1965 Fiat 500 on 2040-cars

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VW walks away from Aurora after self-driving startup partners with FCA

BERLIN — Volkswagen has ended its partnership with self-driving car software firm Aurora, two days after the Silicon Valley start-up said it would build autonomous platforms for commercial vehicles with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. "The activities under our partnership have been concluded," a VW spokesman said in a statement on Tuesday following an earlier Financial Times report on the move which said VW now wanted to work with Ford Motor Co on autonomous driving. Ford's majority-owned subsidiary Argo AI is building an automated "driver" that could compete with Aurora's technology. Aurora said Tuesday "Volkswagen Group has been a wonderful partner to Aurora since the early days of development of the Aurora Driver." The company's statement added that it continues to work "with a growing array of partners." The autonomous vehicle industry is still in its infancy, and alliances and strategies are fluid. Aurora has sought to remain independent and serve a number of would-be autonomous vehicle makers rather than be acquired. Aurora, which said in February it had raised $530 million in new funding, also has partnerships with Hyundai Motor Co and China's Byton to develop and test self-driving systems for automakers, fleet owners and others. After announcing its partnership with Aurora in early 2018, VW last June began discussions with Ford to develop a range of commercial vehicles, later extending the discussions to include electric vehicles and Argo's autonomous driving technology as part of an alliance designed to save billions in costs. VW and Ford have not announced partnerships involving electric or autonomous vehicle technology. Green Chrysler Fiat Ford Volkswagen Technology Emerging Technologies Autonomous Vehicles

Fiat 500X teased in creepy new video

Fiat is bringing a new variant of its 500 family to the 2014 Paris Motor Show, and as its debut approaches, the tempo of teaser releases is increasing. Earlier this month, we showed you heavily blurred video of the new 500X from a variety of angles. Today, we have a pretty strange spot that actually gives us some unobscured looks at the new compact crossover.
The odd teaser shows a woman on a swing in an abandoned city. If that's not odd enough, she's reciting the ABCs in the sort of sing-song manner generally reserved for possessed children in horror films. Then the 500X arrives.
While we do get a full look at the car's face, the majority of styling cues that we can see don't reveal much that we didn't know. The fascia isn't too dissimilar from the 500L, aside from its soft-road styling features, while the tail boasts a wide set of vertical taillights.

2015 Fiat 500L Living [w/video]

Turning The World's Largest Fiat Into A Larger Three-Row MPV
We've explored every offering of the Fiat 500 family meant for the United States, plus all of the Abarth variations. But the 500 now also comes super-sized; we recently attended a drive of the larger 2014 Fiat 500L people-mover and its Trekking edition, and found them both to be generally enjoyable. We Americans, however, are suckers for anything that comes in an even bigger size than Large, so witness this Fiat 500L Living, which will be landing on our shores sometime in late 2014.
The essential benefit here is that this 500L is bigger (i.e. longer) by 8.3 inches, thereby adding cargo space and, to our eyes, filling out the natural profile of the slightly scrunched design of the standard 500L. You can maximize your 500L Living cargo space to 59.7 cubic feet by knocking down all the seats, or you can opt for the "+2" seating arrangement that sacrifices 3.5 cubic feet of volume for a tantalizing third row of chairs that seems to turn some consumers into dogs of Pavlov, no matter the degree of usefulness of said added row.