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alliwantismakeup · 4 years

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Kia Optima Designs, Prices and Ratings

Kia Optima Convertible Idea The kia optima convertible idea was shown in 2015; a 4-door concept vehicle comparable to the kia optima sedan without a roof and rear-hinged doors for the rear travelers in place of the front-hinged doors of the production vehicle. Used Kia Optima for sale across the country Generation cars and trucks were mainly marketed as the optima, although the kia magentis name was utilized in europe and canada when sales began there in 2002. Desire in your area? consider a broader search. Discover a new kia optima for sale - 2 good deals out of 20 listings starting at $22,502. Find a Used Kia Optima Near Me Shop edmunds' vehicle, suv, and truck listings. Of over 6 million vehicles to discover a cheap brand-new, used, or licensed previously owned (cpo) 2020 kia optima for. Evaluating discovers pedestrian detection systems differ commonly in crash security. 2019 kia optima: 5 things we like (and 4 things suboptimal). Utilized Kia Optima by Year Edmunds professionals have actually put together a robust series of ratings and reviews for the 2020 kia optima and all design years in our database. The kia optima is all-new for the 2021 model year and while it's still not readily available in the united states, it will practically look like its kdm equivalent when it arrives. 2020 Kia Optima pricing The kia optima is a feature-packed midsize sedan with a stylish spirit. According to edmunds, competitive pricing, a host of newly standard features and a robust warranty keep the optima in the running for top-of-class honors for 2019, it's offered in 4 trim levels: lx, s, ex, and sx turbo. 2020 Kia Optima Evaluation 6l 4cyl turbo 7am). What do individuals think about the 2020 kia optima?. Customer ratings and reviews are also offered for. What we believe. In a 2016 first test evaluation of the kia optima sxl 2. More about the 2020 Kia Optima The kia optima is a mid-size car produced by kia motors considering that 2000 and marketed worldwide through numerous nameplates. For almost two decades, the kia optima has actually been the go-to option for buyers who require an economical yet accommodating sedan. Associated 2020 Kia Optima info Glassman kia is delighted to be serving auburn hills clinton municipality detroit clients with info about the brand new kia optima. The 2020 kia optima offers some good connectivity features across its trim levels. The infotainment system is easy to use, and the quality of the screens is well worth it. Read what other owners consider the 2020 Kia Optima. Learn more. 2013-2014 kia optima: recall alert. What's the best new-car deal for february 2020?. The 5-seat cabin of kia's midsize optima sx sedan is enhanced with premium materials, a huge glove box, easy-to-read assesses and a great-sounding 10-speaker harman kardon audio system. Kia Optima vs. Hyundai Sonata From 2000 - 2005 optimas were a rebadged version of the hyundai sonata, differing just from the sonata in small outside styling details and equipment content. The optima shares both this engine and its eight-speed automatic transmission with the revamped hyundai sonata. Kia Optima vs. Honda Accord All optimas have the very same $925 destination charge. For comparison, a 2019 honda accord hybrid begins at $25,320, while a 2019 toyota camry hybrid starts at $28,400. Based on our experience driving an optima on the streets and highways surrounding south korea's capital of seoul, we do not think it's most likely to take over the honda accord or mazda 6 as the de-facto choices for driver engagement. Kia Optima vs. Kia Strength Vehicle summary. The midsize kia optima sedan slots above the subcompact rio sedan and hatchback, compact soul hatchback, compact specialty sedan, forte5 hatchback, and strength koup coupe and listed below the full-size cadenza and rear-drive k900 sedans in the automaker's passenger car lineup. Vehicle summary. The midsize optima slots right in the middle of kia's sedan lineup, above the smaller sized rio and forte but listed below the bigger and more costly cadenza, upcoming stinger four-door hatchback, and k900. Other designs to consider Kia motors reserves the right to make changes at any time as to vehicle accessibility, destination, and handling fees, colors, products, specifications, functions, devices, plans and designs. 2010 models see the addition of a distance secret with push-button start and paddle shifters on sx designs. 2020 Kia Optima Summary Vehicle overview. Three engine choices are readily available for the 2016 kia optima including a new 1. Introduction. The 2017 kia optima sedan is equipped with a standard 2. 4-liter i-4 that produces 185 hp and 178 lb-ft of torque and paired to a six-speed automatic that provides an epa-rated 25/36 mpg city/highway for the base lx trim and 24/34 for the ex trim. What do people consider the 2020 Kia Optima? When it pertains to impressing individuals, the 2020 kia optima is definitely a more secure family sedan when you factor in the available safety functions. What's a great cost for a New 2020 Kia Optima? The 2020 kia optima lx 2. 4 has a maker's suggested market price (msrp) of $23,390. The optima is kia's entry into the mid-size sedan market. Its goal is to use much of the very same upscale features, performance, and quality, but at a lower cost than comparable competitors. Should I rent or purchase a 2020 Kia Optima? Purchase/lease of a new 2020 kia optima vehicle with uvo link consists of a complimentary one year membership beginning with new vehicle retail sale/lease date as recorded by the dealer. Well Geared Up With Requirement Characteristics 4l engine, and the ex comes solely with the 1. 6l turbo engine equipped with newly standard functions such as adaptive cruise control and led fog lights. Do you own a Kia Optima? The 2020 kia optima is a midsize sedan sold in 4 trim levels. The base lx comes requirement with apple carplay, android auto and a ton of advanced safety devices. The 2020 kia optima is offered in the following submodels: optima sedan Offered styles consist of lx 4dr sedan. All Kia Optima Trims By Year What's the best new-car deal for october 2019?. 2020 kia optima trims. Kia niro plug-in hybrid. Last year, in 2019, the optima was upgraded with a new front fascia (with led running lights) that shows a clear dna link to the stylish rear-wheel-drive kia stinger, so little has altered for 2020. 2020 Kia Optima Professional Evaluation Our abundant content consists of professional evaluations and recommendations for the 2020 optima featuring deep dives into trim levels and features, performance, mpg, security, interior, and driving. Back in october 2019, kia provided us a shadowy preview of what we must anticipate from the brand new 2021 optima. 2020 Kia Optima Security Requirement security suite. The suite of basic safety innovations on all 2020 kia optimas is detailed. Security is the order of business at kia, and that's why they have actually developed the optima out of advanced high strength steel that takes in energy at 16 core body locations. # 3 in Best Midsize Cars of 2020 Despite the fact that americans seem trading in cars for good, the midsize family sedan looks much better than it's ever been. It definitely didn't feel even worse than other midsize cars and trucks i have actually remained in recently. Headroom is likewise good, even with the breathtaking moonroof on the sxl i drove. Driving the 2020 Kia Optima The newly redesigned 2016 kia optima, with its blend of driving dynamics and a well-thought-out interior, stays competitive in the definitely cutthroat midsize sedan field. 2020 Kia Optima Interior Kia completely upgraded the optima for 2021, with a bolder exterior and a genuinely luxurious interior. But the kia prevents the mazda's conservative, minimalist styling. A good-looking strip of matte synthetic wood and leather dominates the dash and isn't abnormal in today's market, however like the exterior, little touches both in regards to style and design to help the optima's interior stick out. 2020 Kia Optima Outside Kia didn't make many modifications on the optima's outside, however what they've done is bring a few minor design changes into the mix and create a more exciting and sportier optima in 2020. 2020 Kia Optima Requirement Features The updated optima was used with a brand-new 2. 7l engine, 4-speed automatic (the handbook was dropped), and features such as full leather interior and alloy wheels were made requirement. Can i get led headlights on a 2020 kia optima?. While led headlights aren't available on the lx, s and ex designs, they are basic on the sporty optima sx. 2020 Kia Optima Options I wish there were smaller alternatives, like a vw jetta hybrid with the performance of the kia optima hybrid. In a world of suvs the kia optima sportswagon stands out as one of a decreasing variety of options that are excellent to take a look at and fully equipped. 2020 Kia Optima Engine That's thanks in no small part to the optima's now more rakish profile. Kia minimized the three-box style common of sedans and the three boxes are the trunk, cabin, and engine bay in favor of a sleeker tail. The kia optima lx and s models are powered by a 2. 4-liter 4-cylinder engine that sends 185 horsepower to the front wheels via a 6-speed automatic transmission. Net output: 202 horsepower/276 lb-ft of torque. Epa city/highway fuel economy: 41 mpg combined. How much does the 2020 kia optima cost?.

#kia #optima #car

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iratefate · 6 years

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2020 Ford Lariat Price, Review and Specs

New Post has been published on http://usaford-cars.com/2020-ford-lariat-price-review-and-specs/

2020 Ford Lariat Price, Review and Specs

2020 Ford Lariat Price, Review and Specs – Don’t ignore the former times when a design was envisioned to have pickup truck models for practically a decade? Correctly, that is old background. With truck income carrying on with to exceed person cars-Ford acquired more than 820,000 F-series trucks by 2016, more than 2x the revenue of Toyota Camry, the biggest-supporting traveler car company has a fascination to maintain the car new. That implies a faster daily living period with plenty of revisions between.

2020 Ford Lariat Price

Ford is not going to get threats with lightweight aluminum cow finances. Just a few fast an extended period immediately after the new Ford F-150 debuted at the Detroit 2014 auto show; the automaker has presented its styling as before long as and up to date powertrains, this sort of as releasing diesel to the food selection for the 1st time. Ford reaffirmed its promise of a robust hybrid pickup vehicle with the latest state of the Ford F-150 Hybrid, which ought to attain the market by 2020. Specs are however scarce. We have no idea correctly which powertrain blend to utilize the F-150 Hybrid. Ford described that the F-150 electro-mechanical airplane would be created at their Dearborn Van Plant, it can provide “strong yanking and weight capacity,” and will also be able to run as a relocating electrical generator. Ford approaches to enhance the F-150 Hybrid in North America and the Heart Eastern.

2020 Ford Lariat Review

Exterior and Interior

Together with the 2020 Ford Lariat Concept, Ford also strategies to give a Mustang hybrid, two new hybrid law enforcement officials cars, hybrid connect-in transit vans, hybrid autonomous cars, and six but unrevealed electric vehicles. By 2020, the company objectives 40% of its fleet to become jog. To achieve this, the company expended an entire of 4.5 billion dollars in electronic vehicle technology. Quite a few necessary exterior style adjustments operate by way of the total collection, from the XL base to the leading-cut Limited. The new grille and front lights advanced to appear to be a husband and wife of behavior nearer to the dual-club motifs of the Super Duty siblings. The twin grille cafes on the F-150 Lariats equipped with the Sports package acquire body-pigmentation treatment methods. Driving the new taillamps, a bracket is a sculpted pickup truck with the F-150 emblem onto it. The King Ranch, Platinum, and Limited get a new horizontal appliqué in the tailgate for a contract of exclusivity. Interior revisions consist of a set of new cut colorations for the seating. The F-150 Platinum presents a choice of Dim Marsala shades, and Large-lessen trim dog recognizes the coming of the Navy Pier pigmentation topic. Sports Sport and Lariat Sports investors can stipulate false-carbon-fiber content software, and King Ranch will receive a particular seat recognized as Kingsville, whoever sound complements the king.

2020 Ford Lariat Interior

The option of technological innovation and infotainment choices fender joins the history of F-150 alternatives that are previously sufficient. The adaptive luxury cruise manages already upgraded and might now deliver the van to a complete halt in weighty visitors; a new accident discovery approaches these types of as walking recognition, the readily available Wi-fi 4G LTE hotspot permits customers to connect around ten wi-fi models. And Bang &amp Olufsen mp3 strategy deals with discretion requirements. Sightless levels are checking, series-keeping, 360-diploma surveillance cameras, and Apple inc CarPlay and Android Auto all continue to the alternatives history. But while the outer adopts the Super Duty looks and provides a fantastic dosage of realignment, the cabin does not push into the attract of also getting rough or awkward. In reality, whirling running the wheel of Ford F150 Concept 2020 Limited-its the way I put in most of my working day time screening-furthers the idea that some Us citizen pickup trucks can stand up toe-to-toe with standard music. Luxurious sedan and crossover.

2020 Ford Lariat Engine

Tracking at the popular the moment-a-year miles of 12,000 MLS, the EcoBoost 3.5L V6 uses around 522 gallons although the 5.0L V8 creates use of 571 gallons (49-gallon positive change). With gasoline fees hovering near to $ 2.35 for each gallon nationally as outlined by the official website, we could uncover customers will preserve $ 115.19 a year to press EcoBoost. This means that the consumer’s breakeven levels are about 9.5 a few years. The prevalent pickup possession is a lot less than that, and nonetheless, EcoBoost is the perfect endorsing devices for the F-150. I suggest on this site being a customer is not evident in the extended work, they see the benefits of quick-term fuel economy. The significant factor continues to be dedicated to the F-150 powertrain products collection. A freshly injected 3.3-liter V-6 engine promptly replaces the previous 3.5-liter V-6 and is believed to create the very same 282 hp strength and 253 lb-feet of torque as the previous engine but uses significantly less gas. EcoBoost 2.7-liter V-6 gets some also appreciate the unit is at the moment modified with a new up coming-time model with instantaneous injection slot design (2.7 earlier only fast injection). The 3.5-liter EcoBoost V-6 carries on for 2018, and the modified 5.-liter V-8, with believed horsepower and torque advancements. Ford, nonetheless, has not yet unveiled a distinct productivity sum for this products. The company said that every the EcoBoost V-6s and V-8 will be combined with 10-pace digital transmission, and auto cease/ commencing is typical in the lineup.

