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Audi's Project Artemis woes could delay range of VW Group EVs

Two years ago, Audi's then new CEO Markus Duesmann announced his first big initiative called Project Artemis. The plan's marquee component is "to implement a new lighthouse project for Audi in record time," being "a highly efficient electric car scheduled to be on the road as early as 2024" on a brand new platform that would be shared with Porsche and Bentley. An ex-VW and -Porsche man named Alex Hitzinger, who'd also spent time at Apple working on the tech company's electric car, was brought on board to lead Project Artemis and come up with new ideas. Parent Volkswagen Group said it wanted to become "as agile as in a racing team," removing the bureaucratic molasses and bottlenecks interfering with getting the best product on the road in the best time. However, in any grand venture, failure comes before success. Automobilwoche reports that Artemis is struggling through issues large enough to push the product plans back by years. The issue, as it was with the ID.3 lineup on the eve of that car's launch, is software. Well, that's the latest, largest problem; Artemis has already been through copious struggles before getting to the software bit. Two months after Hitzinger came on, in December 2020, VW raised its EV volume target from 50% to 70% by 2030. That necessitated a rethink of the VW Group's entire platform strategy considering the far greater production scale. Hitzinger only lasted six months in the job, ousted in May 2021, supposedly because Audi believed his ideas were "not suitable for profitable series production" among other reasons. By that time, the pace of software development was already said to be six months behind schedule, with the Car.Software division working on VW.OS 2.0 "not yet running at the speed hoped for." Internal frictions were noteworthy and costly as well. VW's commercial division plant in Hanover was meant to build Artemis vehicles for Audi, Porsche and Bentley, but Automobilwoche reported in January of this year that Porsche paid a ""small three-digit million amount" — like $100 million or so — to get out of the deal mandating its vehicles come from the Hanover facility.    So Audi effectively brought Artemis in-house to lead vehicle development, and Car.Software turned into Cariad to get VW.OS and VW.AC, which stands for Automotive Cloud, to market.  The first Audi vehicle under Project Artemis was planned to arrive by the end of 2024, a production version of the Grandsphere concept.

2020 Bentley Continental GT plug-in hybrid spied undisguised

While at first, and even second glance, the Bentley Continental GT in the photos looks pretty unremarkable. In every sense, it's just a normal example of the latest Continental GT. On that third glance, though, you'll notice one extremely subtle detail that's off: it has a second fuel-filler door. That leads us to believe that Bentley has a plug-in hybrid version of the Continental GT on the way, and it's almost ready for production. And when we say this is a subtle change, we mean it. Unlike many PHEVs that have both filler doors on one side, this Bentley has one door per side. So from the side, there's nothing to tip you off to the strange addition. You can only notice the extra door from the rear, which shows both doors on the tops of the rear fenders. Either that, or you would have to know that the regular Continental GT's gasoline fuel door is on the right side of the car, not the left. As for what sort of hybrid powertrain is in this Continental GT, we would suspect it's the same as that in the Bentayga Hybrid revealed at the Geneva Motor Show earlier this year. It uses a turbocharged 3.0-liter V6 with an electric motor. Power and fuel economy haven't been announced for that powertrain, but Bentley says it is capable of driving the big SUV for 31 miles on a charge on the European cycle. We would expect the lighter, more aerodynamic Continental GT could probably eke out a few more mpg with the same setup. Considering that this test car was completely undisguised, and that it will likely use an existing powertrain, we expect this hybrid Bentley to be officially revealed soon. An announcement early next year with sales coming later that year seems plausible. Related Video: Featured Gallery 2020 Bentley Continental GT plug-in hybrid spy shots View 11 Photos Image Credit: CarPix Green Spy Photos Bentley Coupe Hybrid Luxury Performance bentley hybrid

Salvage team boards burnt ship Felicity Ace off Azores, towing begins

LISBON — More than a week after a ship packed with around 4,000 vehicles, including Porsches, Audis, Lamborghinis and Bentleys, caught fire in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, a salvage team managed to board the vessel on Friday and started to tow it to a safe location off the Portuguese Azores archipelago. In a statement, ship manager Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd (MOL) said the Felicity Ace remained stable, and the smoke that for days billowed from the vessel, adrift around 170 km southwest of the Azores, had stopped. The 22 crew members of the Panama-flagged Felicity Ace, which was carrying around 4,000 vehicles including Porsches, Audis and Bentleys from Germany to the United States, were evacuated last Wednesday, the day the fire broke out. Some of the vehicles are electric and their lithium-ion batteries have made the fire very difficult to extinguish, port officials have said. Previous attempts to board the ship to assess its condition and start preparing it for towing had failed due to the fire and rough seas. On Friday, the team was able to board by helicopter and the salvage boat Bear started towing the vessel to a "safe area off Azores," the ship manager said. It was not clear where exactly the vessel was being towed to. It was being escorted by two tug boats and another salvage craft equipped with firefighting gear, MOL said. Related video: Image Credit: Portuguese Navy (Marinha Portuguesa) via Reuters Green Weird Car News Audi Bentley Lamborghini Porsche Electric fire car fire shipping cargo ship