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2017 Jeep Compass ads navigate life for Millennials

Jeep kicked off an advertising blitz Thursday for the 2017 Compass, pitching the attractive compact crossover directly at the Millennial generation. The first broadcast spot, called Recalculating, shows young people navigating life's changes, including marriage, children, job moves, and more. A narrator intones "recalculating" – like a GPS – at each life moment during the 60-second ad. Naturally, a Compass would be a logical ride for all of these milestones, Jeep suggests. "We expect its message of life's journey moving us in many directions to resonate with our Millennial audience while staying true to the Jeep brand's core value of freedom," Oliver Francois, Fiat Chrysler's chief marketing officer, said in a statement. The campaign will be shown during Saturday Night Live, Modern Family, and other popular television shows. Print versions will also appear in national magazines, and the campaign will include digital, cinema, and experiential elements. The blitz began in North America, but it will be a global marketing effort as the Compass is sold in a wide range of regions. The ads will be customized for local audiences. Four more 30-second spots are planned for launch in May. An FCA US spokesperson declined to provide a monetary value for the campaign. The Compass will also be a featured vehicle at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in June in Tennessee. Additionally, FCA US will showcase the vehicle outside its headquarters in Auburn Hills, Mich., with a multi-story wrap on the building (replacing the current Chrysler Pacifica hybrid wrap). The Compass, which is on sale now, is receiving positive reviews for its updated styling that echoes the Grand Cherokee, increased storage space, and off-road capability. Hawking the Compass toward the Millennial generation, which is young people in their 20s to mid-30s, is a logical move for Jeep, as the group is beginning to display increased buying power. The Compass is one of Jeep's entry points. Customers could then theoretically stay with the brand as they age and their families grow, moving up to larger and more expensive vehicles, a longtime strategy employed by automakers. Related Video:

2018 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Alaska Cannonball | Oregon is on fire

Our man Jonathon Ramsey is driving a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon on a 14-week, 14,000 mile journey across North America. Check out his first, second, and third installments.Port Orford, Ore. – On arrival at Battle Rock, just off the southern coast of Oregon, I had completed the (other) Trans-America Trail. It's a worthy Bucket List endeavor even before you get to the bits that challenge a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. The first tests came in western Oklahoma, tiptoeing through and around swampy farmland. Once I got to Colorado, the difficulty scale increased with each day's driving. By the time I hit wildfires and constant detours in Oregon, I was ready for the trail to end. Here are a few more notes from the last half: When I filled up in Columbia, North Carolina just before getting to Oregon Inlet, the odometer showed 12,294 miles. When I filled up in Port Orford before heading north to Seattle, the odo read 18,008, for nearly 6,000 miles in three weeks. GPSKevin says his trail covers 5,184 miles, but detours are an unavoidable part of the experience. Utah wins my vote for the widest variety of beauty. Crossing into southeastern Utah from Colorado, the landscape is full of desert farms and endless visibility to mountains at the ends of the Earth in Monticello. It's plush high plains greenery on the way up and down Geyser Pass, then the rocky red pioneer-killing cauldron of The Spanish Valley and Moab. Scrub-filled rock formations stretch to Salina, then back up to verdant forests in both halves of Fishlake National Forest. A final rocky stretch west of Sevier, Utah fell into a rolling golden land past Black Rock, another trip into sparer mountains, then the final comedown to Baker, Nevada. Moab gets all the Jeep love, but there's plenty of fun all over the state. In Ely, Nevada I met a Harley rider headed east out of Oregon who told me, "It's all on fire. Whole state. On fire." The haze began not long after leaving Ely. By the time I departed Battle Mountain, Nevada hills showed their own scorched-earth scars, and science-fiction gray skies hid entire mountain chains. Detours were already longer and lengthier in the West because of closed roads, locked gates, and "No Tresspassing" signs. Now fire-centric detours and turnarounds joined the routine. The last day on the trail in Oregon, a 114-mile route from Glendale, through the Rogue River Siskiyou National Forest to Port Orford, was the hardest.

Stellantis and LG launch joint venture for North American battery plant

Stellantis has struck a preliminary deal with battery maker LG Energy Solution (LGES) to produce battery cells and modules for North America, as the world's No. 4 automaker rolls out its 30 billion euro ($35 billion) electrification plan. Global automakers are investing billions of euros to accelerate a transition to low-emission mobility and prepare for a progressive phase-out of internal combustion engines. Stellantis and LGES's joint venture will produce battery cells and modules at a new facility with an annual capacity of 40 gigawatt hours (GWh), the two firms said on Monday. No financial details of the deal were provided. The plant is scheduled to start production by the first quarter of 2024, with groundbreaking expected in the second quarter of 2022, the companies said in their statement. Its location is under review and will be announced later. Stellantis, formed in January from the merger of Italian-American automaker Fiat Chrysler and France's PSA, has said it wants to secure more than 130 GWh of global battery capacity by 2025 and more than 260 GWh by 2030. The batteries produced under the deal will supply Stellantis' U.S., Canadian and Mexican assembly plants for installation in hybrid and fully electric vehicles, supporting its goal of e-vehicles making up more than 40% of its U.S. sales by 2030. The company, whose brands include Peugeot, Fiat, Opel and U.S. best-sellers Jeep and Ram, earlier this year announced it would invest more than 30 billion euros through 2025 on electrifying its vehicle lineup. Stellantis has said it would build three battery plants in Europe and two in North America, including at least one in the United States. Intesa Sanpaolo analyst Monica Bosio said the deal was positive, and a further step ahead in Stellantis' electrification process. It comes weeks after Stellantis and its partner TotalEnergies agreed to open up their battery cell joint venture ACC to Daimler, to expand their European sourcing of battery cells. Stellantis is also targeting more than 70% of sales in Europe to be of low-emission vehicles by 2030, and aims to make the total cost of owning an EV equal to that of a gasoline-powered model by 2026. Related video: Green Plants/Manufacturing Alfa Romeo Chrysler Dodge Ferrari Fiat Jeep Maserati RAM Citroen Lancia Opel Peugeot Vauxhall Electric Hybrid EV batteries LG