2020 Ford Lariat Concept Specs

2020 Ford F150 Lariat joined up with all kinds of other agencies to induce the electrification of trucks. The concept of 50 %-van Nikola One particular and Chevy Colorado ZH2 concept intention gas mobile phone technology for the solely electric powered-driven push. The W-15 idea of this problematic member of staff concentrates on a pickup vehicle electrical driven connect-in, with a gasoline engine that provides power potential for extended distance. All of these suggestions also source qualities of cellular electronic powered turbines. Think about turning on your house or job, your home, or your campsite generating use of your pickup. Tesla is allegedly accomplishing work on an all-electronic operated pickup vehicle.

2020 Ford Lariat Review

Ford failed to point out that the 2020 F-150 are going to be a plug-in Hybrid. This almost definitely shows that the F-150 will use a combustion engine and an electronically operated motor to force the vehicle. In other phrases, the van will never be willing to family vacation extensive ranges featuring its electricity or take/bring the maximum load solely on electrically powered run electricity. On the other hand, GM, Ford and Ram source (or technique on providing) a selection of turbo-diesel engines with their fifty percent-ton or intermediate pickup trucks. Ram has purchased 3.0L V6 EcoDiesel for many a few years. GM produces 2.8L I4 turbo-diesel in Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon.

#2020 Ford Lariat #Lariat #Truck Cars

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perksofwifi · 3 years

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2021 Toyota RAV4 Prime First Test: Toyota’s Best Hybrid Ever

Toyota’s hybrids have been called many things, but “interesting,” “fun,” or “fast,” likely hasn’t been on that list. The 2021 Toyota RAV4 Prime plug-in hybrid SUV changes all that. Not only is it arguably the best hybrid Toyota has built to date, but it’s also the quickest non-Supra Toyota we’ve tested in the past five years, and the most-efficient Toyota on sale today not wearing a Prius badge.

What’s a RAV4 Prime and What Makes It So Quick and Efficient?

The new RAV4 Prime is the plug-in hybrid version of the RAV4. Like the RAV4 Hybrid, the RAV4 Prime sports a 177-hp and 165-lb-ft 2.5-liter I-4 engine mated to electric motors and an e-CVT up front, another electric motor at the rear axle, and a battery pack underneath the rear seats. That’s about where the similarities end. The Prime’s motors are more powerful for starters—its front one makes 179 hp and 199 lb-ft of torque, while its rear makes 53 hp and 89 lb-ft of torque, with a total combined system output of 302 hp (versus 219 hp combined for the RAV4 Hybrid).

The RAV4 Prime also sports a large 18.1-kWh battery, which, unlike the RAV4 Hybrid’s 1.6-kWh battery, can be plugged in. Depending on whether you have the standard 3.3-kW on-board charger or optional 6.6-kW charger (the latter available as part of the $3,765 Premium Package on the top-trim RAV Prime XSE), it can be charged from empty to full in about an hour and a half on a Level 2 240-volt charger, or less than 12 hours on a Level 1 120-volt charger. With a full battery, the EPA says RAV4 Prime can motor for 42 miles on electricity before the engine kicks on, giving the SUV a total driving range of about 600 miles. When accounting for both its motors and engine, the EPA rates the RAV4 at 105/84/94 mpg-e, or 38 mpg combined if you never bother to plug the Prime in and treat it like a RAV4 Hybrid.

How Fast Is the RAV4 Prime?

So, to the test track: In the hands of our well-traveled test team, the RAV4 Prime was surprisingly a bit of a handful as it accelerated from 0-60 mph in an impressively quick 5.5 seconds, and on through the quarter-mile in 14.1 seconds at 98.7 mph. “Well, that was unexpected,” said associate road test editor Erick Ayapana, “The RAV4 Prime really made me work to control wheel spin, seeming from the rear axle first, and then the front axle. Regardless, this thing feels strong off the line, good pull from start to the quarter-mile finish.”

The RAV4 Prime’s straight-line performance makes it the second-quickest Toyota we’ve tested in quite a long time—the only vehicle faster has been a 2021 GR Supra 3.0, which needed 4.0 seconds to hit 60 mph and ran a 12.3-second quarter-mile at 115.8 mph (we haven’t tested the Supra GR 2.0 yet, it’ll likely be quicker than the RAV4 Prime, too). Hot on the RAV4 Prime’s heels is the NASCAR-lookalike V-6-powered Toyota Camry TRD. Its best run was 5.8 seconds to 60 mph and a 14.4-second quarter-mile at 99.8 mph.

Somewhat surprisingly given its heavy 4,372-pound curb weight, the RAV4 Prime performed admirably in our braking and handling tests. In the former, it needed 127 feet in our 60-0 mph emergency stop test, and in the latter it lapped our figure eight in 27.0 seconds at 0.65 g average.

How Does the RAV4 Prime Drive?

Out in the real world, the RAV4 Prime is probably the most impressive Toyota we’ve driven since piloting a Land Cruiser through Moab, Utah. Simply, put—it just works. And works well.

With a full battery and left to its own devices in its “Auto EV/HV” (Electric Vehicle/Hybrid Vehicle) drive mode, the RAV4 Prime easily hits its 42-mile EPA-estimated range, and it feels like a big, comfy electric SUV doing so. Power delivery is relatively quick, and even with the engine off, the Toyota’s motors never leave you wanting for power. With the engine on, the RAV4 is seriously quick for an SUV in this class, though as Ayapana noted at the test track, the Prime has trouble delivering lots of power smoothly from low speeds as its electronic brain manages power and torque delivery from three separate sources.

The RAV4 Prime’s suspension is softly sprung, which leads to a fair amount of brake dive and rebounding after impacts, but body roll through bends is well-controlled. Notably, the RAV4 Prime’s brakes manage the transition from regenerative to mechanical brakes smoothly—a balance Toyota has long struggled with on its hybrids. Steering feel is surprisingly tactile and well-weighted.

What’s the RAV4 Prime’s Interior Like?

The current RAV4’s interior has been one of our design favorites in the compact SUV segment, and Toyota leaves well enough alone with the RAV4 Prime. The cabin is comfortable, relatively spacious, and unlike some other mainstream plug-in hybrid SUVs (the Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid, for instance), the battery doesn’t eat into cargo space.

Materials quality was great for our loaded RAV4 Prime XSE’s $42,600 starting price ($49,831 as- tested), though there were a few squeaks and rattles coming from the back of the cabin. A slightly-cheaper RAV4 Prime SE is available, too. It starts at $39,425.

The Bottom Line

Ignoring its speed, efficiency, and comfort, the best part about the RAV4 Prime is just how seamlessly it all works. It’s exactly as engaging (or disengaging) as you want it to be. If you want to just get in after a long day of work and motor on home, it’ll comfortably and quietly whisk you away. And yet, if a shot in the arm is what you’re looking for, its surprisingly charming 302-hp powertrain ought to be more than enough to wake you up. The RAV4 Prime, then, is not just a great plug-in hybrid, but it’s also a hugely compelling compact SUV that ought to be on the short list for anyone in the market for new family transportation.

SPECIFICATIONS 2021 Toyota RAV4 Prime AWD PHEV BASE PRICE $42,600 PRICE AS TESTED $49,831 VEHICLE LAYOUT Front-engine, front/rear permanent-magnet elec motors, AWD, 5-pass, 4-door SUV ENGINE 2.5L/177-hp/165-lb-ft Atkinson-cycle DOHC 16-valve I-4 (gas), 179-hp/199-lb-ft (front), 53-hp/89-lb-ft (rear) elec motors TRANSMISSION Cont variable auto CURB WEIGHT (F/R DIST) 4,372 lb (56/44%) WHEELBASE 105.9 in LENGTH x WIDTH x HEIGHT 180.9 x 73.0 x 67.2 in 0-60 MPH 5.5 sec QUARTER MILE 14.1 sec @ 98.7 mph BRAKING, 60-0 MPH 127 ft LATERAL ACCELERATION 0.83 g (avg) MT FIGURE EIGHT 27.0 sec @ 0.65 g (avg) EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON 40/36/38 mpg (gas), 105/84/94 mpg-e* (gas+elec) ENERGY CONS, CITY/HWY 84/94 (gas), 32/40 (gas+elec)* kWh/100 miles CO2 EMISSIONS, COMB 0.51 (gas), 0.21 (gas+elec)* lb/mile *EPA blended-PHEV (charge-depleting) mode testing, with vehicles set to their default drive and brake-regeneration modes.

The post 2021 Toyota RAV4 Prime First Test: Toyota’s Best Hybrid Ever appeared first on MotorTrend.

https://www.motortrend.com/cars/toyota/rav4/2021/2021-toyota-rav4-prime-first-test-review/ visto antes em https://www.motortrend.com

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savetopnow · 7 years

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2018-03-23 17 CAR now

CAR

Auto Spies

STUD or DUD? Is The All-new Lincoln Navigator, Tuned By Hennessey And With 600 Ponies, THE ONE To Have?

BMW Confirms All Electric X3 Slated For 2020 Release

Diesel Saving Technology Emerges, But Is It Too Late To Save The Oil Burner?

Evidence Mounts That New Mid Engine Corvette Will Be Cadillac Powered

US Seeks To Stop The Sellout Of American Know How To China

Autoblog

VW Beetle is not dead yet

Car brands with the most and least loyal owners

Junkyard Gem: 1998 Mercedes-Benz S500 Sedan

Maybe there won't be an Audi R8 V6 after all

Porsche Cayenne plug-in E-Hybrid teased in new video

Car Throttle

The Karlmann King Is The Stealth SUV You'll Always See Coming

A Simple New Exhaust Technology Could Save The Diesel Engine

The Old Dodge Viper Factory Is Being Turned Into A Museum

Watch A Tesla Model X Crush A 5.7-litre Camaro In A Tug Of War

Cadillac Has Gone All Euro With A 550bhp Twin-Turbo 'Hot' V8

Electrek

Elon Musk’s Boring Company unveils proposed ‘Loop’ route to travel Washington-Baltimore in 15 mins

First look at Tesla Model 3 Canadian configurator with price structure and availability

Green Deals: Remington 12A 19-inch Corded Electric Lawn Mower $140, more

Nissan unveils stunning new streetlights powered by used Leaf battery packs and solar

Tesla to deploy another large Powerpack project in Australia after securing $25 million in funding

Inside EVs

LinkedIn Chooses Tesla #5 Overall On Top Companies List

Check Out What Ford’s Electric SUV Might Look Like

J.D Power Survey – Enthusiasm For Electric Cars Grows Rapidly In China

Watch Roborace Devbot Showcase Some Extreme Driving

Energica EgoGP Electric Motorcycle Debuts In Qatar

Jalopnik

I Still Don't Understand How He Does This

I Am Unduly Excited For The 2019 Cadillac CT6 V-Sport

We're Enjoying All The Incredible Race Cars At Pirelli World Challenge This Weekend

Smokey And The Bandit Will Change Your Life

Comment Of The Day: Sideways Edition

Motortrend

2019 Toyota Corolla Hatchback First Look: Matrix Reloaded

Porsche Says the New Cayenne Hybrid Will Channel the 918 Spyder

Video Shows Seconds Leading up to Fatal Autonomous Uber Crash

2018 Volkswagen Passat GT First Drive: V(olks’)-6

Spied! Refreshed BMW 7 Series’ Grille Looks Even More Massive up Close

Reddit Cars

Craigslist has just taken listings offline

I upgraded from a boat to a faster boat today

How come the 2018 Accord is not selling as well as the 2018 Camry in USA?

Is there a way I can mod my car so it sounds nicer but not louder?

Something in that "Taurus is the saddest car ever made" post reminded me of the Coggiola T-Rex concept car from almost 20 years ago. Maybe the weirdest car I've ever seen.

