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Florida Could Suspend Carvana’s Dealer License For Not Submitting Title Applications

Florida could suspend Carvana’s dealer license after it has failed to transfer the titles of some vehicles sold.

Carvana was reportedly notified of the issues in an email sent by Florida authorities last week. This email is said to have included a spreadsheet that showed 300 Carvana vehicle sales dating back to 2019 that had not had their titles transferred. More than 100 of these vehicle sales occurred in Florida.

State law in Florida requires retailers to apply for a title within 30 days of completing a sale. Speaking with Auto News, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles said Carvana has until January 31 to submit title applications for all the vehicles it sold in 2021 before December 1.

“The department has been proactively working with Carvana to identify and assist Florida customers who have not received their title in a timely manner, and in accordance with state law,” the spokesperson added. “Florida law allows for the suspension of the dealer’s license if they fail to apply for a transfer of title in a timely manner.”

This isn’t the first time Carvana has been scrutinized for not delivering titles in time. Earlier this year it settled with Florida regulators and agreed to pay $500 each to 12 customers who had to wait three to eight months to receive titles on vehicles they purchased. In August, Carvana had its dealer license suspended for 180 days in Wake County, North Carolina for not producing titles fast enough, among other issues.

Carvana sold 244,111 vehicles in the U.S. last year, making it the country’s second-largest retailer of used vehicles. A spokeswoman from the company says Carvana has applied for around 23,500 titles in Florida over the past 12 months.

BMW M Rumored To Be Readying Special M4 For 50th Ann. With Manual Gearbox

Next year is gearing up to be a special one for BMW’s M division. BMW M GmbH will mark its 50th anniversary in May, 2022, and new rumors suggest that there’s a special, limited production M4 on the horizon.

The lead comes from an alleged BMW insider on g80.bimmerpost. The user, who apparently has a good track record for new car info, suggests that the unnamed M4 special will be “configured like the CSL, but with a manual transmission.”

The forum member goes on to say that several options will be deleted, including comfort access, parking sensors, and electric seats. The absence of such would result in an M4 that’s even lighter than the already lightweight CSL, provided this special model is based on the upcoming CSL in the first place.

Although the production M4 CSL hasn’t yet been revealed to the public, our spies have spotted prototypes undergoing testing. These cars feature revised air intakes and grilles, as well as lightweight wheels, a more prominent lip spoiler, and a new diffuser.

Read: BMW Teases Next-Generation M4 GT4 Customer Race Car

A BMW M4 CSL prototype caught testing at the Nurburgring

As yet, powertrain details for the CSL have not been confirmed, although there have been reports that BMW may not offer a manual transmission. If that were the case, a limited, manual-equipped take on the CSL could prove to be the holy grail of BMW’s M4 line-up. The source also remarks that the new variant will be only produced for a few months, starting in November 2022, implying that production numbers will be kept low.

We already know that BMW M GmbH has big plans on the horizon for the upcoming year. Their 750hp plug-in hybrid SUV, the XM, is set to be in production before the end of 2022, and from January, customers will be able to order their cars with a roundel that harks back to the Motorsport division’s classic logo. If that weren’t enough, the new BMW M3 Touring would finally fulfill our M wagon dreams, and a series of 50 new M paint finishes will be made available. A special, ultra-limited edition of the M4 could just be the icing on the cake.

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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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Elon Musk Says He’s Sold Enough Stock, Takes Swipe At California’s “Over-Taxation” While Tesla Shares Surge

Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk says he’s now sold enough stock, achieving his goal of selling 10 percent of his shares in the EV automaker. Speaking to satirical website Babylon Bee, Musk also criticized California for “over-taxation.” Shares in Tesla have increased by six percent since the interview.

Poll Results Or Impending Tax Bill?

In November, Musk asked his Twitter followers to vote on whether he should sell 10 percent of his Tesla stock. More than 3.5 million users participated, with the majority voting that TIME Magazine’s Person Of The Year goes ahead with the plan. Shares in Tesla lost nearly a quarter of their value with the poll results.

Asked whether he sold the stock because of the Twitter results, Musk said that he needed to exercise his stock options before they expired, no matter what, but that he had also sold an additional “incremental stock” to get near the portion promised. “I sold enough stock to get to around 10 percent plus the option exercise stuff, and I tried to be extremely literal here,” said Musk.

