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New Mercedes-AMG EQS 53 Priced From £155k In The UK, Nearly £16k More Than 751HP Taycan Turbo S

Two months ago, Mercedes unveiled the AMG EQS 53 at the Munich Motor Show as the first electric vehicle to wear the AMG badge. Now, the German automaker has released pricing for it, and it’s about what you’d expect for a range-topping high-performance EV sedan.

The EQS 53 will start at £154,995 (equal to around $208,000 at current exchange rates) in the UK, or 55% more than the base EQS 450’s starting price of £99,995. It’s also more expensive than the current flagship Porsche Taycan Turbo S that’s rated for 761PS / 751HP and kicks off from £139,280 (about $186,900).

For that money, you get a dual-motor AWD drivetrain producing 649 hp (658 PS / 484 kW) and 701 lb-ft (950 Nm) of instant electric torque. Upgrade to the AMG Performance Package with the Night Edition that pushes the starting price to £163,900 (around $220,000) though, and that same drivetrain produces 751 hp (761 PS / 560 kW) and 752 lb-ft (1020 Nm) of torque.

The former enables a 3.8-second sprint to 62 mph (100 km/h) with a top speed of 137 mph (220 km/h), while the latter allows for 3.4 seconds to 62 mph with a top speed of 155 mph (249 km/h). The range is the same for both, with a WLTP-estimated 358 miles (576 km) on tap from the car’s 107.8 kWh battery.

Standard features on all variants include the 56-inch Hyperscreen, an AR heads-up display, Nappa leather upholstery, a Burmester® surround sound system, a Parking package with Active Parking Assist, and 360° camera, Driving Assistance Package Plus, AMG sound programs, AMG-specific bodywork, and an AMG steering wheel.

Included with the Night Edition are 21-inch AMG alloy wheels, a flat-bottomed sport steering wheel, and sport pedals. Upgrading to the £8,995 AMG Performance Package (which is only available with the Night Edition) gets you carbon-ceramic brakes, AMG Dynamic Plus boost for Race Start, the AMG Sound Experience, the AMG Driver’s Package with increased top speed, AMG TRACK PACE, and AMG carbon-fiber interior trim.

Finally, serving as a counterpart to the bold Night Edition is the more subtle Touring specification, which comes with 22-inch AMG multi-spoke alloy wheels and elegant ambient lighting in the cabin. On top of that, you can opt for the £2,995 Rear Luxury Lounge package (only available with the Touring), which outfits the multi-contour rear seats with black Exclusive Nappa leather upholstery, power reclining, luxury headrests, neck and shoulder heating, comfort armrests, separate climate controls, an MBUX tablet, wireless charging, and additional USB ports.

The 2022 Mercedes-AMG EQS 53 4MATIC+ is currently on sale now, with the first UK deliveries expected to arrive in April 2022.

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Buick Trademarks The Electra Name, Does It Hint At Upcoming Electric Crossover?

Buick’s range in North America comprises exclusively of SUVs including the Envision, Encore and Enclave, but none of them is fully electric. This could change in the near future as the automaker filed a trademark for the Electra name in Canada, a move that could hint at a production version of last years’ fully electric crossover concept bearing the iconic name.

General Motor’s trademark filing from December 20 for the Buick Electra name was posted at the Rivian Owners Forum. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Buick will use the Electra name on a production vehicle, nor that this will be a fully electric crossover, however both of those assumptions sound plausible given the timing.

The pictured Buick Electra concept was unveiled last year in Shangai. The prototype brought back an iconic name used in full-size luxury sedans from 1959 to 1990. Unlike its predecessors, the new Electra adopted a sleek crossover-style silhouette previewing Buick’s future design language.

Like the Cadillac Lyric that was unveiled in production form earlier this year, the Buick Electra concept was based on GM’s Ultium architecture with a fully electric powertrain. In the concept, the dual electric motors produced 583 hp (435 kW / 589 PS), while the Ultium battery allowed a range of more than 410 miles (660 km). The production version could use the Lyriq’s 100 kWh lithium-ion battery pack which is good for a more down-to-earth 300 mile (483 km) electric range.

A Buick Electra SUV could be a competitor for the rumored Chrysler Airflow and the Ford Mustang Mach-E, or move upmarket to rival more premium electric SUV proposals from BMW (iX), Audi (e-tron), and Mercedes-Benz (EQE). In any case, the design of the concept would have to be toned down for production, including a more conventional design for the greenhouse and the doors while retaining elements like the overall crossover shape, the Matrix LED lighting units, and the large-diameter wheels.

Buick hasn’t made any announcements for the future product strategy so we don’t know if and when they are planning to introduce their first fully electric SUV. Outside North America, the automaker is steadily increasing its sales in China, where it is also offering a wide range of sedans, SUVs, and luxury MPVs.