Sunday Times Driving

10 of the rudest numberplates spotted on Britain’s roads

The Clarkson Review: 2018 Citroën C3 Aircross

Oxford calls for cable car to tackle traffic

Watch the Hoonigans cut a Volvo estate in half and pull wheelies

Uber self-driving car fatal crash: Arizona police release shocking dash cam video

The Car Connection

2019 Toyota Corolla

2018 Infiniti QX60

2018 Infiniti Q70

2019 Toyota Corolla Hatchback: a most international compact car

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The CarGurus Blog

£1000 Wonders: Why Cheap Doesn’t Mean Terrible

Don’t Let a Rental Car Compromise Your Privacy

Top Headlines From March 10 – 16

New to the Used Market: Volvo XC40

Half Price Hot Hatch: BMW M135i

The Torque Report

2019 Toyota Corolla Hatchback revealed ahead of its New York debut

Used Nissan Leaf batteries to power a town in Japan

Ford and Mahindra team to build new SUVs and a small electric vehicle

2020 Porsche Mission E prototype teased from the production floor

2019 Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid teased

The Truth About Cars

Mini Dealers Want to Know What the Hell Is Going on With the Brand

Light It Up: Canucks to Mandate Taillight Illumination

Maryland or Bust(ed): Driver Nabbed Going Over 160 MPH in Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat

2018 Lexus LC 500h Review – Good Design, Bad Design

Rare Rides: The 1979 Nissan President, an Executive Luxury Brougham

#car

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jobsearchtips02 · 4 years

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How Electric Cars Take Over The United States Market, With A Huge Push From Tesla

Vehicles

Released on July 4th, 2020 | by Paul Fosse

July 4th, 2020 by Paul Fosse

I wrote this short article prior to Maarten came out with a post on the same subject last week, however I came to the opposite conclusion.

I’m as big a fan of Tesla as anyone and it has actually definitely done more to advance the adoption of electrical cars than any other manufacturer, however I’m going to speak about how the actions of a few of the other companies will be essential and how I believe they will have the ability to make it through although they can’t innovate as quick as Tesla. [Editor’s note: We just discussed this a little bit in the latest Tesla Inside Out podcast as well, going down a different but complementary road on the topic.]

You see, some markets are actually winner take all. I think you can see this pattern occur in every company (not simply tech companies), and I would anticipate it will eventually happen to Tesla in 10 to 15 years.

So, what does this have to do with electric cars and trucks? I think Tesla can have a big lead in electric vehicles and still not take 90%of the market.

A couple of weeks back, I looked at my supply and need forecasts for 2025 from a high level, whereas this post dives into supply at the time periods leading up to2025 and how some notifiable business will improve their lineups.

The Supply Of Electric Automobiles

I’m going to look at the auto market in 3 stages.

Phase 1– now to 2021

Phase 2– 2022 to 2023

Stage 3– 2024 to 2025

A month back, when I began writing this series of posts, I thought all cars offered would be electric by2025 It is popular in numerous circles to believe markets are all about need, however classical financial experts had it.

It likewise applies to constructing electric automobiles during a time when there is no pandemic. It doesn’t matter if we believe electrical vehicles are much better, if we do not have any electrical cars and trucks to buy, we still need to get to work, numerous individuals will purchase a gas car. Individuals imagined electric cars for many years, however till Tesla and Nissan built cars that individuals might buy about 10 years earlier, it was simply a fantasy. For this thought workout, I’m presuming the global car market has slow growth over the next 5 years. We might have a huge collapse for many reasons, consisting of COVID-19, financial obligation crisis, or self-governing vehicles encouraging individuals to ditch their cars and trucks and simply take a robotaxi around. If any of those take place, the shift to EVs will speed up from the list below analysis substantially. The base case is 100 million cars a year sold in2025 Tesla’s strategies are quite popular. As Elon set out in an interview and I recorded in this post Let’s look beyond those.

Electrification Phase 1 (2020 to 2021)

I know how EV lovers (like myself) dislike the word “electrification” since it is utilized by produces to greenwash their vehicle lineups without making them really sustainable. In this stage, you will see the EV market share triple from about 1%in the US in 2019 to about 3%in2021 As Zach covered in November 2019, there are 7 EVs that could strike 10,000 cars and trucks a month if the stars line up. I’ll cover the ones I believe will be popular in the United States.

Picture by Zach Shahan, CleanTechnica

Nissan Leaf. Nissan recently refreshed the “initial EV.” I drove an earlier Leaf until I got my Tesla Model 3 2 years back. It is a fine car that might make a nice niche for itself, but its lack of active thermal management of its battery has somewhat ruined its track record, especially in warmer climates.

Picture by Nissan

Nissan Ariya.

Photo by VW

VW ID.Buzz. Simply on appearances alone, this will sell.

Ford Mustang Mach-E at Los Angeles Automobile Show, by Kyle Field|CleanTechnica

Ford Mustang Mach-E. Zach didn’t include this, but I think it might be one of the leading selling EVs of the next couple years. [Note from Zach: I agree! And this is specifically the model David Havasi and I focused the most on in our latest Tesla Inside Out podcast.]

Photo by Chevrolet

Chevy Bolt.

Picture by Christianne Fosse

Obviously the Tesla Model Y will have a big effect.

The 2nd thing I see taking place is the “normalization” of the hybrid. The Camry, Avalon, and Highlander have had a hybrid for lots of years, but the RAV4 hybrid came out in 2016, the Corolla hybrid in 2020, and the Venza and Sienna come out in 2021 as hybrid-only models.

This enables individuals to get a hybrid in the cars and truck they want for about $3,000 more (which they will make back gradually), however they don’t need to switch to the Prius design with its Eco image, poorer velocity, and poorer handling (typical in a hybrid although it does not require to be).

The new Sienna minivan takes this to the next level by making every 2021 Sienna a hybrid, so you don’t have to even make the choice to update to the hybrid engine.

Another technique is to benefit from the big United States tax credits (approximately $7,500) to offer a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) that permits people to use almost no gas as long as their daily commute is less than the electric variety. The best example of that is the new Toyota RAV4 Prime Regrettably, Toyota’s bad planning and not buying sufficient batteries suggest that it will not be a choice for many purchasers for a long time.

I’m simply highlighting two car manufacturers, but they are practically all making plans to “energize” their lineups. Putting an electrical motor into much more vehicles does a lot of things for the company:

Gain higher experience in electric motors and batteries.

Start to develop supply chains in these elements.

Hybrid cars all shut down the gas engine, conserving fuel, wear on the engine, and contamination in city stop-and-go driving.

Automakers can start to move cooling, power steering, power brakes, water pumps, etc. to run electric motors rather of a belt.

Because engines just run part of the time, upkeep schedules can be less frequent.

Engine durability ought to be increased given that the engine does not run all the time.

Car manufacturers can reduce R&D in gasoline engines, considering that a basic 4 cylinder Atkinson cycle engine can power all your hybrids. To make a sportier or more powerful design, you add a much better electrical motor with a higher output battery.

I dove into the technical and financial information in this article I wrote in 2015

Stage 2 (2022 to 2023)

In this time period, I expect electrical vehicle market share to double in the United States to about 6%, or near to a million automobiles, as the rates of electrical lorries gets more competitive and more lorries produced in high volumes appear from Tesla, Volkswagen, General Motors, Ford, and BMW. It will become apparent to a lot of in this time that electric cars are the method to go, but a serious scarcity of batteries will make it difficult to increase EV share any quicker.

Throughout this time, car manufacturers will make all of their vehicles other than their least expensive base model hybrids as they stop all development of gas and diesel motor. In order to satisfy the need for quiet and high-performance electric vehicles without the battery supply to produce true 100?ttery electric lorries, they can either make plug-in hybrid electric lorries, or I anticipate more to copy Nissan’s strategy with the serial hybrid

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Former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn was not a fan of hybrids (given that he anticipated true electric cars to quickly surpass them), but considering that he runs out the picture, Nissan is expanding the use of the e-Power system to provide consumers much of the benefits of an electric automobile at a lower expense and without needing the batteries that Nissan does not have access to.

Stage 3 (2024 to 2025)

This is when I anticipate the genuine tipping point to occur.

Conclusion

I started composing this short article thinking that by 2025, all the vehicles sold would be electric, however I was wrong. What I stopped working to understand is that vehicle makes aren’t yet persuaded that electrical automobiles are the future. They are still squandering resources on making engines that are 3?tter. Those are going to end up being stranded properties. If you begin advancement of a brand-new engine now, it won’t be all set till 2025 or later. There will still be gas and diesel cars sold then, but you simply want to produce them for the people who can’t get electric automobiles. There is no factor to spend billions of dollars making engines better unless you doubt whether the transition will take place. The issue is the companies do not have the resources to both develop competitive lorries and improve their conventional vehicles. They only do it in places the laws force them to. They need to do it for their own monetary future.

We didn’t have to pass a law to get people to buy smart devices, and we shouldn’t have to pass laws to get individuals to buy electrical cars.

If you decide to order a Tesla, utilize a friend’s referral code to get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging on a Tesla Model S, Design X, Model 3 and now the Design Y (you can’t use it on the Cybertruck yet). Now good for $250 off either solar panels or a solar roofing system, too! If you do not have any pals with a Tesla, use mine: https://ts.la/paul92237

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lovelyfantasticfart · 4 years

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Xc90 T6 Overview

Dynamic mode is your go to alternative if you happen to need a sportier experience. I popped the car in guide mode and plowed proper out of 1-foot snow drifts, whereas our Camry bottomed out and obtained caught a number of instances. Certainly, the four-cylinder was "enough." But I did notice one odd side: there was a couple of occasion the place I'd set the cruise control whereas climbing a grade and the Explorer wouldn't (or could not) match my desired pace. It isn't sporty sufficient to make up for its lack of room in again, and though it's most likely one of many extra capable automobiles of the group off-street, that doesn't rely for sufficient to vault it above the others. We also characteristic these which are amongst the top mpg vehicles of their class. They're focusing on digital-savvy new automobile patrons who desire the online route to thumbing by means of automotive magazines and trawling around the internet to draw up a shortlist, visiting showrooms to kick the tyres before uncomfortably haggling over the value. Subscribers have the opportunity to improve to a new automobile as early as 12 months into this system without any negotiation. The X5 does have a three row option, but it doesn鈥檛 look as subtle and modern as the Volvo.

Dan upgraded to a 4-yr-previous Volvo soon after. That is the second Volvo XC90 I've owned and that i don't have any complaints. XC90 T6 Inscription Reviews; Volvo; Volvo XC90 specs; Volvo XC90 specifications. 2004 Volvo Simply so happened that I had in for evaluation a 2018 T6 AWD Inscription model. The Volvo S90 debuted as an all-new mannequin for 2017. Often this can be followed by a mannequin yr with nothing aside from just a few minor modifications, however the S90 bucks that trend. Regardless of which powertrain you select, the Volvo S90 sedan has loads of power on tap in your daily commute. There are three powertrain choices, beginning with the T5 that uses a 2.0-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder engine (250 horsepower, 258 pound-toes of torque). The Volvo XC60 is a premium crossover SUV that is accessible in three trim levels: 3.2, T6 and T6 R-Design. Three trim traces are offered: Dynamic, Inscription, and R-Design. And by the way, these seats are not that tomato purple colour in individual.

The leaves are beginning to turn, the rolling fields are dotted with peeling white or purple paint, and air freshens up. I used to be fortunate. In a typical yr, almost 5,000 American pedestrians are struck and killed by motor vehicles. And how are they buying their crossover? Crossover SUVs, because of their mixture of utility and carlike handling, have grow to be the mainstream choice for many drivers. Thanks for visiting our site, contentabove (2019 Volvo Brochure Interior Costs) printed by at . 9-liter twin-turbo six in the View 2016 Volvo XC90 SUV pricing, images, specifications, and detailed expert evaluations. Which Is healthier: 2013 Volvo XC90 or 2013 Acura MDX? On arrival at the South Central Volvo dealership we were very keen to see the whole lot the brand new Volvo FH 600 had to supply. 3,184 on a used or CPO 2019 XC60 available from a dealership close to you. Store Edmunds' car, SUV, and truck listings of over 6 million vehicles to seek out an inexpensive new, used, or certified pre-owned (CPO) 2013 Volvo C70 on the market close to.

In an eight-manner Huge Take a look at comparability of premium sedans, the Volvo S60 T6 came in last place. Because it has finished for all its existence, Acura fights in opposition to the German luxury brands, as well as Lexus, Infiniti, Cadillac, Volvo and other. This car is stuffed with expertise and security equipment, it drives like a dream, and handles surprisingly nicely. In different phrases, he was the perfect person to point out us the full potential of the automobile. As soon as right down to safer cruising velocity and putting some miles between me and Buckeye Nation, I rapidly realized two potential points. The plug-in hybrid T8 E-AWD model of the XC60 has two personalities. By distinction, the Turbo S's specification is for the gadget-fetishist. The Turbo S takes the sledgehammer strategy to life. You need rock climbing in luxurious? But it helped to be psychologically prepared to step out into close to-freezing temperatures. This equates to snappy efficiency around city, provided you step into the lengthy-journey gasoline pedal. Mercedes-benz has introduced to generate its new compact mercedes-benz glb suv.