See: Elon Musk Sells More Tesla Shares And Says Carmaker Will Start Accepting Dogecoin

After a war of words with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren over his taxes, Musk tweeted that his tax bill would be roughly $11 billion this year — potentially the largest individual payment to the Internal Revenue Service. Out of the 13.5 million shares sold, it’s reported that 8.06 were sold to pay taxes related to his options exercise.

Californian Criticism

Tesla relocated its headquarters to Texas earlier this month. The move has been long-mooted, with tensions between Musk and Californian officials initially flaring up over Covid-19 restrictions that forced it to halt production at the Freemont factory.

Musk didn’t mince his words speaking on Babylon Bee’s podcast. “California used to be the land of opportunity and now it is… becoming more so the land of sort of over-regulation, over-litigation, over-taxation,” he said, adding that it is “increasingly difficult to get things done” in California.

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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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Audi Kills Off The R8 In Australia As Local Engine Tune Is No Longer Produced

Not long after Nissan announced that the GT-R will soon be axed in Australia, Audi has revealed that the R8 has also been discontinued.

A spokesperson from Audi Australia stated that the R8 model sold in Australia has a specific engine tune which is no longer produced by the car’s German factory, prompting the automaker’s local division to decide against re-homologating or re-engineering the car for a market as small as Australia.

“The current generation of the Coupe and Spyder are no longer offered in Australia, for local homologation reasons. The R8 will continue to be produced for other markets,” Audi Australia told Car Sales. “AUDI AG is currently discussing various concepts for a possible R8 successor, but no decision has been made so far.”

It is understood that Audi Australia stopped importing the R8 to Australia several months ago and only a handful remain on dealership floors.

While the R8 was available in Australia since 2007, when the first generation was launched, only 681 examples have been sold. To put that into perspective, Audi sold 581 examples of the R8 in the United States alone in 2020 and that figure was down on the 927 units sold in 2018 and the record 1,145 that were sold during 2011.

The local axing of the R8 comes just a few months after Audi announced some updates for the car in the U.S. Most notably, it has increased grunt for the R8 RWD model, pushing its 5.2-liter naturally-aspirated V10 up to 562 hp and 406 lb-ft (550 Nm) of torque. Additionally, it is available with a new Sport Exhaust Package and a Dynamic Package.

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Elon Musk Says German Gigafactory Will “Hopefully” Produce First Vehicles In October

Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, told media he hopes the company’s German gigafactory in Gruenheide, near Berlin, will open in October during a tour of the plant that is still under construction.

“We’re looking forward to hopefully getting the approval to make the first cars maybe in October if we are fortunate,” Musk said during the plant visit, which, Reuters reports, hosted Armin Laschet, the conservative candidate set to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor.

The factory was initially supposed to open in July 2021 but its opening was pushed back to late 2021, with some reports claiming that production wouldn’t start until January 2022. Musk publicly blamed German bureaucracy for the delays and has apparently found a kindred spirit in Laschet, who has been critical of the German government’s red tape.

“Sometimes one has the impression that inventing something new is technologically easier than dismantling bureaucracy in Germany,” Laschet said during the tour.

The factory has been investigated several times for its construction practices. In May, German labor authorities investigated the site for allegedly paying construction crews less than the national minimum wage and housing them in cramped living quarters where cases of the coronavirus were able to spread.

In April, meanwhile, the site came under the Brandenburg Ministry of the Environment’s scrutiny for allegedly using illegal plumbing that diverted wastewater from the factory into the local drinking water supply. Reuters reports that the environmental agency has yet to give the site its final approvals, meaning that further delays are impossible to rule out.

Regardless, Musk was excited about the plant’s prospects, later tweeting out an invitation to the local community to visit the plant on October 9.

Priority for residents of Brandenburg & Berlin, but also open to general public

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2021

What Are The Best And Worst Cars And SUVs For Visibility?

Our buying decisions are often shaped by how a vehicle looks on the outside, when how the world looks from the inside of a car or SUV is arguably far more important.

Carmakers can load up their vehicles with hundreds of electronic safety features but if you can’t see past roof pillars the size of an elephant’s leg, those cars are less safe and less relaxing to drive than they should be.

Pillars have grown since the 1970s to make cars stronger, but some automakers do a better job than others of integrating that strength while still ensuring pedestrians, cyclists and other cars are still visible at all times from the driver’s seat.