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Subaru Previews Fully Electric STI E-RA And Three More STI Performance Concepts For Tokyo Auto Salon

Subaru will join the Tokyo Auto Salon 2022 with a bunch of interesting concept cars that were previewed today in a press release. The most important launch will be the STI E-RA Concept signalling the electric era of the performance brand, but we are also going to see “STI Performance” variants of the WRX S4, Levorg, and BRZ in concept form.

The STI E-RA Concept is described as a “study model of motorsport vehicles for the carbon-neutral era,” so don’t get your hopes up for a production vehicle anytime soon since this is probably a racing car prototype. However, as suggested by the teaser, the model will introduce new design elements that could be used in future Subaru vehicles like the C-shaped LED headlights mounted on the fenders, the double vented bonnet, the red illuminated STI badge on the low nose, and the front bumper with a prominent splitter. Subaru didn’t give us details on the powertrain, other than it will be fully electric.

Besides the motorsport concept for the new era, Subaru will also showcase three “STI Performance” concepts of the WRX S4, the Levorg, and the BRZ. The first one was previewed in an official picture showing additional aero components, which will likely be the case with the other two as well.

Compared to the WRX S4 STI Sport R that is already on sale in Japan and served as a base for the concept, the new aero includes a splitter, side sills and rear bumper extensions painted in pink, matching mirror caps and STI emblem, plus a large carbon-fiber rear spoiler. The bumpers seem to be slightly redesigned for a sportier look while there is a new set of black rims shod in performance tires. We are not sure if there will be any mechanical upgrades over the production model but Subaru also mentioned a performance muffler.

Similarly, the Levorg STI Performance concept will be based on the recently announced Levorg STI Sport R trim. It will feature cherry red accents on the additional aero components, a performance muffler, plus items “that will improve the usability” of the performance-oriented wagon. As for the BRZ STI Performance concept, it will add performance parts to the BRZ S grade painted in the same cherry red shade.

Lastly, the BRZ GT300 2021 racing car that won the class victory this year will be also exhibited at the Subaru booth, where the automaker will make announcements for the 2022 motorsport team. A lucky visitor of the Tokyo Auto Salon 2022 will drive away in a brand new WRX STI Sport R EX that will be this years’ questionnaire prize.

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Latest Lucid Air Dream Edition Review Proves That It’s Something Very Special

The all-electric Lucid Air may come from an automaker with no prior experience building cars but it has proven itself to be one of the finest electric vehicles on the market.

A bunch of journalists have had the opportunity to drive the Lucid Air over the past couple of months and most recently, the guys from Throttle House in Canada headed to California to put the Lucid Air Dream Edition Performance variant through its paces. They walked away from the review seriously impressed.

Powering this flagship variant of the Lucid Air are two electric motors that combine to produce 1,111 hp. It is the most performance-focused variant of the Air but it still offers a range of 471 miles (758 km). Those who don’t need all 1,111 hp can also purchase the Air Dream Edition in Range guise with 933 hp and 520 miles (837 km) of range.

While testing the electric sedan, Throttle House notes that it feels like a luxury car first which is quite a bold statement considering the phenomenal performance that it offers. The Lucid Air also weighs several hundred pounds more than a Tesla Model S Plaid but despite that, it controls its mass incredibly well and offers up loads of grip and gives the driver heaps of confidence. Unlike the Model S Plaid, it also has a set of brakes that match the insane straight-line performance.

The Lucid Air has received a lot of praise recently and was even named as Motor Trend’s Car of the Year. Unlike some other electric vehicles, it has also started to reach the hands of customers and proves that while Tesla continues to dominate the EV market, it now has some serious rivals to worry about.

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Canoo Drops Plans For European Production, Will Build Its EVs In Arkansas And Oklahoma

Canoo has decided against building some of its vehicles in Europe and will accelerate its production plans in the United States instead.

The electric vehicle startup had inked a deal with contract manufacturer VDL Nedcar to build vehicles in the Netherlands but in a recent statement confirmed that it will not move forward with the deal and will exclusively build vehicles in Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Canoo added that bringing production to the U.S. will reduce supply chain vulnerabilities, increase the speed at which it brings vehicles to customers, provide it with more control over new innovations and IP, increase local manufacturing jobs, and “save thousands of dollars per unit by eliminating warranty risks, tariffs, and overseas shipping costs.”

Canoo expects to begin producing vehicles in Arkansas from next year while its ‘Mega Micro’ factory in Pryor, Oklahoma will be operational in late 2023. The decision to build its cars solely the U.S. has allowed the company to increase production estimates from 500-1,000 units in 2022 up to between 3,000 and 6,000 units. It also intends on producing 14,000 – 17,000 vehicles in 2023, between 40,000 and 50,000 in 2024, and upwards of 70,000 to 80,000 in 2025.