What鈥檚 totally different about Kim鈥檚 concept that separates him from all of the opposite blue-sky dreamers which have come before? With Oculus Rift, hundreds of individuals all over Poland immersed themselves on this digital world and spent a day Santa Claus! 2018 nissan xterra: professional-4x, worth, launch date. After the discharge of the WRX, Subaru gained an enthusiast following other manufacturers can solely dream of. Subaru handed us the keys to an Outback 2.5i Touring to test drive. The Golf, in the meantime, is鈥?properly, a Golf - with all of the numerous advantages and minor gripes that brings. Green transportation presents various advantages and obstacles, relying on variables. It still feels higher than the older, truck-based mostly Explorers, but compared with the current population of 7-passenger crossovers, it isn't so great. That stated, we nonetheless thoroughly enjoyed the Bimmer, and a number of other staffers would've picked it for themselves if cash and passenger capability had been no object. This in-depth report discusses this industry鈥檚 market in types of overview/definition, utility, classification, predictions pertaining value and volume, and future predictions.

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actutrends · 5 years

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Comma.ai launches Comma Two, a $999 kit that imbues cars with assisted driving features

Two years ago, analysts predicted that upwards of 10 million self-driving cars would hit the road by 2020. They weren’t the only ones — in 2015 and 2016, respectively, The Guardian and Business Insider proclaimed that people would become “permanent backseat driver[s],” riding in fully autonomous cars from 2020 “without needing any interaction from [drivers].”

Fast forward to today. Despite assurances that as many as 8 million driverless cars will be added to the road in 2025, even operations like that of Alphabet’s Waymo have yet to expand beyond selected metros. The reasons are regulatory as well as technological in nature, but expense plays a role. Conservative estimates peg the cost of outfitting cars at between $100,000 to 250,000 per car.

So why not go the do-it-yourself route? That’s the question George Hotz posed five years ago — he’s the American hacker best known for developing exploits that targeted Apple’s iOS operating system and reverse-engineering Sony’s PlayStation 3. In September 2015, Hotz founded Comma.ai with the goal of developing a semi-automated system — OpenPilot — that would improve cars’ visual perception and electromechanical motor control. Unlike most full-stack solutions in testing, it’s intended to replace OEM advanced driver-assistance systems, effectively imbuing cars with self-driving capabilities.

For the first time in its history, Comma.ai has an official presence at the Consumer Electronics Show. The company this week invited members of the press (including VentureBeat) to test-drive the latest version of its system — and to show off the Comma Two.

OpenPilot

OpenPilot’s development had a bit of a rocky start. The first version’s reveal in a Bloomberg article and video prompted a cease-and-desist letter from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which accused Comma.ai of testing a self-driving car in the state without a license. Subsequently, OpenPilot was packaged into a shippable device dubbed the Comma One, which again ran afoul of the authorities because of noncompliance with U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. Under pressure from the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration, Comma One was canceled, and Comma.ai open-sourced OpenPilot on GitHub.

Much has changed. In the roughly three years since Comma.ai made OpenPilot available to the public, over 1,500 users have racked up more than 14 million autonomous miles collectively, half of which were driven autonomously. (That’s up from 10 million miles as of May 2019.) Moreover, they’ve forked the GitHub repository over 2,300 times, adding features like automatic lane change and support for older Tesla, Chrysler, and Jeep models.

Comma Two

Comma.ai previously sold the Eon Devkit, a self-contained and windshield-mounted modified OnePlus phone. It started at $599, and once OpenPilot was installed to it, it automatically recognized car models by analyzing CAN network traffic. (The presence of certain CAN messages and their lengths is an indication of the model year, car brand, car model, and trim.) Companion devices dubbed the Panda and Giraffe plugged into cars’ OBD-II ports to track RPMs, MPG, cornering G-force, battery life, and more, and to provide access to the communication buses and enable the Eon to interface with the car.

The Comma Two replaces the Eon, but it retains all of the Eon’s features and then some. That said, it ditches the Panda for a single-cord solution, and it’s slightly pricier at $1,000 (though it’s available on a payment plan through Affirm).

The first batch of 300 units are available for purchase today. They’ll begin shipping later in the month, Hotz says.

The Comma Two is powered via OBD-C as opposed to by battery, which Hotz says was a top complaint among current Eon owners, and it has a larger mount as well as a custom fan-based hardware cooling solution. Like the Eon, which used a camera to recognize drivers’ faces and decelerate if it detected those drivers were distracted, the Comma Two performs facial recognition. In point of fact, it’s in improved in that it leverages two infrared sensors as opposed to an RGB sensor, enabling it to work during nighttime.

Other highlights include front and back cameras, as well as a fourth CAN bus to connect the OBD-II port and a low-power mode that automatically shuts off the Comma Two after three days to save car battery.

The Eon was equipped with cellular service and a SIM card supplied by Comma.ai. Data was unlimited (though capped to 512Kbps), and users could spring for Comma Prime if they so chose, a $24 per month service that enables remote access (via T-Mobile) from anywhere and online storage of 14 days’ worth of drive data (compared with the standard three days). The Comma Two also taps cellular for connectivity and plays nicely with new and existing Comma Prime subscriptions, and it comes with a year’s worth of storage.

By default, OpenPilot uploads driving data in real time from the road-facing camera, CAN, GPS, inertial measurement unit, magnetometer, thermal sensors, and operating system to Comma.ai’s servers for machine learning training and development purposes. Much of this data can be accessed locally through the Comma Connect app for iOS and Android or through Explorer, an online dashboard of recent drives from which disengagements (i.e., instances when a driver took control from OpenPilot) can be annotated to help improve the system.

From within the app, Comma Two owners can remotely wake up the Comma Two and snap a picture from either the front- or rear-facing cameras. Additionally, they’re able to switch among multiple units on the fly and to view their real-time geographic locations.

Compatibility

OpenPilot isn’t compatible with every car under the sun. It only works with these models and model years:

Acura ILX (2016-2018) and RDX (2016-2018)

Buick Regal (2018)

Chevrolet Malibu (2017)

Volt (2017-2018)

Cadillac ATS (2018) and Pacifica (2017-2018)

GMC Acadia Denali (2018)

Holden Astra (2018)

Honda Accord (2016-2019), Civic (2017-2019), Civic Hatchback (2017-2019), CR-V (2015-2019), CR-V Hybrid (2017-2019), Fit (2018), Odyssey (2018-2019), Passport (2019), Pilot (2016-2019), and Ridgeline (2017-2019)

Hyundai Elantra (2017-2019), Genesis (2018), and Santa Fe (2019)

Jeep Grand Cherokee (2016-2019)

Kia Optima (2019), Sorento (2018), and Stinger (2018)

Lexus RX Hybrid (2016-2019) and ES Hybrid (2019)

Subaru Crosstek (2018) and Impreza (2019)

Toyota Avalon (2016-2018), Camry (2018-2019), C-HR (2017-2019), Corolla (2017-2020), Corolla Hatchback (2019), Highlander (2017-2018), Highlander Hybrid (2018), Prius (2017-2019), Prius Prime (2017-2020), Rav4 (2016-2019), Rav4 Hybrid (2017-2018), and Sienna (2018)

Equally critically, OpenPilot isn’t capable of fully autonomous driving on all road types in all conditions. It can currently handle lane centering on roads without clear marking thanks to machine learning algorithms trained with user data, and it can maintain a safe follow distance and drive in stop-and-go traffic without supervision.

But it’s complicated. On all supported cars, OpenPilot’s automated lane centering and lane keep assist replace the stock systems. Only on specific supported cars does the system’s adaptive cruise control and forward collision warning slot in for default, however, and on no model does OpenPilot take over things like auto high-beam, blind spot warning, and side collision warning.

Driving experience

So how’s the driving experience with the Comma Two? “Smooth sailing” sums it up. OpenPilot indeed maintains its lane position even when the markings aren’t obvious — or aren’t visible. In a construction site with cones on either side and on an unpaved road without dividing lines, we watched OpenPilot deftly keep centered and maintain a comfortable following distance from the car in front of it.

It doesn’t much matter whether the road ahead is straight or severely curved. OpenPilot used to scrape OpenStreetMap for road curvature and traffic data, but it doesn’t any longer — now, it’s smart enough to calculate the trajectory in real time and to ensure it doesn’t speed along that trajectory too violently.

In this respect, OpenPilot is akin to Nissan’s ProPilot Assist, Volvo’s Pilot Assist, and GM’s Super Cruise, the last of which is one of the few systems that offers hands-free driving thanks to an eye-monitoring infrared camera. But in contrast to Super Cruise, which only engages on about 130,000 miles of U.S. and Canadian highway that GM has mapped, OpenPilot theoretically works anywhere there’s a discernible road.

OpenPilot can change lanes automatically, but it requires signaling from drivers before it does so — they have to first switch on a turn signal and nudge the steering wheel in the direction they’d like to go. It smoothly merging while keeping pace with the traffic ahead in our brief experience. But Hotz noted that OpenPilot won’t prevent lane changes when cars are to the immediate left or right, in the Comma Two’s blind spot.

Of course, Comma Two and OpenPilot can’t anticipate every situation. An SUV rear-ended a hatchback during our driving demo, forcing Hotz — who was behind the wheel — to tap the brake and disengage the system. And OpenPilot doesn’t handle things like red lights or stop signs — at least not yet.

Safety

Whether OpenPilot can be considered truly safe is a semantics question, in part. The driverless car industry lacks an agreed-upon metric for safety — Noah Zych, head of system safety at Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group, told Wired in an interview that miles traveled isn’t a particularly insightful measure without context like location. Derek Kan, U.S. secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation, echoed that sentiment in remarks at a conference two years ago.

Companies like Intel’s Mobileye and Nvidia have proposed mathematical models that aim to codify good habits like giving other cars the right of way. Essentially, they’re decision-making policies in a motion-planning stack that monitor unsafe actions by analyzing real-time sensor data.

Comma.ai has a safety model of its own, which Hotz said involves several forms of regression testing. Commits aren’t merged to the OpenPilot codebase before they’ve met the test suite’s muster.

This aside, Comma.ai problematically hasn’t committed to regularly publishing any sort of statistics beyond miles driven, like disengagements or accidents. California’s Department of Motor Vehicles mandates that all companies testing autonomous cars report disengagements, but because Comma.ai doesn’t have a permit to test cars, it’s exempt from this requirement.

Hotz for his part asserts that the infrared sensors in Comma Two will improve safety substantially, as will the onboarding video customers are required to watch before they launch OpenPilot for the first time. On the subject of the former, a warning appears on the Comma Two’s screen if a driver diverts their eyes from the road for four seconds, and after six seconds, OpenPilot disengages and begins to slow down. (Unclicking the driver-side seat belt or opening the car door also disengages the system.)

For what it’s worth, we encountered only one disengagement — Hotz’s stop to avoid the accident — over roughly 7 miles and 25 minutes of driving “We pushed on nuance [with this latest version of OpenPilot],” said Hotz. “Intersections have no lane lines — it’s unclear where you should go. [OpenPilot] follows the path that the human would follow.”

Backend improvements

On the backend side of the OpenPilot equation, new is a simulation environment called the Small Offset Simulator that loads in real-world routes and simulates deviations of them. “You can’t just take a lot of data and train a model to mimic the data, because that model doesn’t realize that if it takes action, the world will change,” said Hotz. “The only way to really do that is to build a simulator.”

Using a technique called projected geometry and generative adversarial networks (GANs), or two-part AI models comprising generators that synthesize data samples and discriminators that attempt to distinguish between the synthesized samples and real data, the simulator redraws scenes meters to the left or right or with curvature and other perturbations. Hotz said that the models within the Small Offset Simulator are now training on 200,000 minutes of driving data collected by Eon users.

It’s similar — but not quite the same — as the simulation environments deployed internally by Uber, Waymo, and others. GM’s Cruise, for instance, leverages a replay approach that involves extracting real-world sensor data, playing it back against the car’s software, and comparing the performance with human-labeled ground truth data. Cruise also engages in planning simulation, which lets the company’s data scientists create up to hundreds of thousands of variations of a scenario by tweaking variables like the speed of oncoming cars and the space between them.

Future developments

Going forward, Comma.ai plans to release new hardware on roughly a yearly cadence — Hotz believes its business model of selling devices at profit and eating the cost of software development is sustainable. (Comma.ai has raised $8.1 million in venture capital to date across two funding rounds, the most recent of which closed in April 2018.) As for OpenPilot, achieving a better end-to-end driving experience remains an acute area of focus for the engineering team.

“What we want to do is move away from [lead car following] and move to an end-to-end longitudinal [model],” he said. “One of the problems we as a company have trying to convey is, when it works well, you don’t even notice it. Our company mission is to solve self-driving cars while shipping intermediaries.”

But Comma.ai isn’t discouraging rivals from cloning its hardware and piggybacking off of OpenPilot. In fact, Hotz encourages it, just as he encourages those with proprietary solutions to compete with Comma.ai.

