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In Case You Missed It - Nutson's Weekly Automotive News Digest - December 12-18, 2016; Subaru COTY; VW eMinivan; 2017 Kia Niro MPG Record; 1000HP Lucid Electrifies; Self-Driving News


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AUTO CENTRAL CHICAGO, December 18, 2016; Every Sunday Larry Nutson, Senior Editor and Chicago Car Guy along with fellow senior editors Steve Purdy and Thom Cannell from The Auto Channel Michigan Bureau, give you TACH's "take" on this past week's automotive news in easy to digest mega-tweet sized nuggets.

If you are a car and driving fan like we all are here at The Auto Channel, you can easily "catch up" or put these stories in context by searching the past 25 year's 2,002,399 automotive pages of news, automotive stories, articles, reviews, archived news, video, audio, rants and raves accessible from The Auto Channel's Automotive News Archive.

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Happy Holidays, enjoy and thanks for the positive feedback and ratings. See You Next Week, LN.

Nutson's Weekly Automotive News Digest - December 18, 2016

* At an award ceremony held inside the Tokyo International Exchange Center on Tokyo Bay, the Subaru Impreza polled 420 votes to triumph over the Toyota Prius by 49 votes and win the 2017 Car of the Year Japan (COTY). In a close battle for third, the Audi A4 polled 149 votes and captured the Import Car of the Year trophy, just 4 votes ahead of the strong finishing Volvo XC90. The win gives Subaru only its second ever COTY trophy and its first in 13 years.

* The upcoming CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, now in its 50th year, is the most important trade show of its kind in the country and has become a popular venue for auto companies to show off new technology, and even introduce new vehicles. Chrysler has decided to eschew the Detroit auto show this year doing a new product introduction at CES. Now we see that BMW will be showing off a futuristic holographic touchscreen at CES that, they say, can touch you back.

* After many iterations of concept vehicles based on the classic VW Microbus we learned this week VW will produce an electric version of what we’ve most recently seen as the BUDD-e concept vehicle. With styling nicely evolved from the concepts we’ve seen over the years this 7-passenger, rear-wheel drive, high-style vehicle will have a projected 500 kilometer (310-mile) range with the drive motor integrated into the rear axle. A liquid-cooled lithium-ion battery pack will be housed within the floor. Best guess is for production in 2019.

* The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute's latest report from Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle says the average fuel economy (window-sticker value) of new vehicles sold in the U.S. in November was 24.9 mpg—unchanged from the revised value for October. The value for November 2016 is up by 4.8 mpg since October 2007 (the first month of their monitoring), but down 0.6 mpg from the revised peak of 25.5 mpg reached in August of 2014.

* Take note that for model year 2017, the EPA revised its methodology for calculating the window-sticker fuel-economy value for new vehicles. In order to make the data for previous model years comparable with model year 2017 (and future model years), the EPA also retroactively revised the corresponding data for some vehicles in model years 2011-2016.

* The NHTSA wants to accelerate the pace of repairs to cars that have faulty air bag inflators made by Japanese supplier Takata. The agency said that Takata must provide replacement parts “on an accelerated basis and made available first to the riskiest vehicles.” Nearly 70 million air bags with defective inflators have been recalled. Takata has been ordered to recall all of the faulty air bags by the end of 2019. The recall is being done in stages and about 12.5 million have been fixed so far.

* In another new report from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute's Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle they say the more stringent 2022-2025 fuel economy standards will likely increase pressure on automobile manufacturers to produce (and sell) vehicles with high fuel efficiency, and thus increase marketing efforts (incentives, production goals, etc.) for cars (and especially small cars), which tend to be the most fuel-efficient gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles for sale today. They postulate that the vehicle mix under the 2022-2025 standards will contain proportionally more cars and less light trucks than would have been the case without these standards in place. With a theoretical mix of 60% cars and 40% trucks the fuel saved during the first four years would amount to 3.3 billion gallons.

* Google says it will not make self-driving cars but instead focus on developing the technology for others to use. Google is setting up its self-driving car unit as its own separate entity called Waymo under the Alphabet umbrella, the company announced. The business will be looking to partner more with vehicle makers, rather than building its own. Waymo’s technology could have uses as varied as ride-sharing services and long-haul trucking.

* The U.S. Department of Transportation announced this week a proposed mandate to require all new cars and light trucks be equipped with vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure, or short-range, communications systems that will allow them to “talk” to one another in order to prevent crashes. The systems would transmit information about each vehicle’s speed, location, braking and other data. It may take a year for a rule to come out from the Feds and then two to four years after that for the technology to hit the streets. But, it's coming so your car will know what's happening down the road or around a curve before you see it. The proposed rule would not require retrofitting of existing vehicles.

* Getting it done in 2016 as promised, Chevrolet delivered the first three Bolt EVs to customers in the San Francisco Bay area. Named the Motor Trend 2017 Car of the Year, the Bolt EV offers an EPA-estimated 238 miles of range on a full charge. Bolt EVs are currently in transit to California and Oregon markets and are arriving this month. A national rollout begins in 2017, and a number of Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States including New York, Massachusetts and Virginia will see first deliveries this winter.

* The 2017 Kia Niro officially received a Guinness World Record title for the lowest fuel consumption driving across the USA from coast to coast by a hybrid car. The new record-setting mark is 76.6 mpg. The production-stock Niro EX was driven 3,715.4 miles from Los Angeles City Hall to New York City Hall using only 48.5 gallons or 4.1 tanks of gas.

* Uber’s experimental self-driving program ran into a snag on its first day in operation in San Francisco this week as the California Department of Motor Vehicles claimed they did not have the proper permits. Uber said they did not need the permit because their test cars require a test driver to be present and monitor the process unlike driverless vehicles. So far it sounds like a misunderstanding that will be easily resolved.

* Look out Tesla, there’s a new challenger on the horizon. A company called Lucid Motors revealed a prototype of a luxury electric sedan this week that boasts 1,000 horsepower from two electric motors, a 0-60 time of 2.5 seconds and a 300 mile range from a 100-kWh battery pack. The Lucid Air will come to market, they say, in 2018 being built in a new $700 million Arizona factory. Cost is claimed to be somewhat more than $100,000. The company is taking $2,500 deposits now.

* Volkswagen’s new Atlas 7-passenger crossover began full production this week in anticipation of going on sale early in 2017. Built along side Passat in the Chattanooga, TN assembly plant the Atlas project required a $900 million upgrade of the factory and the addition of 665,000 square feet. Prices for the new Atlas, powered by either a turbo four-cylinder or a V6, have not been announced but are expected to begin in the low $30,000 range.

* For something a bit more exciting, the first road-going version of the all-new 2017 Ford GT has rolled off the line – heralding the beginning of production of the long-awaited halo car from Ford Performance. In the new, low-volume assembly facility at Multimatic in Markham, Ontario, Raj Nair, Ford executive vice president, global product development, and chief technical officer, marked the milestone by driving a Ford GT off the assembly line.

Larry Nutson, the Chicago Car Guy