, as Mercedes is also dropping the EQ branding for its electric cars. However, the official name of the new model has yet to be revealed. +++
+++ SMART is considering an electric revival of the Roadster sports car, which it made from 2002 to 2005, once it has launched a range of more mainstream electric cars. The brand now sells the #1 and #3 SUVs in Europe and will bring the larger #5 SUV to the market next year while it works to enhance the viability of an electric city car to replace the Fortwo, for which, the firm says, it would need to share a platform with another manufacturer. With that core line-up in place, the brand could start to shift focus to more enthusiast-minded, low-volume propositions and Smart Europe CEO Dirk Adelmann has told a resurrection of the diminutive Roadster sports car is one possibility. Adelmann said that when he and his colleagues were planning the new Smart line-up in around 2020, when China’s Geely acquired a 50% stake in the brand from parent company Mercedes-Benz, “there was one very wild colleague who had the first drawings of a new Roadster”, and the prospect of bringing it to reality hasn’t been written off. “We have three great cars and none of them is a Roadster, but why not?” he said, when asked about the prospect of a comeback. Adelmann had a Roadster as his first company car so has a “very emotional relationship with that vehicle” and pledged that any EV successor would be true to the original’s spirit. “If we do a Roadster, rest assured it will be very compact; for sure a two-seater”, he said. The brand’s current line-up is SUV-focused, but launching an EV sports car with a comparable footprint to the original Roadster (which was just 3.4 meter long and 1.2 meter tall) would go some way to taking Smart back to its roots as a purveyor of characterful and ultra-compact cars for urban environments. It would contrast markedly with the new #5 flagship, for example, which at 4.7 meter long and 1.7 meter tall is almost as big as a Land Rover Defender 110. But Adelmann told the brand’s positioning is less related to the size of its cars and more about their unique design and positioning. “Smart is always unconventional, and I think this is what we again have shown with the #5. Nobody expected that from us. Nobody expected the #1 from us, which is also for Smart a rather big SUV. Nobody expected a SUV-coupé (the #3) from us. But also if you look 20 years back, nobody expected the Crossblade”, referring to the outlandish speedster version of the Fortwo that Smart launched in 2002. “How could we dare to bring such a concept to the road? Smart is much more than the Fortwo”, he said, hinting at the potential for a drastic expansion of the brand’s line-up, which historically was largely centred around its core model. +++
+++ The U.S. Commerce Department plans to issue proposed rules on connected vehicles next month and expects to impose limits on some SOFTWARE MADE IN CHINA and other countries deemed adversaries, a senior official said. “We’re looking at a few components and some software (not the whole car), but it would be some of the key driver components of the vehicle that manage the software and manage the data around that car that would have to be made in an allied country”, said export controls chief Alan Estevez at a forum in Colorado. In May, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said her department planned to issue proposed rules on Chinese-connected vehicles this autumn and had said the Biden administration could take “extreme action” and ban Chinese-connected vehicles or impose restrictions on them after the Biden administration in February launched a probe into whether Chinese vehicle imports posed national security risks. The comments of Estevez, who is the Commerce under secretary for industry and security, are the most definitive to date about the administration’s plans on Chinese vehicles that sparked wide alarm. Connected cars have onboard integrated network hardware that allows internet access, allowing them to share data with devices both inside and outside the vehicle. Estevez said the threat is serious. “A car is a very scary thing. Your car knows a lot about you. Your car probably gets a software update, whether it’s an electric vehicle or an autonomous combustion engine vehicle”, he said. “A modern car has a lot of software in it. It’s taking lots of pictures. It has a drive system. It’s connected to your phone. It knows who you call. It knows where you go. It knows a lot about you”. The Chinese foreign ministry has previously urged the United States “to respect the laws of the market economy and principles of fair competition”. It argues Chinese cars are popular globally because they had emerged out of fierce market competition and are technologically innovative. Raimondo said in May “you can imagine the most catastrophic outcome theoretically if you had a couple million cars on the road and the software were disabled”. There are relatively few imports of Chinese-made light duty vehicles in the United States. The Biden administration has proposed sharp hikes in tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and other goods that they expect to be in place by August 1. +++