One such challenger — former Yahoo CTO John Hayes’ Ghost Locomotion — emerged from stealth last November promising an aftermarket self-driving kit to retrofit existing cars. Another — Cambridge, U.K.-based Wayve — claims its driverless cars self-improve by learning from safety driver interventions. Mobileye doesn’t sell a consumer product, but like Comma.ai, its driverless tech leans on cameras for autonomous decision-making. And then there’s Tesla, which recently release a preview of an active guidance system (Navigate on Autopilot) that navigates a car from a highway on-ramp to off-ramp, including interchanges and making lane changes.

Hotz is unconcerned. “Mobileye is the Windows [of autonomous driving] that’s going to do Microsoft-style business development deals with big companies, Tesla’s the Mac that’s going to ship sexy hardware to consumers, and we’re the Linux,” he said. “Everybody should use us for whatever they want.”

The post Comma.ai launches Comma Two, a $999 kit that imbues cars with assisted driving features appeared first on Actu Trends.

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componentplanet · 5 years

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Car of the Year: ExtremeTech’s Best Cars for 2020

How do you pick the right Car of the Year when so many cars are so good? You can choose the car you’d drive if you had Wall Street money (Flash: Porsche 911 Named Car of the Year Again). You can award the vehicle that drives over boulders (Flash: Jeep Gladiator Honored). You can call on your must-be-Motown roots (Flash: Corvette Wins Car of the Year Again), especially this year when the Corvette is a legit choice. But in the hands of others, that mindset also gave us the Chevrolet Vega, the Mustang II, the Chevrolet Citation, and the second coming of the Ford Thunderbird in 2002.

What about us? At ExtremeTech, we’re looking for a highly competent car that is forward-looking on technology, safety, and driver assists: a car that has still-desirable features and tech when it comes off lease and goes to the next owner at three our four years of age. Seventy percent of cars sold each year are previously owned. As for criteria, we have no price cap; some pubs say no more than 2.5X the average new car price, which average price in November was $38,400 according to KBB.com, excluding incentives, but we’d expect a lot more technology in a $100,000 car than a $25,000 car. Our preference is the car be available to buyers by the beginning of the year, not vaporware. Plus, it should be fun to drive on top of the technical merits. Here’s the 2020 ExtremeTech Car of the Year and, in alphabetical order, the rest of the top 10.

Seen-it-all journos give the 2020 Car of the Year Hyundai Sonata the thumbs up.

Car of the Year: 2020 Hyundai Sonata

In yet another Year of the SUV, where seven in 10 sales go to SUVs, crossovers, and pickups, the best new vehicle is a sedan: the 2020, eighth-generation Hyundai Sonata. Really. Sonata. Only once you have a) seen how good-looking the 2020 model is, b) gone through the list of standard safety technology and c) driven the Sonata can you fully understand the very neat trick Hyundai pulled off.

For starters, the following Hyundai SmartSense driver-assist features below are standard on all four trim lines of every 2020 Sonata (and the last is standard on the trims above SE that account for 85-90 percent of Sonata sales):

Stop and go adaptive cruise control (Hyundai’s term: “advanced smart cruise control”)

Forward collision warning, auto emergency braking, pedestrian detection (“forward collision-avoidance assist with pedestrian detection”)

Auto high beams (“automatic high beam assist”)

Lane keep assist (steers the car back from the lane edges)

Lane centering assist (“lane follow assist”)

Driver drowsiness detection (“driver attention warning”)

Dynamic backing guidelines for the (federally mandated) rearview camera

(SEL, SEL Plus, Limited:) Blind-spot detection (“blind-spot collision avoidance assist”) / rear cross-traffic alert (“rear cross-traffic avoidance assist”)

This is every bit of driver assistance tech you’d expect on any 2020 car, even high-end cars.

Hyundai Blind Spot View Monitor (BVM) shows what’s in your blind spot (also beeps, flashes).

There’s more driver assistance, if you want it: On the top two trim lines, Hyundai has Level 2 self-driving called Highway Drive Assist. It works well. On the top line, Sonata Limited, Remote Smart Parking Assist self-drives your car into and out of a parking space or garage with you out of the car, for about 30 feet worth of self-drive parking. Also on Limited is a Blind Spot View Monitor (photo above) that shows left and right rear video views in the instrument panel, twice as wide as what you’d see from the side mirror, and you still get warning chirps and lights. All in a mainstream car, not a Lexus or Mercedes.

There’s also phone-as-key (just what it sounds like) called Hyundai Digital Key using NFC (near field communications). There’s also a separate NFC proximity card that opens and starts your car and costs about $20 (not $250) for a physical wireless remote key if you lose it. Hyundai Digital Key works with Android phones, and would work with iPhone if Apple allowed NFC for more things than Apple payments. Hello, Apple?

Hyundai knows navigation is a tough sell on lower-cost cars, so it makes standard Android Auto, Apple CarPlay and an 8-inch color touchscreen. Plug in your own phone for navigation. On the upper SEL Plus, Hyundai makes optional a 10.25-inch center display and onboard nav, and it’s standard on Limited because everything comes standard on Limited.

Sonata Limited cockpit.

A performance Sonata, the N Line, follows in 2020 (announced), then most likely a hybrid Sonata (widely expected) that will provide e-power to the rear wheels and give the Sonata all-wheel-drive without creating a space-robbing transmission tunnel for mechanical rear-wheel-drive. Of the top-selling sedans perceived as midsize, the No. 1 Toyota Camry will offer AWD in the spring after 27 years as front-wheel-drive only, No. 2 Honda Accord is front-drive only, No. 3 Nissan Altima got AWD with the 2019 model, and the Sonata is on the verge of being the No. 4 seller as soon as the current fourth- and fifth-place Ford Fusion and Chevrolet Malibu hurry up and kick the bucket (never mind that they are very good sedans).

You get all this core safety (the bullet list above) in the Sonata for $26,430 including freight, or $28,830 for the SEL that has BSD, ten grand under the average selling price of a new car today. The Sonata Limited, maxed out with every option-that-is-actually-standard, sells for $34,530: The Car of the Year, loaded, at four grand under the price of the average new car sold today.

Hyundai’s new equipment-and-options scheme is nice: Features are fixed (no options offered) on entry and premium lines. The least expensive trim has no extra-cost options because shoppers are buying a low payment plan, such as a Sonata SE lease for $219 or 1.9 percent purchase financing; in late December, in some areas, it’s as low as a $99 lease or 0 percent APR 72-month loan. The middle trims offer options. At the top trim, most buyers want every option, so they’re all baked in. And the Sonata is made in America: Montgomery, Alabama, to be specific. Auto manufacturing is transforming the New South in Alabama, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Mississippi, and if the jobs aren’t in Michigan, they are in the US of A.

While the Sonata’s length of 192.9 inches says midsize, the interior volume of 120.4 cubic feet (104.4 feet passenger, 16.0 feet trunk) says full-size in EPA numbers (120 cubic feet and above). In every way, our Car of the Year is a cut above. And Hyundai is poised to pick up the slack as US-flagged automakers cut their sedan lines. Thirty percent of 17 million new vehicles is still 5 million sedans.

Anybody can make a great $75,000 car. It takes genius to engineer a great car for $30,000. Hyundai did it and that’s why the Sonata is the ExtremeTech Car of the Year for 2020.

Below, the rest of ExtremeTech’s top 10 cars for 2020:

BMW X5: An SUV that’s a kick to drive just about anywhere.

BMW X5: Safe, Fast Fun Has Its Price

If you want one higher-end vehicle that does it all – ultra-composed highway cruising with the family or back-roads carving on your own, carpooling or towing 7,200-pound trailers – that’s the 2019 BMW X5 midsize SUV. This the most balanced vehicle in the BMW lineup and offers more of the good stuff and good-life stuff – driver assists, entertainment, safety technology – albeit for a price. It rides well, handles well, and just feels good to be in. It’s the second year of the fourth-generation X5 that debuted as a 2019 model.

The 2020 X5 offers three engines: a 335-hp inline-six and a 0-60 time of 5.2 seconds, a 456-hp V8 (0-60, 4.6 seconds) and for 2020 an X5 M50i with a 523-hp V8 (0-60, 4.1 seconds). Near-perfection has its price: $59,895 for a rear-drive X5 (a whopping seventeen large over the compact X3), to $83,000 for the base X5 M50i (meaning parts from the BMW Motorsport bins), to $133,825 for the X5 M Competition, an all-Motorsport vehicle, fully optioned.

The six-cylinder X5 comes standard with dual 12.3-inch displays, LED headlamps, front/rear parking sonar, Active Driving Assistant (blind spot detection/rear cross-traffic alert, lane departure warning, forward collision warning/city collision mitigation, and daytime pedestrian protection). You pay extra for adaptive cruise control (BMW’s standard “dynamic cruise control” sounds like ACC but really it’s cruise control), for the satellite radio tuner chip (it’s in packages starting at $1,050), and for nine of the 11 paint colors that add $550-$1,950. You may want things like laser headlamps, the rear air suspension, or ultra-premium audio, because why not? You must get the Driving Assistance Professional package ($1,750) with adaptive cruise control, lane centering, auto lane change (just flick the turn signal and it happens if it’s safe), and steering/traffic jam assistant.

A well-equipped X5 will run you $70,000-$75,000. Compared with the equally luxe, equally new Mercedes-Benz GLE, the Bimmer is more fun to drive. Compared with the Audi Q7, Audi still has a great interior but trails otherwise because it’s a five-year-old platform with a 2019 facelift.

Price, mid-engine design makes the Corvette a sports car for the young again.

Chevrolet Corvette Stingray: Mid-Engine Magic

Corvette songs peaked in the sixties, give or take Prince and “Little Red Corvette,” and even that was 1982. Now Corvette culture is back, this time without gold chains, as the 2020 C8 (eighth-generation) Vette arrives. The engine is finally mounted behind the driver, something Corvette chief engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov dreamed of in the 1950s. There’s a seven-speed double-clutch transmission. The 491-hp V8 engine has variable valve timing, gasoline direct injection, and Active Fuel Management (cylinder deactivation) to make the car a responsible citizen that also hits 60 mph in 2.9 seconds with the Z51 package. A turbocharged, overhead-cam, hybrid – yes, hybrid – engine is reportedly in the offing for more fuel efficiency and more power, more power because the electric motors act as additional turbochargers that have zero lag.

The new Corvette offers magnetic ride control shocks – MR, or magnetorheological dampers – that can be sporty or soft. Testers who’ve had the C8 Corvette on the track find it quicker than the C7 Corvette of 2014-2019, and easier to drive. Amazingly, the list price (excluding freight) starts just over $61,000 with freight, $7,500 more for the hardtop convertible. Bring on the Porsches and Ferraris. Most people will pay more and the $100,000 Corvette is an easy possibility. The online configurator is addictive: You want orange seat belts, or Tension Blue, or Torch Red? That’s $395, please, if you don’t want black. You’ll discover front lift with memory, $1,495, that remembers via GPS up to 1,000 speed bumps and steep driveways and lifts the front end 2 inches before you get there. Hey, that’s cheap compared with replacing the front spoilers.

Hyundai Palisade: Upscale ride, cockpit, design. Less than $50,000.

Hyundai Palisade: So Good, So Affordable

If not for the Hyundai Sonata, the Hyundai Palisade might well be Car of the Year. The Palisade is the BMW X5/Mercedes-Benz GLE for $20,000 less, all of them with outstanding interiors and a raft of safety features and driver assists, and very different price points. With the Palisade, a slew of safety features come standard on all trim lines. The three rows fit seven (middle row captain’s chairs) or eight (bench), with semi-passable room in row three for adults. The 291-hp V6 and eight-speed automatic are plenty quick, if not in BMW’s league. (The $20K extra has to go for something, such as less body lean.) Hyundai Drive Assist gives you Level 2 autonomy, meaning the car drives itself on highways as long as you keep your hands lightly on the wheel most of the time.

We loved the Blind View Monitor on the premium trim line, Limited, with its 12.3-inch digital instrument panel. Rear-side-facing cameras bring up a view to the left or right rear. depending on which directional signal is activated. That’s on top of a blind spot warning light in the side mirror, a pleasant chirp from the speakers, and what was a Hyundai/Genesis first, blind spot warnings in the head-up display. You can’t have too much of a good thing, especially for older drivers who can’t, or younger drivers who won’t, turn their heads to check traffic. (Editor’s note: Ignore the Consumer Reports early review that calls Palisade Blind View Monitor “clever … but some of our drivers considered this feature a mere novelty while others thought it could be distracting.” No way. It’s a feature that makes blind-spot detection even more useful.)

A loaded Palisade comes in at less than $48,000. The Palisade resets expectations on what you must pay for a great family-size SUV. Shop this (and sibling Kia Telluride, below) if you’re looking at best-seller Ford Explorer or Lincoln Aviator for that matter, as well as Chevrolet Traverse. It’s competitive with Audi/BMW/Mercedes SUVs as well.

