AUTOS
-A company created to build battery-operated cars is now expanding into battery-operated homes and, if Tesla chief Elon Musk wins his battle to electrify the carbon-based world, battery-operated everything. Starting later this year, a new Tesla company called Tesla Energy will market a 10-kWh, $3500 wall-mounted battery called the Powerwall and will also launch a line of refrigerator-sized industrial batteries that are scalable up to sizes large enough to power
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– We’ll start with an apology to any fans of two-door Subarus who have found this page via a wayward Google search. Because the SVX that brings us here isn’t the compellingly bizarre Giugiaro-designed 1990s coupe—one of the biggest automotive flops of the past 25 years—but rather Land Rover’s plans to use the acronym for some butched-up off-road models. – As with most of the interesting stuff happening at Jaguar Land
– This is hardly a surprise. While the rest of VW’s supervisory board was no doubt hoping that Volkswagen/Porsche heavyweight Ferdinand Piëch would simply disappear and enjoy retirement after he and his wife (and fellow VW board member) Ursula stepped down last week—his critical remarks on the performance of VW CEO Martin Winterkorn had been met with outrage—that isn’t to be the case. – The void was quickly filled with two new appointees, 57-year-old
– Cadillac is getting serious about efficient powertrains. The brand will launch four- and six-cylinder diesel engines, Cadillac chief engineer Dave Leone re-confirmed to us. (Cadillac CEO Johan de Nysschen previously asserted a similar plan and said the engines would arrive by 2019.) “They are both new engines,” Leone told us. He said that the usage and tuning will be tailored to the cars: “It depends on the product they are going into.” The
-Scion’s sales woes for the FR-S sports car haven’t un-woed, and the company sold just 893 of the coupes in March, down from 1464 during the same month last year. After debuting to much acclaim in 2013—the Scion and its Subaru BRZ twin were both named to our 10Best Cars list that year—sales have slid in large part because pretty much everybody who wanted one of the tail-happy rear-drivers bought one.
– To surprise of absolutely no one, the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 has been selected to pace the field at the 99th running of the Indianapolis 500. As the long-reigning poster child for domestic performance, the Corvette Z06 being paired with the Indy 500, a storied and distinctly American celebration of the all that is right in the world—at least for that one fleeting moment—is the stuff gasoline-marinated marketing dreams are made of.
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-What’s a Camaro? Chevrolet sent us a French-English dictionary which defined “camaro” as a little-known colloquialism meaning “comrade” or “pal.” The word was so little-known that none of our French friends had ever heard of it. Sounds Spanish, they said, so we tried a Spanish-English dictionary. Eureka! “Camaro” is defined as a gratuity, a shrimp or something very much like something else. Perfect! There was even a little quotation which
– It’s always nice when a good cause and fun automotive design converge, and so it is the case with the cool Ford Transit van you see here. Izzy Paskowitz is a former pro surfer who runs Surfers Healing, a group that works to connect and engage with autistic children using surfing, and his current beach shuttle is a tired old 1998 Ford E-series van. Ford and the famed customizers at Galpin Auto
