2010 Audi Q7 4.2 Prestige Quattro on 2040-cars

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Recharge Wrap-up: Atieva making EV with former Tesla talent, Holland lowers PHEV incentives

A reduction of tax incentives on company cars in Holland is expected to put the brakes on plug-in hybrid sales. Cars are taxed at an average of 25 percent, with plug-in hybrids taxed at just seven or 14 percent, depending on emissions. Taxes on PHEV company cars will increase to 14 and 21 percent. With company car leases making up a third of vehicle sales in 2014, the uptake on PHEVs "will likely go back to regular volumes," according to Volvo's Christiaan Krouwel. It could be a boon for battery electric cars, as their tax rate will remain at four percent for company cars. Read more at Automotive News Europe. Ford is testing cylinder deactivation in its 1.0-liter EcoBoost engine. On-road prototype testing has shown improvements in fuel economy of as much as six percent. Ford engineers developed a system using a new dual mass flywheel, pendulum absorber, and tuned clutch disc to allow cylinder deactivation under a wider range of speed and engine loads with less NVH. "The highest priority in the development of new combustion engines for automotive applications is the ongoing reduction of fuel consumption," says Ford's Andreas Schamel, presenting Ford's findings to the Vienna Motor Symposium. Read more at Green Car Congress or in the press release from Ford. Atieva is building an EV with the help of numerous former Tesla employees. The Silicon Valley-based startup was founded in 2007 by a former Tesla vice president, and its roster includes 12 other former Tesla employees. Already well funded, Atieva is now looking to fill its ranks with more talent, with 32 engineering positions, two recruiter positions and other job openings posted at its website. As for the EV it is working on, Atieva says it is "redefining what a car can be, by building an iconic new vehicle from the ground up." Read more at Charged EVs. Testing shows that Joule ethanol, made from recycled CO2, meets standards for use in the US and Europe. In partnership with Audi, Joule has been working toward making its recycled CO2 fuels ready for commercialization. "We are pleased to achieve another critical step towards our planned near-term delivery of fuel-grade ethanol from recycled CO2," says Joule President and CEO Serge Tchuruk. "Using waste CO2 as a feedstock, our technology has the two-fold advantage of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and producing cost-competitive, drop-in fuels." Joule will use these test results to get government approval for the use of its ethanol in highway fuel.

2017 Audi S4 First Drive

For all its power and easy performance, the best thing about the last Audi S4 was its uncanny ability to act like a normal (but very high-spec) A4 for most of its life. Then, when you needed or wanted a bit more speed or a bit more grip, you pushed a button or opened the tap and it became something else. It became a thing with more grip, more poise, more focus, and more gristle, but the changeover between the two S4 characters was seamless. That doesn't seem to be the case with the new one. The latest, B9 A4 has been well received and is probably the best mid-sized premium car out there, so that should have left the S4 a simple job to become the best warmed-up premium mid-sizer. It hasn't quite happened like that. The spec sheet suggests the S4 should come out on top in the fight with the BMW 340i and the Mercedes-AMG C43, but the numbers aren't everything. The engine seems impressive on paper; the all-new EA838 3.0-liter turbocharged V6 was jointly developed with Porsche (and it's closely related to Porsche's next V8, with which it will share non-internal bits like the camshaft chain). The 60-degree V6 weighs 31 pounds less than the old S4's supercharged V6, and it's replete with variable valve timing and lift, centrally mounted fuel injectors, and both direct and indirect fuel injection. That gives it 354 horsepower at 5400-6400 rpm (up 6.5 percent) and 369 pound-feet of torque from 1,370 to 4,500 rpm. That gives it a peak 44 lb-ft higher than the old one, spread across a band 600 revs broader. At 2,000 rpm, where drivers live every traffic light, it has another 74 pound-feet. That's enough motivation to move to 62 mph in 4.7 seconds. There's a new all-wheel-drive system that usually shoots 60 percent of the torque to the back but can ramp that up to 85 percent when it needs to, or it can swing it around to fire more than 70 percent to the front axle. The category benchmarks suggest turbocharged 3.0-liter gasoline sixes are the thing to have, with the Mercedes-AMG C43 using one, the 340i BMW having one (though it's straight), and Maserati's Ghibli also using one. The oddball is Jaguar's XE S, which uses a supercharger. You know, like Audi just ditched. The S4 trumps all but the C43 on power (the nine-speed Benz has 362 hp). While it ties the Ghibli for torque, it again trails the Benz (by 15 lb-ft) though its torque peak hits far earlier (the Benz waits until 2,000 rpm).

Dysfunctional dashboards: Auto suppliers competing to clean up the cockpit

SAN FRANCISCO - Peer at the instrument panel on your new car and you see sleek digital gauges and multicolored screens. But behind the dashboard, here's what US auto supplier Visteon Corp found: a mess. As automotive cockpits become crammed with ever more digital features such as navigation and entertainment systems, the electronics holding it all together have become a rat's nest of components made by different parts makers. Now the race is on to clean up the clutter. Visteon is among a slew of suppliers aiming to make dashboard innards simpler, cheaper and lighter as the industry accelerates toward a so-called virtual cockpit - an all-digital dashboard that will help usher in the era of self-driving cars. What's at stake is a piece of the $37 billion cockpit electronics market, estimated by research firm IHS Market to nearly double to $62 billion by 2022. Accounting firm PwC estimates that electronics could account for up to 20 percent of a car's value in the next two years, up from 13 percent in 2015. Meanwhile, the number of suppliers for those components is likely to dwindle as automakers look to work with fewer companies capable of doing more, according to Mark Boyadjis, principal automotive analyst at IHS Markit. "The complexity of engineering 10 different systems from 10 different suppliers is no longer something an automaker wants to do," Boyadjis said. He estimates manufacturers eventually will work with two to three cockpit suppliers for each model, down from six to 10 today. DIGITAL MAKEOVER One of Visteon's solutions is a computer module dubbed "SmartCore." This cockpit domain controller operates a vehicle's instrument cluster, infotainment system and other features, all on the same tiny piece of silicon. So far this year, the Detroit-based company has landed two big contracts for undisclosed sums. One, announced in April, is with China's second-largest automaker, Dongfeng Motor Corp. The other is with Mercedes-Benz, Reuters has learned. Mercedes did not respond to requests for comment. Another unnamed European automaker plans to use the system in 2018, according to Visteon. Visteon is going all-in on cockpit electronics, having shed its remaining automotive climate and interiors businesses in 2016. The bet so far is paying off. The company secured $1.5 billion in new business in the first quarter, helped by growth in China. Visteon's stock price is up more than 50 percent over the past year.