The Jaguar I-Pace is the electric sports car SUV that doesn’t require paved roads.

Jaguar I-Pace: Charm of the Un-Tesla

If you want a sports car that’s quick, comfortable, great-looking, and comes with a $7,500 tax credit, that’s the Jaguar I-Pace. Most of all, it’s exclusive: Jaguar was bringing only about 3,000 to US shores for 2019, which is also about what demand is for a vehicle that’s snug in back relative to the Tesla Model S, Model X, or Model 3 and with a more modest range, 234 miles on the EPA test cycle or 292 miles for Europe’s WLTP (Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicle Test Procedure). To push range over 300 miles, you need several hundred more pounds of battery, and that hurts performance. And range. The US needs more cars like the I-Pace, our ExtremeTech Car of the Year a year ago, to make EVs sexier and more desirable.

At the $70,000 base price, it’s a great deal, as high-performance SUVs go. Or high-performance hatchbacks, which the I-Pace also closely resembles. Some people find it annoying when they spend a lot of money on a Black Sapphire Metallic BMW X4 and find the same X4 next to yours in the company parking lot, even if the other one is Carbon Black Metallic or Jet Black. (BMW sells a lot of black cars.) Won’t happen with the Jag.

Midsize Kia Telluride has all the right stuff, at a sub-$50K price (loaded).

Kia Telluride

The Kia Telluride is a fraternal twin to the Hyundai Palisade. Engineers say every body and interior panel is different. But the drivetrain is the same, the EPA numbers are the same at 21 mpg combined city/highway, pricing is similar, and interior finish is first-class on both. The Telluride has four trim lines (LX, S, EX and SX), while the Palisade three (SE, SEL, and Limited). Entry models are about $33,000, both with full-range adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection, lane-centering steering, rear parking sensors, and a trailer stability system.

The Telluride (only) comes standard with blind-spot detection/rear cross-traffic alert and safe exit assist (alert sounds if you open a road-side door with traffic approaching). So if you shop the entry model, the Telluride is a better choice than the Palisade. Both offer a blind spot monitor (display) in the instrument panel, with Kia’s taking up the middle of the screen and Hyundai’s taking up the left-side circular speedometer or right-side tachometer, depending on whether the alert is on the left or right side. Kia has a traditional console shifter; Hyundai uses buttons that set aside more space for cupholders, phones, and keys. Fully optioned, the top trim line is about $47,500. (A Ford Explorer can hit $65,000.)

Subjectively, reviewers say the Kia looks ruggeder, in part with the rectangular grille shape and the Telluride name. The ride is about the same. The Telluride in the fall was outselling the Palisade by 20 percent, and Telluride was Motor Trend’s SUV of the Year; both are candidates for the NACTOY (North American Car and Truck of the Year) utility vehicle award to be announced Jan. 13. Either way, the two are shaking up the market, with the Telluride marketed as a sporty/rugged vehicle and the Palisade emphasizing a luxe interior. To us, the biggest difference is Telluride has blind-spot detection even on the entry trim line.

The midsize Lincoln Aviator is the best of the new Lincolns, hitting all the right notes.

Lincoln Aviator: Ford’s Luxury Brand Takes Off

The Lincoln Aviator represents the resurrection of the Lincoln Motor Company, which for more than a decade breathed Cadillac’s exhaust fumes. The midsize Aviator builds on the Ford Explorer (the best-selling midsize SUV in recent years) with luxury touches that resonate with buyers who, unlike X5 shoppers, don’t yearn for the chance they might one day want to autocross a 2.5-ton vehicle. Still: The Aviator, with a 400-hp twin-turbo V6, hits 60 mph in close to 5 seconds; the Aviator Grand Touring PHEV adds a 100-hp electric motor and batteries good for 18 miles. Inside, the cockpit is rich, refined, and tasteful. High-end trims get 28-speaker Revel audio and 30-way massaging seats. Or maybe it’s the other way around. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra created short musical chords that take the place of harsh beeps on other cars.

Standard safety is good: Co-Pilot 360 comprises forward-collision warning, automated emergency braking, pedestrian detection, blind-spot detection, lane-keep assist, and automatic high-beams. But standard safety could be better: The Aviator line that runs $53,000 (Aviator) to $90,000 (Aviator Grand Touring Black Label) does not include, on lower trims, Co-Pilot 360 Plus with full-range adaptive cruise control, traffic-sign recognition, and self-parking (parallel and perpendicular). The Aviator (formerly MK-something, MKT we believe), flanked by the bigger Navigator (always called Navigator), the smaller-midsize Nautilus (formerly MKX), and the compact Corsair (formerly MKC), is finally gaining momentum. For a Lincoln to advance from best-of-the-year for 2020 to models that are best of every year, it needs to work on quality control (the Aviator/Explorer rollout was messy) and give thought to some sporty variants.

Mazda CX-5: the definitive class-above compact SUV.

Mazda CX-5: So Good in So Many Ways

How often does one model surpass half an automaker’s sales? That’s the Mazda CX-5 compact SUV, with 151,000 of Mazda’s 300,000 US sales in 2018, a runaway success since the second generation arrived as a 2017 model. It’s nimble, seats four or five very comfortably, and now has a Grand Touring Reserve and Signature models with a 250 hp turbo engine and even nicer cockpit trim. Every mainstream automaker flaunts the term “class above,” but it’s Mazda that actually delivers. (Okay, the Hyundai Palisade/Kia Telluride in this story as well.) Fit and finish are first-rate and several Mazdas, including the CX-5, are cited among Consumer Reports’ most reliable vehicles.

Vehicle development engineer Dave Coleman says, “Mazda makes slow cars that are fun to drive fast.” Meaning there’s more fun pushing a normally powered car to its limits on a back road than carefully modulating the throttle on, say, an X3 to find you’re always holding back to avoid being 20 mph over the limit and having to lean hard on the brakes going into a curve. Mazda sweats the details on how the driver blends with the seat, even how his or her head bobs going over bumps or in turns, all to in the name of jinba ittai, or making horse and rider as one. The first time you hear jinba ittai, you wonder if this is more marketing BS. Over time, you realize this is what Mazda is about, and why a comparatively small company slays so many dragons.

The entry CX-5 Sport with cloth seats, blind-spot detection, 187 hp, and front-drive is a sporty runabout at $25,000, while the top-of-the-line Signature AWD adds adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist (but not lane centering, because Mazda wants to keep it a driver’s car), suede seat inserts, and gorgeous wood dash panels for $38,000. Now that it’s winter, you can mount winter tires and test Mazda’s belief that nobody does better predictive all-wheel drive.

Ram 1500: Big display, 48-volt power boost.

Ram 1500/Ram HD: 48-Volt eTorque Boosts Power

Redesigned for 2019, the Ram 1500 offers a very good ride, the ability to carry or tow big loads, and a wide range of engine choices. Most interesting is eTorque, a mild-hybrid option on V6 and V8 engines that uses a 48-volt battery pack and a belt-drive electric motor (which doubles as a generator) for brief bursts of extra power, or torque. In city driving, eTorque engines boost fuel economy by almost 20 percent. There’s also a V6 EcoDiesel that is matching V8s on power and towing capacity. Inside, the cab is roomy, has lots of storage, and useful tech features, including an available 12-inch portrait display and the easy-to-use UConnect interface and navigation system. The Ram’s coil-spring suspension improves the ride over leaf-spring pickups and the top-line Limited has a four-corner air suspension that emulates the ride of an upscale luxury sedan or SUV.

Naturally, there’s an array of cab types (regular with one row of seats; quad with two rows and snug rear legroom; and crew with two rows and the same 41-inch legroom as the front seat), bed lengths (5’7″, 6’4″, 8′), trim lines (seven), engines (V6 and V8 gas with and without eTorque, V6 diesel, Cummins inline-six diesel), an off-roader (Rebel), heavy-duty versions (2500 HD, 3500 HD), and rear- or four-wheel-drive. The most common driver assists – blind spot detection, adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist – are offered as options, and some features such as adaptive cruise control are only available on higher trim lines. All this made the Ram 1500 America’s third best-selling vehicle in America, albeit behind the Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado.

The Subaru Forester compact SUV: Different from the rest, and better.

Subaru Forester: Solid, Safe, On and Off Paved Roads

The fifth-generation Subaru Forester that debuted in 2019 remains true to its roots: rugged, reliable, standard all-wheel-drive, and easily cleaned inside and out with a fire hose (first remove the golden lab), or so the faithful claimed, except now the rubber floor mats are carpet. And there’s a lot of safety, standard, via Subaru EyeSight, a system using stereoscopic cameras. For 2020, lane centering assist comes standard, in addition to full-range adaptive cruise control and forward-collision warning/mitigation braking. DriverFocus tracks head movement and sounds an alert if you appear distracted; usually, it’s right.

Compared with our top ten Mazda CX-5, the Forester occupants sit more upright and have more legroom, and there’s more cargo room in back. The CX-5 is more fun to drive, while the Forester’s higher ground clearance make it better off-paved roads. The Mazda, even with the non-turbo four, is quicker, while the Forester easily gets fuel economy in the 30s. Both are great in the snow, especially on winter tires.

Hell freezes over: The Toyota Racing Development (TRD) Avalon. Hold on to your dentures.

Honorable Mention

With almost 300 different models on sale, there are plenty of just-about-as good cars, SUVs, and pickups. All are standouts overall, with very good technology. They include:

Audi A4. The best compact, upscale sport sedan, in a field crowded by BMW 3 Series, Mercedes C-Class, Infiniti Q60, Lexus IS, Volvo S60, etcetera. Plenty of tech, as you’d expect.

Ford F-150. No. 1 selling vehicle (nearly 1M this year). Ford’s turbo (EcoBoost) V6 makes buyers forget V8s. Sync works well.

Honda Accord. The longstanding benchmark in midsize sedans has fought off challengers before and rivals higher-end cars for cabin quality.

Honda Odyssey. Write this on your hand when you shop: No 200- to 205-inch inch SUV carries as many people in comfort, in all three rows, as a minivan. The 2020 Odyssey has its extensive HondaSensing safety suite and blind-spot detection (which is not part of the suite) standard on all but the low selling-entry trim line. It’s the best choice for a family. If you need all-wheel-drive, the Toyota Sienna is the only choice currently (a very good choice), and if you do a lot of around-town carpooling, the upscale Chrysler Pacifica PHEV covers the first 18 miles on battery power.

Hyundai Kona. A solid upscale subcompact crossover. Want the same size from Hyundai, only less expensive? Check out the just-shipped Venue, a Nissan Kicks competitor.

Mazda CX-30. CX-30 finds room in the foot of length between the aging CX-3 and never-grows-old CX-5.

Porsche Macan. The compact SUV is a gem, priced to match, and with great technology. It is the best-selling Porsche.

Subaru Crosstrek, now in gas or gas-hybrid.

Subaru Ascent. A very, very good midsize SUV the second time around. A decade ago, Subaru couldn’t click with the similarly sized B9/Tribeca SUV. This time, magic happened.

Subaru Crosstrek. The go-anywhere AWD (of course) subcompact hatch with a sporty flair, solid off-paved-roads driving, and the excellent optical driver-assist system, EyeSight. Now has a hybrid option.

Tesla Model 3. Forget the Tesla hype machine for a moment: Tesla knows EV batteries best. The Model 3 is a smash sales success compared with every non-Tesla EV.

Toyota Avalon. The best big, midprice sedan for those who don’t want SUVs. Really a good car, and not just for retirees. There’s a hybrid (of course) and a performance model (OMG!) TRD Avalon sedan.

Toyota Camry Hybrid. Camrys are great, Toyota hybrids are great. Perfect when you need more room than a Prius and don’t want a RAV4 (a great small SUV which comes in hybrid).

Toyota Prius. Year in, year out, the standard-bearer among small hybrids. People have (almost) stopped asking how long the batteries might last.

Toyota Yaris. Yes, that’s a lot of Toyotas on this list. Except the best subcompact sedan is actually the Mazda2, rebadged.

Volvo XC60. In a crowded field of upscale compact SUVs, the Volvo stands out for safety and a classy cockpit.

Now read:

2020 Hyundai Sonata Review: Car of the Year? (It’s That Good)

Are Tesla Cybertruck, Mustang Mach-E Moving the Needle Toward EVs?

Buick Throws in the Towel on Cars in the US

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/303740-car-of-the-year-extremetechs-best-cars-for-2020 from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/01/car-of-year-extremetechs-best-cars-for.html

#Car of the Year: ExtremeTech’s Best Cars for 2020

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usedcarsnearme · 5 years

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BEST USED CARS UNDER $20,000 | Used Cars Near Me

As the year-end approaching, it is the best time to put your money in used cars and invest in the latest models and the best part is you can avail the best discounts and deals. You’ll have a variety of options available to choose from whether it can be mid-size trucks, sedan or extravagant luxury.

