Hydrogen at work
Korean car maker Hyundai is about to leap from budget option to one of the car industry’s technical powerhouses in the space of two generations.
While the German premium brands continue to develop, tease and promise with hydrogen fuel-cell cars, Hyundai is already promising to deliver its second-generation model by late next year.
Its ix35 Fuel Cell car (above) beat Toyota’s much-hyped Mirai onto the road by a matter of weeks and the mass volume brand is keen to continue its technical momentum.
The ix35 Fuel Cell is due to end its limited production run next year after delivering between 10,000 and 15,000 of its zero-emission hydrogen-powered cars in two years.
While the ix35 Fuel Cell cars have largely been snapped up by hydrogen-infrastructure companies and lobby groups keen to prove the clean-fuel technology works, the replacement car will target a broader public audience.
It has typically been at the upper end of the Hyundai price range worldwide, but Hyundai insiders have strongly hinted that the successor’s price target would be far cheaper as it seeks out more private buyers.
Insiders have suggested the brand has targeted weight reduction and packaging as their biggest areas of improvement, and the scalability of the next generation’s powertrain should make that easier. The car’s design has already been signed off in Seoul, in right and left-hand drive.
New-look Toyota 86
Toyota is showing the next generation of its 86 sportscar at the New York International Auto Show this week. The official press picture shows the car (below) in a colour remarkably close to Subaru’s 555 Blue, which is interesting given that Subaru produces the same car under the name BRZ. Design changes include a new front look with LED lights, new wheel designs and a revised rear, while the interior has received a more upmarket look. Toyota also says it has updated the suspension of the new model which arrives in SA in the fourth quarter.
BMW grows X-factor
As we reported in July 2015, BMW has been preparing its largest X model, the X7. The new model was given the green light back in 2014 but is only likely to hit the market in 2018. The company has just hosted its annual results conference, where it teased with a picture of the new model under a cover. The X7 will be built on the same platform as the next generation X5 but with a longer wheelbase to make it the largest X model it has ever produced.
It will be produced at the company’s Spartanburg plant in the US, with the US and China likely to be major markets for the new model.
Phaeton disappears
Production of Volkswagen’s loss-making Phaeton limousine fizzled out almost anonymously last Friday.
Launched as a flagship car to take Volkswagen into a semi-premium future and built at a high-cost, custom-made flagship plant in Dresden, Germany, the Phaeton (above) has no immediate replacement atop the Volkswagen line-up. A hundred workers will remain on hand in Dresden, the plant dubbed the "Crystal Palace" by the English or the "Transparent Factory" by Volkswagen’s official spokesmen, as it moves from an actual car plant to become a showcase for electromobility and digitalisation. The rest will be moved to Volkswagen’s nearby Zwickau plant.
The three Volkswagen spokesmen we talked to would not acknowledge the irony in a plant designed to demonstrate Volkswagen’s future to the world closing to be turned into a showcase to demonstrate Volkswagen’s (new) future to the world. The plant will officially close on March 29, to be reopened 10 days later as a visitor’s centre for electrified driving.
Instead, Volkswagen has hinted another car with more conventional technology may sit above the Passat in its four-door sedan hierarchy. Officially, the Phideon (note the cap-tip to the Phaeton’s name) will be built in China for China, but by launching it in Geneva this month Volkswagen gave the rest of the world’s potential buyers the chance to show some interest in the sleek-looking limousine.
Insiders at Volkswagen have implied that selling the Phideon outside China would let it save the Phaeton badge for its all-electric, semi-autonomous flagship in 2018.
It’s a dog’s life
Remember Buddy? He was the star of many a Toyota advert in SA, but now it seems he has not only fled to the UK but been adopted by Opel’s UK division, Vauxhall. He might also have had a sex change because he has appeared in an advert parking a Vauxhall Corsa under the name Gerty the Boxer. Sitting in the driver’s seat of the red Vauxhall Corsa, Gerty shows off the advanced technology of the new easy parking feature — from how it detects a parking space to automatically computing the perfect manoeuvre into the slot — demonstrating that parallel parking can be a walk in the park. Perhaps Gerty will be sending pounds home to the family in SA.
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