“Canoo is now in a position to issue guidance at a time when many others in the industry are reducing targets and projections,” Canoo chairman and chief executive Tony Aquila said. “The Company has now refined its manufacturing strategy and assembled a team to execute the production roadmap for 2022 – 2025. In addition, we will be 100% built in the heartland of America, and we have proudly achieved another major milestone of having sourced 96% percent of our parts from U.S. and Allied Nations.”

Volvo To Open Battery R&D Center In Gothenburg With Partner Northvolt

Volvo and Northvolt will open a joint research and development center in Gothenburg, Sweden. The center will be tasked with developing new batteries for EVs that deliver on range and charging time expectations while reducing the carbon footprint of the batteries themselves.

The R&D center will become operational in 2022 and the location has been chosen to keep it close to Volvo’s own R&D center as well as Northvolt‘s existing innovation campus in Västerås, Sweden, to ease cooperation.

“Our partnership with Northvolt secures the supply of high-quality, sustainably-produced batteries for the next generation of pure electric Volvos,” said Håkan Samuelsson, chief executive for Volvo Cars. “It will strengthen our core competencies and our position in the transformation to a fully electric car company.”

Volvo says that the partnership will focus on developing “tailor-made” batteries that give buyers long ranges and quick charging times. The automaker wants to collaborate with Northvolt to create an end-to-end system for battery manufacturing to allow it to develop its own batteries. Since batteries are the single largest component of an electric vehicle and the single biggest contributor to their carbon footprint, the development of new technology will be an important area of focus.

The center is being created as part of a SEK30 billion ($3.3 billion) investment in battery development. Batteries developed there will also power Polestar vehicles, which announced this year that it intends to build climate-neutral cars by 2030.

Following the completion of the R&D center, Volvo and Northvolt will build a battery manufacturing plant in Europe. Although the exact location of the site is not yet known, Volvo says it will be announced in early 2022.

The plant will have a potential annual capacity of 50 GWh, enough to supply about 500,000 vehicles, the automaker says. Construction is expected to commence in 2023 and large-scale production should kick off in 2026. Part of Volvo’s commitment to sell only electric vehicles by 2030, the plant and the R&D center are quite important when it comes to the automaker’s plans for the future.

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Tesla Model S Plaid Needs 15 Seconds To Run Quarter Mile In ‘Chill’ Mode

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The Tesla Model S Plaid has been in the headlines a lot in recent months and has established itself as the world’s quickest production car this side of the Rimac Nevera and Pininfarina Battista hypercars.

Importantly, virtually all performance tests you’ll see online of the Model S Plaid show it being driven in Plaid mode with the available Drag Strip Mode system enabled. Eager to see how his Model S would perform in the more relaxed ‘Chill’ and ‘Sport’ driving modes, YouTuber DragTimes headed onto the street for some tests.

For the first test, he set a baseline with Plaid mode and Drag Strip Mode enabled, rocketing to 60 mph (96 km/h) in just 2.42 seconds and running the quarter-mile in 9.52 seconds at 148.58 mph (239.1 km/h). He then switched the EV into Sport mode. Doing so saw the 0-60 mph time climb to 3.51 seconds while the car then needed 11.14 seconds to run the quarter-mile with a trap speed of 129.36 mph (208.18 km/h). That’s still a quick quarter-mile time and just a few couple tenths behind a BMW M5 CS.

As for the ‘Chill’ mode, well it is exactly that. After pinning the throttle in this mode, the YouTuber is immediately amused with how much slower it is. It picks up speed very gently and ultimately needs a full 7.13 seconds to hit 60 mph and completes the quarter-mile in 15.27 seconds at just 93.81 mph (150.97 km/h).

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XPeng Unveils New Flying Car And Terrifying Robotic Pony

XPeng has used their 1024 Tech Day to unveil an assortment of new concepts including a flying car and a robotic pony that will haunt your dreams.

Starting with the flying car, it was developed by XPeng’x Urban Air Mobility affiliate known as HT Aero.

The company didn’t go into many specifics, but said the model was developed in-house and features multiple safety redundancies as well as a lightweight design and a foldable rotor mechanism. When the car is parked, two gullwing doors open and allow the rotors to swing into place. The blades then extend, allowing the car to takeoff and land vertically.

Also Read: Flying Cars Are Coming, But They’ll Be Pricier Than Ferrari’s SF90 Stradale

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In terms of styling, the model looks like a futuristic supercar as it features an aerodynamic design and partially covered rear wheels. The flying car also sports a high-tech interior with a transparent infotainment system and a digital display integrated into the steering wheel. We can also see a central divider and unique controls for flying.

While the model looks pretty farfetched, XPeng says a roll-out is planned for 2024. They also noted it will be “road-capable” and this suggests it will be fully street-legal.