2017 Ford Fusion Hybrid

The comfortable midsize sedan which builts an ample amount of space for sitting and things. With the powerful V6 engine and 325 horsepower, it falls under the sport sedan segment and also makes it a suitable option for the family car. Even driving the used 2017 Ford Fusion Hybrid can provide you an everlasting experience as it comes with all-wheel drive and sporty suspension.

The plug-in hybrid version present in the 2017 Ford Fusion Hybrid makes them the best hybrid cars as it provides energy till 21 miles and also goes a long way without any refueling and at the same time provides relief to your pocket. It also comes in two other models one is a luxury version i.e. Fusion Platinum with the leather on the dashboard, advanced technology, and other uplifted luxuries.

The 2017 Ford Fusion Hybrid is the perfect match for extracting the fuel at 43 MPG. The best part is it is the most powerful car in the sedan car segment falls under the sports car segment which is Fusion sport with a V6 engine and 325 horsepower and inclusion of the Hybrid plugin provides excessive fuel economy.

2016 KIA Optima

KIA has taken the market recently in wider area which shows the 2016 model looks like a familiar model of 2019 KIA and a perfect buy for a used car in the midsize-sedan with upgraded technology and advanced features.

KIA offers a range of options if you are considering buying used cars the 2016 KIA optima Eco provides 1.6-liter turbocharged with a 7-speed dual-clutch transmission and the SX and SX-L have 2.0-liter engine with the advanced power steering system. The best option to buy in used cars in 2016 KIA optima SX as it has 245 horsepower with 4 turbo cylinder and 7-speed dual-clutch which makes it suitable purchase in the midsize 2016 Kia Optima.

2016 Chevrolet Impala

2016 Chevrolet Impala is the best example of Sedan as it is way stylish with the all-wheel-drive and extravagant performance and fuel economy. It has 2.5 liters 4 cylinder engine which attains 31 mpg on the highway with the upright 196 horsepower.

Impala offers the best interior and features like MYLINK VALET MODE enables the access of an 8-inch color touch screen with the 4 digit PIN code. It also provides the place where you can safely place your keys, wallets, and smartphone and also it runs on CNG which saves the pocket.

2016 Honda Accord

As Honda’s tagline symbolizes “You meet the nicest people on a Honda” doesn’t this sounds great buying a used car and also meeting new people at the same time. 2016 Honda Accord offers comfort and a roomy interior which enhances the driving experience. If we talk about the reliability and using the used car in the long run 2016 Honda Accord is totally a go-to option to buy.

In the minimal range, Honda Accord provides 2.4 liters with 4 cylinder engine with 27 MPG and 185 horsepower does not have rigid suspension with less steering and powerful brakes enhance the driving experience and add value to the money. 2016 Honda Accord tends to depreciate less in comparison to another sedan in the same segment.

2017 Toyota Camry

Toyota has always remain people’s first choice due to they’re reliable which is why they are always the individual’s first choice to buy in the sedan car segment. 2017 Toyota Camry is way feasible to drive and also offers great resell values it is available in V6 and V8 engines with the horsepower of 178 and 6-speed automatic transmission.

The interior of the 2017 Toyota Camry has subtle interior and is feasible to use with knobs and buttons which looks way digital. It falls with the other three option of powertrains that enhances performance and fuel economy and also every model of the Camry has front-wheel-drive. 2017 Toyota Camry comes in four other trims LE, SE, XLE, and XSE, the LE, SE are a less expensive model then XLE and XSE.

#most reliable used truck under 5000 #small pickup trucks for sale near me #best small pickup #used small trucks #used pickup truck for sale near me

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jonathanbelloblog · 6 years

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2020 Toyota Corolla Sedan: It’s Much Better!

SAVANNAH, Georgia—One argument for replacing the long-in-the-tooth Toyota Corolla with an all-new model is that this compact sedan is such an icon for the brand. More than 46 million have been sold globally since production began at Japan’s Takaoka plant in 1966, easily topping the Ford Model T and the original Volkswagen Beetle. Then there are the years and millions of dollars spent developing the new, 53-city-mpg hybrid model that would have helped the model glide through the Obama administration’s now-cancelled Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard of 2025. And of course there’s the hope that the 2020 Toyota Corolla will scoop up those first-car purchases left on the table by the departures of the Chevrolet Cruze and Ford Focus.

Arguments against? The production capacity at the plants that build the hybrid (Takaoka) and the vast majority of North American models (Blue Springs, Mississippi) would be better utilized assembling more RAV4s, which has become the bestselling non-pickup in America. At least Toyota plans to shift Corolla production from Blue Springs to a new Alabama joint-venture factory with Mazda in 2021, freeing up capacity for more RAV4s in Mississippi.

In case first-time buyers about to enter the new-car market are ready to turn this SUV trend around, though, Toyota is ready with a compact sedan that’s once again competitive in its rapidly shrinking segment.

The Basics

Indeed, the 2020 Toyota Corolla is a vast improvement, though it remains a conservative counterattack against its biggest rival, the Honda Civic, and the ambitious new Mazda 3. The new lineup is split into “sporty” and mainstream trim levels, with the SE and XSE covering the former and the L, LE, and XLE making up the latter. There’s also the LE hybrid. The new car rides on Toyota’s TNGA platform and is claimed to be 60 percent stiffer in torsional rigidity.

For ’20, the Corolla switches from a torsion-beam rear axle to a multilink setup, and the chassis also takes advantage of Active Cornering Assist, Toyota’s marketing name for brake-based torque-vectoring that will slow an inside wheel to mitigate understeer. The non-sporty versions are powered by the familiar 1.8-liter 2ZR-FAE inline four-cylinder engine, upgraded by 7 horses to 139. It makes 126 lb-ft of torque. The SE and XSE scorch the pavement with the 169-hp, 151-lb-ft 2.0-liter M20A-FKS four. The hybrid combines a 1.8-liter 2ZR-FXE with an electric motor for a total of 121 total horsepower and 105 lb-ft.

The mainstreamers and the hybrid get a standard continuously variable transmission tuned for, well, mainstream driving, while the SE and XSE’s CVT incorporates a physical first gear that upshifts to the transmission’s belt to offer improved off-the-line response. The SE is the only Corolla to offer a manual, in this case a six-speed unit with rev-matching and hill-hold features. While the take rate for the six-speed manual transmission is about 10 percent on the Corolla SE and XSE hatchbacks, which launched for the 2019 model year, Toyota expects just five percent of buyers to shift for themselves in the Corolla sedan.

The Equipment

SE and XSE also add smoked LED taillamps, dual chrome-tipped exhaust, color-key sideview mirrors with turn-signal repeaters, sport mesh gray metallic grille and 18-inch machined alloy wheels with P225/40R-18 tires, which were Yokohama Avids, in the case of our test car. Toyota’s spec sheet notes that SE, XSE and XLE also add variable intermittent windshield wipers, which seems like something that should be standard across the Corolla board. But Toyota clearly has been counting pennies on the sedan’s development, with the popular LE model starting at just $20,880 and the LE Hybrid at $23,880.

There’s Apple Car Play and Amazon Alexa capability, but no Android for Auto. Safety Sense 2.0 includes a pre-collision system with pedestrian detection, bicycle detection in daylight, full-speed range dynamic radar and lane-departure alert with steering assist.

The Driving

We started out in an XSE. The roads leading out of charming, historic Savannah aren’t conducive to wringing out anything, even a small car with little power, though we were able to determine on the few curves that the XSE is taut and nimble, with decent compliance at turn-in and fairly minimal understeer (which may or may not have become moderate had we been on a more challenging road). The steering, despite the fact that the electronic power assist remains on the column and not the rack, is excellent. It transmits all kinds of road feel, although there’s also a lot of road noise coming in through the Yokohama Avid 225/40R-18s.

The XSE’s two-tone, faux-leather sport seats are handsome and more comfortable, with more bolstering, than those in the “L” models. (The SE gets the same basic seats with cloth upholstery.) The XSE comes with paddle shifters, with nine steps in the CVT-plus-first-gear transmission, though we mostly saved self-shifting for the SE manual. Sport mode affects the throttle response and turns the digital speedometer graphic from blue to red, though there was minimal seat-of-the-pants difference. The CVT doesn’t hold a “gear” and “upshifts” automatically at the redline even when using the paddles.

The XSE’s 2.0-liter is the standard engine in the hatchback and provides the same smooth power here, although the shift from first gear to the CVT’s belt was fairly noticeable under heavy throttle. In truth, this 169-horse engine should be the entry-level powerplant in this car from Toyota, a company which continues to eschew the turbocharging that is now ubiquitous.

A Corolla XLE with Dunlop Enasave 205/55R-16s that we drove next was much quieter, and the road feel still was good, though the low-rolling-resistance tires added a bit of twichiness, requiring regular steering corrections that we didn’t need to make in the XSE. The 139-hp 1.8-liter doesn’t feel that much down on the 2.0-liter four until you try full-throttle acceleration. While up front the seats are heated and feature eight-way power on the driver’s side, if you’re thinking of it as an analog to, say, the Civic’s semi-premium Touring model, you’ll come away disappointed. In reality, the XLE is slightly less expensive than the top-trim sporty model.

All the Corollas we drove had cheery, pleasant interiors, although there’s a bit of inconsistency shown in stuff like the dashboard stitching on the XSE, which is blue on the black upper portion of the two-tone dash and cream-colored on the cream-colored portion of the dash. The rear seat is capacious enough for a compact, with good outward visibility, although the bottom cushion is situated high to afford better legroom at the expense of headroom.

The driver’s version is the 2020 Toyota Corolla SE. It’s available with the CVT, though only the six-speed-manual version comes with a standard moonroof and proximity entry and ignition; it’s priced $700 higher as a result. And in a nod to purists, the SE manual has real gauges with actual needles, not the digital readouts of other models we drove.

The manual is a bit notchy, but it’s easy to use and has a nice, progressive clutch; it’s perfectly fine if you’re not spoiled by Miata or Honda stick-shifts. The iMT—for “intelligent manual transmission”—button turns on the rev-matching downshift function.

We also were able to sample the gas/electric Corolla, which the automaker positions as an affordable conventional hybrid that offers exceptional fuel mileage and a sticker price south of $25,000. It’s a Toyota hybrid, so the transitions between full battery power and the ignition of the 121-hp 1.8-liter four are fairly smooth. It’s still the sort of car you won’t feel compelled to drive quickly or fast, and sitting as it will in showrooms with hybrid versions of the Camry, Avalon, RAV4, and Highlander—to say nothing of the Prius, which also has a Prime plug-in variant—continues the normalization of the powertrain type that the automaker helped popularize.

The Takeaway

In fact, with so many hybrids, it’s probably time to make the Prius Prime the base version of that car. And we’ll repeat our opinion that the 2.0-liter engine ought to be the engine across the conventional Corolla lineup. When each is equipped with the CVT, it beats the 1.8-liter’s fuel economy both in the city and on the highway, which means the old 1.8 is just there to keep the price down. Does Toyota really need a base model that begins just above $20,000 at the sacrifice of fuel efficiency? Perhaps fleet buyers will be charmed by that one.

But the rest of the lineup should charm plenty of civilian buyers. The 2020 Corolla is a competent, good-looking compact that, should its reputation hold, will pay off with years of virtually trouble-free driving. The new sedan isn’t as expressive or as much fun to drive as the Honda Civic or the new Mazda 3, but in most every other way it’s in the hunt, and the hatchback model broadens the lineup and offers enough fun and style to interest enthusiasts. In any case, every vehicle that Toyota sells that’s a Corolla instead of an SUV is a net positive in our book.

2020 Toyota Corolla Sedan Specifications

ON SALE Now BASE PRICE $20,430–$26,380 ENGINES 1.8L DOHC 16-valve inline-4, 139 hp @ 6,100 rpm, 126 lb-ft @ 3,900 rpm; 2.0L DOHC 16-valve inline-4, 169 hp @ 6,600 rpm, 151 lb-ft @ 4,400 rpm; 1.8L DOHC 16-valve inline-4 with electric motor, 121 hp @ 5,200 rpm, 105 lb-ft @ 3,000 rpm TRANSMISSIONS 6-speed manual, continuously variable automatic LAYOUT 4-door, 5-passenger, front-engine, FWD sedan EPA MILEAGE 29–31/36–40 mpg (city/hwy, nonhybrid), 53/52 mpg (city/hwy, hybrid) L x W x H 182.3 x 70.1 x 56.5 in WHEELBASE 106.3 in WEIGHT 2,950–3,100 lb

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eddiejpoplar · 6 years

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2020 Toyota Corolla Sedan: It’s Much Better!

