Autocar December 8 - 15, 2021 Doble Issue

“BANNING INTERNAL combustion engines might be picking a fight with the wrong enemy,” said Steve Sapsford, managing director of consultancy firm SCE, at a recent Autocar Business webinar (p16). “Stopping our dependence on fossil fuels is where we should be focused.” Enter e-fuels, a seemingly ovenready solution to reducing emissions not only with the world’s existing car parc, but also many larger, heavier forms of transport unsuited to a switch to battery-electric power. Even when all new cars sold in the UK are electric only, there will still be millions on our road that need to run on liquid fuels for years to come. Yet there is one big hurdle for e-fuels to overcome: legislators. Or even more pertinently, politicians. Given how politicised electric cars and the 2030 engine ban…

“It will play a key role in Nissan’s £1 billion investment to make Sunderland ‘a flagship EV hub’” Nissan will build a mid-size electric SUV in the UK, replacing its pioneering Leaf hatchback as one of 15 all-new EVs due by 2030. Previewed by the new Chill-Out concept, the as-yetunnamed crossover will go on sale in around 2025 and sit beneath the Ariya SUV, with similarly rakish proportions and closely related underpinnings. Nissan’s boss in Europe, Guillaume Cartier, has previously confirmed that it will succeed the Leaf, which has been on sale in its current form since 2017. This will take the number of SUVs in the brand’s European range to five. It will sit atop the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance’s CMF-EV platform, which has already been deployed in the Ariya and…

Nissan has also given clues to production cars arriving in the more distant future with a trio of radical concepts. Each has a new lightweight platform with a motor at both ends and a solid-state battery in between. With plans to introduce solid-state-battery EVs to the market by 2028, Nissan could be one of the first mainstream manufacturers to commercialise the revolutionary technology. It will open a pilot plant for the new batteries in Yokohama, Japan, in 2024, estimating that they will slash charging times by 66% and bring material costs down to help achieve “cost parity between EV and gasoline vehicles”. The three new concept cars hint at the theoretical flexibility of the new-era underpinnings and Nissan’s plans for a diverse model line-up in the EV era. Max-Out This…

The new GR Yaris H2 is a hydrogen-fuelled concept version of Toyota’s highly acclaimed four-wheel-drive hot hatchback. Toyota has been testing hydrogen combustion engine technology for several months by racing a lightly modified Corolla touring car – which uses a hydrogen-fuelled version of the GR Yaris’s turbocharged 1.6-litre three-cylinder engine – in Japan’s Super Taikyu Series. Toyota says that hydrogen combustion technology allows cars to become emissions free relatively affordably, because it enables manufacturers to exploit “existing internal combustion engine knowhow and manufacturing investment”. Toyota’s European CEO, Matt Harrison, said that using this technology would allow Toyota to “deliver almost zero tailpipe emissions without electrification but do so while retaining the things that fans love most about race cars: the speed and the noise”. “It’s music to the ears,” he…

LEXUS ROV Lexus’s hydrogen-fuelled Recreational Off-Highway Vehicle (ROV) concept is designed to demonstrate that “exhilarating driving can coexist with a carbon-free society”. The two-seater features exposed suspension, a full roll-cage and chunky tyres – but Lexus maintains that it’s still “the kind of vehicle that people would expect from a luxury car maker”. It uses a hydrogen-fuelled 1.0-litre combustion engine, but Lexus has given no further technical or performance details. LEXUS RZ Lexus’s first bespoke electric car, due in the first half of 2022, is called the RZ. It is based on Toyota’s e-TNGA platform but has bespoke modifications aimed at taking “the driving experience to the next level”. Lexus Europe vice-president Pascal Ruch said that a priority is offering “exhilarating driving performance” and hinted at variants of future EVs…

THOSE INTERESTED IN the new Toyota GR86 should act “relatively quickly” to place their orders, because sales in Europe will end just two years after first deliveries, as it won’t be compliant with incoming safety regulations without significant re-engineering. Order books for the sports coupé are open now, ahead of deliveries beginning in the first half of 2022. Toyota’s European senior vice-president Tom Fux told Autocar: “We felt that the vehicle is so good and so needed for Toyota’s image in Europe, and we have a small but very passionate group of customers out there who are searching for vehicles like the GR86. “In the end, we decided it’s important to offer this vehicle, but then we will need to stop, because it will not meet the new requirements in…