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The 2017 Dodge Charger Pursuit will always watch your back

Police cruisers spend the majority of their life parked and idle, waiting for the call to action. A parked car is a vulnerable one, especially when there may be incentive to disable or destroy that vehicle. FCA has worked with InterMotive, Inc., to supply safety technology that will detect movement behind the vehicle through the combined use of radar and the rear-view camera. Even better, FCA is putting this tech in every 2017 Dodge Charger Pursuit at no extra cost. According to InterMotive, the Officer Protection Package is designed to help awareness with an officer is parked and working inside the vehicle. The system will provide an alert if there is anyone moving behind the vehicle to ambush the officer. The system plugs into the OBDII port and is secured under the dash. The device can then be manually switched on. This triggers the rear parking sensors to activate and. If any movement is detected, the officer can look behind the car through the rear-view camera. The system will automatically lock the doors, roll up the windows and flash the taillights. No word on how much the system will cost for non-2017 vehicles, but it is available for order right now. Related Video: News Source: FCA Dodge Technology Police/Emergency

EV cost burden pushing automakers to their limits, says Stellantis' CEO Tavares

DETROIT — Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said external pressure on automakers to quickly shift to electric vehicles potentially threatens jobs and vehicle quality as producers struggle with EVs' higher costs. Governments and investors want car manufacturers to speed up the transition to electric vehicles, but the costs are "beyond the limits" of what the auto industry can sustain, Tavares said in an interview at the Reuters Next conference released Wednesday. "What has been decided is to impose on the automotive industry electrification that brings 50% additional costs against a conventional vehicle," he said. "There is no way we can transfer 50% of additional costs to the final consumer because most parts of the middle class will not be able to pay." Automakers could charge higher prices and sell fewer cars, or accept lower profit margins, Tavares said. Those paths both lead to cutbacks. Union leaders in Europe and North America have warned tens of thousands of jobs could be lost. Automakers need time for testing and ensuring that new technology will work, Tavares said. Pushing to speed that process up "is just going to be counter productive. It will lead to quality problems. It will lead to all sorts of problems," he said. Tavares said Stellantis is aiming to avoid cuts by boosting productivity at a pace far faster than industry norm. "Over the next five years we have to digest 10% productivity a year ... in an industry which is used to delivering 2 to 3% productivity" improvement, he said. "The future will tell us who is going to be able to digest this, and who will fail," Tavares said. "We are putting the industry on the limits." Electric vehicle costs are expected to fall, and analysts project that battery electric vehicles and combustion vehicles could reach cost parity during the second half of this decade. Like other automakers that earn profits from combustion vehicles, Stellantis is under pressure from both establishment automakers such as GM, Ford, VW and Hyundai, as well as start-ups such as Tesla and Rivian. The latter electric vehicle companies are far smaller in terms of vehicle sales and employment. But investors have given Tesla and Rivian higher market valuations than the owner of the highly profitable Jeep and Ram brands. That investor pressure is compounded by government policies aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The European Union, California and other jurisdictions have set goals to end sales of combustion vehicles by 2035.

Detroit Auto Show prankster 'damages' hundreds of thousands of dollars of cars

Obtaining credentials for an auto show is generally a pretty selective process, especially at one of the world's premier shows, like Geneva, Los Angeles or Detroit. That didn't stop online prankster Dennis Roady from getting credentialed for the 2015 North American International Auto Show on behalf of a Russian YouTube channel to cover the show. While he wasn't brought on strictly to cause mischief, Roady couldn't help but have some fun at the expense of the product specialists during the serious business of covering the show. He took to an app called "Dude, Your Car," which allows Apple iPhone users to take snaps of vehicles and then edit them to add some serious, but fake, dents and scratches. Naturally, the pranking session was caught on video, where you can enjoy the sight of poor product specialists freaking out over damage to vehicles ranging from the Mercedes-Maybach S600 to the Audi R8 and a lovely Dodge Challenger. Take a look. News Source: howtoPRANKitup via YouTube, The Detroit News Humor Detroit Auto Show Audi Dodge Mercedes-Benz Coupe Luxury Performance Videos Sedan 2015 Detroit Auto Show prank