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Hybrid, electric campers take center stage at Germany's motorhome trade show

Car companies from all over the automotive spectrum will make international headlines next week by presenting hybrid and electric cars at the biennial Frankfurt auto show. Camper van and motorhome manufacturers got a head start on the rest of the industry by presenting their green solutions at the Dusseldorf Caravan Salon. The show confirms electrification is present in the leisure segment, too. German camper experts Dethleffs introduced a plug-in hybrid, pop-top camper based on the full-size Ford Transit van. Called Globevan e.Hybrid, it relies on a 126-horsepower drivetrain built around a turbocharged, 1.0-liter EcoBoost three-cylinder engine. The system can power the camper on electricity alone for up to 31 miles. Adventurers who leave with a full tank and a full charge enjoy 310 miles of driving range, which is an impressive figure for the camper van segment. Charging the battery pack takes 5.5 hours when using a regular household outlet, according to the manufacturer, or three hours when hooking it up to a quick-charging station. Globevan production is tentatively scheduled to begin in 2020, and pricing starts at 75,000 euros, a sum that represents approximately $83,000. EFA-S took electrification a step further. Starting with a Fiat Ducato, a van known as the Ram Promaster in the United States, it yanked out the turbodiesel engine and replaced it with a 140-kilowatt electric motor fed by an 86-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack. The company pegs the camper's driving range at up to 186 miles, a relatively low figure which hardly reflects how most vacationers use their van. The pack takes four hours to charge, Auto Motor und Sport learned. While sustainable, zero-emissions tourism is difficult to argue against, the Ducato-based camper suffers from two serious setbacks. First, the battery pack makes it so heavy that it can't be driven with a regular license. It's considered a heavy commercial vehicle. Second, its 160,000-euro (about $177,000) price tag makes it twice as expensive as a diesel-burning model, and puts it in the same price range as much bigger, more powerful, and more luxurious models. EFA-S will nonetheless move forward with production in 2020, though it plans to build no more than 30 units. The caravan Salon is not only about hybrids and electric cars, however.

Ford pulling out of V8 Supercars after 2015

Australian racing fans are staring down the end of an era as news breaks that Ford will no longer participate in the V8 Supercars series. Although the official announcement has yet to be made, the decision – as reported widely in the automotive press Down Under and in global motorsport publications – indicates that the Blue Oval automaker has already confirmed its intentions to its shareholders early on Monday to shut down its factory effort in the popular tin-top series at the end of next season. The move will mark the end of an era for what has become the International V8 Supercars Championship. Alongside GM's Holden division, Ford was one of only two manufacturers competing in the series from its inception in the late 1990s through last year when a change in regulations opened the door for entries from Nissan, Volvo and Mercedes. Further rule changes are expected to attract even more manufacturers to the series, with Lexus said to be first among them. Over the past eighteen seasons, the V8 Supercars Championship has been won in a Holden Commodore fourteen times, leaving Ford to win the title only four times with successive versions of the Falcon. Eleven of the cars on the grid this season were Commodores, compared to only seven Ford Falcons between two teams that will need to switch to another manufacturer for the season after next – although some could opt to stick with their Fords for one more season, even without factory support, until the open 2016 regulations take effect. The decision follows Ford's announcement last year that it will cease manufacturing in Australia by 2016, ending a 90-year presence Down Under that stretches back to 1925. Blue Oval models like the Falcon, previously unique to the Aussie market, are being replaced by imported models like the Mondeo and Mustang.

Daily Driver: 2015 Ford Edge Sport

Daily Driver videos are micro-reviews of vehicles in the Autoblog press fleet, reviewed by the staffers that drive them every day. Today's Daily Driver features the 2015 Ford Edge Sport, reviewed by Adam Morath. You can watch the video above or read a transcript below. Watch more Autoblog videos at /videos. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Hi. I'm Adam Morath for Autoblog and in today's Daily Driver we're with the 2015 Ford Edge. It's been completely redesigned and I really think that it needed it because this was always kind of the last car to come to mind when I was considering all of Ford's lineup. It was sort of forgotten. I don't think that will be the case anymore. It looks great. They revamped the exterior. The first thing I noticed walking up to the car when they first dropped it off was [00:00:30] the great job they've done with the taillights. They've got a very high tech look to them. You have LED accent lighting that surrounds the tail lamps and then a light bar that spans the entire deck lid. It looks pretty cool, very angular, a lot sportier than the previous models. We also have the optional HID headlights so if you combine that with what I've already told you about with the [00:01:00] tail lamps, and also the ambient lighting inside this vehicle ... It just feels like the lighting in general was very well considered on the Edge and gives it a very modern feel. The nice design continues to the interior as well. You've got leather panels with contrast stitching on the sport model. You've got a nice center console that actually has some storage underneath it, so it's sort of a floating center console. The only thing is there is still a little bit of cheap plastic [00:01:30] used on the interior. That's a common complaint of automotive journalists worldwide, but this one I can see already has a few scratches on it. You can also get this vehicle with 20-inch aluminum wheels or 21-inch matte black aluminum wheels. Here we've got them wrapped in Perelli. I haven't been on a track or anything where you could really get a sense of the performance, but again, that just adds to the sporty look of the Edge in the sport trim level. It has the new 2.7 [00:02:00] liter Eco Boost V6 and I have been really happy with this powertrain. It puts out 315 horsepower, 350 pound feet of torque, and that's that twin turbo working for you. It helps with acceleration and passing at highway speed, so it checks both boxes there.