Future Cars

Not so many years ago, a 1.2-liter engine would only have been found in the U.S. in the smallest and least impressive of subcompact cars. It might have been a 3-cylinder, and certainly wouldn't have had even 100 horsepower. But times change, and engines of that size will soon be found even in the...

As Volkswagen works to look toward the future, following its damaging diesel deceit, electric cars and plug-in vehicles will be front and center in its product publicity. The German automaker has already hinted at its future electric cars with a handful of concepts, but its first high-volume...

The iconic Jeep Wrangler is a tough vehicle to make fuel-efficient. Its separate frame and body add weight, and it has all the wind-cheating grace of a small municipal hospital. The Wrangler SUV only gets redesigned every 10 years or so, so each new generation is a big deal to Jeep fans. DON'T...

Small SUVs are all the rage, steadily eating into sales of passenger sedans and hatchbacks of pretty much every size. It's not just limited to North America, either: the trend is global, which is why several makers have jacked up perfectly standard front-wheel-drive hatchbacks and turned them into...

Volvo has never tackled the small crossover segment in the United States, but it's ready to change that with the new XC40. The Volvo XC40 will join the larger XC60 and XC90 as its smallest crossover option in the United States, though a previous generation of the model has found success in Europe...

Volkswagen intends to take on the growing global electric-car market in an aggressive way, given the automaker's range of I.D. electric-vehicle concepts over the last couple of years. While a complete portfolio of electric cars will eventually find their way into production, the first high-volume...

The Tesla Model 3, the first mass-market electric car from the Silicon Valley carmaker, is now nominally in production. Scaling up from a trickle of hand-assembled cars to 10,000 units a month is Job One to keep Tesla afloat by letting it sell cars to hundreds of thousands of hand-raisers globally...

It’s a cool spring morning in Menlo Park, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. In a two-story concrete-and-glass building on Constitution Avenue, just down the block from Facebook’s vast fortress, a group of automotive engineers and designers is working to create the...

Audi may have taken an evolutionary approach to the design of the newest, largest luxury sedan, but it is positioning the car as a technical force to be reckoned with. The 2019 Audi A8 ushers in a new era for the German luxury brand—starting now, every single model will soon feature a...

VW Group remains one of the world's three largest carmakers, along with Toyota and General Motors, but the German automaker foresees challenges ahead. Specifically, Volkswagen believes the industry will face a shortage of lithium-ion batteries if new investment is not made soon for additional cell...

Faraday Future has seen its share of setbacks following January's reveal of its FF 91 electric luxury car, but it walked away with a victory at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. The troubled company not only took home a victory, but it also claimed a new record in the process. The FF 91...

OK, reporters of the world, it's time for a little chat. We know—believe me, we know—that you are cranking out a whole lot of copy, with much less support than you used to have, on far tighter deadlines, to feed a voracious, anonymous online audience whose clicks get you paid. But it's...

Volvo has announced a major leap forward in an effort to embrace an electrified portfolio of vehicles. The Swedish automaker will go all-electrified come 2019; every single vehicle it launches will feature an electric motor in some usage. To be clear, this is not the immediate end of the...

In August 2016, when the first U.S. ads for the BMW 330e plug-in hybrid sport sedan hit the airwaves, they carried an interesting promise. "You will wait, and wait, and wait some more," the voiceover intoned, "all before that electric-car company's new model ever even arrives." That would be the...

Over the last two years, Audi and Mercedes-Benz have released several all-electric concept cars that are thinly disguised production models to arrive in 2018 and beyond. But electric-car pioneer BMW's plans are less clear. Its sole recent electric concept car was the iNext luxury sedan shown more...

German luxury carmakers often follow each other's product plans in something close to lockstep. Let one maker—BMW, say—introduce a new category of vehicle—sport utility "coupes," say—and soon Mercedes-Benz and Audi will have their own too. And the premium brands appear to be...

It's public knowledge that Hyundai plans to replace its aging Tucson Fuel Cell utility vehicle with an all-new hydrogen-powered vehicle, and that it has big plans for the future. The Korean automaker showcased the FE Fuel Cell concept in March to provide a glimpse of what to expect when the...

Working to redirect attention from its diesel-emission scandal—soon to wind down in the U.S. but ongoing in Europe—Volkswagen Group has talked a lot about its future electric-car plans. It will launch three high-volume battery-electric vehicles on a common architecture over the next...

Volkswagen is following the lead of many other global automakers: it has signed a deal for a new electric-vehicle joint venture in China. The German automaker said this week it has partnered with Chinese automaker Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Co. (JAC) to produce electric vehicles, as well as to...

Henrik Fisker, the man behind the relaunch of the company that bears his name, has released some new details on the upcoming EMotion sedan. However, the news isn't necessarily the best that electric-car fans and advocates could have hoped for. The graphene battery technology Fisker has frequently...