The Basics

The Equipment

The Driving

The Takeaway

2020 Toyota Corolla Sedan Specifications

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lovelyfantasticfart · 4 years

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2018 BMW 5 Collection - Consumers Guide

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jesusvasser · 6 years

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2020 Toyota Corolla Sedan: It’s Much Better!

The Basics

The Equipment

The Driving

The Takeaway

2020 Toyota Corolla Sedan Specifications

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robertkstone · 6 years

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The 2020 Hyundai Sonata Aims to Create Buzz

The 2020 Sonata will not be instantly recognizable as a Hyundai, but it is designed to be a head-turner and create buzz similar to the impact of the 2011 Sonata, says SangYup Lee, head of the Hyundai Global Design Center in Namyang, Korea.

The next-generation Sonata is one of 13 new vehicles coming this year for the Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis brands. It will be on display at the New York auto show in April with production set to begin soon.

This is an important year as Hyundai works to rebrand itself as more emotional and sporty while still offering value and retaining its commitment to cars—more are coming next year—even as Hyundai expands its crossover lineup and still plans to add the Santa Cruz car-based pickup.

Hyundai Le Fil Rouge Concept

Designing the eighth-generation Sonata was a challenge knowing it must excite consumers who continue to forgo sedans. “The new Sonata is quite challenging for us obviously just because we all know that market is shrinking and taken over by SUVs,” Lee said in an interview with MotorTrend.

As companies such as Ford, FCA, and General Motors cut their car lineups, Hyundai found itself deciding whether to proceed with a new car. But the Sonata is integral to the brand, accounting for almost a sixth of its sales as it competes with juggernauts such as the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord.

Hyundai chose to make a new Sonata but knew it had to be more appealing, with progressive design—no big-box sedan. “It’s almost like a four-door coupe style without compromising the usability inside,” Lee said.

“We will make big statements this year,” Lee said, akin to the 2011 Sonata, the sixth generation that made people take notice. It was one of the first coupe-style sedans, a provocative design at the time. Lee was a designer at General Motors working on Camaro and Corvette when he saw that Sonata with its distinctive profile. “I was looking at it, and I was like, ‘Wow. That is something else. And it’s going to be a hit with this market.’ As soon as I saw it, I sensed it, and second thing is, ‘why didn’t I think of that?’”

Lee thinks the 2020 Sonata can have the same impact. The design is inspired by the Le Fil Rouge concept (pictured above) shown a year ago in Geneva. Some Hyundai signature cues will remain, such as a hint of the cascading grille and the composite lens in the headlights.

But the face will not be recognizable as a Hyundai. Lee wants people to like it and take a second look and see that it’s a Hyundai. Rather than Russian nesting dolls, the goal is a portfolio of chess pieces that look and behave differently, but when they’re all together, their roles are clear.

Powertrains are uncertain. The current 1.6-liter turbocharged I-4 could be dropped while keeping the base 2.4-liter I-4 and 2.0-liter turbo-four. A Sonata N performance variant could be a candidate for the third-generation Theta turbocharged 2.5-liter. The six-speed automatic transmission could be retired with the eight-speed to fall back on as well as the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission. And we expect hybrids and plug-in hybrids.

Sonata dates back to 1985 when the midsize car was first produced in Korea. It was essentially a face-lifted Hyundai Stellar with more power sold in Korea, Canada, and New Zealand to little success. The second generation in 1988 was part of Hyundai’s expansion in North America, including the U.S., and the design was by Giorgetto Giugiaro of ItalDesign. In addition to Ulsan, Korea, there was a plant in Bromont, Quebec, until it closed in 1993.

The current seventh-gen Hyundai Sonata

Over its various generations it has used Mitsubishi engines, migrated to a platform shared with the Kia Optima and the first Hyundai Santa Fe, and was the first host for the new Theta I-4 engine and part of the production launch in 2005 at the first U.S. plant in Montgomery, Alabama. After the eye-catching 2011 model, the current seventh-generation model was unveiled at the 2014 New York auto show with more conservative styling to bolster sales in Korea. A plug-in hybrid with a 27-mile electric-only range was added in late 2015 in 10 states. The outgoing sedan got a refresh for the 2018 model year.

Lee does design work for both Hyundai and Genesis. Although Genesis was born from Hyundai, the luxury brand has a different legacy. As Hyundai positions itself as the sporty and emotional value brand, the infant Genesis brand must be progressive and daring and strives to celebrate Korean culture.

The current G70, G80, and G90 sedans will be followed up with the first SUV, the GV80, which is coming this year. Genesis has more new vehicles coming this year, but Lee is tight-lipped about the other products on tap.

He does confirm that work continues on a production version of the Essentia sports car. It is an iconic statement to define the brand, and he says it will be even better than the concept.

The post The 2020 Hyundai Sonata Aims to Create Buzz appeared first on Motortrend.

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completeautoloans · 6 years

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14 Top Hybrid Cars under $30k

Best Hybrid Cars under $30k

Hybrid cars run on two different engines to minimize air pollution and enable drivers to cover more mileage. The average sports car covers 19-22 miles per gallon of gas in the city while owning a hybrid enables you to drive at least 27 miles using the same amount of fuel. That’s great, isn’t it? So, today, let’s look at the best hybrid cars under $30k.

1. What is the best hybrid to buy under $30,000?

1. 2017 Toyota Highlander Hybrid

Did you know that it’s possible to own a hybrid SUV for less than $30k? Well, thanks to the 2017 Toyota Highlander Hybrid, you can own cruise around your city in a 305 horsepower hybrid engine. Just like most high-performance SUVs, this hybrid uses the new V6 engine.

How many miles does it cover per gallon of gas? Drivers who reside and work in the same vicinity might travel at least 28 miles while those who regularly use the freeway do approximately 30 miles. It’s an ideal family car thanks to its spacious interior and quite safe when you look at the safety features.

2. 2017 Toyota Camry Hybrid

Why is this hybrid so popular nationwide? Because the LE model enables you to cover approximately 40 miles on just one gallon of gas! Basically, you can cover twice the distance a sports car owner driving a 320 horsepower engine covers. Toyota Camrys also appeal to first-time car owners due to their low maintenance costs.

Inside, you’ll find a touch-screen infotainment system that serves several functions. Top of the list is navigation where you can access GPS maps straight from the screen. It also supports hands-free phone support while driving. Motorists can also plug in their phones or tablets to enjoy listening to their favorite albums or podcasts.

3. 2017 Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid

Here’s a mid-size sedan that’s ideal for your family’s everyday ride. Below the front bumper is a set of powerful LED fog lights to enhance your visibility when driving in bad weather. It’s protruding fenders and overall shape hint a sporty aura to this hybrid. You won’t feel out of place pulling up in this hybrid on campus or a date thanks to this brilliant design.

Do you own an Android device? The good news about the 2017 Chevy Malibu Hybrid is that it uses an Android infotainment system. That means you can access Google Maps directly on the screen as long as you have a reliable internet connection.

This is perhaps one of the best hybrid cars on this list that you might end up buying. Especially if you spend at least thirty minutes driving from home to work or school. Why? Because this hybrid can cover an impressive 38 miles within city limits and 40 miles on the highway.

4. 2017 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid

The 2017 Toyota Rav4 Hybrid is great in terms of fuel consumption and cargo carrying capacity, making it to the list of ideal hybrid family cars. It’s also quite safe thanks to the height from the ground, which enhances its stability when driving offroad. It comes with an all-wheel-drive system to ensure optimum torque distribution when your car gets stuck in the mud.

It covers at least 35 miles per gallon of gas when driven on the highway. Despite its large size, this SUV has a modest 195 horsepower engine. The infotainment system is basic, making it easy to use for first-time RAV4 owners.

5. 2017 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid

Here’s a good alternative to the 2017 Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid as well as the Toyota Camry. Both have a similar size as well as mileage per gallon. It’s also a nice family car because it can accommodate five passengers while proving each with ample leg room. The roof is high enough even for tall people to travel on bumpy roads without hitting their heads on the ceiling.

If you’re planning to own this hybrid, keep in mind that it has a four-wheel-drive system. That’s a great feature especially for a midsize sedan because you won’t get stuck driving in some random back roads while out on road trips.

6. 2017 Kia Optima Hybrid

Are you looking for a car with a corporate look? Owning this Kia Optima Hybrid helps you to cover long distances without inflating your company’s expenses. One of the fuel-saving features you’ll like is the smart cruise control. A gallon of gas on the highway will last for 46 miles.

On a long ride, you can download Spotify directly to the Google Android system on your dashboard. The steering wheel has a nice smooth finishing to prevent your wrists from straining. It also has several controls that enable a driver to answer calls, control windows, just to name a few.

7. 2017 Kia Niro

If you’re considering downgrading from a fuel-guzzling SUV to a pocket-friendly ride, the 2017 Kia Niro is your solution. Why is it so popular? Because it covers 48 miles per gallon of gas in the city. Just imagine how many road trips you can enjoy annually on this hatchback.

The interior consists of straightforward design and you’ll find it quite spacious. It has a push-to-start button and chrome pedals. If you’re looking for a family car, you’ll this Kia because it has huge trunk space. The back seat is foldable to create extra luggage room.

8. 2017 Honda Accord Hybrid

If you’re hoping to buy a hybrid within the 200 horsepower range, have a look at the 2017 Honda Accord Hybrid. This mid-size sedan can serve as a corporate or family car when you look at its friendly design and 5-passenger capacity. It covers over 45 miles per gallon on the highway.

Honda did a nice job when it comes to dashboard features. You can charge your phone wirelessly inside a retractable port. This feature prevents drivers from accidentally spilling drinks on their phones. It also has a Wi-Fi hotspot to enable you to update your maps and get the latest entertainment.

9. 2017 Hyundai Ioniq Hybrid

You’ll notice a high degree of similarity at the rear end between this vehicle and the Honda Accord Hybrid. Its unique design positions the center of gravity closer to the ground for added stability. The large front grill and slanting headlights give it a sporty feel especially since its blue like a Subaru WRX.

Have you ever noticed how the sun might seem to glare into your eyes despite lowering your visor? You won’t experience that problem inside an Ioniq Hybrid because it comes with sliding visors. You can adjust them depending on the angle of sunlight. It also has an Android entertainments system that’s integrated with Apple music.

10. 2017 Toyota Prius

The 2017 Toyota Prius is an ideal alternative to buyers who want a car that has the features of a Hyundai Ioniq Hybrid but costs less. Despite being a recurring theme of standup comedy, the Prius covers an impressive 50 miles on the highway per gallon of gas. That’s why most car dealerships offer it to college students because it’s economical.

The center console features a simplistic black and white design. Unfortunately, it isn’t compatible with Android devices. Tall people might feel uncomfortable sitting in the back because the reclining roof design brings about uneven headspace.

11. Ford Fusion Hybrid

It comes in various options to suit different hybrid customers. The premium Fusion Hybrid has white leather seats and a push-to-start button. However, the driver’s legroom is small for tall drivers who are 5ft 9′ and above.

One cool feature about driving this car is using a knob to switch gears instead of the usual stick. It has better precision and less likely to suffer from damages because your engine is automated. You’ll notice just how spacious the back is despite being a midsize sedan with a slanting roof design.

12. 2015 Lexus ES

Here’s an amazing family sedan that might make you reconsider purchasing a Hyundai Sonata or Chevy Malibu Hybrid. Why? Because its spacious enough even for tall people to ride on bumpy roads without hitting their heads on the roof. Plus, it’s large enough to accommodate three adults in the backseat.

It’s amazing just how silent the interior is even while cruising at high speeds. Under the hood is a 268 horsepower V6 engine with a 6-speed transmission. You can drive it three modes; Eco, Normal, and Sports. The latter mode is best suited for long straight roads.

Suggested read: Long lasting cars that are worth checking out

13. 2016 BMW i3

Who would have guessed that the iconic German-based manufacturer BMW would one day manufacture subcompact eco-friendly cars? Well, the rising demand in more green-compliant cars globally led to BMW releasing the i3 that costs an average of $22,000.

It contains a 170 horsepower engine with a rear-wheel-drive system. The exterior is made from reinforced carbon fiber and has high nerd appeal. If your lithium battery runs out completely, you’ll need to charge it for 20 hours. A full battery will sustain you for 80 miles in normal driving situations.

Are you planning to buy a sports car that costs less than $50,000?

14. 2017 Lexus CT Hybrid

Here’s a luxurious hybrid that provides elegance and economical fuel consumption under one roof. It has a smartkey entry system and you activate your engine using a push-to-start button. You can cover at least 40 miles per gallon of gas while in the city riding around in this 2017 Lexus CT hybrid.

You’ll notice LED lights on your side mirrors to enhance visibility when driving through a fog. There’s also an extra pair of fog lights below the front grill. The interior features leather seats and dashboard controls mounted on a slanting panel.

Get your hybrid today!

There’s no shame in driving a Prius to campus or your place of work because you know how great it feels to spend 50% less on gas than you did when owning a fuel guzzler.

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