To let buyers know which new cars are the visibility villains, and which are the heroes, Consumer Reports ranked the best and worst cars in each market sector, from basic subcompacts to luxury midsized SUVs.

The visibility assessments come from the “driving position” section of CR’s regular road tests on each vehicle, but this is the first time the ratings have been assembled in one place.

Some market segments, including minivans and large SUVs, weren’t ranked because Consumer Reports’ testers didn’t find sufficient differences between competing models. But in other sectors there were huge differences between the good and the bad.

CR’s results showed that generally speaking, sedans have much better visibility than the SUVs that are increasingly replacing them. But it gave special praise to the Subaru Forester, finding its visibility was “vastly superior” to its rivals.

In fact two more Subarus, the WRX and the Legacy were rated best in class, while Honda also scored three “bests” with the Fit, Passport and Pilot, but ranks less well than Subaru overall because the Clarity was ranked the worst midsize sedan.

Nissan, meanwhile featured twice on the “worst” list with the Murano and Pathfinder, as did Chevrolet. That the Camaro and its pillbox slit windows fared badly was no surprise, but the little Spark also struggled.

Whats cars have you driven that would justify a “worst” rating by CR’s testers?

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Tesla’s Chairman, Robyn Denholm, Sells $22 Million Worth Of EV Maker’s Shares

Robyn Denholm, the Chairman of Board for Tesla Inc., has sold 31,250 of her shares in the company, according to a regulatory filing late Wednesday night. The shares were sold at average weighted prices of between $700 and $726.11, combining for a value of more than $22 million, reports Automotive News. The reasons for the sale are not yet known.

Denholm recently testified in a Delaware court as part of a shareholder lawsuit against CEO Elon Musk over Tesla’s controversial acquisition of SolarCity, a solar panel manufacturer owned by Musk’s cousins. The suit alleges that Musk used his outsized influence to make a deal with SolarCity that did not benefit Tesla or its shareholders.

Although four other Tesla board members owned stock in SolarCity at the time of the 2016 acquisition, they all settled the allegations against them and did not admit fault.

Denholm has served on Tesla’s board since August 2014. In 2018, she took over the role of chairman after Musk was required to step down from the position as part of an agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

That deal only required Musk to step down for three years, though, a time which is close to wrapping up. That means that he could legally take the position back soon.

Denholm lives in Australia and previously served as the CFO for Telstra Corp, an Australian telecom company. She has also worked at Toyota, Sun Microsystems, and a number of other companies.

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GM Taking Legal Action Against Ford Over BlueCruise Hands-Free Driving System

Back in April, Ford announced they were jumping on the autonomous driving bandwagon with their BlueCruise hands-free driving system. Now, GM is taking legal action against the Blue Oval, as they believe the name infringes on their similar Super Cruise system.

Over the past few weeks there have been ongoing conversations on the matter between the two automotive giants, ultimately ending with GM filing a lawsuit against Ford on the grounds of trademark infringement. The case will be taken to a United States federal court.

A statement following the filing said: “GM’s Super Cruise hands-free driver assistance technology was announced in 2012 and has been used commercially in-market since 2017. Our majority-owned self-driving subsidiary Cruise has been in business since 2013. While GM had hoped to resolve the trademark infringement matter with Ford amicably, we were left with no choice but to vigorously defend our brands and protect the equity our products and technology have earned over several years in the market. As this is a matter of pending litigation, we have no further comments at this time.”

GM also believes that confusion between Super Cruise and Ford’s “less advanced” BlueCruise could tarnish the Super Cruise brand as the result of an “inferior consumer experience, with the potential for comfort and safety issues.”

Ford, on the other hand, disagreed, with spokesperson Mike Levine saying: “We think GM Cruise’s claim is meritless and frivolous. Drivers for decades have understood what cruise control is, every automaker offers it, and “cruise” is common shorthand for the capability. That’s why BlueCruise was chosen as the name for the Blue Oval’s next evolution of Ford’s Intelligent Adaptive Cruise Control, which incorporates hands-free Blue Zones and other advanced cruise-control features.”

Super Cruise is currently only available in the Cadillac Escalade, but GM plans on offering the system in a total of 22 vehicles by the end of 2023. By contrast, BlueCruise is not available in any Ford vehicles as of yet, but will be installed in the F-150 and Mustang Mach-E in the coming months by way of an over-the-air update.