1971 Dodge Dart on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Stellantis and LG announce Canadian EV battery joint venture

SEOUL — South Korean battery giant LG Energy Solution (LGES) said on Wednesday it plans to invest $1.5 billion to set up a joint venture with Stellantis in Canada. LGES owns 51% of the joint venture, tentatively named "LGES-STLA JV" and Stellantis owns 49%, LGES said in a regulatory filing. In October, LGES and Stellantis NV struck an electric vehicle (EV) battery production joint venture, targeting to start production by the first quarter of 2024 and aiming to have an annual production capacity of 40 gigawatt hours of batteries. In a separate regulatory filing, LGES said it plans to acquire a stake worth $542 million in ES America to respond to demand from EV startups in the United States. LGES is considering building a factory in Arizona to meet demand in the United States, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, adding that the plant is expected to primarily produce cylindrical battery cells. LGES has its own factory in Michigan and two battery joint ventures with General Motors in Ohio and Tennessee. "We are considering a new production site, but nothing has been decided yet," said a spokesperson at LGES. LGES, which counts Tesla, GM and Volkswagen among its customers, currently has battery production sites in the United States, China, Poland, Indonesia and South Korea. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Green Plants/Manufacturing Chrysler Dodge Fiat Jeep RAM Electric

Junkyard Gem: 1988 Dodge Diplomat Salon

Except for the Viper, Prowler, and some Mitsubishi-derived AWD machines, all Chrysler cars went front-wheel-drive starting in the 1990 model year and continued that way until our current century. The last holdout was the Dodge Diplomat (and its Plymouth Gran Fury and Chrysler Fifth Avenue siblings), and these cars were the most common police cruisers in America throughout most of the 1980s and well into the 1990s. You won't see many Diplomats today, but I found this high-luxe civilian Salon version in my local Denver self-service yard. This one was purchased new in Cheyenne, which is just up I-25 from Denver. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. A Diplomat was one of the automotive protagonists in the classic car-chase scene from the 1990 film, Short Time. Diplomats have figured heavily in many films over the years. I got my first driver's license in 1982, in a Navy town with ruthless Diplomat-equipped traffic-law enforcement, and so my right foot still twitches in the direction of a brake pedal when I see this grille. This one was full of Denver-centric ephemera from the early-to-middle 1990s, layered with the shredded paper and rodent poop that indicates long-term outdoor storage, so I'm guessing that the car's elderly owner stopped driving it 20 years ago and it sat until finally evicted by an angry landlord. These cars weren't known for being particularly quick in stock form. This one has the carbureted 318-cubic-inch V8 (yes, some cars still had carburetors as late as 1988), good for 140 horsepower. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Fiendishly seductive! Related Video:

40+ cars that barely avoid the gas guzzler tax

The Gas Guzzler schedule, with mpg ratings and charges that haven't changed since 1991, lays out which fuel-swillers owe what to Uncle Sam.
I started thinking about the "Gas Guzzler Tax" - considerably less well known as The Energy Tax Act of 1978 - when I was driving Dodge's new Challenger SRT Hellcat last week. Unsurprisingly for a car that can burn 1.5 gallons of gas per minute at max tilt, theoretically able to empty a full tank of premium in about 13 minutes, the Hellcat will be subject to the Gas Guzzler Tax schedule when it goes on sale.