In other news, XPeng used the event to announced plans to launch the XPilot 3.5 driver assistance system early next year. It features the “industry’s first mass-produced quadruple perception fusion solution, with dual-camera-vision coverage, complemented by LiDAR and millimeter-wave radar sensors.” They will enable vehicles to see in 3D as well as recognize, classify and note the position of objects around them.

Roughly a year later, in the first half of 2023, XPeng will roll out XPilot 4.0. It’s billed as a “full-scenario” driver assistance system that allows for autonomous point-to-point driving. It’s slated to use an 8 million pixel front-view binocular camera, 2.9 million pixel side-view cameras and two Orin-X autonomous driving SoCs.

The Tesla competitor also announced plans for China’s first “800V high-voltage mass-production SiC platform, with new-generation X-Power superchargers able to charge for a range of up to 200 km (124 miles) in just 5 minutes.” Speaking of the latter, the company will introduce 480 kW superchargers to all for quick charging.

Last but not least, XPeng introduced a robotic pony prototype that looks like a rocking horse from hell. It features face, body and voiceprint sensing to recognize multiple users and presumably steal the souls of small children. The pony can also walk thanks to 3D route planning and high-tech limbs, and children can apparently ride on it.

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Porsche Design Chief Believes A Fully Electric 911 Is Achievable

Earlier this year, Porsche’s CEO, Oliver Blume, stated that the 911 would be the last model to go electric “if it ever did at all”. However, that hasn’t stopped Porsche’s design chief Michael Mauer from envisioning and talking about the design of a fully electric 911, even though it would be highly unlikely for such a variant to be introduced before 2030.

Blume had stated that the concept of the 911 “doesn’t allow a fully electric car because we have the engine in the rear”. Mauer confirmed that the iconic silhouette of the 911 is not going anywhere, however the rear-engined layout limitation doesn’t seem to worry him at all, stating that an electric powertrain gives designers more freedom.

Porsche’s head of design told Autocar that he is more worried about the limitations in future combustion engines, such as the packaging of the exhaust system due to the increasingly strict emission regulations. He said that in 10-15 years, a rear overhang should be “almost two meters” in order to fit all the necessary equipment, adding that “purely from a design standpoint, an electric 911 is even easier in the future”.

Mauer admitted that “differing opinions” are part of Porsche’s culture and in the end, this is what leads to the best solutions, reminding the evolution from air-cooled to water-cooled and turbocharged engines. He believes that the traditional sound of the flat-six engine is not 100 percent of the car’s character, since styling, handling, and performance are also important factors of the 911 experience.

While Mauer and his team already have a vision for a future fully electric 911, he sounded skeptical on when it would be the right time to put it out in the market: “We will see. Maybe with the next generation, we still can do a combustion-engine 911. I don’t know. As a designer, we will find solutions.”

We might not see a BEV variant of the 911 anytime soon, but it seems that Porsche is getting ready to electrify its iconic model. A hybrid 911 Turbo prototype was spotted testing at the Nurburgring a few months ago, hinting at a more powerful derivative. The current 992 generation that debuted in 2018 has been engineered with the capacity of electrification in both mild-hybrid and plug-in hybrid forms.

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QOTD: Which Group B Rally Icon Should E-Legend Turn Into An EV Next?

The Audi Sport Quattro-Inspired EL1 electric coupe is one of the most exciting cars we’ve seen this year, and its existence owes nothing to modern day Audi.

Instead, the 30-unit run of retro EVs is the work of another, much smaller company by the name of E-Legend. And according to Autocar, E-Legend plans to follow up the EL1 with more zero emissions homages to 1980s Group B rally icons.

Marcus Holzinger, E-Legend’s chairman and chief designer, suggested to Autocar’s Mike Duff that Lancia’s Delta S4 and 037 and Ford’s RS200 were all cars he would like to reinterpret as EVs, conceding that the running order might be decided by which generates the most demand from buyers.

Kimera Evo37

On its website at the foot of a section about the EL1, E-Legend states that “two more rally icons of the same type, also limited to 30 units, are expected to follow”.

The 037, you might recall, has already been rebooted by another independent company as the 498 hp Kimera Evo37, though that uses conventional ICE running gear rather than electric motors.

While the cars Holzinger mentions share nothing beyond their Group B history, E-Legend says it can produce any of them using a modified version of the carbon fiber monocoque chassis and triple-motor running gear found in the EL1.

Ford RS200

Autocar reports that the architecture is flexible enough to accommodate different wheelbase lengths, and that handling characteristics can be tweaked to mimic those of the original car by switching off the front motor or moving components to change weight distribution.

The 805 hp EL1 is claimed to accelerate to 62 mph (100 km/h) in 2.8 seconds, has a maximum speed of 186 mph (299 km/h), and costs €890,000 ($1.04 million) plus tax.

Which Group B icon do you think E-Legend should tackle next (we’re guessing not the embarrassingly crappy Citroën BX 4TC)?

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